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Tour Review
Salem Mass (781) 248-2031
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"Halloween in Salem" A Review by Carl A. Rossi
One of the best introductions to Salem is the
Hocus Pocus Evening Walking Tour under the scholarly guidance of Susan
or Richard Metzger or their son Michael (the latter comes dressed,
complete with top hat). The Metzgers also mix their tales with humor ---
after all, they have taken their tour’s name from a popular Bette Midler
film set in Salem and will point out which scenes were filmed in town
and which were filmed, elsewhere. Beginning and ending near the Museum
Place Mall entrance, the curious are led around the immediate
neighborhood and into the dark corners of Salem’s past; you soon realize
that Salem’s true theatricality does not lie in the obvious --- i.e.
that which is on display to be photographed, bought or sold --- but,
rather, in the juxtaposition of bloody or ghostly deeds that occurred in
the midst of self-righteous and, later, genteel society --- the
resulting mood is positively Lizzie Borden-esque. The Metzgers are wise
to conduct their tours after hours: during the day, Salem displays a
pretty ankle with her winding streets, her architecture and her statuary
but the nightfall claims her as a scarlet woman --- a handsome Federal
mansion, for example, sunning itself by day takes on a sepulcher cast in
the moonlight upon hearing that an old man was murdered in his bed … up
there …. You become a child, again, filing through the streets like
trick-or-treaters to learn about the origin of the name “Salem” or the
spooky visitations in the Hawthorne Hotel or how the Puritan dead were
buried if they couldn’t afford the proper length of coffin or the
appalling conditions of the town’s two prisons, one long razed; the
other, now out of business --- and all conducted sans [without] special
effects or hired actors leaping out at you, brandishing rubber cleavers.
Most stunning of all is to suddenly stand before the house where Sophia
Peabody, the future Mrs. Hawthorne, lived and was courted; the structure
stands firm, despite being damaged from a long-ago fire --- a deceased
romance comes alive, again: there is the door upon which the shy writer
knocked, heart in hand; which upstairs window was his invalid beloved’s?
Adding to the richness of the overall canvas is the ever-present wind
with the smell of the sea on its breath; the fallen leaves racing across
your path, the flickering candles in the hands of others passing by ---
you can see why Mr. Hawthorne, when young and unknown, chose to walk at
night as depicted in his story “Night Sketches”: the scarlet woman
beckoned to him --- no matter how far he fled, afterwards, Salem
continued to hold him in her spell.
© 2004 by Carl A. Rossi - Playwright Republished with the gracious consent of Mr. Rossi |
