Tips for Visitors

During October, please leave plenty of time for heavy traffic, difficult parking and walking to the venue. Shows sell out, and later admission can often not be accommodated. Tickets will not be refunded for missed performances. Thank you for understanding and planning ahead.

Salem is a walking city with lots of brick and cobblestone. It’s charming, but “sensible shoes” are recommended.

In New England the weather can do anything. The outdoor arrest of Bridget Bishop happens regardless of heat, rain, or even snow showers.

History Alive, Inc.  supports breast feeding mothers. We are happy to provide breastfeeding ticketholders with a private, comfortable place to nurse. Unfortunately the building does not have changing tables.

Things to Do
& See

Did you know that much of what’s great to do in Salem is free? You can visit the waterfront, check out a movie about Essex County at the Visitor’s Center, walk through an ancient cemetery, visit the Witch Trials memorials, meander down through a mansion lined street, and much more. All of these things are within walking distance of our venue, the Old Town Hall. We also have the highest concentration of restaurants in Salem right in our neighborhood, with so many styles of food and ethnic cuisines to choose from.

Walking Tours

History Alive, Inc. has licensed walking tour guides on our staff, including some who can give tours in Italian, French and Spanish. (Please reserve foreign language tours ahead.)  In the summer season, walking tours are offered nearly every day from the Old Town Hall. We limit our tours to no more than 50 people. Our tours are historical in nature. They are not “ghost tours”. Please check with the box office for a daily schedule of available tours.

Recommended
Reading

In addition to viewing the primary sources online, at http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/17docs.html, these are some of our staff’s favorite resources:

Good General Introductions to Salem Witchcraft

  • In the Devil's Snare by Mary Beth Norton

  • Six Women of Salem by Marilynne Roach

  • Storm of Witchcraft by Emerson Baker

Puritan Judicial History

  • The Witches by Stacy Schiff

  • The Devil Made Me Do It by Juliet Haynes Mofford

  • Wicked Puritans of Essex County by Tom Juergens

Puritan Sexuality and Gender Roles

  • Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

  • The Devil in the Shape of a Woman by Carol F. Karlsen

  • Wicked Puritans of Essex County by Tom Juergens

Witchcraft Beliefs

  • Entertaining Satan by John Demos

  • The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe by Brian P. Levack

  • Witch Hunting in 17th Century New England by David D. Hall

  • A modest enquiry into the nature of witchcraft, and how persons guilty of that crime may be convicted: and the means used for their discovery discussed, both negatively and affimatively, according to Scripture and experience by the Reverend John Hale (primary source in reprint).

Daily Life

  • Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, Vol. 1 by David Hackett Fischer

  • Everyday Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony by George Francis Dow

  • The History of Salem by Sydney Perley

Puritan Theology

  • Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were  by Leland Ryken

  • The Puritan Dilemma by Edmund Morgan

Causes of the Witch Trials

  • In the Devils Snare by Mary Beth Norton

  • Witchcraft at Salem by Chadwick Hansen

  • Entertaining Satan by John Demos

  • Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum

Foreign
Language
Guides