Cold as a Witch’s: Salem in the Snow

February 13, 2017 — After visiting the city multiple times a year for the past ten years, living there for a month, and writing an entire book about the place, I saw something in Salem over the weekend that I don’t think I’ve ever seen there before: Snow.

For some reason, I’d never been to Salem after a snowstorm.

But thanks to one last week that threw about a foot of cold white Frosty cells onto large areas of New England, that’s now been remedied.

The Witch House looks spookier with icicles.

And let me tell you, for a place that I’m used to seeing all black and orange, it looks good in white. Well, except for the Essex Street Pedestrian Mall, where the snow had been trampled into an icky gray sludge across the bricks. Icky Gray Sludge III, MD.

I also inadvertently timed it for Salem’s So Sweet, a Valentine’s Day festival featuring ice sculptures and chocolate tastings. That was another first for me.

We somehow ended up spending 10 hours in Salem, met with a lot of friends at a lot of restaurants, drank too much, ate too much, tromped through a lot of snow, and had a good time.

The way we always do…in Salem.

Ice bar at Rockafellas.

An ad for the upcoming exhibition of horror movie posters at PEM
from the collection of Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett.

The Grimshawe House is getting renovated.
I hope that doesn't mean no more spooky house by the graveyard.

Patrick Dougherty's What the Birds Know is still standing after close to two years.

My biggest surprise on this visit was learning that they'd cut down the massive tree
behind the Nathaniel Hawthorne statue.

Plenty of these signs around.

The Haunted Neighborhood...now a ghost town.