Salem is just north of Boston and was the first place that the English colonised upon arriving in America. In the past it was a thriving sea port where goods were brought in from all around the world and for a while it was the state capital of Massachusetts.

 However the event Salem is most famous for is the witch trials of 1692, where over 400 people were accused of being witches and 19 of those were executed.

It all started with a slave woman named Tituba. She was entertaining her masters daughters and their friends with ghost stories and magic tricks. She put an egg white in a glass and told the girls to look in, they were supposed to be able to see the professions of their future husbands, however one of them said that they had seen a coffin.

After that the girls started to go into fits, crawl around on all fours barking like a dog and staring at the wall for hours. Now it is believed that they had eaten contaminated grain, which had formed a hallucinogenic mould due to poor storage conditions. However the doctor said that they were the victims of witchcraft and total hysteria broke out, everyone was accusing everyone else of being witches. This resulted in 400 people being arrested, 200 of them being imprisoned and 19 of those being executed, including Giles Corey who refused to recognise that the court had the right to send him to trial and was crushed to death.

 There are still practicing witches in Salem to this day, and contrary to most peoples beliefs they don't use their spells to cause harm to anyone. They believe that whatever magic they put out, comes back on them much stronger, so doing anything bad would only result in harm coming to themselves.