Gallows Hill: Death in the Name of FearFour Seasons Spookfest — October 17, 2025
There’s a hill in Salem where the trees grow still and heavy. Where wind carries voices long gone, and silence speaks louder than the leaves.
They call it Gallows Hill — a place where fear wore the mask of justice.
From June to September of 1692, nineteen people were hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, accused of witchcraft by neighbors, strangers, and former friends. Their crimes? Speaking out. Owning land. Being different. Being too poor. Too rich. Too female. Too foreign. Too inconvenient.
The executions were public. The hill became a spectacle. Townspeople gathered like it was theater, not murder. They watched as the carts arrived. As ropes were tightened. As souls left bodies in silence.
But make no mistake — this was not justice.
It was politics. Greed. Religion twisted into fear. It was mass hysteria, fueled by personal vendettas, false visions, and a broken legal system that allowed spectral evidence — dreams and accusations — to outweigh fact.
And it left a stain on the land that lingers even now.
Many visitors to Salem speak of a heaviness in the air around Gallows Hill and Proctor’s Ledge, now recognized as the likely site of the hangings. Some say the trees themselves remember — that the earth recoils from what happened.
People report:
- Sudden chills that strike even on warm days.
- Footsteps in the gravel behind them when no one is there.
- A strange, pressing silence that falls the moment they approach the ledge.
- Unexplained emotions — grief, fear, anxiety — as if they’re carrying someone else’s sorrow.
And always… the sense that they’re not alone.
Gallows Hill is not just a haunted place.
It’s a sacred one.
Not because of what stood there,
but because of what fell there.
Not because of ghosts,
but because of the lives unjustly taken — and the names we still speak.
✨ Dedication to the Lost — Salem, 1692 🕊
They called them witches. But they were mothers, fathers, grandparents, daughters, sons, neighbors, and friends.
They were people.
And they died not for what they did — but for what others feared.
We remember their names:
⚰️ Hanged at Gallows Hill
June 10, 1692
• Bridget Bishop
July 19, 1692
• Sarah Good
• Rebecca Nurse
• Susannah Martin
• Elizabeth Howe
• Sarah Wildes
August 19, 1692
• George Burroughs
• George Jacobs Sr.
• John Proctor
• John Willard
• Martha Carrier
September 22, 1692
• Martha Corey
• Mary Eastey
• Alice Parker
• Ann Pudeator
• Margaret Scott
• Wilmot Redd
• Samuel Wardwell
• Mary Parker
And on September 19, 1692
• Giles Corey was pressed to death beneath stones.
His final words: “More weight.”
To their families, who lived with broken hearts and empty chairs —
To every soul silenced in the name of fear —
We see you. We speak your names. And we will not forget.