Salem Ghost Tours Top Tours in Salem, MA
Free Walking Guide

Self Guided Salem Ghost Tour: Free Walking Route & Map

A self guided Salem ghost tour is exactly what it sounds like: you walk the city's haunted and historic sites on your own schedule, with no ticket, no group and no fixed departure time. Salem's historic core is compact enough that almost every site tied to the 1692 witch trials sits within a mile of the others, which makes it one of the few American cities where a walking route like this genuinely works.

This route suits independent travellers, anyone visiting outside tour hours, families who need to set their own pace, repeat visitors who already know the headline sites, and budget travellers who would rather spend the money on dinner. It is equally useful as a warm-up before a guided walk later the same evening.

Below you will find an interactive map with numbered markers and the suggested walking order, ten stops with the historical background for each, the best time of day to set out, an honest comparison of walking it alone versus going with a guide, parking advice and answers to the questions visitors ask most. Everything here is free to use and needs no booking. If you would rather compare every experience before deciding, browse our complete collection of Salem Ghost Tours.

Plan the Walk

Self Guided Salem Ghost Tour Map

Markers follow the suggested walking order. Tap any marker for the stop name, or use the numbered list below the map.

Total walking distance1.5 miles (2.4 km)
Estimated walking time30 minutes of walking
Allow overall1.5–2 hours with stops
Recommended startSalem Witch Trials Memorial — 24 Liberty Street
Ending locationDerby Wharf — Salem Maritime National Historic Site, Derby Street
  1. 1Salem Witch Trials Memorial24 Liberty Street
  2. 2Old Burying Point Cemetery51 Charter Street
  3. 3Salem Old Town Hall32 Derby Square
  4. 4Bridget Bishop Site43 Church Street, at Lyceum Hall
  5. 5Bewitched StatueLappin Park, Essex & Washington Streets
  6. 6Joshua Ward House148 Washington Street
  7. 7Essex StreetEssex Street Pedestrian Mall
  8. 8The Witch House310 Essex Street
  9. 9Ropes Mansion318 Essex Street
  10. 10Derby WharfSalem Maritime National Historic Site, Derby Street
Walking Order

10 Stops on the Route

Ten stops, in the order that makes the most sense on foot. The first nine sit within a few minutes of each other in the historic core; the last is a longer, deliberate walk down to the water.

1

Salem Witch Trials Memorial

24 Liberty Street

Dedicated in 1992 on the three-hundredth anniversary of the trials, this small walled courtyard holds twenty granite benches — one for each person executed in 1692. Each bench carries a name, a means of execution and a date.

The most affecting detail is at the threshold: the victims' own protests of innocence, taken from trial transcripts, are carved into the stone floor and deliberately cut off mid-sentence by the wall. It is a memorial about not being heard.

2

Old Burying Point Cemetery

51 Charter Street

Salem's oldest burying ground, in use since 1637 and directly adjoining the memorial. No one executed in 1692 is buried here — as convicted witches they were denied consecrated ground — but several of the people who condemned them are.

Among the graves is John Hathorne, the magistrate whose aggressive questioning shaped the early examinations, and who never recanted. His great-great-grandson Nathaniel added the 'w' to Hawthorne, by most accounts to distance himself from the name.

3

Salem Old Town Hall

32 Derby Square

Opened in 1816, this Federal-style brick building is the oldest surviving municipal building in Salem. The ground floor worked as a public market; the hall above hosted civic meetings, lectures and dances.

Derby Square, the sunken brick plaza in front of it, empties out completely after dark — which is when the building stops reading as a market hall and starts reading as something else entirely.

4

Bridget Bishop Site

43 Church Street, at Lyceum Hall

Bridget Bishop was the first person executed in the Salem witch trials, hanged on 10 June 1692. She had been accused before, ran a tavern, wore red, and was disliked — which in 1692 was closer to evidence than it should have been.

Her apple orchard occupied this block. Lyceum Hall was built over it in 1831 and later became the site where Alexander Graham Bell gave one of the first public demonstrations of the telephone in 1877. The building operates as a restaurant today.

5

Bewitched Statue

Lappin Park, Essex & Washington Streets

A nine-foot bronze of Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stephens, perched on a broomstick against a crescent moon, installed by TV Land in 2005.

It remains genuinely divisive locally — a sitcom witch a few hundred metres from a memorial to twenty executed people. Whatever you make of it, it is the single most photographed object in Salem and a useful marker of how the city holds its history and its tourism in the same hand.

6

Joshua Ward House

148 Washington Street

Built in 1784 for the merchant Joshua Ward, this Federal mansion contains interior woodwork by Samuel McIntire, including what is believed to be his oldest surviving staircase.

Its reputation comes from what stood here before: the property is associated with George Corwin, the sheriff who carried out the arrests, seizures and executions of 1692 and who was widely loathed for it. The building is in private commercial use and is not open to visitors — view it from the pavement.

7

Essex Street

Essex Street Pedestrian Mall

The pedestrianised spine of the historic centre, and the street most guided walks use to move between sites. By day it is shopfronts, buskers and witch-themed retail; after closing time the crowds vanish and the brick runs almost empty under the lamps.

Walk it slowly. Much of what makes Salem readable — the Federal doorways, the ship-money architecture, the sheer age of the fabric — is above eye level and easy to miss.

8

The Witch House

310 Essex Street

The only building still standing in Salem with a direct, documented tie to the 1692 trials. It was the home of Jonathan Corwin, one of the magistrates who examined the accused, and some of those preliminary examinations are believed to have taken place inside.

The steep gables and near-black clapboard are what most people picture when they picture Salem. It operates as a museum with its own admission and opening hours — worth checking ahead if you want to see the interior.

9

Ropes Mansion

318 Essex Street

A Georgian Colonial mansion dating to the late 1720s, standing in the McIntire Historic District and now cared for by the Peabody Essex Museum. The walled garden behind it is open seasonally and is one of the quietest corners in the historic centre.

Most visitors arrive knowing it as Allison's house from Hocus Pocus. Stay for the architecture — it is one of the best-preserved examples of what Salem's merchant wealth actually built.

10

Derby Wharf

Salem Maritime National Historic Site, Derby Street

The longest of Salem's surviving wharves, and the reason the town existed at all. In the decades after the Revolution, Salem was one of the richest ports in America, and Derby Wharf was where that money came ashore.

It is a deliberate finish: a long, dark, open walk out into the harbour with the town lights behind you. The contrast with the crowded streets around Essex Street is the point.

Timing

Best Time to Walk the Route

Daytime

Best for detail and for anyone travelling with children. Interiors like the Witch House and the Ropes garden are only accessible during opening hours, plaques are readable, and the memorial's carved inscriptions are legible in daylight. The trade-off is crowds — Essex Street in October daylight is very busy.

Sunset

The best compromise, and the hour most photographers pick. Sites are still open or just closing, the light on the clapboard and brick is at its best, and the crowds have started to thin. Arrive at the memorial about an hour before sunset to finish at Derby Wharf as the light goes.

Nighttime

Atmospherically the strongest by a distance. Derby Square and the burying ground empty out entirely, and the route stops feeling like sightseeing. You lose all interior access and the inscriptions become hard to read, so night works best if you have already walked it once by day.

If you enjoy eerie streets after sunset, a Salem Night Ghost Tour covers many of the same locations with documented stories shared by a licensed local guide — including sites like the old jail lot that are easy to walk straight past on your own.

An Honest Comparison

Is a Self Guided Ghost Tour Worth It?

Both work. They are answering different questions, and the honest answer depends on what you actually want from the evening.

  Self Guided Guided Tour
CostFree. You pay only for any interiors you choose to enter.From $29 to $30 per person on the tours listed on this site.
FlexibilityTotal. Start when you like, skip stops, linger, turn back.Fixed departure time and a set route at the group's pace.
StorytellingWhatever you read here or look up as you go.A live storyteller reading the group, adjusting, and answering as they go.
Historical contextAccurate but general. Depth depends on your own reading.Trial records, dates and primary detail most visitors never encounter.
Local guideNone.A licensed, Salem-based guide on every tour listed here.
Questions & answersNone. You leave with the questions you arrived with.Ask anything, including the awkward ones about what is legend and what is record.
ReservationsNone needed. Walk it any day, any hour.Book ahead — evening slots sell out, especially through October.
Overall experienceYou see the buildings, the monuments and the streets.You see the same places and learn what happened in them.

The plainest way to put it: a self guided walk shows you where. A guide tells you what happened there, and why the record says what it says.

Taverns

Can You Visit Haunted Bars on Your Own?

Yes, entirely. Salem's historic taverns are ordinary working bars — you can walk into any of them, order a drink and sit in a room where something is said to have happened. Nobody stops you, and there is no cover charge for standing in a haunted building.

What you miss is everything that makes the room worth sitting in. Which building held what before it was a bar, which stories come from documented incidents and which are pure invention, where the tunnels ran, and which accounts came from staff rather than tourists. Walk in alone and it is a pleasant bar; walk in with someone who knows the building and it stops being one.

There is also a practical difference. A crawl is routed and timed so you are not standing outside a full pub at nine on a Saturday deciding where to go next. If that appeals, the Salem Ghost Tour & Haunted Pub Crawls visits eight historic and haunted locations, four of them working pubs, with the stories attached.

1692

Salem Witch Trial Sites You Shouldn't Miss

If the 1692 trials are the reason you came, these are the four that matter most — and one important caveat about where they actually are.

Bridget Bishop

The first person executed, hanged on 10 June 1692. Her orchard stood on the Church Street block, stop 4 on this route. Her case set the pattern for everything that followed: reputation and gossip treated as evidence.

Giles Corey

An eighty-year-old farmer who refused to enter a plea, and was pressed to death under stones over two days in September 1692 in an attempt to force one. Refusing to plead kept his estate from seizure. His bench at the memorial is the one visitors stand at longest.

Rebecca Nurse

A seventy-one-year-old grandmother of unblemished reputation, initially found not guilty before the verdict was reversed. Her conviction is the moment the trials lost any remaining claim to reason. Note that the Nurse Homestead is in Danvers — the former Salem Village — not in Salem town, so it is not on this walking route.

Salem Witch Trials Memorial

Stop 1, and the only place in the city where all twenty executions are named together. Reading the benches in order is the most direct way to grasp the scale of what happened in a single year.

For visitors who care specifically about the trials rather than the hauntings, the Salem Historical Witch & Ghost Tour is the walk built around them — the memorial, the McIntire and Washington Square districts, the cemeteries and the former jails, led by storytellers working from the trial record.

Practical

Parking

Salem's historic core is small and the streets are narrow, so the garages are almost always the better choice than circling for a space. All three below are within a short walk of stop 1.

Museum Place Garage — 1 New Liberty Street

The most central option and the closest to Essex Street. Roughly a four-minute walk to the Salem Witch Trials Memorial. It fills earliest on October weekends.

South Harbor Garage (Waterfront) — 10 Congress Street

Usually the cheapest of the city garages and the easiest to get a space in. Around a seven-minute walk to stop 1, and conveniently placed for the finish at Derby Wharf.

Church Street Lot — Church Street

A smaller surface lot near the north end of the historic core, useful for shorter visits when the garages are full.

City garage rates are modest by the hour and are set by the City of Salem, but they change — and October rates and event pricing are materially higher than the rest of the year. Check the city's published parking rates before you travel rather than relying on any figure quoted on a travel page, including this one. If you are visiting in October, the commuter rail into Salem station is worth considering instead.

Common Questions

Self Guided Salem Ghost Tour: FAQ

Very. Salem's historic core is one of the most walkable in New England — the first nine stops on this route sit within about half a mile of each other, and the streets are flat. Only the final leg down to Derby Wharf involves any real distance.

Yes. The route, the map and the stop-by-stop history on this page cost nothing and need no booking. The only money you might spend is on admission if you choose to go inside the Witch House or another museum, and on parking.

About 1.5 miles in total, which is roughly 35 to 45 minutes of pure walking. Realistically, allow 1.5 to 2 hours to actually read the memorial, look at the buildings and take photographs — and longer if you go inside anything.

Yes, and it is far more atmospheric after dark. Everything on the route is a public street, square, cemetery path or waterfront, all visible at night. You will lose interior access and the memorial's carved inscriptions become difficult to read, so many visitors walk it once by day and again after sunset.

The historic core is well lit, busy through the evening and routinely walked by guided tour groups. Ordinary city-centre sense applies: stay on lit streets, keep to the main routes, and be aware that Derby Wharf is dark, exposed and windy at the far end.

Not for the self guided walk — there is nothing to book. Guided tours are the opposite: space is limited and advance reservations are strongly recommended, particularly for evening departures in October.

It depends what you want. For the 1692 history specifically, the Salem Historical Witch & Ghost Tour holds the highest traveler rating of the three listed on this site at 4.6. For a family-friendly night walk, the Salem Night Ghost Tour carries a Top pick badge and runs 75 minutes. For an adults-only evening, the Haunted Pub Crawl covers eight locations including four working pubs.

It is one of the better ways to do Salem. Walk the route in daylight to see the buildings, the plaques and the interiors, then take a guided walk the same evening for the stories behind the places you have already stood in front of.

Want the Stories Behind the Locations?

A self guided walk shows you the buildings and the monuments. It cannot tell you what happened inside them. That is the honest limit of any route on a page, including this one.

  • Documented historical records rather than summarised highlights
  • Eyewitness accounts drawn from the trial transcripts
  • Local legends, and a guide who will tell you which is which
  • Courtroom stories from the examinations themselves
  • The chance to ask questions as they occur to you
  • A richer evening overall, in the company of someone who lives here
Compare Salem Ghost Tours