Each year my kids have a Fall Break, a week at the end of September where my wife and I frantically try to throw together some sort of itinerary that will beat back the gathering darkness known to parents as utter boredom. When kids are just lying around the house with nothing to do, well, you know, idle hands are the tools of the devil.

This year, we presented these little jerks with an exciting new adventure to undertake, foregoing our usual stay on the Gulf Coast and setting off to explore Boston and Cape Ann, MA. It was the first time my kids had ever flown on an airplane, and the first time any of us had been to New England.

Gloucester

Some speculate that eldritch horror icon H.P. Lovecraft based the titular town in his tale The Shadow Over Innsmouth on the coastal city of Gloucester. If not, the author certainly pulled inspiration from somewhere near Cape Ann, with its brooding skies, tectonic shorelines, and spuming waves. Gazing across the ancient and tumultuous waters of the Atlantic Ocean on an overcast day, one can see how the landscape could engender some dark curiosity about what shipwrecks and slumbering god-creatures may lie beneath those gray fathoms.

Luckily, over the course of three days in Gloucester, I witnessed no locals with misshapen heads or bulging eyes indicative of the frog-fish-hybrid-people who serve the Deep Ones. No lurking shoggoths. No Order of Dagon meeting house. On the contrary, the people of Gloucester were abundantly friendly, open to chat, and moved generally at a pace much slower than those here in Atlanta. They were also happy to engage my son, who is autistic and likes to talk to everyone he sees, radiating that quintessential, small town New England warmth often depicted in film or books.

We had initially planned to stay in Boston or Salem for the week, but hotel prices were prohibitively steep after paying for four roundtrip plane tickets, and I just so happened to see pictures of the Gloucester coast online. So, we decided to stay outside the better-known cities and explore areas off the beaten tourist trek.

With the help of Google maps, we discovered lighthouses, rocky lookouts, hidden coves, a whale watching day cruise, autumnal groves, a castle (see below), and a historical harbor walk. We dined in some local haunts right on the wharf, not surprised to see that fish (haddock) and lobster were staples on every menu, and a very nice Sam Adams seasonal beer was on tap wherever we went.

Hammond Castle Museum

Probably worthy of its own blog post, Hammond Castle Museum is the historic home of John Hays Hammond, Jr., a prolific inventor who lived from 1888 to 1965, and commissioned the building of his grand Gloucester keep ca 1926-1929.

Looming over the vast waters of Gloucester Harbor, waves crashing at its feet beneath a breathtaking lookout, the castle is a thing beautifully out of place and out of time. Walking onto the castle grounds, I was immediately captivated by the aforementioned lookout and felt as though I could spend a day just lounging around the outside and taking in the view. In fact, there were several artists there as part of some sort of club, sitting and drawing or painting the gothic buttresses and dazzling vistas of the harbor.

Not only is the castle’s presence along a quaint, small-town Any Street wonderfully strange, it houses a treasure trove of curious artifacts. An eclectic mix of pieces from centuries past are collected within, including artisanal Renaissance furniture, Medieval tapestries, a real German Zweihander sword (awesome), and reliquaries containing magnificent crucifixes.

Because I’m a nerd, I kept losing track of my family by stopping to read all the various placards offering trivia about Hammond’s life, inventions, and notable guests. Several rooms were also preserved in the way that Hammond might have used them in his time, like the study with its panoramic view of the harbor, the solarium-like courtyard, or the Medieval dining room with a table fit for a duke or baron. I admittedly found myself standing in these places daydreaming about living there and wondering if those who had were truly happy.

Quite interesting were the randomly placed Roman era bas-reliefs that have been seamlessly integrated into the walls and thresholds. As I perused the grounds, it was easy to nearly miss one of these priceless works of ancient art set flush into the castle’s corpus of granite. The subject matter of these bas-reliefs included forgotten icons, angels in descent, and men wrestling beasts. One of these sculpts seemed to depict a child atop a pedestal, curled prostrate as a man brings a large blade down upon the naked sprat; this one was either a depiction of a sculptor or carver at work, or a tribute to some good ol’ fashioned child sacrifice (realistically, it’s the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac).

Another curious piece was what appeared to be a plaster death mask, although in the old days, life masks were just as common (there was no placard attached to this item to be certain). Nonetheless, it was a shocking thing to run across, there in its case, stark white and eerily placid.

Having been to real medieval castles, abbeys, and cathedrals in England back in 2019, I’d say Hammond’s stronghold captures the spirit of those places remarkably well for being built in the early 20th century and an ocean apart. Living in England during his formative years, Hammond must have become as enamored as I am with those old fortifications of turrets, battlements, and haunted stones, so much so that he decided to spend his disposable income on building one for himself. I’d quite honestly do the same if I had a mile-long list of technological patents, or perhaps even renovate an old Victorian home somewhere, within which I’d spend the rest of my days and eventually become the house’s resident ghost.

Speaking of ghosts, I found out later that Hammond Castle Museum was investigated by TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society) on the show Ghost Hunters. The investigators claim to have some scientific instrumentation with which to detect and measure paranormal activity; the grounded part of me that is a scientist thinks that’s all horseshit, but the stargazing philosophical aspect thinks, well, maybe a place can have a sort of memory, the sounds and motions of past inhabitants and events stored and transduced by the piezoelectric quartz within those granite walls (or something like that).

Salem

My wife, a materials scientist by day and a lifelong goth by night, has always wanted to visit Salem. Forever in the shadow of its past bout of mass psychosis, the town whose name is synonymous with the 17th century Witch Trials has sadly become a modern tourist trap with a few residual historical points of interest.

Perhaps it was because we went in the “off season”, weeks before October’s rush of fish-netted fanatics and costumed cavorters, but we came away from Salem feeling vaguely irritated and unimpressed by it.

The most prominent attraction based on Instagram posts and Tripadvisor seemed to be the Witch Museum. Stylized like an old abbey and dominating an intersection near the commons, this behemoth of a tourist trap required an advanced purchase of tickets for a given time slot, and a wait in line before gaining entry. Inside, we gathered in the middle of a diorama and listened to a disembodied narrator give a synopsis of the genesis and grisly conclusion of the Witch Trials. As the voice rattled along, different portions of the diorama were illuminated by stage lights, and the grotesquely sculpted figures of the accused and their accusers, bedecked in 17th century garb, were unintentionally horrifying, like Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” music video from 1986. After sitting through all of this with two fidgety kids who were wondering why in the hell they were suddenly on a school field trip, we were herded like disoriented livestock into the gift shop, where we were so inundated by fellow museum goers that no one had a chance to even look at the trinkets and trifles on the shelves. My wife and I exited uttering a few choice expletives.

As far as actual museums go, the Peabody Essex Museum had some awesome things related to the Witch Trials and a themed exhibition on the occult, and I wish we would have spent our time there instead of the Witch Museum.

According to one of the kindly waitresses at our hotel breakfast cafe in Gloucester, a lot of the action during the Witch Trials actually happened in the neighboring city of Danvers, home to the original Salem Village of the 17th century where those harrowing events began. Some houses of notable Witch Trial individuals are still standing at the site of the village, including the homestead of one of the most famous victims, the elderly Rebecca Nurse. So, if you want the “ACK-shualll” location where the witchy business kicked off, the otherwise unremarkable Danvers is the place to see. But, if you prefer countless shops, boutiques, and cafes dedicated to the spirt of all things spooky, occult, or politically progressive (penis-shaped candles in the gift shop next to kids’ t-shirts, anyone?), Salem is where it’s at.

Of the few things I found genuinely interesting in Salem, there were some colonial period houses, painted in black from ground to gutters, where some important players in the witch trials had lived. The presence of these dark edifices gave an authentically ominous feel to parts of Salem, to be fair, despite the campiness of some of the town.

The old Charter St. cemetery was well worth the look. We went inside the Pickman House, which serves as the cemetery information center and is an authentic 17th century home very well preserved and free to enter. Just outside of the Pickman House was the Salem Witch Memorial, a series of stone epitaphs dedicate to the victims of the infamous trials, including the famous John Proctor (hanged) and Giles Corey (crushed to death).

Fascinatingly enough, the Smithsonian documentary available here explains that the bodies of the alleged “witches” were never recovered after their executions; viewed as corrupted, they were not buried on church-grounds but instead tossed in a mass grave near the site of the hangings, the location of which is thought to be at Proctor’s Ledge (around the corner from a Walgreen’s).

Fans of the movie Hocus Pocus can happen upon some recognizable filming locations, like Max’s high school and the town hall where the costume party takes place. There was also a pretty cool walkthrough, jump-scare monster museum in Witch City Mall, worth a gander and kid friendly. However, the scariest thing I came across in all of Salem was undoubtedly the public men’s restroom in Witch City Mall—God deliver me from evil. The things smeared onto its walls were more horrifying than the monsters in the museum.

Boston

We finished our trip with a day and night in the big city—I’m talking about Bahston, ya chowdahead!

Boston is very deeply tied to the American genome, having played host to several key events and people that brought about the Revolutionary War (the Boston Tea Party, the Boston Massacre, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, etc.).

My wife and I overheard a guy on the flight back to Atlanta confiding in a stewardess that Boston was the most unfriendly city he’d ever been to, claiming that he’d “not seen a single person smiling.” I found that the people on the streets and in the market kept to themselves, as is customary in most urban settings, but were plenty hospitable when engaged. I recall an instance where my son approached a surly construction worker outside the New England Aquarium and, completely at random, told him how awesome he thought the laborer was. The man’s scowl quickly turned to a genuine smile; we could all certainly learn a lot of humanity from people like my son who are deemed “disabled”.

True that drivers out and about were horribly impatient, but I found it strange that despite a heavy volume of traffic during Boston’s rush hour, the traffic moved well, unlike the constipated, inch-wise slog in and out of Atlanta I’m used to. So angry Massholes behind the wheel, be thankful you don’t have to fight Atlanta traffic on the daily.

For a first trip to New England, our little excursion was very nice, and I’m sure we’ll return one day. If this writing thing works out, I can see myself growing old, holed up in one of those gorgeous Cape Ann homes—or perhaps my own castle overlooking the Atlantic—cranking out novels until my kids come to visit one day and find me keeled over in front of my laptop.