The Wiccans Ocker spoke with had mixed feelings about whether the men, women and children killed in the Salem Witch Trials were actually witches. Then there’s the city trying to make everyone happy.” Then there are people like the historians who balk at the religious witches, who kind of co-opt the cause of the accused witches by saying that they were almost martyrs for the cause. Everything from laundromats to police officers’ uniforms bear witchy insignia.Įach genre of witch brings its own baggage, Ocker says: “The Witches, capital W, religious Witches, they balk a little bit at the Halloween witch, because it’s ugly and it’s a stereotype, and it has all these historical associations with it.

But it was only in the early ’80s that the city started hosting official “Haunted Happenings” events, starting at just one weekend and expanding to the entire month of October. Witch tourism has been going on in Salem for centuries, and the association between Salem and witches was bolstered by mid-20th-century cultural phenoms like The Crucible and Bewitched. 31, these groups drive massive tourism to the city. While there’s no explicit connection between Halloween and the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, the two have been linked in the popular imagination, and the city draws tourists from a few different interest sectors, Ocker tells TIME: costumed party people, history buffs, horror-genre fans and people interested in Wicca as a religion.įrom Oct.

In his new book A Season With the Witch, Ocker explains how “dark magic overtook the dark history” of Salem, “and the fantasy became more prominent than the facts.” Ocker counted himself among that group last year as he spent the whole month in downtown Salem to find out what it is about the spooky town that Halloween tourists find so enchanting. Every autumn, the city of Salem, Mass., casts a spell on travelers: in the month of October, the population balloons from 42,000 to a quarter of a million.

A Season with the Witch by J.W. Ocker