This Salem cemetery draws thousands every October. But only 100 are allowed in at peak times.
This past weekend, nearly 10,000 people made their way through the graveyard.
With its downtown setting and centuries-old allure, some visitors to Charter Street Cemetery in Salem haven’t known it’s real, according to Kate Fox of Destination Salem.“A lot of people don’t realize it’s a cemetery,” she said. “They think it’s been constructed as a tourism destination.”But the cemetery, which dates back to 1637, is authentic. It holds the final earthly remains of several judges from the infamous Salem witch trials and other early Salem residents, according to online records.Accommodating thousands of visitors per year is a strain on the nearly 400-year-old graveyard, Fox said.To help keep tabs what goes on in this historic site, only 100 people are allowed in at a time on the weekends leading up to Halloween and on the spooky holiday itself.
The history that lays inside
Formerly The Old Burying Point Cemetery, it’s the second oldest cemetery in the nation and Salem’s oldest, according to the Salem Witch Museum website. John Hathorne, a prominent judge in the trials that led to the deaths of 20 people accused of and executed for witchcraft, is buried there. His original granite gravestone remains on site, encased in another stone to help with preservation, the website says.A tomb nearby holds the remains of Bartholomew Gadney, another judge from the trials.Also buried there is Mary Corey, the second wife of Giles Corey, the only victim of the trials pressed to death rather than hanged. Mary Corey died before the trials started. Giles Corey’s third wife, Martha, was hanged shortly after he was killed, the website says.
Continued visitor interest
This is the second year Salem has used staff to help control how many people are in the cemetery during peak visitor times in October, Fox said.Last year, the limits were only put in place for the final weekend in October through Halloween.The effort has been sparked by ongoing conservation efforts, she said, noting the wait to enter is usually less than 10 minutes.This past weekend, nearly 10,000 people made their way through the site, according to Fox.“It’s a tremendous impact on a cemetery that dates back to the 1600s,” she said.While there hasn’t been any noticeable damage or vandalism to the cemetery so far this year, Fox said she’s heard that people in walking tours sometimes lean on the gravestones. Student groups also visit during the week when staff isn’t there, she said.Using pencils or crayons to rub the imprint of stones onto paper has long been forbidden, but the past activity did leave its mark.“You can can see where hands would’ve been holding it,” she said.Though not recently, the cemetery has seen a variety of activity, from someone changing a baby on top of a tomb to a man attempting to dig up a grave, according to Fox. Onlookers didn’t stop him because they thought it was part of an act; he was later arrested.While Salem is busier than it’s been in recent years, police haven’t had any unwanted activity in the cemetery yet, according to Salem Police Capt. Conrad Prosniewski.He estimated roughly 50,000 people visited this past weekend.“We’re just getting a lot of people earlier,” Prosniewski said.
