"Halloween in Salem" A Review by Carl A. Rossi

One of the best introductions to Salem is the Hocus Pocus Evening Walking Tour under the scholarly guidance of Susan or Richard Metzger or their son Michael (the latter comes dressed, complete with top hat). The Metzgers also mix their tales with humor --- after all, they have taken their tour’s name from a popular Bette Midler film set in Salem and will point out which scenes were filmed in town and which were filmed, elsewhere. Beginning and ending near the Museum Place Mall entrance, the curious are led around the immediate neighborhood and into the dark corners of Salem’s past; you soon realize that Salem’s true theatricality does not lie in the obvious --- i.e. that which is on display to be photographed, bought or sold --- but, rather, in the juxtaposition of bloody or ghostly deeds that occurred in the midst of self-righteous and, later, genteel society --- the resulting mood is positively Lizzie Borden-esque. The Metzgers are wise to conduct their tours after hours: during the day, Salem displays a pretty ankle with her winding streets, her architecture and her statuary but the nightfall claims her as a scarlet woman --- a handsome Federal mansion, for example, sunning itself by day takes on a sepulcher cast in the moonlight upon hearing that an old man was murdered in his bed … up there …. You become a child, again, filing through the streets like trick-or-treaters to learn about the origin of the name “Salem” or the spooky visitations in the Hawthorne Hotel or how the Puritan dead were buried if they couldn’t afford the proper length of coffin or the appalling conditions of the town’s two prisons, one long razed; the other, now out of business --- and all conducted sans [without] special effects or hired actors leaping out at you, brandishing rubber cleavers. Most stunning of all is to suddenly stand before the house where Sophia Peabody, the future Mrs. Hawthorne, lived and was courted; the structure stands firm, despite being damaged from a long-ago fire --- a deceased romance comes alive, again: there is the door upon which the shy writer knocked, heart in hand; which upstairs window was his invalid beloved’s? Adding to the richness of the overall canvas is the ever-present wind with the smell of the sea on its breath; the fallen leaves racing across your path, the flickering candles in the hands of others passing by --- you can see why Mr. Hawthorne, when young and unknown, chose to walk at night as depicted in his story “Night Sketches”: the scarlet woman beckoned to him --- no matter how far he fled, afterwards, Salem continued to hold him in her spell. 
 

© 2004 by Carl A. Rossi - Playwright

Republished with the gracious consent of Mr. Rossi