You don't hear much about the town of Salem's mystique, but it's clear that the Salem witch trials, and the deaths it caused, have captured America's imagination for centuries.
What could set neighbor against neighbor, or send so many guiltless individuals to their early graves? Since we live in New England, we took the obvious next step and voyage out to Salem itself, home to a museum intended to educate visitors about the controversial tragedies that once took place in the little picturesque village.
It's clear from the onset, though, that the only real plus about the overpriced Salem Witch Museum is the fact that its $6.50 admission is the monetary equivalent of a much longer bad Adam Sandler matinee movie.
The museum's introductory show is a short treatise on the Salem Witch Trials, played out with narration and wax figures. It quickly turns into a lecture as to why the United States is a nation is superior to all of Europe since we only sent 19 innocent "witches" to their deaths while our former colonizers executed thousands.
Whether or not this claim is a recent addition brought on by recent military endeavors and the national centricity that comes with it, or has always existed as an attempt to justify an extremely black spot on our early colonial history, the pure unmotivated superiority of it will make even the most patriotic American cringe at the attempted moral justification.
One doesn't go to a witch museum to get lectured about how wonderful our nation is, and the suddenness of the claim will make even a jingoistic audience-goer burst out in pure, surprised laughter.
The rest of the museum is equally misguided, as it is more of an attempt to preach about why "normals" should be open-minded toward witches than as any sort of a historical display. The few facts given are either inaccurate or exaggerated, and the exhibit concludes with a pair of mannequins dressed as modern-day "Wiccans." They explain to the audience that their religion has developed directly from practices dating back to Celtic times and that in fact, they're just like the rest of us -- really -- as they stand dressed in ridiculous ceremonial garb that looks like it comes from Marian Zimmer Bradley's version of Arthurian court life.
Those responsible for creating the exhibit and the message it communicates have clearly hurt their cause more than they could have possibly helped it, as no visitor who has witnessed the obviously over-the-top display will be able to hear the word "witch" without it triggering a fit of sniggers for days afterward.
It's not the sense of desperation or the willingness to play fast and loose with facts, but it is the pure egotism displayed by the exhibit that will make visitors cringe.
The Salem Witch Museum, for all its purported history and its expensive entry price, is the New England equivalent of a circus sideshow -- fun to laugh at (the wax figure of the Devil who ends the show while philosophical questions play on the loudspeaker is guaranteed to send you to giggles) and utterly senseless.
And it's not as if there's nothing else to do in Salem besides gawk at witches, even during the tourist off-season. One's money would be much better spent taking a tour of the House of Seven Gables, made famous in Nathaniel Hawthorne's book of the same name (which is also much more reasonably priced at only $3 per tour) or buying colonial sweets at the Ye Olde Pepper Companie, Salem's long-time candy company which can trace its routes back to the early 1800s.
Either would give tourists a more historically accurate and more relevant look at Salem's colonial history, and visitors won't leave with the acrid taste in their mouths that comes with swallowing one's pocketbook.
For this exhibit, it doesn't matter whether you're American or European, "normal" or warlock, overdressed Arthurian Wiccan with Celtic-leaning tendencies or modern-day practicing witch.
The Salem Witch Museum is good for laughs, giggles, and maybe a side-splitting chortle or two. But if you want a historical account of Salem's tragedy that happened four hundred years ago, you're better off sticking to Professor Evan Haefeli's class, "Salem Witch Trials," than making the half-hour trek out to the town where it happened.
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