Salem, Massachusetts is known for its witch huntings, ghostly tales, and active Halloween festivities. This is where PIRO and a few others went on Sunday, October 25. PIRO, or the Paranormal Investigations and Research Organization here at UNH, meets weekly to discuss topics that range from curses and ghosts to zombies and fairies. This trip to Salem, Ma, is their annual trip that is open to the campus. 99 UNH students packed into two coach busses that Sunday morning and made themselves comfortable during the three-hour bus ride to the “haunted” city. It was an especially nice drive, seeing the colors of the leaves become more vibrant as the buses got further north.
To start the day off right, scary movies were played to pass the time. One bus watched The Ring and a documentary of A Haunting in Connecticut. The other bus also watched movies on the ride up.
Once in Salem, the students were able to have free reign of the city, with the instructions to meet back at 8:30pm, and that there were tickets for them for a show at the Witch’s Cabin.
Walking around Salem, one encounters a wide variety of people. There are people in normal every day street clothes, Halloween costumes, and also people in garb that suggests they frequent Salem’s shops often. The cobblestone side streets allow one to imagine that he or she is in a very old area; people who participated in the mass hysteria of the witch-hunt walked those very same streets, three hundred and eighteen years ago. The smell of kettle corn and deep fried dough were enough to make anyone gravitate towards the many stalls that sold them.
Every ten to thirty feet there was a new shop to enter and explore, ranging from pagan symbols and traditions to joke shops, sweet shops, and a bookstore of epic proportions. Ten hours in Salem is certainly enough time to explore all the shops a person could want, if he or she has enough money to spend that is. By the end of the day when the shops close and the sun has set, another side of Salem comes out. There is a carnival by the docks and a wide choice of haunted ghost tours, haunted houses, and museums.
One thing that the 99 students received besides free transportation to the city was a ticket to the Witch’s Cabin. This was a short show filled with creepy histories and tales of the area, along with many special effects, including bubbles that glowed under florescent light, smoke that pour out of the walls, and light tricks that accented the unsettling feeling the actors were trying to convey. Afterwards, there was a Q&A with the cast, where the audience (which consisted mainly of UNH students) could ask questions about anything in the show, as well as an interactive segment where the actors taught about the history of the broomstick.
By the end of the day most people were out of cash and exhausted from the long, entertaining excursion. Getting back on the bus, many students took a nap, despite the early hours of the night, simply from their fatigue. One student said, “Overall, I thought it was entertaining, interesting, and different. Seeing everyone dressed up as witches and warlocks was interesting… I was exhausted by the end of the day because we were basically walking for 10 hours straight, but when leaving, I felt like there was so much more I could have done while there.”
