Word: salem
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After three centuries, you would think the witch trials would have faded from memory. Yet Salem is still a powerful enough cultural landmark to bring 100,000 people here on Halloween. The town somehow has managed to turn a legacy that was once a curse--for many years after the trials, superstitious buyers shunned land in Danvers, the nearby town where the witch-hunt actually took place--into an annual economic shot...
...Salem's Halloween extravaganza--the town also hosts events for the whole month leading up to Halloween--is an odd commentary on how we relate to the past. To some extent, people come to Salem for nothing more than the spectacle of seeing so many other people in costume. But the history of the place feeds into the celebration here so intimately that the holiday banners hanging from lampposts in the center of town are decorated with the silhouettes of witches on broomsticks. Even during the off-season, Salem's Main Street is lined with witch-themed shops...
...raucous street party in Salem over the weekend, and the whole year-round industry that has sprung up in town around witches and witchcraft, is a sort of macabre parody of a gruesome episode in the town's history. Everyone who comes to Haunted Happenings, the official name of the celebration, knows what happened in Salem to put it on the Halloween map. But that's just one more reason to buy the T-shirt. In the end, the witch trials are just a great excuse for a party...
Wiccans, and the spare proselytizing pamphleteer, take Halloween in Salem seriously, as something loaded with lasting historical and cultural significance. Maybe to them it's a distilled version of some deeper religious rift in American culture...
...what they think is beside the point. Most of the people in Salem Sunday night weren't there to pass out fliers or light candles by the Witch Trials Memorial on New Liberty Street. They were there to have...