History Main / SalemIsWitchCountry

* Salem is home to the [[MageTower Tower of Fate]], sanctum of ''ComicBook/DoctorFate'', one of the most powerful magic users in DC canon.

* In ''ComicBook/{{BPRD}} Dark Waters'', three women were drowned in a lake by the intolerant priest in the Salem knock-off of Shiloh, Massachusetts. Centuries later, a similarly fundamentalist preacher goes running around causing trouble, and ends up dragged into the lake by their ghosts after their bodies are given a proper burial.
* The titular town of the ''ComicBook/CoffinHill'' series published by Creator/VertigoComics was settled by Emma Coffin, a witch who had fled the Salem Trials leaving nineteen innocents to die in her stead.

* ''ComicBookkFantasticfour'': The HiddenElfVillage of New Salem is inhabited by descendants of witches who fled Salem when the WitchHunt started there. The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem%27s_Seven protectors]] of the village are known as the [[TheNotableNumeral Salem Seven]]. The leader of New Salem, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Harkness Agatha Harkness]] has also worked as governess to [[ComicBook/FantasticFour Franklin Richards]] and magical tutor to Comicbook/ScarletWitch. She is several centuries old and may be one of the original witches from the Witch Trials.
* A strange StoryArc in ''ComicBook/MarvelTeamUp'' involves Comicbook/SpiderMan, the ComicBook/ScarletWitch, ComicBook/TheVision, [[ChromeDomePSI Moondragon]], and Doctor Doom time-traveling to Salem to fight a warlock who was involved in the Salem Witch Trials. Unfortunately, the heroes defeat the Warlock, but could not stop innocent people from being hanged.
* Violet from the "Bride and Groom" arc of the ''ComicBook/{{Nightwing}}'' series is the daughter of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tituba Tituba]], the slave girl accused of teaching witchcraft in Salem. Violet has several powers including the ability to [[LifeDrinker drain the life forces]] of people to maintain her {{immortality}}.
* ''ComicBook/SalemQueenOfThorns'' from Creator/BoomStudios follows Elias Hooke, a former inquisitor for the Puritan Church who discovers that only innocent people were killed at the trials and the true supernatural evil in Salem was a manifestation of nature, the Queen of Thorns.
* The ''ComicBook/SalemsDaughter'' series published by Zenescope Entertainment is a [[WeirdWest supernatural western]] that features [[http://www.comicvine.com/anna-williams/4005-78765/issues-cover/ Anna Williams]], a witch living in Salem who hides her inherited powers in the fear of sparking another WitchHunt two hundred years after the original trials.
* ''ComicBook/ShadeTheChangingMan'' "History Lesson": When Shade, Lenny and Kathy go [[TimeTravel back to the witch trials]], they end up taking ComicBook/JohnConstantine along with them. The three land in trouble, of course, both because of Shade's powers and local prejudice against Lenny's Jewishness.
* Aramis Merrow from the ''ComicBook/SouthernKnights'' is a teenage sorcerer from the days of the Salem Witch Trials. His parents put him into a [[RipVanWinkle magical sleep]] when their coven was attacked and he was accidentally revived by the Knights when they moved into his old house.
* ''ComicBook/{{Spellbinders}}'' is set around a fictional Salem high school called John Hawthorne High School where magic is accepted as a fact. A large part of the plot revolves around the rivalries between magical students (wicks) and non-magical students (blanks), and between the various covens.
* ''ComicBook/TheTombOfDracula'' depicted the events in Salem as the result of the [[VampireMonarch Lord of the Vampires]] manipulating the villagers into killing one another in order to avenge {{Drac|ula}}'s mistreated former love interest.
* In the first issue of the ''ComicBook/XMen: Hellfire Club'' miniseries, Hiram Shaw (ancestor of Sebastian) is a minister in Salem who is hunting witches but is also a magic-user himself (and at one point claims to be the [[TheArchmage Sorcerer Supreme]]). It turns out [[HumanoidAbomination Dorm]][[DimensionLord ammu]] is behind the events, and Hiram is trying to stop it. Oh, and Hiram's son ends up running away with Abigail Harkness, from the same family as Agatha, and who is - of course - really a witch and burns the town down.

* In the ''ComicBook/{{Zatanna}}'' comic, "Witch Hunt" [[MagiciansAreWizards Zatanna]] sends some [[TheWitchhunter witch hunters]] that attacked her back to the Salem trials where they are ironically mistaken for witches by the Salemites who prepare to burn them at the stake. As Zatanna watches them from afar, her narration reveals she'll save them before they actually die.
* ''World's Finest'' #186 & #187 featured a two-part story in which Superman and Batman travel back in time to colonial New England (about a century after the Salem witch trials, but who's counting?) where they rescue a young woman falsely accused of witchcraft and then Batman is similarly accused (by Superman, who is revealed to be possessed by a demon and uses his powers to make the townsfolk believe that Batman is a warlock) and nearly burned at the stake.
* ''ComicBook/BatmanGrantMorrison'', which made a thing out of homaging and reconstructing wacky Silver Age concepts, did a more serious version of "time-displaced Batman + witch hunters in colonial New England" in the second issue of ''The Return of Bruce Wayne''.

* A strange StoryArc in ''[[TeamUpSeries Marvel Team-Up]]'' involved Comicbook/SpiderMan, the ComicBook/ScarletWitch, ComicBook/TheVision, [[ChromeDomePSI Moondragon]], and Doctor Doom time-traveling to Salem to fight a warlock who was involved in the Salem Witch Trials. Unfortunately, the heroes defeated the Warlock but could not stop innocent people from being hanged.

* ''WebVideo/AtunSheiFilms'': When the [[TheWitchHunter Witchfinder General]] travels to modern-day Salem, he sees it overtaken with occultism and neo-pagantry (as it is in real life), which shocks and horrifies him. He also winds up learning that all his friends and family are dead in the modern day. The episode culminates when he storms the Satanic Temple HQ[[note]]which really is based in Salem[[/note]], only to be greeted warmly and told to check out the gift shop.

So what is Salem, UsefulNotes/{{Massachusetts}} famous for? [[OurWitchesAreDifferent Witches]], of course.

* Danvers would still gain some spooky history to undeniably call its own, though. Namely, it's the site of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danvers_State_Hospital Danvers State Hospital]], a mental hospital that was designed to ''not'' be a BedlamHouse but, due to lack of funding and overcrowding, degenerated into one anyway. It's said to have been the birthplace of the {{lobotomy}}, as well as the inspiration for Creator/HPLovecraft's Arkham Sanatorium (which in turn inspired Arkham Asylum from the ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' comics), and it has a very storied reputation for being haunted (the film ''Film/Session9'' was set there). Incidentally, it was built on the hill where John Hathorne, the judge of the Salem witch trials, had once lived. The place was progressively shut down between 1969 and 1992; what's left has since been renovated into an apartment complex.

* The main character of ''Literature/ADiscoveryOfWitches'' is Diana, the last witch in a long line of Bishop witches who can trace their history back to the first woman executed in Salem. Her father Stephen Proctor's ancestor John was also executed in Salem. Diana's aunt Emily Mather is a descendant of Cotton Mather, who played an influential role in the trials.

* Creator/MarvelComics examples:
** A strange StoryArc in ''[[TeamUpSeries Marvel Team-Up]]'' involved Comicbook/SpiderMan, the ComicBook/ScarletWitch, ComicBook/TheVision, [[ChromeDomePSI Moondragon]], and Doctor Doom time-traveling to Salem to fight a warlock who was involved in the Salem Witch Trials. Unfortunately, the heroes defeated the Warlock but could not stop innocent people from being hanged.
** The HiddenElfVillage of New Salem is inhabited by descendants of witches who fled Salem when the WitchHunt started there. The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem%27s_Seven protectors]] of the village are known as the [[TheNotableNumeral Salem Seven]]. The leader of New Salem, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Harkness Agatha Harkness]] has also worked as governess to [[ComicBook/FantasticFour Franklin Richards]] and magical tutor to Comicbook/ScarletWitch. She is several centuries old and may be one of the original witches from the Witch Trials.
** ''ComicBook/{{Spellbinders}}'' is set around a fictional Salem high school called John Hawthorne High School where magic is accepted as a fact. A large part of the plot revolves around the rivalries between magical students (wicks) and non-magical students (blanks), and between the various covens.
** ''ComicBook/TheTombOfDracula'' depicted the events in Salem as the result of the [[VampireMonarch Lord of the Vampires]] manipulating the villagers into killing one another in order to avenge {{Drac|ula}}'s mistreated former love interest.
** In the first issue of the ''ComicBook/XMen: Hellfire Club'' miniseries, Hiram Shaw (ancestor of Sebastian) is a minister in Salem who is hunting witches but is also a magic-user himself (and at one point claims to be the [[TheArchmage Sorcerer Supreme]]). It turns out [[HumanoidAbomination Dorm]][[DimensionLord ammu]] is behind the events, and Hiram is trying to stop it. Oh, and Hiram's son ends up running away with Abigail Harkness, from the same family as Agatha, and who is - of course - really a witch and burns the town down.

* ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_{comics) Salem: Queen of Thorns]]'' from Creator/BoomStudios follows Elias Hooke, a former inquisitor for the Puritan Church who discovers that only innocent people were killed at the trials and the true supernatural evil in Salem was a manifestation of nature, the Queen of Thorns.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* ''Film/AssassinationNation'' uses this for RuleOfSymbolism. It's set in a StepfordSuburbia called Salem, which experiences a moral panic reminiscent of the witch trials when a hacker leaks the personal photos and information of everybody in the town.

* [[Recap/WandaVisionEpisode8PreviouslyOn Episode 8]] of ''Series/WandaVision'' begins in Salem in 1693 with the attempted execution of the witch [[spoiler:Agatha Harkness]]. However, the twist is that she's being punished by her fellow witches for using forbidden dark magic. [[spoiler:Agatha]] turns the tables on them by draining their life forces before escaping.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout4'', taking place in and around UsefulNotes/{{Boston}} and eastern Massachusetts, has Salem as a location on the map, and the local witch trial museum is the subject of [[NightmareFuel one of the scariest sidequests in the game]]. [[WhatCouldHaveBeen At one point]] the quest there would have been even witchier: it was supposed to concern [[NuclearMutant mutants with powers like fireballs or ice magic]], because in early development the ''Fallout 4'' game engine was exactly the same as the ''VideoGame/{{Skyrim}}'' engine. The Skyrim spells got DummiedOut, so the questline changed.
* ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'': The final Pseudo-Singularity takes place in Salem; specifically modern-day Salem has suddenly been swallowed up by a dark void that has re-created 17th century Salem right down to the year the infamous witch-hunts started. Once Chaldea Rayshifts inside, however, they begin to notice various discrepancies between the actual events of and persons involved in the trials and what's going on in the singularity. [[FromBadToWorse And then the undead and ghouls start showing up]]... It eventually turns out that [[spoiler:the Demon God Pillar Raum was using the hysteria and horrors of the trials to [[BreakTheCutie break Abigail Williams]], a copy of the original from history, and turn her into the vessel of an [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Outer God]] to [[LovecraftCountry overrun the world with Lovecraftian horrors]].]]

* Hearthbrook is a coastal Massachusetts town set in LovecraftCountry in the comic ''Webcomic/DearChildren''. Guess what the main characters are looking for at the beginning of the story? Yep, witches.

* WebVideo/AtunSheiFilms: When the [[TheWitchHunter Witchfinder General]] travels to modern-day Salem, he sees it overtaken with occultism and neo-pagantry (as it is in real life), which shocks and horrifies him. He also winds up learning that all his friends and family are dead in the modern day. The episode culminates when he storms the Satanic Temple HQ[[note]]which really is based in Salem[[/note]], only to be greeted warmly and told to check out the gift shop.
* Roleplay/SurvivalOfTheFittest: The town from which the students of V8 are from is none other than Salem, Massachusetts. Like its real life counterpart, there are no witches or anything supernatural but the pregame description of Downtown Salem mentions that the bulk of the town's tourism has to do with "witchcraft, the occult, and all things spooky in relation to the infamous Salem Witch Trials."

* The "The Witch is Back" episode of ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'' shows that one of the Halliwell ancestors was lined up to be burned at the stake in Salem.

-->'''Bonnie''': Was our family burned in the witch trials?\\

* Averted in ''Webcomic/SomethingPositive'': a girl from a UsefulNotes/{{Wicca}}n coven [[https://somethingpositive.net/comic/trolling-for-goths-pt-3/ claims to remember]] her [[{{Reincarnation}} past life]] of being burned at the stake at Salem. Davan calls her out on it (except for the burning part, which has already been mentioned here).
* ''Webcomic/TimesLikeThis'': Cassie's reaction to a song - mentioning that she escaped being burned alive due to witchcraft accusations - was "it was a trip to Salem gone horribly wrong".

** It is probably not a coincidence that the [[TheMasquerade International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy]] was established officially in 1692, the same year that the Salem Trials started.

** According to [[https://www.pottermore.com/collection-episodic/history-of-magic-in-north-america-en History supplementary material]] written by Creator/JKRowling for ''Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'', there were at least two Scourers (rogue mercenary wizards) amongst the judges that instigated the Salem trials to settle their personal feuds. This led to several witches being killed alongside innocent [[{{Muggles}} No-Majs]] that were caught up in the hysteria.

* Averted in ''Webcomic/SomethingPositive'': a girl from a UsefulNotes/{{Wicca}}n coven [[http://somethingpositive.net/sp04242002.shtml claims to remember]] her [[{{Reincarnation}} past life]] of being burned at the stake at Salem. Davan calls her out on it (except for the burning part, which has already been mentioned here).

* This shows up in a ''{{racing game}}'', of all places. ''VideoGame/TheCrew'' features Salem, Massachusetts as one of the many small American towns you can visit (taking place in a WideOpenSandbox rendition of the entire United States), and appropriately, the place is [[HalloweenTown all decked out for a Halloween celebration]], with jack o'lanterns and other decorations lining the streets.

Well, more accurately, it's famous (or infamous) for the witch ''trials'' of [[UsefulNotes/TheThirteenAmericanColonies 1692–93]], in which bizarre behaviors amongst the town's children led to a massive outbreak of hysteria, which led to the townspeople [[WitchHunt accusing their neighbors of being witches]], which led to various arrests and trials, which led to a number of hangings. The episode is often held up as one of the greatest instances of mass hysteria and moral panic in American history, and the search for a logical explanation behind it has pointed to everything from an outbreak of ergotism to "People just be crazy, y'all."

** A strange storyarc in ''[[TeamUpSeries Marvel Team-Up]]'' involved Comicbook/SpiderMan, the ComicBook/ScarletWitch, ComicBook/TheVision, [[ChromeDomePSI Moondragon]], and Doctor Doom time-traveling to Salem to fight a warlock who was involved in the Salem Witch Trials. Unfortunately, the heroes defeated the Warlock but could not stop innocent people from being hanged.

* ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'': The final Pseudo-Singularity takes place in Salem; specifically modern-day Salem has suddenly been swallowed up by a dark void that has re-created 17th century Salem right down to the year the infamous witch-hunts started. Once Chaldea Rayshifts inside, however, they begin to notice various discrepancies between the actual events of and persons involved in the trials and what's going on in the singularity. [[FromBadToWorse And then the undead and ghouls start showing up]]... It eventually turns out that [[spoiler:the Demon God Pillar Raum was using the hysteria and horrors of the trials to [[BreakTheCutie break Abigail Williams]], a [[CloningBlues copy of the original from history]], and turn her into the vessel of an [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Outer God]] to [[LovecraftCountry overrun the world with Lovecraftian horrors]].]]

Roleplay/SurvivalOfTheFittest: The town from which the students of V8 are from is none other than Salem, Massachusetts. Like its real life counterpart, there are no witches or anything supernatural but the pregame description of Downtown Salem mentions that the bulk of the town's tourism has to do with "witchcraft, the occult, and all things spooky in relation to the infamous Salem Witch Trials."

Well, more accurately, it's famous – or infamous – for the witch ''trials'' of [[UsefulNotes/TheThirteenAmericanColonies 1692–93]], in which bizarre behaviors amongst the town's children led to a massive outbreak of hysteria, which led to the townspeople [[WitchHunt accusing their neighbors of being witches]], which led to various arrests and trials, which led to a number of hangings. The episode is often held up as one of the greatest instances of mass hysteria and moral panic in American history, and the search for a logical explanation behind it has pointed to everything from an outbreak of ergotism to "People just be crazy, y'all."

Well, more accurately, it's famous for the witch ''trials'' of [[UsefulNotes/TheThirteenAmericanColonies 1692–93]], in which bizarre behavior amongst the town's children led to a massive outbreak of hysteria, which led to townspeople [[WitchHunt accusing their neighbors of being witches]], which led to various arrests and trials, which led to a number of hangings. The episode is often held up as one of the greatest instances of mass hysteria and moral panic in American history, and the search for a reasonable explanation behind it has pointed to everything from an outbreak of ergotism to "People just be crazy, y'all."