We took an impromptu trip to Salem on July 20, 2021. It was my cousin and myself (in our 40s), a 23, 20, and 9 year old. We spent the day walking around, shopping, eating, watching some of the re-enactments and visiting the historical sites.
We decided to go ahead and do an evening tour and picked the Haunted Footsteps Ghost Tour. It had good reviews and sounded like just what we were looking for.
It was not.
It was horrible. A disgrace really. And I found it to be disrespectful. The whole thing was like a Saturday Night Live comedy show. Described as a 90-minute lantern-lit stroll...it was not that either. Not a lantern in sight. It could have been 90 minutes. I don't know because it was so bad, we left early. The two women (one named Tora, can't remember the other) leading the tour certainly dressed up, but then put on a horrid display of history. I learned nothing because half the time I couldn't understand what they were saying. I saw nothing like the pictures on this site.
A retelling of events in history should be respectful and knowledgable not a show production. Not what I expected and I wasn't the only one. Everyone in my party thought the same thing, along with other tourists. One said she had been on this tour a number of times in the past couple of years and it had never been anything like this. Another couple had said they had taken the tour the year before and it was a whole other experience. There was a couple who left before we did. We finally couldn't take anymore and left.
Definitely not worth the money and time. From reading the reviews, sounds like we were unlucky and got bad tour guides who forgot their lanterns and respect.
On another note, not controlled by the company of course, if you go in July, expect to get bitten by 100 mosquitoes.