Visiting Salem In The Fall | Things To Know Before Your First Visit

Last August (2024) we took a weekend trip to Boston to visit Kris’ brother and his family. During the trip, we decided to visit Salem, which has always been on my list of places I wanted to see.

My mom and brother had taken a trip there the year before. They came back with some awesome pictures and great souvenirs, but little in the way of information for how to navigate our way around.

Before this trip, movies and the media had always led me to believe that Salem was a compact seaside town. Maybe that’s my own ignorance, but I went into planning this trip assuming we could park in one spot, and walk to all of the attractions. In movies, trick-or-treating kids seem to walk around town easy enough. Unfortunately that’s movie magic, and not reality.

I never blindly go into a vacation without researching it, so for weeks leading up to our trip, I frequented Reddit and other forums to learn about the real Salem.

Here’s what I found out:

Salem is a city, and the tourist attractions are spread out

This may seem like a ridiculous revelation, but it was not obvious to me before researching it. Salem is a busy, populated city, made even more crowded by tourists this time of year.

Unbeknownst to me, you actually can not park in one location and walk to all of the attractions. The main attractions and touristy spots are actually spread out all over the city. This leads me to my second point:

Parking is hard to find

Be prepared to have trouble finding parking. Actually, if I were to stay in Salem, I would probably take cabs or public transportation to most of the places we wanted to see. Since our hotel was a good 40 minutes away, we had to drive ourselves around.

We really lucked out with finding parking, but it took a couple of drives around the block at our first location. I’m not sure if this is because it was August and the busy season hadn’t fully started yet, or if we just got lucky.

The Jonathan Corwin House (The Witch House), and Ropes Mansion (Allison’s house from Hocus Pocus) are both on Essex Street. Essex Street has 2 hour non-resident parking available from Monday-Sunday 8am-6pm. When googling this, I found conflicting information as to whether it was Monday-Saturday or Monday-Sunday, but the sign said Sunday when we went, so unless it’s changed since last summer, I’d go with that.

I found the multitude of signs a little conflicting. Having a large “resident permit parking only” sign above the 2HR non-resident parking sign was a bit confusing and I feel like one sign would have sufficed, but I’m sure the residents would disagree.

Also keep in mind - we went in late August, the weekend before school started, and even then it was starting to get crowded. It would be ten times more crowded in October.

What can you walk to?

If you manage to secure a 2HR spot on Essex street, you can easily walk to The Witch House, Ropes Mansion, The Bewitched sculpture, and several shops (like this magical gift shop we found - Witch City Wicks). With only a 2 hour time limit, I wouldn’t risk walking much further. On a map, a lot of attractions can look close together, but remember that you will be navigating a busy city with a lot of traffic and people.

Even in August, the streets were what I would consider crowded. We had to wait in line in front of both Ropes Mansion and The Witch House to take photos.

There’s lots of parking at Pioneer Village

Pioneer Village was a welcome break in a busy traffic day. Thankfully, there is a parking lot that you can pay to park in using an app. Pioneer Village is about a 10 minute drive from the Essex Street attractions.

It doesn’t take long to walk through Pioneer Village (unless there is a large crowd), but it was fun to see another one of the filming locations for Hocus Pocus, and learn about the history of the area.

The Proctor’s Ledge Memorial Is in an unexpected location

If you’ve done your research, you already know, so this message is for anyone who has NOT done their research.

Proctor's Ledge is the alleged spot of the infamous Salem Witch Trial executions.

I thought I knew all there was to know about all of the tourist attractions in Salem, but nothing could have prepared me for this. From photos online, I assumed the Proctor’s Ledge Memorial was a nice park where we could sit, reflect, spend some time. Let’s just say, a lot has changed since the 1690s, and the city has built up around this historical site. In reality, it’s not a park at all, but rather a very small inlet in the middle of a residential side street.

I definitely feel like it’s still worth the visit, but I would encourage you to use Google Earth to take a stroll down the street before actually going there.

There is zero parking. We ended up parking on the right side of the road, a bit further down the street, but there is no actual designated parking. It’s definitely a “park quick, run and get your photos, then run back to the car” kind of place.

Max and Dani's House is private property

Max and Dani's House at 4 Ocean Ave is someone’s actual house. As much fun as it is to go around taking pictures with filming locations from Hocus Pocus, this one is private property.

We did not get out of the car for this photo, instead we drove down the street and I snapped a few pictures on the way by.

I’ve seen pictures online of people posing in front of it, however keep in mind that there is nowhere to park to do this, people actually live there, and it’s a busy residential street.

There are no public bathrooms (and do not use the bathroom at witch city mall)

Perhaps one of the most important points I could make, is this. There are no public bathrooms in Salem. Research ahead of time also taught me that the bathrooms at the Witch City Mall are probably a portal to Hell. Apparently these bathrooms are not maintained, not cleaned, and a common place for people to do drugs, defecate on the floor, etc.

I didn’t dare venture there myself, but I’ve seen photos, and they weren’t pretty.

Our hotel was only 40 minutes away from Salem, and we only planned on being there a few hours, but as luck would have it, nature called a short time after we arrived in Salem.

Most businesses will NOT allow customers to use their washrooms. Imagine thousands of tourists trying to use your washroom every day. I can see why they don’t want that.

We lucked out at a gas station. Maybe the employee saw that we had a child with us, and felt bad, but for whatever reason, they allowed us to use the washroom. This was not a public washroom, but rather the single room employee washroom.

The only place I can think of that would have public bathrooms are restaurants.

If you take anything away from this article, please remember this. No bathrooms.

Stay for more than a day

Finally, my last suggestion is to stay for more than a day. Since we took a day trip from our Boston vacation, we didn’t get to see even half of the sights we wanted to. It was overwheming driving from location to location, and we would have liked to slow down and see more of the city.

We definitely want to visit again someday - maybe next time during actual spooky season.