Old Burial Hill

On Halloween I posted about the proliferation of skull- (and crossbones) adorned stones at Old Burial Hill Cemetery in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Despite being small and having the largest concentration of skull imagery I've seen in any cemetery, Old Burial Hill was also full of a wide variety of wonderful non-bone-related tombstones.

The cemetery was established on the site of a meeting-house and is, very literally, on top of a hill. The views of the harbor are breathtaking and there is a gazebo on the top of a rock outcropping that I could just sit in for days. In fact, the entire town of Marblehead was painfully cute—we drove through it on our way in and out of the cemetery, but its winding streets definitely deserve a closer look.

Although, in my opinion, there is nothing better than a skull motif, Old Burial Hill contains some really lovely winged cherubs, suns, portraits and tombstone lettering. It's the first place that I can recall seeing the words "Memento Mori" on an actual headstone (several, actually) and the carvings are all so remarkably preserved despite being hundreds of years old.

Salem Wax Museum

The Salem Wax Museum of Witches & Seafarers features 50 London-made wax figures depicting scenes from Salem's history, from the notorious 1692 witch hysteria to its days as a bustling seaport. When we visited Salem in October, we had to be choosy about which attractions we visited because the lines were prohibitively long, especially in the "Haunted Neighborhood." I had wanted to see the wax museum even if it has pretty terrible reviews on Trip Advisor and Yelp—I've never met a creepy, dusty, glassy-eyed wax figure that I didn't love.

The Salem Wax Museum is full of figures that will make you look twice—crossed eyes, missing fingers and questionable wardrobe choices abound. The museum has been in operation for more than 20 years, and attractions like this just don't get made anymore. Wax museums feel so analog in our world of screens and graphics, but no amount of digital effects will ever be able to recreate the feeling you get standing before a dimly-lit scene set with life-size and life-like wax figures.

The line was long, but moved quickly and while I'm sure the other attractions are fun, I don't at all regret our choice. Our experience at the Salem Wax Museum was similar to the one we had at Niagara's Wax Museum of History—most people were not impressed, a bit confused and hurried through the exhibit, while I loved every weird minute of it.

Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast

We had been planning to visit the Lizzie Borden house for a few years, and we finally made it happen as a stop on the way to Salem in October. Fall River, Massachusetts is about an hour and a half south of Salem, and about three hours northeast of New York City. The Bordens—Andrew and his second wife Abby, along with Andrew's daughters, Emma and Lizzie—lived at 92 Second Street in downtown Fall River from 1872 to 1892. The house has operated as a bed and breakfast since 1996, although we opted to just take a tour instead of staying overnight.

On Thursday, August 4, 1892, Abby and Andrew Borden were murdered with a hatchet in separate rooms of the house—Abby in an upstairs bedroom, and Andrew in the sitting room. Lizzie was tried and acquitted of the crime nearly a year later, and the murders remain unsolved. Lizzie and Emma moved out of the Second Street house but didn't go very far, moving to "The Hill" neighborhood, where Lizzie started going by Lisbeth. 

The house tour was really thorough and our tour guide was great. My only complaint is that our group was much too large, but we weren't surprised that it's a popular late-October destination. Almost none of the furnishings are original, but they're period-specific to what the Bordens may have had. There are a few artifacts scattered throughout the house, including replicas of Andrew and Abby's skulls (the originals were reburied after being exhumed for the trial), the dress Elizabeth Montgomery wore in "The Legend of Lizzie Borden," family photographs and a book once owned (and initialed) by Lizzie.

I knew the basics of the story before the tour and had my own theories, but after actually seeing the house I'm even more convinced that Lizzie did it. The trial itself was the first to be reported on a national level, and one of the first to use photographic evidence—it was basically the OJ Simpson case of the 1890s. The all-male jury couldn't accept that a woman was capable of such savagery, and in the absence of any real physical evidence, moved to acquit. Too much time has passed to ever really know if it was the right decision, but if you're curious, you could stay overnight and see if the Ouija board has any answers.

See also: Lizzie Borden's Grave

Old Burial Hill: Skulls

 It wasn't long after we had started exploring Old Burial Hill cemetery in Marblehead, Massachusetts, that I declared it to be my favorite cemetery. Of course this is a bit like choosing a favorite child—for those of you who are into the kid thing—but Old Burial Hill is that good. I initially put it on our itinerary due to its Hocus Pocus cred, and while it was fun to see for that reason, it definitely doesn't need a movie connection to be considered a destination.

Old Burial Hill was established in 1638—54 years before the Salem Witch Trials and 138 years before the US officially became a country—which makes it the one of the oldest (maybe the oldest?) cemeteries I've ever visited. Located about five miles southwest of Salem, Old Burial Hill contains an estimated 600 Revolutionary War soldiers and one victim of the Salem Witch Trials—although I'm not sure if the cemetery actually contains the remains of Wilmont Redd, or just a memorial marker.

The first thing I noticed (with glee) was the high concentration of skull-and-crossbones imagery, which is my very favorite thing to see on a tombstone. This memento mori motif was popular with the Puritans, and the newer the cemetery the less likely you are to see this type of stone. Old Burial Hill was positively lousy with them and I was completely overwhelmed by all of the variations.. Usually I'll find one or two in my cemetery adventures, but every one I saw was better than the last and wejust kept finding them. Like cemeteries, it's impossible to pick a favorite stone, but Mrs. Susana Jayne's stone is pretty much perfect, containing not only a skeleton, but an hourglass, bones, winged cherubs and bats.

The "hill" part of Old Burial Hill offers beautiful views of Marblehead Harbor and Salem Sound and I found myself wishing that I could visit the cemetery whenever I wanted a quiet moment. Despite being so near Salem on a beautifully sunny Sunday, the cemetery was nearly empty. I knew that the Salem cemeteries were going to be packed with funnel-cake eating and selfie-taking tourists (I was right, unfortunately), so having an hour to really explore such a beautiful and historic cemetery on our own felt like the ultimate luxury.

👻  🎃  Happy Halloween!!

Salem, Massachusetts

After successfully Halloween-ing in Sleepy Hollow for the past three years, my friends and I (the Halloween All-Star Team) decided that we were ready to tackle Salem. I'd been to Salem once, in August of 2007, but I was eager to go back. We stopped along the way to pay our respects to Lizzie Borden, and visit some Hocus Pocus filming locations, and in the end we spent about one and a half days exploring Salem.

Salem is known best as "Witch City," because of the notorious happenings in Salem Village (present-day Danvers) circa 1692. 19 people were hanged after refusing to confess to charges of witchcraft, and one man—Giles Corey—was pressed to death. It's a little strange for a town to embrace a shameful past to the point of celebrating the very thing that caused the panic—witchcraft and witches—but most of the witch hoopla feels so far removed from the historical event.

The Witch House is the only surviving structure with any real ties to the Witch Trials—Judge Corwin lived and worked out of the house—and it was definitely a solid marketing move to name it such. Even without the witch connection, I would have loved the house—I have never seen a black house that I didn't love. In fact, Salem is full of the most adorable colonial-era homes with dark siding and colorful trim, and I defy you to find a more perfectly spooky style of house.

 If the Salem Witch Trials had never happened or things had turned out differently, maybe Salem would be known as "Hawthorne City" after its most famous literary resident. After c

onquering

The House of the Seven Gables

, I was excited to tour its namesake house, which also includes a tour of Hawthorne's birth house, which was moved onto the property to save it from demolition.

Salem on any October weekend is a bit of a madhouse, and we eschewed any ticketed tour until Monday, when things emptied out slightly. There are definitely parallels to Roswell in that both towns' identities are based around events in their pasts that have morphed over time into cheesy tourist destinations. I actually thought that Salem was a bit light on witch-themed things, even if we saw witch patches on policemen, witch emblems on firetrucks and every year the high school graduates a whole new class of "Salem Witches."

Oak Grove Cemetery + Lizzie Borden Grave

On our recent roadtrip to Salem, our first stop was the Lizzie Borden house in Fall River, Massachusetts. After touring the house we headed over to Oak Grove Cemetery to pay our respects to the entire Borden family, including, Lizbeth Andrews aka Lizzie. After being acquitted of murdering her step-mother and father, Lizzie remained in Fall River for the rest of her life and was buried at Oak Grove in June of 1927—her sister Emma died just nine days later and was buried beside her.

Oak Grove cemetery was established in 1855, and is a beautiful cemetery with many wonderful (and wonderfully-preserved) tombstones. The weather was full-on fall on Saturday—chilly, windy and rainy, although the rain was nice enough to hold off long enough for us to explore a little. The foliage in Massachusetts is definitely ahead of ours here in New York, and it was the perfect setting for a late October cemetery stroll.

The Borden plot has a main monument surrounded by smaller stones for each person in the family. As we were walking into the cemetery, a couple was walking out. The guy saw us with our cameras and without hesitation gave us directions to the Lizzie's grave (she changed her name to Lizbeth later in life hoping to distance herself from her notorious past). It was helpful, but it's also sort of a shame that most people only visit Oak Grove for its most famous resident—of course that's why we were there, but we spent most of our time in other parts of the cemetery.

 So many of the headstones that we found were so beautifully preserved, with intricate gothic lettering and symbols. Bundles of wheat, leaves, flowers, fruit, hands and other cemetery symbolism was everywhere we looked, thrust into sharp relief by the contrast of the weathering stone. There are so many different kinds of headstones in the world, and they're all fascinating to me, but this type of Victorian decoration is one of my very favorites.

 It did eventually start pouring (we briefly took refuge in the doorway of a mausoleum), otherwise I could have spent so much more time exploring Oak Grove. The cemetery is FULL of other Bordens—it must have been a popular name in Fall River—and we even found a few other Lizzies, who I'm sure have confused less-informed tourists throughout the years. I'm not against cemetery tourism for a specific grave, obviously, since that's usually how I pick specific cemeteries, but the real joy comes in discovering the things beyond the star stone.

Salem: Hocus Pocus

Unlike a lot of people my age, I don't recall seeing Hocus Pocus until I was solidly an adult. My childhood Halloween go-to was another 1993 classic, Double Double, Toil and Trouble starring the Olsen twins (fun fact: Nightmare Before Christmas was also released in '93, completing the Holy Trinity of Halloween films). But once I saw Hocus Pocus it immediately became a fall tradition, and I love it more and more with each viewing. A lot of movies don't actually film in the cities in which they are supposed to take place, and while not every scene was filmed on location (and certainly not in October), the major sites are easily accessible.

Our first stop was Old Burial Hill Cemetery, located just south of Salem in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Old Burial Hill is the location of Max's after-school run-in with the 90s personified, Jay and Ernie Ice. We found some of the tombstones glimpsed in the movie, but even if you're not a fan, Old Burial Hill is definitely worth a stop. It's one of the most beautiful cemeteries I've ever seen, and it's so full of wonderful tombstones that it deserves a full post. There are other cemetery scenes in the movie, but those took place on a soundstage, which can't possibly compete with the real beauty of Old Burial Hill.

Not far from the cemetery, just after you cross into Salem is Max and Dani's house. Located at 10 Ocean Avenue, the house is instantly recognizable by it's cupola and looks pretty much exactly the same today. It's in a good location to stop and take a quick photo, and we weren't the only millennials fans doing so. It's also pretty much my dream house—despite the tourist traffic—and I can't think of anything better than tying some cornstalks to the porch and nestling into the cupola with a good book.

Speaking of houses, Allison's house is right in Salem proper, next to the Witch House. The Ropes Mansion—the house's proper name—is currently owned by the Peabody Essex Museum. It was only a slightly less popular selfie-stick spot than Max and Dani's house, and you can tour the inside, although only the exterior was used in the movie.

The Old Town Hall is the site of the epic Halloween party in which Better Midler sings "I Put A Spell on You" while doing just that. While there were no parties happening while we were there, it has public restrooms which is a big deal when you're a tourist (and even when you're not).

The only other major filming location that we weren't able to visit was the Sanderson's sisters' cottage, located in Salem Pioneer Village. The village doesn't hold regular hours in October, and all of their events were sold out when we checked—I suppose this means another Salem trip is in the cards.

See also: Home Alone 2: Lost in New York