Come with us and you will see, this our town of Halloween!

avoid salem...during halloween.

Staying in Boston and taking train from North Station is very feasible and they have extra trains on Halloween although not sure when the last train on Halloween leaves Salem (normal days it's around 11:30 PM). So staying close to North Station/ Quincy Market/ Waterfront in Bos ton should work well. The Halloween evening activities are around the Salem Commons, where they have music, vendors, etc. The older houses around get the most trick-or-treaters. Most bigger bars/ restaurants will have some adult events that require cover charge, but some (or even most) of those can be on Sat evening vs. actual Halloween. Hawthorne hotel has Costume Ball, which I believe to be on Saturday. During the day time and into the evening the Commons is very family friendly, which is also enforced by the police, etc. clearing it relatively early. Witch Museum and the like might be OK depending on your interests, most of them are quite hokey small town attractions. Peabody Essex Museum however is worth a visit anytime. Lots of good restaurants/ bars around -- my personal favorite for Halloween is Bella Verona is very small (maybe 8 tables) right next to Hawthorne hotel. More on the romantic, intimate side (if I'm not there with my kids and friends) vs. party place, but would recommend early dinner there and then switching to party mode later.

Avoid Salem at all costs on Halloween. Epic fail in the making. It's a crazy madhouse, and not at all enjoyable. If you want an AWESOME Halloween celebration in the Boston area, head over to Beacon Hill around 6pm. They close the streets down, the decorations are amazing, everyone comes and sits out on their front steps, and the kids have a blast. (So do the adults, like me, who just go to watch!)

The irony is that the witch trial and all the other historical merriment actually happened in what we now call Danvers. In those days no one was living where Salem is now.

I've done this for work (not the TV show on thehttp://www.salemhauntedhappenings.org/), and truth to tell, it wasn't all that astonishing. The tours and parade are nice, but it's not West Hollywood, for sure.  The presentations are pretty well done, it's all literary and historical, but not in a taxing way, the vendors sell pretty good quality stuff, but to be honest, I didn't really see what all the fuss was about, other than a way for a small city to capitalize on history as a tourist event. The city claims 40,000 on Halloween night, which might be right. Didn't seem that big. Here's a http://www.thehungrymouse.com/2010/11/02/halloween-2010-in-salem-ma-a-photo-tour/ from last year's event. Fall in New England is lovely, but I wouldn't travel cross-country just for this event.

Actually Salem Town was already a bustling place (for 17th-c New England values of "bustling") when the witch trials happened, but Danvers, then known as Salem Village, was indeed where most of the witch trial action took place. It's also where I grew up! Anyway, I have never been to Salem for Halloween. I kind of associate it with drunken bachelorette-partyish antics, but that may just be a reflection of the kind of people I am friends with on facebook rather than the way it really is. If you see a girl carrying a blow-up doll, say hi to her for me. Can you drive? If you really want to be in Salem, I don't think staying in Boston makes a lot of sense; I would guess that you could stay in one of the neighboring towns much more cheaply than either in Salem or Boston, but that would require a car. On the other hand, the advantage of staying in Boston is that there is a lot more stuff to do there, including lots of historical sites and tours and things and people-watching out the wazoo. And going in to Salem from Boston is not difficult; the train takes about a half-hour from North Station, and there are a handful of hotels and at least one B&B close to the station. Honestly, though, if it's the historical/ghost tour/people watching kind of stuff you want to do, you don't *need* to do it in October. That stuff is going on almost year-round, or certainly any time between, say, now and Halloween.

I stand corrected.

I am not quite sure why people are saying to stay out of Salem at all costs at Halloween. It's not some magical Disney-like engineered performance, but certainly lively and has lot of people coming. One nice thing is that entire families have costumes vs. kids only and some have put slot of effort into them. For the past several years we've had friends with their kids visit us for Halloween and while traffic into town can be heavy it's not undoable. Entertaining enough - especially if you can tie it I with some other interesting things near-by.

In '00 and '01 I did Salem by car for Halloween. I lived in Boston at the time. Parking wasn't horrible as long as you arrived early and stayed most of the day. I actually was able to move the car a few times on each occasion - something which would probably not be considered a normally wise plan. I had other people getting tickets and waiting in lines while I was moving it, so it involved organization and the ability/willingness to split up for it to be viable. It is a absolutely a mad house. I was not your typical Salem tourist. I may be a semi-typical mefite. My first trip I didn't go to the house of seven gables because the wait was too long, I scrapped a few smaller tours as well. Its a bit of a checklist, so if you go on October 31st or July 31st you get the same tour. Nothing magical happens - so I could live with scrapping the bigger tourist draws with no regrets. The one tour that I did both years, that I was the principal reason for going back the second year, was the ghost story tour at the library. They use a few local actors to read/act out a few non-standard period ghost stories in a few different rooms in the library. Its cool. Plus, there are cider doughnuts on the premise after you finish the tour (which - Yay! Library doughnuts!) Anyway, I'd be concerned about relying on train transit any time you approach the witching hours of 12:30 with the T. Boston closes down the subway, it is not NYC, DC, or any other city. Plan accordingly.