Old Burying Point

Salem is a city full of history, dark and light. There is so much to see and to learn about this so called “Witch City.” Of course we all know there’s plenty of Haunted Houses and Wax Museums, but where is the real history? Well, all over the city of course but one place in Salem that draws all the tourists in is the Old Burying Point located right next to the Salem Witch Trial Memorial.

When you step into the cemetery, the first thing you hear is the crunching noise of the rocky-sandy dirt path. On this day, it was gloomy. The rain misted from the cloudy skies above. The trees are very large with many twists and turns, making them look very unique. You better be careful if you stray off of path in this grave yard because some of the headstones are incredibly tiny! I wouldn’t be surprised to see a person or two trip over one during their visit.

Some stones in the cemetery are very old and have been broken, as you can see in this picture they are simply “repaired” by some metal reinforcements to piece it back together.

One detail about the cemetery that actually surprised me was not how old the stones were, but how long people actually lived during the time period. I was surprised to find out that some people actually lived to be between their sixties and seventies. To our surprise the only headstone that was actually taken care of was Judge Hathorne’s, who was the leading judge in the Salem Witch Trial Hysteria.

Judge Hathorne’s repaired headstone at the Old Burying Point.

While visiting the cemetery, there was obviously some tourists checking it out. We spoke to one women who was visiting all the way from Scotland. She was in Boston visiting her sister who sent here out here to check out Salem. She talked about how beautiful the city was and was really looking forward to seeing more of the city. So yes, now we know for sure that people do come visit Salem from all around the world.

So Finally!! The most interesting part about our time at the Old Burying Point was the awesome guy who’s lived in Salem since 1983 and has been conducting tours ever since. He calls himself Crash Gordon, which is hilarious. Now, we all know Salem is full of characters, but this guy was pretty cool and he knew a lot about Salem. He also told us about how he was featured on Ghost Adventures with Zak Bagans. I’m not sure how familiar people are with the show or if anyone has seen the episode, but he claimed that he was the gravedigger that they showed. He told us about how he took them all throughout the tunnels below the city that were said to be created for runaway slaves, but then he went on to talk about how he has a pretty good feeling that they were used by pirates too.

Crash explaining how the game of clue works, SPOILER ALERT!

He talked about how the game Clue is actually based off of a murder in Salem. In order to incorporate Salem’s history, Ms. Scarlet represents the scarlet letter, Mrs. White represents the victim Captain White and Coronal Mustard represented the color of the house that the killers fled to. Which I actually never knew. he made really funny jokes too. He was talking about a friend he had that owned the Joshua Ward house and that she “came flying out of there like her butt had been bitten.” As we laughed he then went on to say “Yeah, she got an STD too, she was also scared to death. Use it in the right context.”

I guess you could say we definitely got our seven minutes worth here, I really enjoyed talking with Crash, even though some stuff he talked about could have been completely made up. But it was all around a pretty cool visit.