Salem Witch Trials of 1692 · Salem Historic District
Ghost City Tours operates ghost walking tours in dozens of U.S. cities, with Salem among its programs advertised as running since 2012. In Salem the company runs three separately ticketed products anchored to the town's 1692 witch trials, when a wave of accusations led to twenty deaths and hundreds of imprisonments: the family-friendly Ghosts of Salem Tour, which meets at Old Town Hall; the adults-only Requiem for Salem Ghost Tour, which meets at the Old Burying Point Cemetery (also known as Charter Street Cemetery) and covers the executions and their aftermath without the family tour's filter; and the Salem Witch Trial Tour, which the operator explicitly distinguishes from its ghost tours as a fact-based, non-paranormal walk through the true events of 1692, meeting at the John Ward House.
Each tour's own product page lists a small set of "featured" stops along its route, explicitly noting that not all stops are guaranteed on every night. The Witch House and Howard Street Cemetery appear on both the Requiem for Salem Ghost Tour and the Salem Witch Trial Tour, and the Old Burying Point Cemetery appears on both the Ghosts of Salem Tour and the Requiem tour. The operator separately maintains a longer sitewide directory of 20 places it describes as haunted in Salem; that directory is presented independently of any specific tour's stated route and is not treated here as a tour stop list.
All three Salem products run nightly, rain or shine, seasonally from March through November, and cover roughly 1 mile of downtown walking.
Sources
- https://ghostcitytours.com/salem/
- https://ghostcitytours.com/salem/ghosts-salem-tour/
- https://ghostcitytours.com/salem/requiem-salem-tour/
- https://ghostcitytours.com/salem/witch-tours/
ApparitionsUnexplained SoundsFeelings of Being Watched
Each Salem tour is built around a different register of the operator's stated material, with the Salem Witch Trial Tour explicitly framed by the operator as a factual account of the events, people, and legal record of 1692 rather than a ghost tour. The Ghosts of Salem Tour and the Requiem for Salem Ghost Tour both draw on the operator's stories about the Burying Point Cemetery, where witch trial judge John Hathorne is buried, and the Witch House, home to magistrate Jonathan Corwin, who examined many of the accused. The Requiem tour also covers Howard Street Cemetery, where the operator recounts the 1692 death of Giles Corey, historically pressed to death (peine forte et dure) after refusing to enter a plea — a documented execution, not a HauntBound characterization of any ongoing haunting.
The Ghosts of Salem Tour additionally covers the Ropes Mansion, a Salem restaurant the operator calls Rockafellas, and the Pickman House, framing each around a haunting story attributed to the operator's own research rather than independently corroborated history.
All of this is the tour operator's own marketing and narrative material, not documented history verified independently for this listing; it is included here as a description of what the tours cover, not as an endorsement of any specific claim about a real historical person.
