Salem draws around a million visitors every October for a holiday built on the worst thing that ever happened there. June is quieter. It should not be. On the morning of June 10, 1692, Bridget Bishop was carted from the town jail to a rocky ledge west of the village and hanged, the first execution of the Salem witch trials. That was 334 years ago today, and Salem is marking the date.
Eight Days in June
The accusations had been stacking up since winter, and by late spring the jails in Salem and Boston were packed with people waiting on a court that did not exist yet. The new governor created one. The Court of Oyer and Terminer sat for the first time on June 2, 1692, and Bishop’s case went first. The evidence against her was spectral, meaning witnesses swore that her shape, a version of her only they could see, pinched and choked them in the night. You cannot cross examine a shape. She was convicted that same day and dead eight days later at Proctor’s Ledge, near the spot tradition calls Gallows Hill.
The court kept working through September. Nineteen people went to the rope, and Giles Corey, who refused to enter a plea at all, was pressed to death under stones. Not one of them had done any witchcraft. The judges stayed sure of themselves the whole time.
The Easiest Target
Bishop had been through this before. Salem accused her of witchcraft back in 1680 and she beat it. Twelve years later she was on her third marriage, known for saying what she thought, and notorious around town for a red bodice that scandalized people with too much time on their hands. More accusers came forward against her than against anyone else tried in 1692. The new court wanted a sure thing for its opening case, and she was the resident nobody was going to defend.
She is also the only victim of the trials who died alone. Every execution after hers was a group hanging.
The lot where her property stood is a seafood restaurant now. Salem layers its history like that, tucked under the gift shops and the fried clams, which is part of why horror can never leave the place alone. The genre took Salem’s iconography, the hats and the cauldrons and all of it, and never paid the town back. The real story has no monster in it, just neighbors and a courtroom, and it reads scarier every year.
Salem at 400
The timing lands strange this year. Salem turns 400 in 2026, counting from Roger Conant’s settlement at Naumkeag in 1626, and the city has wrapped the whole year in a commemoration called Salem 400+. June 10 gets two events. At 10 am there is a short gathering called Remembering Bridget at the Salem Witch Trials Memorial on Liberty Street, with 17th century poems and flowers donated by Voices Against Injustice for visitors to lay on the stones. At 6 pm The Witch House hosts historian Margo Burns, a tenth generation granddaughter of Rebecca Nurse, who was hanged that July, for a talk pulling apart the myths that stick to the trials, the ergot theory included. Seats are limited and free to reserve.
The rest of the year works too if you cannot make it today. The memorial sits beside The Burying Point on Charter Street. The Witch House on Essex Street belonged to trial judge Jonathan Corwin and is the only building left in Salem with a direct tie to 1692. The Peabody Essex Museum holds original trial documents and keeps a witch trials exhibition running alongside its Salem 400+ programming.
Bring a flower if you go. Bishop never got a grave. What she has is a stone bench on Liberty Street with her name and a date carved into it, and by Wednesday evening it will be covered in flowers left by strangers. It took 334 years to get her that much. It counts anyway.