Word: salem
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...says with a cheer usually reserved for road-company musicals, “they may accuse you of being a witch!” These accusations turn out to be represented by a single Pilgrim with an animatronic hand that swings jerkily on her plastic wrist. The Salem witch trials were paranoia at its most fierce. Now they’re represented by an ill-made plastic finger bobbing up and down...
Elizabeth Laskin, a lecturer in the history department who teaches History 71a, “America: Colonial Times to the Civil War” notes that the jumbling of eras in Salem creates a skewed version of history: “In front of the witch museum, they have that marvelous statue of Roger Conant. It’s sort of oversized, and he’s got this great billowing cloak...I think a lot of people look at him and think ‘Salem witch trial judge right there.’ In fact, Conant was dead...
Martinez has long dark hair and a tiny, barely visible nose stud. She says that most who come to her store are just garden-variety tourists, some with an interest in paganism and witchcraft. She has had her odd run-ins though, even by Salem standards. “We did have a Holy Roller who came and tried to strangle my dog.” She thinks for a moment. “We had a woman come in and say that it was blasphemous to call a store Goddess.” She shrugs and hands...
Nearby, Greg Vanck is standing outside the face-painting tent. “This is my first time [in Salem]. Thought I’d get a little history in—witch trials and everything,” he says as he watches a friend get her face painted a flattering shade of asphyxia-blue. The face painting racket is at a height of popularity, with several competing tents. One specializes in painting wounds on customers. Seeing people walk by with caked blood on their faces no longer seems weird after the first two or three times...
...Salem as a souvenir-selling freak parade actually has roots in the 19th century, according to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Phillips professor of early American history, who teaches several courses on colonial New England. “I’m not sure the commercialization of Salem is entirely new....A lot of what people see there now builds on popular ideas developed in the 19th century (125 years after the Salem witch trials),” she writes in an e-mail. “Nathaniel Hawthorne is, of course, the best known purveyor of that 19th century literary version...