In at quaint, New England town of 40,000 residents, 5,000 practice witchcraft. What better time to visit Salem, Massachusetts than October?!? What New Year's Eve is to Time Square, Halloween is to Salem. We visited the memorial to the victims of the Salem Witch Trials. It was beside a cemetery with headstones dating back to the late 1600s.
I guess I got a little caught up in the 'spirit' of Salem and decided to have my tarot cards read. I handed over $50 and about 4 1/2 minutes later I knew my future. According to the reader (for lack of a better word), 2010 is my year! I can't wait to meet my Lebanese future husband (well, she said he could be Jewish instead) so we can start our family--because I'll have our two children by the time I'm 36. (It must be a shotgun wedding.) Apparently, she didn't notice the 'Whuh?' look on my face; I guess she was too busy counting my $50. Sucker...
We enjoyed visiting the House of the Seven Gables--the original house based on the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The fictional story is inspired by a real curse that was supposedly put on the house by a woman sentenced to death during the witch hysteria. Sidenote: Hawthorne's ancestor was the infamous Judge Hathorne who sentenced the innocents to death during the Salem Witch Trials. He added the 'w' to his name as a way to separate himself. He also looks a lot like Mark Twain.
We ended our visit to Salem by attending a 4-hour Ghosthunting 101 seminar at the (haunted) Hawthorne Hotel. We listened to the team from the New England Ghost Project talk about their paranormal investigations before we set out on some investigations of our own. The trip to the old bank vault basement was a bust. I didn't detect any energy using my electromagnetic field (EMF) device. This is spooky...electromagnetic voice phenomenon (EVP). We learned how to talk to spirits and record their voices. I think I might be too scared to try it! When we returned to the hotel, we attempted to contact spirits. I witnessed a spirit channel the medium who was part of the investigation team. The spirit was a nineteenth-century sailor who drown on a ship. The spirit was inside her as she was experiencing his drowning. I was scared watching it because I actually think it was real. If it was real, then it ranks up there beside the South African witch doctor's digs...totally bizarre.
Our adventures in Salem ended at the witching hour. Time to move on.
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