Hocus Pocus is one of my all time favorite movies, so when I had the chance to go to Salem and visit all the filming spots, I couldn't pass it up!
2 years ago, a girlfriend and I did a 5 day New England tour. We picked things we wanted to see or do and hit up as much as we could. We drove up Mount Washington in New Hampshire (the highest peak in Northeastern US), we hiked through Diana's Baths and up Whitehorse Ledge, we biked through Stowe, Vermont and went to the Ben & Jerry's factory, we went to Yale and the beaches of Connecticut, (we also went to the town that inspired Gilmore Girls, but that's a different blog haha), went to the mansions on Rhode Island...and went to Salem.
There were two main reasons I wanted to go to Salem for our time in Massachusetts. One, I'm actually a decedent of Nathaniel Hawthorne, an American novelist who was born in Salem in 1804. One of his ancestors is John Hawthorne, the only judge of the Salem Witch Trials who didn't repent his actions.
The other reason was Hocus Pocus.
I geeked out like none other. It was amazing. We only had a couple hours in Salem before my flight, but it was awesome. And I'm definitely going back. Here are the pictures I took of the filming locations. (This LINK gives you the addresses of the locations. I didn't get to go into Pioneer Village - which is Salem at the very beginning of the movie when Thackery Binx gets turned into a cat - because it was closed that day. I may or may not have walked around the gates and tried to sneak a peak, but it wasn't anything I could get clear pictures of.)
The first stop was Rogers Mansion, or Allison's house.
The Rogers Mansion is actually owned by the Peabody Essex Museum, and the gardens behind it are free and open to the public.
Next we went to Old Burial Hill, where Max rides his bike through the cemetery and gets his shoes stolen by Ice. The cemetery is actually at the top of the hill right in the middle of town.
Here's Town Hall, which is where Max and Dani's parents "danced until they died" after Winifred cast a spell on them. This is dead in the middle of town, and there was a great little shack restaurant that I had a lobster roll at right behind it.
Finally, the piece de resistance, if you will, is Max and Dani's house.
The house looks almost exactly the same and what you can't see are the amazing views of the bay from the house.
I will definitely be back to Salem in October! It was so cool at the end of September. Hope you loved my pictures. Now I'm gonna go watch the movie...again...lol. BUT, I can watch it in theaters this Halloween! Find those locations near you HERE.