Seasonal & Holidays Haunting Reminder: Salem Halloween Season Tourist Crush On Its Way After nearly one million visitors came to the Witch City last scary season, officials are urging to plan out travel and itineraries. Reply
“We had 994,000 people last year — which was up 3 percent from the prior year. We’re looking to either meet or exceed that.” – Destination Salem Interim Executive Director Stacia Cooper (Scott Souza/Patch)
SALEM, MA — The costumes, the chaos and the cacophony of tens of thousands of Halloween revelers each day — with up to 10 times that many visitors on October weekends — are about to descend upon downtown Salem to celebrate in the holiday’s unofficial hometown.
To the delight of many businesses and freight night enthusiasts, and to the distress of some downtown residents, the Salem Halloween season has gotten longer each year and is seemingly impervious to any attempts to tamper down the crowds. With that in mind, Destination Salem has released its annual Haunted Happenings Guide that serves as a map, a collection of attractions and restaurants, and plenty of dos and recommended don’ts when it comes to coming to the Witch City for the holiday season.
“It’s primarily organic,” Destination Salem Interim Executive Director Stacia Cooper told Patch. “There is not anything we can do really to manage it in regards to visitation (volume). People are going to come here regardless of any messaging. I remember in the pandemic people were driving up from New York City and you asked them ‘Why?’ and they said ‘I don’t know (because it’s Salem on Halloween). “People are still going to come. We had 994,000 people last year — which was up 3 percent from the prior year. We’re looking to either meet or exceed that.”
While Salem officials know they can’t reduce the crowds or tell people to stay away — they tried that at the height of the COVID-19 health crisis and an estimated 500,000 people still came to the city in October of that year — they are providing messaging on how to best get downtown and the importance of planning ahead when it comes to transportation, attractions, parking and finding food. Officials are urging people coming to Salem to take the commuter rail from Boston or the North Shore, the Salem Ferry, or if they do drive to the city to utilize one of the free satellite parking lots at Salem Hospital on Jefferson Avenue, Salem High School on Willson Street or the O’Keefe parking lot at Salem State University.
The free shuttle buses that drop off and pick up at Riley Plaza will run each weekend starting with the weekend of Sept. 30-Oct. 1 and includes Indigenous Peoples/Columbus Day on Oct. 9. Shuttles will not run on Halloween itself, which is on a Tuesday this year. Many museums and tours will sell out and most restaurants are typically packed with long waits during peak hours.
“Restaurants are going to be at a maximum,” Cooper said. “Plan an itinerary and reach out to the individual businesses to see if they have advance reservations or tickets.” New events and activities this year include Kid’s Pub events, a Haunted Speakeasy at Hamilton Hall, a Salem Night Faire, Spirits Speak in Salem at the Hawthorne Hotel, and Wicked Night on the Wharf. The Peabody Essex Museum will showcase objects that the Salem Witch Trials victims and accusers owned and touched in an exhibition that puts the dark history in a new light. The PEM will also launch its new exhibition “BATS!” where attendees can explore why bats are not only creatures of the night but also daytime participants in our food systems and growing seasons. Long gone are the days when Haunted Happenings in Salem were a slow build throughout October that peaked the weekend before and the weekend of Halloween. “It starts in September,” Cooper said. “That last weekend or so, or even mid-September, and we even get a runoff into November. That first weekend of November is usually the shoulder of it.”
Haunting Reminder: Salem Halloween Season Tourist Crush On Its Way
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