A Family Trip To Salem Mass.

Since moving to New England I love the fact that we live a couple hours away from Salem Massachusetts. I have been wanting to go to Salem for Halloween for a few years now, and although we had planned on doing that trip this October we came to realize we had to plan an October trip to Salem early in the year rather then a few month out from October. However we lucked out and took a weekend trip. It was amazing!

Planning a spontaneous weekend can be fun, not really having a plan and just winging it when you get to your destination can be exciting. It helps when you already have a vague idea of what you can do when you get there. I had a vague idea of what to do from many, many instagram stories and tiktoks of goths I follow who happen to frequent the Salem Mas area every halloween. Adding a 9 going on 16 year old and an 1 year old and you kinda have to roll with what your able to do, rather then what you really want to do. We made it work though.

Salem has lots of touristy trap museums, two different pirate museums, many witch museums, monster museums and the list goes on. We popped into two such museums but Im glad we did.

The Ouija Board museum although very small, just a back room in basically a Harry Potter store, was totally worth the 10$ each. So many vintage and obscure boards and a guide to give you the true story of the Ouija board. Not as scary as some people would have you believe.

The second museum we visited was the Halloween Museum. Very kitchy, they gave us 3D glasses to wear, it was very neon and trippy. One of a kind props from various halloween movies, Nightmare, Hocus Pocus and more. I liked the halloween dollhouse they had.

We also visited the Witch house original to 1692 and was the home of the judge from the witch trials and the Peabody Essex Museum which was more of a modern history museum. I highly recomend both.

Witch House

Peabody Essex Museum

There is some amazing shopping in Salem. I have been a fan of BlackCraft Cult for many years and followed along on their journey to opening up their Salem location. The building the store resides in use to be a bank and they kept the old vault, the place is amazing worth the trip just to do a bit of shopping. We also discovered a few other very cute gothy stores worth a pop in.

BlackCraft Cult

VampFangs

Wolf Moon

The last place we visited before heading back to upstate New York was the Satanic Temple. My husband has been wanted to visit the temple for some time so it was exciting to finally get a chance to. The temple is more of an art gallery and gift store then anything else and it was defiantly worth the visit!