Halloween Happenings!

It’s Wanderlust Wednesday, and we are off to..where else…Salem, Massachusetts! The Halloween Capital of the World! For 11 months of the year, Salem is just another beautiful seafaring city along the North Shore of Boston. A favorite year-round tourist destination, Salem features many unique attractions, like Pickering Wharf, filled with boutiques and restaurants

Salem Willows, a beautiful ocean-side park

with an old-fashioned arcade

and the House of Seven Gables– the home of Susanna Ingersoll, cousin to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Hawthorne’s frequent visits to this home are credited with inspiring the setting and title of his 1851 gothic novel The House of the Seven Gables.

Ah, but come the month of October, the city comes alive with the sights and sounds of Haunted Happenings, Salem’s homage to all things Halloweeny (Click here for all the official event information)

There are costume balls

The Devils Run road race

and thousands of costumed tourists flocking to the city to join in the festivities…

but also to visit and tour the Witch House (the only structure still standing with direct ties to the witch trials of the 1600’s.)

and the Salem Witch Museum where you will learn the true story of the Witch Hysteria of 1692.Salem, of course, is home to the notorious Salem Witch Trials that took place in the 1600’s, when twenty innocent men and women were put to death under suspicion of witchcraft. 

Modern-day witches, such as Laurie Cabot, “The Official Witch of Salem”

(as proclaimed by Governor Dukakis in the 1970’s), have fared much better than their ancestral counterparts.  The city itself has embraced its historic heritage and is nicknamed “Witch City”, and hosts a multitude of witch shops that feature all things witchcraft and offer Psychic Readings. Tonight, on Salem Commons, you can join in the Salem Witch’s Samhain Celebration (where you will find the true history, based in Celtic roots, of the holiday we now know as Halloween).

But if you don’t want to brave the post-Sandy weather, and the horrifically haunted crowds tonight, you can visit Invocation Creation, where you will learn more about Psychic Readings and Tarot and the practice of modern-day witchcraft. The information is spell-binding!

Ok, time to get my costume ready for work. I am going as a middle-aged blogger/health-care provider. Can’t get much scarier than that! Have a “spook”tacular (and safe) Halloween!! Susan