Witch Dungeon Museum

Features live reenactments of witch trial examinations and a recreation of the dungeon where accused witches were held in 1692. The dungeon replica is based on archaeological evidence from the original Salem jail.

The Witch Dungeon Museum occupies a building steeped in layered history—a Stick Style chapel constructed in 1897 for the East Church on a site where Massachusetts Bay Colony erected a fort in 1629. After a fire in 1902, the congregation relocated and the Church of Christ Scientist held services here until 1979, when it became Salem's second-oldest witch museum. Though the building itself dates to the Victorian era, it houses one of the most significant artifacts of the 1692 witch hysteria: an original wooden beam from the Old Witch Jail dungeon.

The original Salem jail was built in 1684 on what is now the corner of St. Peter and Federal Streets—a small wooden structure measuring just twenty feet square with two stone-walled dungeons in the basement. Conditions were appalling: dirt floors, lice, perpetual darkness, and air thick with the stench of unwashed bodies and excrement. Prisoners were charged for their own chains and fed salted foods to induce confessing thirst. At one point, 150 accused witches were crammed into these hellish chambers, including Sarah Good—the destitute beggar whose trial the museum now reenacts. Good was hanged on July 19, 1692, along with four other women, while her four-year-old daughter Dorcas remained chained in the dungeon so long she never fully recovered her sanity.

When the New England Telephone Company demolished the jail site in 1956, workers discovered 17th-century beams that had formed the original dungeon cells. Three were preserved: one at the Salem Witch Museum, one at the Peabody Essex Museum, and one here at the Witch Dungeon Museum, where visitors are encouraged to touch this timber that once held the condemned. The museum also displays the original sign from the "Old Witch Jail and Dungeon"—Salem's first witch tourism attraction, opened by the Goodall family in 1935.

Performers and visitors alike report an unsettling atmosphere that transcends mere historical unease. During trial reenactments—drawn directly from 1692 court transcripts—some actors claim to feel a presence watching, as if the spirits of the accused are observing their stories being told. The dungeon recreation in the basement amplifies these sensations: as visitors descend, a wave of cold, damp air greets them, the lighting casts long shadows across rough-hewn walls, and the pervading sounds of dripping water and chains create an immediate sense of claustrophobia and dread. Many report feeling the weight of collective suffering—not theatrical fear, but something deeper, a chilling reminder of neighbors turning against neighbors.

The wax figures depicting tortured prisoners are described as unsettling, their positions eerie, with a strange off-kilter quality that visitors find genuinely disturbing. Cold spots appear in the dungeon area with no obvious explanation, and unexplained sounds have been reported when the building stands empty. Whether these phenomena stem from the authentic beam connecting visitors to 1692, the emotional residue of reenacting such tragedy, or something more supernatural remains debated. What is certain is that the Witch Dungeon Museum offers not just education but an encounter with the darker currents of Salem's past that continue to flow through this quiet chapel on Lynde Street.