Proctor's Ledge Memorial

The true execution site of the Salem witch trials, confirmed in 2016 by the Gallows Hill Project. Nineteen innocent people were hanged here in 1692, their bodies discarded in a nearby crevice. A memorial was dedicated in 2017 on the 325th anniversary of the first hangings.

Proctor's Ledge is the confirmed site where nineteen innocent people were hanged during the Salem witch trials of 1692, a rocky outcropping between Proctor Street and Pope Street that for over three centuries was lost to public memory. The first execution took place on June 10, 1692, when Bridget Bishop was hanged. On July 19, Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, Rebecca Nurse, and Sarah Wildes followed. Five more died on August 19, including George Burroughs, a minister who recited the Lord's Prayer perfectly on the gallows -- something supposedly impossible for a witch. John Proctor, the wealthy landowner who publicly condemned the trials and for whose family the ledge may be named, was among them. The final eight were executed on September 22, 1692. None received a proper burial. Their bodies were dumped into a shallow crevice at the base of the ledge, as touching the corpse of an executed witch was considered dangerous in colonial Salem.

The location was first correctly identified in 1921 by historian Sidney Perley, who published detailed evidence in the Essex Institute Historical Collections using eyewitness accounts and family oral histories. The city of Salem purchased a small parcel of the land in 1936 and designated it "Witch Memorial Land," but no marker was ever placed and the site was gradually forgotten. Popular misconception held that the executions occurred at the top of Gallows Hill. In 2010, the Gallows Hill Project -- led by Elizabeth Peterson, director of the Corwin House, along with historian Emerson Baker, University of Virginia professor Benjamin Ray, Salem witch trials historian Marilynne Roach, and Salem State University geologist Peter Sablock -- began the work of confirming the exact location. The breakthrough came when Roach discovered the phrase "the house below the hill" in nearly one thousand pages of court records, uttered by fifty-one-year-old accused witch Rebecca Eames during her preliminary examination on August 19, 1692. Peter Sablock used ground-penetrating radar to survey the site, finding less than three feet of soil on the ledge -- not enough to bury bodies, confirming they were simply discarded in the rock crevices. The team officially announced its findings in January 2016.

The families of the executed endured their own ordeal. Because it was dangerous to be associated with convicted witches, families had to retrieve their loved ones' remains in secret, under cover of darkness. According to historical accounts, Benjamin Nurse used a creek route to access the ledge and recover the body of his mother, Rebecca Nurse, for reburial. Other families likely made similar nighttime journeys, though many of the executed may never have been recovered. It is this denial of proper burial and peaceful rest that believers say has kept the spirits of Proctor's Ledge bound to the site for over three hundred years.

Visitors and paranormal enthusiasts report a range of phenomena at the ledge. The most frequently described is a Lady in White who appears briefly before vanishing -- she has also been spotted at other Salem locations, including Murphy's Restaurant and the Old Burying Point Cemetery, leading some to speculate she is one of the executed women wandering the routes she knew in life. Disembodied wails have been documented at the site, and visitors describe an overwhelming atmosphere of sorrow and heaviness. Cold spots are commonly encountered even on warm days, and photographs taken at the ledge frequently capture unexplained glowing orbs and mysterious lights after dark. In 2017, CBS featured Proctor's Ledge among "America's 5 Most Haunted Places."

On July 19, 2017 -- the 325th anniversary of the first mass execution -- Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll dedicated the Proctor's Ledge Memorial, designed by landscape architect Martha Lyon. The semicircular granite installation features nineteen engraved stones bearing the victims' names and execution dates, arranged around a single oak tree symbolizing endurance and dignity. The memorial was funded by a $174,000 Community Preservation Act grant and donations from descendants of the executed. Salem's ghost tours now include Proctor's Ledge as a regular stop, and the site has become a place of both solemn remembrance and, for many visitors, unsettling encounters with forces they cannot explain.