The Ghosts of Gallows Hill

In 1867, Reverend Charles Wentworth Upham painted Gallows Hill in a less than favorable light: "It is hard to climb the western side, impossible to clamber up the southern face. Settlement creeps down from the north, and has partially ascended the eastern acclivity, but can never reach the brink. Scattered patches of soil are too thin to tempt cultivation, and the rock is too craggy and steep to allow occupation."

This quote is key to discovering the true Gallows Hill, which, for the larger part of a century, is believed to sit at the intersection of Hanson and South Streets.

In 1692, the process for witchcraft executions was rather formulaic. As the morning fog swirled around the tree trunks and flirted with the flowers, the victims (i.e., the very "witches" themselves) were removed from the Old Witch Gaol and forced into two-wheel oxcarts. The carts then rumbled down present-day Essex Street before the townspeople of Salem Village, before rolling to a stop somewhere "down the hill."

According to local lore, the condemned were then hanged from locust trees before being tossed into a ditch--their burial place, as it was then illegal to give proper Christian burials to those who acted decidedly un-Christianlike. More recently, historians have claimed that the locust trees hangings were nothing but a rumor, and that the victims were actually hanged from ladders (or traditional gallows). It seems unlikely that the locust trees were at all strong enough to uphold bodies.

Author Frances Hill in Hunting for Witches claimed, "When the ladder was pushed away from whatever it was leaning on, they died a slow, painful death. But whether the ladder was supposed by a branch or a scaffold, the sources [do not say.]"

Historian Suzanna Saville believes otherwise. "The hill itself does not seem a very promising location when you get right down to it," she wrote in her book, Hidden History of Salem.

Saville gathered her information from more contemporary sources. In her book, she references Robert Calef, who argued, "The cart, going to the hill with these eight to execution was for some time at a set [stuck]; the afflicted and others said that the devil hindered it."

But what of the crevice?

The legend goes that after the hangings, including those from the Witch Trials. the sheriff (generally George Corwin) would have his men throw the lifeless bodies into a ditch, or a crevice. And the hangings themselves would have been performed outside of the city limits. At Gallows Hill (or at least, where many assume it to be) there is no appropriate ditch that the bodies would have been put.

It's said that in the dead of night, families of the condemned would climb into their boats (canoes) and sail for Gallows Hill. There, they would gather their dead loved one and place them in the boat, traversing down the river until they reached their homestead and gave the accused a proper burial. Rebecca Nurse, one of the nineteen executed victims, exists as an example that the families did this.

In 1921, historian Sidney Perley made a startling discovery. While the site of Gallows Hill did not offer a crevice, nor even sound terrain to haul up the two-wheel oxcarts, there was a smaller hill nearby that fit the description perfectly.

Moreover, this smaller hill had a perfect view of across the river. This proved Perley's assumption that this hill was the actual Gallows Hill, as records existed that Puritan John Buffum and his family could watch the executions from their house across the waterway. Based on Perley's findings, an even closer house existed: John Maccarter's.

Four months after the infamous trials, Maccarter attempted to sell his house and it sold for dramatically less than what it should have--according to Suzanne Saville.

Unfortunately, the North River does not intersect here any longer--in fact, it's been mostly paved over and converted into part of Salem proper.

Today, the Gallows Hill that most people are aware of is nothing but . . . a baseball diamond. Yes, it's true.

But up on that baseball diamond, and the children's park that surrounds it, bone fragments have allegedly been found there. Naturally, the debate ensues on whether these skeletal remains belong to the 1692 witch trial victims.

According to the Peabody Essex Museum, who reported their findings to Ghosts of Salem author Sam Baltrusis, "Bone fragments have been found. But we'll never really know what they are from."

An unearthed record from the late 18th century delivered news of a mass excavation found in the general area of Gallows Hill. Immediately, it was largely assumed that the remains had to be those of the condemned . . . Only, the record also made note of a piece of coffin found in the mix, and as many historians have since pointed out: the nineteen witchcraft victims were buried sans coffins.

Really, they weren't even that "buried" at all.

There have also been claims that Phillip English, the husband of Mary, one of the accused, actually moved the remaining victims after their hangings. Where did he move them? Another subject up for debate, though it's largely believed that the bodies were placed in a church cellar in Marblehead.

So, where is Gallows Hill and where are the bodies of the victims?

In January 2016, The Salem News announced something spectacular: "Nearly 325 years after 19 people accused of witchcraft were hanged in this city, a group of scholars has finally confirmed the place where they met their fate: Proctor's Ledge."

According to the seven scholars who formed The Gallows Hill Project, Proctor's Ledge, first "discovered" by Sidney Perley in 1921, comprised the perfect placement for Gallows Hill.

As Emerson "Tad" Baker, a history professor at Salem State University, told the newspaper, "There was never really a 'eureka' moment. I think most of us--we're talking about a number of scholars who were working on this--we knew Perley's research was really good."

The group worked diligently for five years, using court records, maps, aerial photographs and even some fancy ground-penetrating radar to bring the 1692 witchcraft hysteria.

While approximately one thousand records exist from the period, hardly any witness accounts of the hangings still exist. But one does, and it laid the foundation for the Gallow Hill Project's discovery.

Historian Marilynne Roach made a great find while digging through the centuries-old records. It seems that in 1692, Rebecca Eames, another woman believed to be practicing evil witchcraft, was removed from her home in nearby Boxford. As her cart turned down Boston Street, she could see the gallows where they stood as she headed for Salem Village.

Later on that day, Eames found herself in a preliminary trial. According to the report, the magistrate asked Eames if she'd witnessed the execution that morning. Her response was that she had been at "the house below the hill" and that, yes, she'd witnessed the "folks" at their hangings.

"The house below the hill" was none other than John McCarter's house, the same house Sidney Perley had found years earlier, and a house that stood all the way until 1890 at 19 Boston Street.

That site Rebecca Eames saw now has an address: 59 Boston Street. An address that just so happens to sit behind a Walgreen's drugstore.

Salem Mayor Driscoll told CBS Boston, "[the Salem witch trials is] definitely a dark part of our history, an infamous time in Salem when people turned onto each other. I think we learned a lot of lessons and we've worked hard to overcome what happened in 1692."

Currently, a memorial for the victims is in the works to be placed at Proctor's Ledge, the final destination for nineteen victims in 1692.