1. The Witch House (Judge Corwin’s Home)

The only structure still standing with direct ties to the witch trials—Judge Jonathan Corwin interrogated accused witches in his home, and forensic analysis of the attic beams shows rope burns where restraints were likely anchored during questioning sessions.

2. The Burying Point Cemetery

Rebecca Nurse’s empty grave sits here, but her body was secretly retrieved by family after her 1692 hanging and buried on her farm—gravediggers reported the coffin felt too light when lowering it, suggesting the switch happened before the funeral.

3. Salem Witch Trials Memorial

The stone threshold visitors step over to enter bears the protestation words of the accused carved into granite—you’re literally walking over their final testimonies of innocence, exactly as the court symbolically did in 1692.

4. The House of the Seven Gables

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s cousin Susannah Ingersoll told him about a secret staircase in this 1668 mansion, which he fictionalized in his novel—the real hidden passage was used to hide valuable China Trade goods from customs inspectors, not romantic intrigue.

5. Old Town Hall

Built directly over the site of the original 1692 meetinghouse where preliminary witch examinations occurred—construction workers in 1816 unearthed iron restraints and reported “unexplained cold spots” that delayed the building’s completion by six months.

6. Pickering Wharf

During the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1799, captains returning from tropical ports were quarantined on Derby Wharf—sailors who died were buried at sea at midnight to avoid panic, and fishermen still report seeing lanterns moving across the water on windless nights.

7. Ropes Mansion Garden

The elaborate garden behind this 1727 estate was designed to include “mourning paths” with dark flowers after the owner’s daughter died of scarlet fever—her gravestone faces the house so she could “watch” family gatherings through the dining room windows.

8. Chestnut Street (McIntire Historic District)

Samuel McIntire carved protective “witch marks” (daisy wheels and hexafoils) into several doorframes along this Federal-era street—ship captains commissioned them after the China Trade began, fearing curses from foreign ports.

9. The Peabody Essex Museum

The museum’s Asian Export collection includes a cursed Qing dynasty mirror that four different Salem families donated after experiencing “misfortune”—it’s kept in climate-controlled storage and never displayed per the families’ written requests from the 1800s.

10. Gallows Hill Park

Archaeologists confirmed this as the actual execution site in 2016—the rocky ledge where hangings occurred was deliberately chosen because bodies would be visible from town as a warning, and the soil still tests unusually high in iron content from deteriorated restraints and nails.