Howard Street Cemetery

A quiet side street in downtown Salem. Away from the tourist crowds and souvenir shops. Away from the bustling witch museums and packed restaurants.

Here, wind whispers through iron gates and rustles the branches of old trees standing sentinel over crooked headstones.

This is Howard Street Cemetery, and it feels different from Salem’s other historic sites.

Heavier. Darker. More charged with something you can’t quite name.

While the Old Burying Point Cemetery draws thousands of visitors each October, Howard Street Cemetery sits mostly forgotten. Fewer tourists. Less foot traffic. More silence.

But locals know the truth. This is where Salem’s most violent death during the witch trials occurred. This is where one of history’s most famous curses was spoken with dying breath. This is where restless spirits are said to wander still.

The story of Howard Street Cemetery isn’t just about old graves and colonial history. It’s about torture, defiance, and a curse that allegedly plagued Salem’s sheriffs for three hundred years.

Step through the gates if you dare. But be warned….what happened here refuses to stay buried.

A Cemetery Founded in Tragedy

Established in 1801, Howard Street Cemetery is a historic cemetery in Salem, Mass. The cemetery is 2.5 acres in size with 1,100 headstones and is located next to the old Salem jail.

But the land itself carries a much older and darker history.

Before it was a cemetery, it was actually an open field where it is believed that Salem Witch Trials victim Giles Corey was pressed to death by Sheriff George Corwin in 1692.

In 1801, the field was established as a cemetery, called the Branch Street Cemetery, because the street it is located on was called Branch Street at the time.

Howard Street Cemetery, laid out in 1801, is Salem’s fourth oldest burying ground. Compared to the Charter Street Cemetery established in 1637, it’s relatively young. But what it lacks in age, it makes up for in dark history.

It was renamed Howard Street cemetery after John Howard from Marblehead, a soldier in the Revolutionary War who died in 1828. After his death the street and cemetery were renamed in his honor.

Osgood and Batchelder wrote in their Historical Sketch of Salem 1626-1879: “A part of it was originally reserved for colored people, and apart for strangers.”

The cemetery’s layout reflects early colonial burial practices – simple, humble, unadorned. Plain headstones with minimal decoration. No grand monuments or elaborate family tombs. Just stone markers bearing names, dates, and occasionally the cause of death.

The cemetery is definitely a little more out-of-the-way than other prominent ones in Salem. Many of the gravestones are faded, so you can barely read the inscriptions.

This quieter, more somber atmosphere sets Howard Street apart from its more famous neighbor, Old Burying Point. Where Old Burying Point has become a must-see tourist destination, Howard Street remains overlooked. Forgotten.

Perhaps the spirits prefer it that way.

The Ghost of Giles Corey — Salem’s Most Famous Spirit

The Torture and Death of Giles Corey

No name is more synonymous with Howard Street Cemetery than Giles Corey.

Giles Corey was born in Northampton, Northamptonshire. He was baptized in the Holy Sepulchre, Northampton on 16 August 1611. By the time of the witch trials, he was approximately 81 years old, an elderly farmer who had lived a complicated life.

As an English-born American man, Giles Corey found fortune in the farmstead. Corey had settled south of Salem Village with his third wife, Martha Corey. They were churchgoers and extensive landowners, two advantages for Salem society.

But Corey’s reputation was checkered. Corey had been brought to trial for the murder of Jacob Goodale in 1676. Goodale’s offense? Stolen apples. Goodale died of blood clots from the assault, yet Corey was exempt from the charge of murder.

Despite his troubled past, Corey’s later marriage to Martha re-established his reputation. By 1691, his past transgressions had been disregarded.

Then came 1692, and everything changed.

In April 1692, five of Salem’s “afflicted girls” accused Corey of witchcraft: Elizabeth Hubbard, Ann Putnam Jr., Abigail Williams, Mary Walcott, and Mercy Lewis.

Corey faced an impossible choice. If he pleaded guilty or not guilty, he would stand trial. And in the hysteria of 1692, a trial almost certainly meant conviction and death. Worse, his property would be seized by the court.

So Corey made a fateful decision. He refused to plead at all.

In September 1692, Corey refused to plead innocent or guilty at arraignment and in an attempt to make him enter a plea, judges punished him with peine forte et dure, a form of torture in which the subject is pressed beneath an increasingly heavy load of stones.

Corey was pressed to death by Captain John Gardner of Nantucket in an empty field on Howard Street, which was next to the jail in Salem Village, between September 17 and 19, 1692.

The torture was systematic and brutal.

On September 19, 1692, Giles Corey was subjected to this excruciating form of death. He was stripped nude and made to lie face down on the ground. A wooden board was placed on his back, and progressively heavier stones were piled onto it, slowly crushing him.

After two days, Corey was asked three times to enter a plea, but each time he replied, “More weight,” and the sheriff complied. Occasionally, Corwin would even stand on the stones himself.

The scene was horrifying to witness.

Robert Calef, who was a witness along with other townsfolk, later said, “In the pressing, Giles Corey’s tongue was pressed out of his mouth; the Sheriff, with his cane, forced it in again.”

After three days of agony, Giles Corey died on September 19, 1692, without ever entering a plea.

His defiance served its purpose. Although Corey’s refusal to plead meant that his estate was protected from seizure, it was reported that Sheriff Corwin nevertheless extorted his family by falsely claiming that he could still confiscate the property.

Corey is believed to have died in the field adjacent to the prison that had held him, in what later became the Howard Street Cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts. His exact grave location in the cemetery is unmarked and unknown.

Three days after Giles died, his wife Martha was hanged for witchcraft.

The Curse of Giles Corey

According to legend, Corey didn’t die silently.

There are several accounts of Corey’s last words. The most commonly told one is that he repeated his request for “more weight,” but another telling notes it as, “Damn you. I curse you and Salem!”

Legend has it that Corey cursed Salem and its officials with his dying breath. His curse was reportedly directed specifically at the sheriff, whom he damned along with the town.

What happened next has fueled belief in the curse for over three centuries.

Four years after Corey’s death, Sheriff Corwin died suddenly of a heart attack at just 30 years old.

But Corwin was just the beginning.

The position of Sheriff of Essex County was also said to have suffered from the “curse of Giles Corey,” as the holders of that office, since Corwin, had either died or resigned as a result of heart or blood ailments.

The pattern continued for nearly three hundred years.

In 1981, after Essex County Sheriff Robert E. Cahill was forced to retire early due to a stroke, heart attack, and rare blood condition, he looked into the history of the sheriff’s office.

Apparently, Cahill found that as far back as the records went, every Salem sheriff since Corwin had suffered some sort of heart or blood problems.

Cahill believes that when the sheriff’s office was moved from Salem to the new prison in Middleton in 1991, it broke the curse and spared future sheriffs. Since the move, no sheriffs have been diagnosed with any heart conditions or blood ailments.

Coincidence? Stress-related illness from a demanding job? Or the dying curse of a man tortured to death for a crime he didn’t commit?

The people of Salem have their own opinions.

Corey’s Phantom Sightings

The curse isn’t the only legacy Giles Corey left behind.

According to a local legend, the apparition of Corey appears and walks his graveyard each time a disaster is about to strike the city.

They say if you see his ghost, something terrible is about to happen. According to several accounts, his spirit was spotted near the Howard street cemetery the night before the Great Fire of 1914, which burned one-third of Salem.

In 1914, right before the fire, a ghostly figure of an old man was seen hovering through the cemetery grounds. The fire started near Gallows Hill, the site of his wife Martha’s hanging, and destroyed most of Salem.

In 1978, he materialized before local sheriff Robert Cahill suffered a rare blood disorder, heart attack, and stroke in the same year.

Ghost tours frequently cite Corey as one of Salem’s most active spirits. His apparition has been described as a tall, elderly man in tattered period clothing, walking slowly between the graves or standing motionless among the trees.

Some witnesses report a feeling of intense pressure when near the area where Corey was pressed to death—as if the very air grows heavy with the weight of stones.

Other Hauntings and Eerie Encounters

Whispering Voices and Cold Spots

Giles Corey may be the most famous spirit at Howard Street Cemetery, but he’s far from alone.

But there has been a ton of ghost sitings in this place, so if spooky is your things, this is a good place to check out.

Visitors consistently report disembodied voices—whispers that seem to come from the ground itself. Murmured conversations that stop when you try to listen closely. The sound of someone calling a name, though no one else is present.

These phenomena intensify at dusk and during colder months, when the cemetery takes on an even more somber atmosphere.

Temperature drops are another common experience. One moment the air feels normal; the next, you’re enveloped in a pocket of cold that penetrates to your bones. These cold spots move and shift, following visitors between the graves.

One tour participant reported that at the Howard St cemetery he “started to feel really heavy and struggled to breathe and felt really sick and as fast as all of it hit me it went away as we left the area.”

Movement in the Corners of Vision

Shadow figures are frequently reported at Howard Street Cemetery.

Dark shapes moving between headstones. Figures that dart away when you turn to look directly at them. Silhouettes that seem to drift near the trees at the cemetery’s edge.

Visitors and paranormal enthusiasts often report feeling a strong, unsettling presence within the cemetery, attributing it to Corey’s restless spirit.

Particularly active is the area believed to be near where Corey was pressed to death. Shadow figures seem drawn to this spot, appearing and vanishing without pattern or explanation.

Some describe the shadows as residual—echoes of the past replaying in the present. Others believe they’re conscious spirits, aware of visitors and choosing to make themselves known.

Disturbed Earth and Unmarked Graves

Walk through Howard Street Cemetery and you’ll notice areas where the ground seems disturbed. Uneven. Unsettled.

Some of this is natural settling over two centuries. But local legend suggests other explanations.

According to local historian and owner of the Salem Night Tour, Tim Maguire, around 15 percent of the people buried in the cemetery were crushed to death and many others died in tragic accidents, including 10 prisoners who were later buried here after they died when a floor in the Salem Jail collapsed.

The irony is chilling—a cemetery on the ground where Giles Corey was crushed, now filled with others who met similar fates.

Many graves are unmarked, their occupants unknown. A significant portion of the graves are unmarked, adding to the cemetery’s eerie and somber atmosphere.

Paranormal investigators claim certain areas of the cemetery feel “charged”…as if the soil itself holds energy that shouldn’t be there. EMF readers spike in specific locations. Temperature sensors register anomalies that defy explanation.

The air feels heavy, charged with an eerie energy. Suddenly, the electromagnetic field readers spike, prompting excited murmurs.

Who lies in these unmarked graves? What stories do they carry? And why does their resting place feel so unsettled?

A Cemetery of Sorrow and Silence

Howard Street Cemetery reflects the stark, unembellished approach of early colonial burial practices.

Unlike the ornate family tombs of wealthier Salem residents in other cemeteries, the graves here are modest. Plain slate headstones with simple inscriptions. Weathered faces that have endured two centuries of New England weather.

Here you will find graves of children, merchants, soldiers, locals, and people from Europe searching for new life. The cause of death was often engraved on the headstones, telling the story of how the deceased ended up beneath the ground.

Marked with grim, plain-faced Puritan tombs, themselves marked with grim epitaphs in line with purist fashions, the Howard Street Cemetery is a short glance into settler life.

The cemetery holds notable residents alongside the forgotten. Col. Samuel Carlton, who was with Washington at Valley Forge, and William Browne, commander of the ship Brutus, which went down in a shipwreck off Cape Cod rest here. Revolutionary War veterans buried in Howard Street Cemetery include Colonel Samuel Carleton, who “raised a company and marched to Ticonderoga.”

A portion of the cemetery was dedicated to Salem’s African American population. One of the more prominent residents of the African American community to be buried there was Prince Farmer. A former cook on the vessel George, Farmer opened his own business as an oyster dealer.

Yet despite these notable residents, the cemetery feels heavy with unresolved energy.

The contrast between its peaceful appearance and the violent history of the ground it occupies creates a tension you can feel. Birds sing. Trees provide shade. Squirrels run across the grass.

But something underneath doesn’t fit.

The land remembers what happened here in 1692. The slow, agonizing death. The curse spoken with final breath. The injustice that was never truly addressed.

Some believe the haunting at Howard Street Cemetery isn’t about individual ghosts at all – it’s about the land itself, holding trauma like a wound that never healed.

Visiting Howard Street Cemetery Today

What to Expect

Howard Street Cemetery offers a very different experience from Salem’s more tourist-oriented sites.

It’s quieter. Less polished. More authentic.

The cemetery is definitely a little more out-of-the-way than other prominent ones in Salem. You won’t find gift shops or guided audio tours. Just you, the graves, and whatever else might be present.

The paths are narrow and sometimes rough. Headstones lean at various angles, some nearly illegible after centuries of weathering. Grass grows long in places. The atmosphere is one of gentle decay. A place that time hasn’t forgotten but hasn’t preserved, either.

The oldest headstone is from 1801 and the latest headstone is from the 1950s. The last burial in the Howard Street Cemetery took place in 1953.

The old Salem Jail sits adjacent to the cemetery, a visual reminder of the connection between this land and Salem’s dark justice. Today, the Old Salem Jail got a facelift after standing neglected for many years. Nowadays, it’s a posh hipster apartment building with a restaurant on the bottom floor.

The proximity to the Witch Trials Memorial and Old Burying Point Cemetery makes it easy to visit all three in one walking tour. But Howard Street deserves its own time, its own attention.

Come prepared for an experience that’s less about entertainment and more about contemplation.

Tips for Respectful Exploration

You can visit it by yourself at any time before dusk or with an organized tour. You may visit the cemetery every day, from dawn till dusk.

Avoid visiting at night to prevent potential issues with authorities. Daylight offers the best experience.

Respectful behavior guidelines:

• Don’t climb on stones or walk directly over graves
• Keep voices low and conversations appropriate
• Don’t leave offerings that aren’t biodegradable
• No grave rubbings—the stones are too fragile
• Respect any signs or barriers
• Photography is generally permitted, but use discretion

Best times to visit:

• Dusk offers the most atmospheric experience while still respecting closing hours
• Autumn evenings capture the quintessential Salem mood
• Weekday afternoons provide solitude for quiet contemplation
• October is crowded throughout Salem, but Howard Street sees fewer visitors

What to bring:

• Comfortable walking shoes (paths can be uneven)
• Camera for capturing the weathered headstones
• EMF reader or other paranormal investigation equipment if you’re so inclined
• Layers – temperature can vary, and not just from natural causes

Nearby Salem Witch Trial Sites

Howard Street Cemetery sits within easy walking distance of Salem’s other witch trial-related locations.

Salem has three cemeteries that are significant to the Witch Trials of 1692. The Howard Street Cemetery is said to be where Giles Corey was taken to be pressed to death.

Nearby sites to include in your visit:

• The Witch Trials Memorial: Stone benches inscribed with the names and final words of the executed
• Old Burying Point Cemetery: Salem’s oldest burial ground, resting place of witch trial judges
• The former Salem Jail site: Where the accused were held before trial
• The Witch House: Home of Judge Jonathan Corwin, now a museum

Though his actual grave is unmarked, a memorial marker for Corey can be found at the Salem Witch Trials Memorial.

A complete walking tour of witch trial sites takes approximately half a day, allowing time for contemplation at each location.

The Legacy of Injustice and Fear

Giles Corey’s story has become more than history. It’s become symbol.

His defiant final words, whether “More weight” or a dying curse, represent resistance against injustice. Against hysteria. Against systems that destroy the innocent.

Giles Corey’s death shocked Salem. He was not the typical profile of a witch; he was elderly, male, and had been a member of the church. His gruesome execution and steadfast refusal to confess made him a martyr in the eyes of many and contributed to the growing public dissent against the witch trials.

The gruesome and public nature of Corey’s death may have caused residents of Salem to rethink their support for the witch trials. Giles was absolved of the crime in 1712.

Howard Street Cemetery serves as a physical memorial to this resistance. A place where visitors can stand on the ground where it happened. Where they can feel the weight of history. Perhaps literally.

The cemetery is also a site of mourning and unresolved spiritual energy. The dead here didn’t all die peacefully. Many met violent or accidental ends. Some were strangers to Salem, buried far from family and homeland.

The cemetery’s atmosphere, amplified by the stories of Corey’s suffering, makes it a focal point for those interested in the darker side of Salem’s history.

The idea persists that the land itself remains “alive” with echoes of the accused. That the trauma of 1692 seeped into the soil and never fully dissipated. That Giles Corey’s curse wasn’t just words…it was an imprint on the very fabric of this place.

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, standing at Howard Street Cemetery forces confrontation with uncomfortable truths. About what humans do to each other when fear takes hold. About how easily justice transforms into persecution. About the lasting damage inflicted on communities—and perhaps on the land itself – by moral panic.

The lessons of 1692 remain relevant today. The cemetery ensures we don’t forget.

Closing Scene: When the Wind Shifts on Howard Street

Late afternoon. The sun sinks toward the horizon, casting long shadows across the weathered headstones.

A cold wind sweeps through the cemetery, rustling leaves and bending grass that covers unmarked graves. The temperature drops noticeably, even though no clouds have moved across the sky.

You’ve walked the paths. Read the inscriptions. Stood where they say Giles Corey was pressed to death over three agonizing days.

Now it’s time to leave. You turn toward the gate.

But something makes you pause. The feeling of being watched. Of not being alone.

You glance back. The cemetery looks empty. Just stone markers and old trees and the encroaching shadows of evening.

Yet there, by the fence at the far edge, is that a shadow drifting between the graves? A figure that wasn’t there a moment ago?

You blink. It’s gone. If it was ever there at all.

The wind shifts, carrying something that might be a whisper. A voice from very far away. Or very long ago.

You quicken your pace toward the gate, resisting the urge to look back again.

Because on Howard Street, the dead do not sleep peacefully.

They wait.