The Salem Witch Trials Memorial, tucked behind the Old Burying Point Cemetery on Charter Street, is a simple and affecting monument to the twenty people executed in 1692. Twenty stone benches project from the low granite wall, each carved with a victim's name and method of execution. The inscriptions are interrupted mid-sentence — a deliberate design choice to evoke the way the condemned were silenced mid-protest.
The adjacent Old Burying Point Cemetery (c. 1637) is Salem's oldest cemetery, where Judge John Hathorne — ancestor of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who added the 'w' to distance himself from the family shame — is buried. The combination of the memorial and the cemetery makes for a sobering half hour away from the witch-themed entertainment of Essex Street. The contrast between the two is instructive: one Salem commercializes the horror; this corner quietly names the dead.