As the saying goes, "You can honour the dead by telling their stories". This tour, unfortunately, was not the best example of this, and although for me it was lacking, I'm sure for others, this may be just the right tour for them.
Before booking the tour I did a lot of research. Salem has been on my "wish list" since I was very young and was part of a 3 week 'epic' to the East Coast and beyond (we're from the UK).
There were a lot of tours to choose from but looking this up I thought having a Salem tour from 'real witches' would be fun and informed, with a unique take on the history of the witch trials.
Overall, this is definitely one for those who want to know more about modern day witchcraft and where it comes from, rather than the Salem witch trials. The tour does touch on various parts of the history of Salem and shows us a few of the sights, but I think it's fair to say it's a different perspective, with a lot left out about the trials that could've been included in the tour whilst still including the witchcraft.
The tour started at Crow Haven Corner, which is the oldest witch store in USA and owned by the tour operator. We were first taken to the yard and guided through a spell. That was good fun and even if you don't believe or are sceptical, it's interesting to learn about other cultures so this was a cool beginning.
The tour then started and we were taken to various sites including the memorial for the 20 victins, Bridget Bishop's land, the graveyard containing the puritan graves and the site for the old dungeons. It was a good introduction to the locations of the sites.
However, at each site, the detail was incredibly light on the actual events of the Salem witch trials. As someone who had a little bit of knowledge from past studies, I expected stories and information about the events tied into the 'witchcraft'. What we got was a lot of proclamations that the victims were not witches and no real detail on the events, the timeline or the stories of those killed. In fact, we only got one whole victim's story out of 20.
Several times, our tour guide would refer us to Wikipedia or say "I don't want to tell you about that it's too gory, you're on the wrong tour" as well as recommending we visit the sites after or hoped we'd been before the tour. I didn't expect the gore, but I expected more - John and Elizabeth Proctor were mentioned in passing but we didn't get anything on their story; Giles Corey's torture story was an example of the "gore" so we weren't told the detail, why he was a victim, or anything detail surrounding his tale. When we visited the memorial garden, we were told more about when it was built and why, without any stories or information about the victims. Again, some of this detail was interesting, but provided little substance for me.
What there was on the tour were numerous references to current day events and political commentary, as well as an explanation about where Christmas came from... All very interesting and made for an entertaining tour, but not really why we came or anything to really do with Salem or the trials!
It was also disappointing that at the end, we basically got asked to visit the witchcraft store to buy things and during the tour, readings were recommended anf we were told we could buy certain spell ingredients talked about mid-way through the tour. Tipping was also covered in the closing remarks! Having paid $33 for two of us, I thought this inappropriate and the whole your felt commercialised.
I gave the review 3/5 because the tour guide was enthusiastic and we found out a lot about the current witchcraft, some of which of course I found interesting. But I expected more about Salem and the history and for this reason I left a little disappointed.