Between February 1692 and May 1693, colonial Massachusetts executed twenty people accused of witchcraft, nineteen by hanging and one by pressing with stones. The Salem witch trials began when two girls in Reverend Samuel Parris's household exhibited unexplained fits, and within months accusations spread through Essex County like contagion. Spectral evidence — testimony that an accused person's spirit had appeared to the witness — was admitted in court, a decision that would later be condemned as the trials' most egregious legal failure. Chief Justice William Stoughton presided over the Court of Oyer and Terminer, established by Governor William Phips specifically to hear witchcraft cases, and the court's willingness to accept supernatural testimony sealed the fate of dozens. By September, public opinion had shifted; Increase Mather's treatise "Cases of Conscience" argued that spectral evidence was unreliable, and Governor Phips dissolved the court in October. Of the fifty-two remaining accused, none were convicted under the stricter evidentiary standards that followed. Salem witch trials tours from Boston connect visitors to multiple memorial sites that preserve this history with uncommon restraint. The Salem Witch Trials Memorial, dedicated in 1992 on the tercentenary, consists of twenty granite benches inscribed with the names and execution dates of the condemned, each bench cantilevered over a low stone wall to symbolize interrupted lives. The memorial occupies a quiet plot adjacent to the Old Burying Point Cemetery, where Judge John Hathorne — the only trial magistrate who never expressed regret — is interred. Charter Street, which borders the memorial, follows the original route prisoners walked to Gallows Hill. Guided experiences often include the Witch House, the restored home of Judge Jonathan Corwin, the sole remaining structure with direct ties to the trials. Its dark timber frame and diamond-pane casements are original to the 1670s, and forensic research has identified the interrogation chamber where pre-trial examinations took place. Day trips from Boston covering Salem's witch trial heritage typically allocate time for the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, where the city's wealth as a seaport — built on cod, privateering, and the China trade — is contextualized against the social anxieties that fueled the 1692 panic. The Custom House and Derby Wharf illustrate the economic forces that made Salem the sixth-largest city in the new United States by 1790, less than a century after the trials. This juxtaposition underscores a central irony: Salem's transformation into a prosperous global port depended on the same Puritan mercantile class that had enabled the executions.