Self-Guided Smartphone Ghost Walking Tour in Salem is an app, not a guided walk. Nobody meets you, nobody tells the story out loud and there is no group: you download the WalknTours tour to your own phone and stand in front of ten Salem addresses while the narration plays. It runs about 50 minutes and books from $7.75 per person at our August 3, 2026 check, the second-cheapest of the twenty Salem listings we track and the second-shortest. The listing flags it not wheelchair accessible, and its single booking band runs 12 to 120, so nobody under 12 can be booked. Its rating has not moved across three checks: 4.3 from 232 Viator reviews at our July 28, July 30 and August 3, 2026 passes.
| Detail | What the listing shows |
|---|---|
| From price | $7.75 per person (checked August 3, 2026), the second-cheapest of the twenty Salem listings we track |
| Duration | 50 minutes (checked August 3, 2026). Our July 28, 2026 facts pass banked 40 to 50 minutes, so read it as about fifty. |
| Format | Self-guided on your own phone through the WalknTours app. No guide, no group and no meeting point. The listing's private-tour flag is a per-party app artifact, not a private guide. |
| When | No departure. Our July 28, 2026 pass records availability as anytime, and no clock time is published anywhere in what we captured, so we print none. |
| Route | Ten entries as the listing names them, two flagged pass-by (checked July 30, 2026): Ropes Mansion and Garden, the Witch House at Salem, the Salem Inn, the Bewitched statue, Salem Old Town Hall (pass-by), Rockafellas Restaurant, the Joshua Ward House, 15 Front St (pass-by), Charter Street Cemetery and the Salem Witch Trials Memorial. All street level. |
| Ages | A single booking band running 12 to 120 (checked July 30, 2026). There is no child, youth or infant band, so nobody under 12 can be booked. No verbatim age line was captured, so we print the band rather than a policy. |
| Group size | Not captured. The listing is sold as a private tour, so each purchase is its own party. |
| Accessibility | Not wheelchair accessible, per the listing's own field (checked July 30, 2026) |
| Included | App access. The listing notes the app works on four phones for one price. |
| Cancellation | Free cancellation flagged at our August 3, 2026 check. Our July 28, 2026 pass records free cancellation to 24 hours across all twelve tabled Salem tours; the exact window was not re-captured for this listing. |
| Rating | 4.3 from 232 Viator reviews (checked August 3, 2026), unchanged from our July 28 and July 30, 2026 passes. That is fourteenth of the twenty Salem listings we track by review count. |
| Not captured | Meeting point, end point, weather policy, confirmation timing, stroller access and any clock start time. We print none of them. |
| Operator | WalknTours. We do not run this tour. |
What the app walks you past
Two of the ten we can say nothing about: Rockafellas Restaurant and 15 Front St have no research file in our checked Salem corpus, so we name them and stop. All of it is read from the sidewalk, and none of it is an admission: Ropes Mansion, the Witch House and Old Town Hall each sell their own.
The Witch House on Essex Street is where the folklore and the record part company hardest. Jonathan Corwin bought the unfinished house in 1675 and lived in it until he died in 1718; in 1692 he sat on the Court of Oyer and Terminer, which the Historic American Buildings Survey record HABS No. MA-398 says sentenced nineteen people to death during the trials. What did not happen here is the part usually sold: no witch lived in it, no trial was held in it, and the Salem Witch Museum states that although many believed for years that examinations also took place in this home on Essex Street, there is no evidence to support that theory. It is not on its 1692 footprint either: in the winter of 1945 it was moved about 35 feet for the widening of North Street, and it opened as a museum in 1948.
Charter Street Cemetery was in use before 1637. The people buried here ran 1692 rather than died in it: John Hathorne, the magistrate who conducted the examinations and Nathaniel Hawthorne's great-great-grandfather, was buried here in 1717, and Bartholomew Gedney with him. No victim of the trials lies in this ground, Giles Corey was not pressed in it, and rubbings are not done here. The Salem Witch Trials Memorial adjoins the cemetery rather than sitting inside it. Maggie Smith and James Cutler designed it; Elie Wiesel dedicated it on 5 August 1992 at the tercentenary, and dedicating is all he did. Twenty granite benches cantilever from a low wall, each carrying one victim's name with the date and manner of death. Twenty benches, nineteen hangings: the twentieth is Corey, who was pressed. The threshold is cut with the victims' own protests from the 1692 court record, and every one of them runs into the wall and stops mid-sentence.
The Joshua Ward House at 148 Washington Street is now the hotel The Merchant. Ward bought the lot on 11 August 1781, removed the house standing on it and built the present mansion between 1784 and 1787, which kills the story usually told at this address: it is not George Corwin's house, and the high sheriff of 1692 is not buried in its cellar. Corwin died in 1696 at about thirty and was buried at Broad Street Cemetery. What is documented is Washington, who lodged here on 29 October 1789; William Bentley, writing in Salem at the time, recorded that the arrangement was made at the General's particular request.
Ropes Mansion at 318 Essex Street carries a mob story its own dates refuse. Judge Nathaniel Ropes renounced the Crown salary that had made the Superior Court a political target on 8 February 1774, five weeks before he died on 18 March at 48, so the salary motive is backwards. Abigail Pickman, whom Salem's death register enters in 1839 as dead of burns at 42, was not his wife, and the build date is unsettled at about 1727. The Salem Inn at 7 Summer Street is a unit of the brick row Captain Nathaniel West built in 1834, listed in 1983 as the West Cogswell House, a century too late for the ghost usually attached to it: Elizabeth Derby West divorced him at Salem in 1806 and died about 1813 or 1814. A working inn, so guests only.
The last two are lighter. The Bewitched statue in Lappin Park was dedicated on 15 June 2005 and paid for by TV Land, a television promotion rather than a witch-trials monument, and residents said so publicly at the unveiling. Salem Old Town Hall, flagged pass-by, was built in 1815 and 1816 as a market house, so nothing from 1692 happened inside it; its exterior appears in Hocus Pocus, and the party interior was shot in Los Angeles.
Who it suits
People who want the route and the stories without a group, a schedule or a $30 ticket. It is private and app-delivered, so you start and stop when you like, and the listing states the app works on four phones for one price, which makes it the cheapest way to move a family of four past ten real Salem addresses.
- Not for anyone who wants a guide, a group or a live answer. Nobody meets you.
- Not for children under 12. The single band runs 12 to 120, with no child or youth band.
- Not for anyone who needs a step-free route. The listing flags it not wheelchair accessible.
- Not a substitute for going inside. Ropes Mansion, the Witch House and Old Town Hall each sell their own admission, and none is included.
- Not for anyone who wants a start time. No departure, and no clock time published.
How it compares
The denominator is twenty, the Salem listings we track. Two of the twenty are self-guided app products, this one and the same operator's other Salem app, so the format is the differentiator. On price it is second-cheapest, and only that sibling costs less. On length, 50 minutes is beaten only by the 45-minute Wandering Witches session, and the set runs out to 3 hours 15 minutes. On rating, 4.3 sits third from the bottom, above a 4.2 and a 4.1, and 232 reviews places it fourteenth by base; the leader, History and Hauntings of Salem, carried 4.9 from 15,335 at our July 30, 2026 pass. More of the city is in our haunted Salem guide.
Questions people ask
Is there a guide, and what time does it start?
No guide, and no start time. It is an app you follow yourself, sold as self-guided and contactless, and our July 28, 2026 pass records availability as anytime. No clock time was captured, so we print none.
How long is it, and what does it cost?
About 50 minutes, from $7.75 per person at our August 3, 2026 check. Our July 28, 2026 pass banked the length as 40 to 50 minutes.
Can we share one purchase?
The listing states the app works on four phones for one price. That is the operator's own note, and it is why this reads as the cheapest way to move four people past the same ten addresses.
Which sites does it cover?
Ten, two of them flagged pass-by: Ropes Mansion and Garden, the Witch House, the Salem Inn, the Bewitched statue, Salem Old Town Hall, Rockafellas Restaurant, the Joshua Ward House, 15 Front St, Charter Street Cemetery and the Salem Witch Trials Memorial. No interior admission is included.
Is it accessible, and what ages can book?
The listing flags it not wheelchair accessible at our July 30, 2026 check, and the single booking band runs 12 to 120, so nobody under 12 can be booked on it.
