Witch History Museum — Attraction in Salem

I'm a Salem resident and I am on a mission to tour all the local attractions.

I visited the Witch History Museum in November right after all the October frenzy.

What this is:

The Witch History Museum is located directly on Essex Street (the main pedestrian street in downtown Salem) and it is basically a guided tour through some life-size depictions of scenes from the Salem Witch Trials. Tours run every half hour (as in 10am, 10.30, 11 etc) and, as far as I know, tickets are only sold at the door before tours start. You can buy at the door also a combo ticket that includes other 2 museums (Witch Dungeon and The NE Pirate Museum).

First you'll sit in a small, colonial style auditorium, where you can read some facts about the trials on the wall while waiting for the tour to start. The auditorium can host maybe.. 60 people? Probably more. When I toured it in November we were only 3 people in the tour.

Your guide will give you a short introduction about the trials, and then walk you through the second part of the exhibition, downstairs, where you'll find - you can guess... - dioramas and mannequins. Yes, this is yet ANOTHER dioramas-and-mannequines Salem's attraction!

This attraction is a direct competitor of the Witch Museum, as they have almost the same name and they are similar in intents and purposes.

So, which one is better?

I'll start by saying that it took me a minute to decide if rating this attraction 3 or 4 stars. The display downstairs is, in all honesty, dusty and outdated and it makes, in my personal opinion, no more than a 3 stars display.

However, this attraction features a guided tour, so the quality of the experience is also based on the ability of your tour guide. Our guide was great, not as much as a "Salem-Witch-Trials connoisseur" 😊, but as a person able to tell a story to a group in an entertaining and fun way. So, I did enjoy the experience and I thought 3 stars were unfair, especially as it is better, in my opinion, than other attractions that I rated 3 stars (for example, the Wax Museum).

Was the information given a generalization of the actual facts? Yes, it understandably was, given the small amount of time available.

Were there mistakes in the information given? To the risk of sounding like an obnoxious know-it-all who tells others how to do their jobs... Yes, there were some mistakes in what was said during the presentation.

So, is it better of worse than the Witch Museum?

The Witch Museum (the other attraction) has a better structured presentation, a longer show, more information around witch trials in general, a bigger and fuller gift shop, and together with their website and their programs, a general feeling of being "more than just an attraction" - while the Witch History Museum is indeed just an attraction - so the Witch Museum is objectively better (in my opinion. This is my personal opinion, objective to me 😊 I am not affiliated with the Witch Museum or any of the Salem's attractions)

However, the Witch History Museum (the attraction of this review) could be offering you things that might be more valuable to you depending on what you are looking for. The Witch History Museum has the "human touch" of an actual person guiding you through the display (instead of recordings as at the Witch Museum), pictures are allowed, you don't have to buy tickets in advance to secure your spot, you'll probably have shorter waiting times here to get in, and it is a quicker, "easier" experience to do that doesn't require any planning ahead.

PROs

Informative, enjoyable. It can be interactive (if you have questions for your guide!). You can take pictures.

CONs

The display itself is old, and dark, and dusty. Because of the presence of a tour guide, the experience can go either way. And I can imagine that in a large crowd, it would not be easy to hear your guide talking.

Whichever you can/want to visit, I don't recommend to visit both as the second one you visit will probably feel just like a repetition of what you learned from...

The Witch History Museum almost falls into the “so bad it’s good category.” Believe it or not, I don’t even mean that in any negative way. I want to say that the tour guide we had was very knowledgeable, especially considering the fact that he had just transferred over from the New England Pirate Museum after it closed for the season. But there is an added level of kitsch entertainment in how outdated the vignettes with mannequins and animatronics are. The museum could use a facelift but, like the other witch museums, that’s part of the charm. If you have a tour guide like ours who is well aware of this fact, the tour can be quite fun. Though I can also see how some might find that inappropriate given the subject matter. I feel that despite jokes at the expense of the displays, the tour remained very respectful to those who were tried and lost their lives.

The name of the museum may be misleading to some. “Witch History” paired with the logo of a broomstick-riding witch could give the impression that this museum covers the subject of witches more broadly. However, like many of the others in town, it is firmly centered around the 1692 witch hysteria and trials.

Fun fact, the museum was originally planned to focus on the native tribes and indigenous people of the Massachusetts Bay Area, but later hopped on the witch bandwagon. This explains why the first display in the theatre area features Native American figures opposed puritans.

The gift shop is pretty baseline. There are a few branded t-shirts and other little souvenirs (identical to those found at the Witch Dungeon with just the names swapped out). Other than that, it’s generic Salem merchandise and basic witchcraft tools and merch (much of which you’ll find elsewhere throughout town).

Final summation, drop in if you’re looking for some cheesy fun straight out of the 80s with the potential to learn a little too! If you come during the peak season, pick up the combo pass to see this and its two companions, The Witch Dungeon Museum and New England Pirate Museum.

Also, as a final thought, something more people need to be aware of is there is no museum loaded with authentic artifacts tied to witch hysteria of 1692. Between the fact that no one saw reason to keep them after all was said and done and a massive fire across Salem in the earliest 20th century, next to nothing survives. So, be aware of that fact when visiting and reviewing attractions in Salem - judge them based on what they are, not what...

So the gift shop was alright ( that's what you'll walk into first is the gift shop ) The presentation was nice the guided tour was entertaining, you could tell the displays were old bc it smelled super dusty tho lol but it defintely will educate you about the timeline of events that happened and the guides were super nice and fun! A great experience my only complaint was as a Native American woman, the first display I saw depicted a native tribe and like I felt like one of the statues was like the stereotypical "savage" Native American. I'm saying that here so hopefully you guys can be a little more like aware of that. It offended me and kinda like stuck with me. I went yesterday and like it just makes me upset to see that. There's a dancinf one and two other ones and one like looking all crazy about to hit a drum and the drum one was the one that got me. That's like a really awful way to depict natives. I hope you guys can take that down because for me that's what ruined the entire experience. I would've rated this one star had the staff not been so friendly, plus it's for sure a biased opinion as I'm sure not everyone cared about that bc not everyone is Native lol....