Wicked Awesome Tours: Witch Trial History and Salem Haunts is a one-hour guided walk run by Wicked Awesome Tours, booking from $29 per person at our July 30, 2026 check. The listing names five stops: the Salem Witch Trials Memorial, The Burying Point, the Bewitched statue of Elizabeth Montgomery, The Salem Museum and the Nathaniel Hawthorne statue, plus Hocus Pocus filming locations among what the hour covers. No departure time was verified, so check the schedule before booking.
This page was called Haunted Tour in Salem, then Salem Witch Trials and Haunted Sights Walking Tour; the supplier renamed the live listing again between our July 28 and July 30, 2026 checks, and the tour has not changed. It suits a visitor who wants the trials, the hauntings and the film locations sampled rather than opened up.
| Detail | What the listing shows |
|---|---|
| From price | $29 per person (checked July 30, 2026) |
| Duration | 1 hour |
| Departures | No clock time verified. Check the schedule on the booking page. |
| Minimum age | Children priced from 5. The adult band starts at 18, a pricing band rather than an age rule. |
| Group size | Up to 50 travelers, per the listing |
| Accessibility | Wheelchair accessible, per the listing. 8 of the 18 Salem listings we checked say yes, 7 say no. |
| Weather | Goes regardless of weather, per the operator. |
| Meeting point | Not verified. Confirm it when you book. |
| Cancellation | Free cancellation flagged at our check. We did not capture the window, so read the terms. |
| Rating | 4.8 from 1,272 Viator reviews |
| Operator | Wicked Awesome Tours. We do not run this tour. |
What you will see
The Salem Witch Trials Memorial at 24 Liberty Street names all twenty people executed in 1692 in one place. Twenty granite benches cantilever out of a low wall, each cut with a victim's name, date and manner of death; the threshold carries their own protests of innocence from the 1692 court records, every line running into the wall and stopping mid-sentence. A juried competition drew 246 entries; artist Maggie Smith and architect James Cutler won, and the playwright Arthur Miller presented their design on November 14, 1991 (Salem State University Archives). Elie Wiesel dedicated it on August 5, 1992, speaking about fanaticism as the cause of 1692 and as a continuing danger, and it was rededicated on September 12, 2012 after a restoration by Voices Against Injustice, the City of Salem and the Peabody Essex Museum, roughly six million visits into its first twenty years. Twenty benches against nineteen hangings is not an error: the memorial counts Giles Corey, pressed to death rather than hanged. Neither this memorial nor the one at the execution site counts those who died in jail awaiting trial.
The Burying Point next door has been on the National Register since March 10, 1975, reference 75000294, as the burial ground of the Charter Street Historic District. Its earliest trace is a 1637 town record letting John Horne raise a windmill in the "burial place," and the National Register nomination calls it one of the oldest in the country, the wording to use rather than the second-oldest-in-America line that circulates on tour routes. Here is what most Salem stories get backwards: no victim of 1692 lies here. John Hathorne, the magistrate who ran the 1692 examinations, was buried here in 1717, as was Bartholomew Gedney of the same Court of Oyer and Terminer. The ground holds the men who sent people to the gallows, not the people they sent. From 1835 to 1841 Dr. Nathaniel Peabody's family lived in the Grimshawe House at the corner, where Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hathorne's great-great-grandson, courted Sophia Peabody and wrote house and burying ground into his unfinished Dr. Grimshawe's Secret. The stones are fragile and the city's rules are posted: no rubbings, no standing or climbing. The cemetery reopened on Memorial Day 2021 after a long restoration.
One correction is worth carrying, since the hour covers the trials and none of the 18 Salem listings we checked names the execution site as a stop. The nineteen hanged in 1692 died at Proctor's Ledge, a low outcrop off Pope Street at the base of Gallows Hill, not at the summit. The Gallows Hill Project settled that on January 12, 2016 from Rebecca Eames' testimony of August 19, 1692, that she was at the house below the hill and saw a few folk (the surviving court record), from Sidney Perley's 1921 deed research, and from a GIS viewshed analysis showing the ledge is visible from where she stood while the summit is not. Nobody was burned at the stake in Salem, Giles Corey was pressed to death and is not among the nineteen, radar found no remains at the ledge, and where the executed were finally buried is unknown.
The Bewitched statue in Lappin Park, at Essex and Washington, is a television promotion, not a witch-trials monument. TV Land paid for the bronze of Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha on a broom against a crescent moon, dedicated on June 15, 2005 before a crowd of more than a thousand including cast members, over public objections from residents who said it made light of the executions (Salem Public Library). The last two stops, The Salem Museum and the Nathaniel Hawthorne statue, we can only name, since our research found no verified detail for either. On Hocus Pocus, the listing names filming locations; the only Salem exteriors documented in our research are Old Town Hall, used for the adults' Halloween party, and the Ropes Mansion, used as Allison's house. Neither is among the five stops, and interiors for both were shot in California, so expect the film material as talk on the way.
Who it suits
An hour and five stops make this a sampler: the trials, the hauntings and the film references each get a few minutes rather than a chapter.
- Good for one spare hour: it ties Salem Ghosts: Witches and Wicked Whispers for the shortest guided walk in the 18-listing Salem set we checked.
- Good for a mixed group. Children are priced from 5, and the listing states wheelchair access, which 8 of those 18 offer and 7 do not.
- Skip it if you want depth on one subject, or a small group: the cap is 50, against 15 on Witch City Walking Tours' night walk.
- Do not book it as the budget pick. Five guided Salem tours we checked start below $29, from $20.
How it compares
Three siblings frame the choice. History and Hauntings of Salem Guided Walking Tour, from Witch City Walking Tours, is $36 for two hours and fifteen minutes, lists wheelchair access too, and carries 4.9 across 15,335 reviews, the largest review record in the Salem set we track. Salem Ghosts: Witches and Wicked Whispers is the other one-hour guided walk, at $23, but it is not wheelchair accessible and can take 48 hours to confirm. The seasonal Magic Lantern Tour runs ninety minutes with a cap of 25, though it is 18 and over, not wheelchair accessible, and rated 4.6 on only 29 reviews; at our August 3, 2026 check its dates sell only for an October 1 to November 4, 2026 window, so it lists no out-of-season fare and we quote none.
This one earns its place on access and length, not price or depth: wheelchair access, children from 5, one hour, and a 4.8 on 1,272 reviews, a fair sample though five Salem listings we checked carry more. See Salem ghost tours compared and our guide to the best ghost tours in Salem.
Questions people ask
How long is it, and what does it cost?
One hour, from $29 per person at our July 30, 2026 check. Prices move, so confirm the rate on the booking page.
Which stops does the listing name?
Five: the Salem Witch Trials Memorial, The Burying Point, the Bewitched statue of Elizabeth Montgomery, The Salem Museum and the Nathaniel Hawthorne statue. Nothing beyond those five is listed.
Does it visit Hocus Pocus filming locations?
The listing names them among what the walk covers, but none of its five stops is one. The Salem exteriors we documented are Old Town Hall and the Ropes Mansion, with interiors for both shot in California.
Is it wheelchair accessible, and can children come?
The listing states wheelchair access, and children are priced from 5. The adult band starting at 18 is a pricing band, not an age rule.
Where were the 1692 executions?
At Proctor's Ledge, at the base of Gallows Hill, confirmed by the Gallows Hill Project in January 2016, not at the summit. Nineteen people were hanged and nobody was burned. This walk does not go there.
