Salem Witch Trials And Our Trip to Salem

We've been struggling to find new and exciting field trip ideas this year.  We've been homeschooling for 4 years now and with weekly/ daily field trips for the first few years we have found ourselves getting bored with visiting the same places over and over again.

I was so excited when I realized that we could easily spend a day visiting Salem Massachusettes and learning all about the Salem witch trials.

Before heading out for our trip we read:

What Were the Salem Witch Trials?

You Wouldn't Want to be A Salem Witch

Once we had a good idea about what the Salem witch trials entailed we picked a day with nice fall weather and headed out to explore the town.

The Salem Witch trials took place in colonial Massachusetts in the year 1692.  Mass hysteria found many town folk accused of witchcraft and held as prisoners awaiting trial.  During the trials 19 witches were convicted and hanged, 1 man was crushed to death, and 5 others (including infants) died in prison.

I had not been to Salem since I was in high school many years ago and so much had changed!  With their Haunted Happenings festival in full swing we got the full Salem experience!

We parked in the downtown parking garage and the top level gave us a good view of the town.

We headed right to the Salem Witch Museum and found that we could get in immediately for their next show.

We sat in a large room and scenes depicting the various stages and players of the Salem Witch Trials were lit up one by one as the narration took us through the story.

After the show we spent a bit of time in the gift shop and then followed our guide into the museum room off the show room.  There we learned a bit more about the time line and evolution of witchcraft.

We headed across the street to the Salem Common to eat lunch in the park.  There were rides and food trucks set up near us for their nightly events but much of the park was left untouched.

Once our lunches were done we headed to the Salem Armory where we wandered around looking at the maritime displays and checking out the photo contest winners.

We found a few pamphlets and a lot of visitor information and decided to head to the Salem Witch Dungeon Museum.  Along the way we stopped for some homemade ice cream at Melt.

Once we were finished our ice cream we headed inside and found that their next show was starting in just two more minutes!  We lucked out again and headed right on in.

Their show includes a live reenactment of an actual trial during the with trials.

We were then led through to their dungeons in the basement; all of which are set up to match the specifications of the actual dungeons used during the witch trials.  We were stunned at the size of some of the cells and to learn the number of prisoners held within them.

A depiction of Giles Cory being crushed under the weight of the rocks used to try and get him to confess to witchcraft

From the dungeons we were led through a tiny town recreation and we learned to many more facts that our books had not covered.

The boys all felt like they had learned enough about the witch trials and asked to start heading home so we called it a day and headed back to the car.  

It was a perfect fall field trip in New England.

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