Gretchen Wylder Brings 2026 Salem Witch Trial to Provincetown
by Steve Desroches
Modern day Salem, Massachusetts, is fun and fascinating with an incredibly complicated history. It is, of course, best known for the witch trials, occurring in 1692 to 1693, which when they ended, saw 200 people accused with 19 being executed, one dying by torture for refusing to enter a plea, and another five dying of disease in filth-ridden prisons. There were many witch hunt hysterias in colonial New England, but this is the one that has captured people’s imaginations for the past 400-plus years. Over those four centuries, this frightening, violent tragedy became mythologized in some ways to almost cartoonish proportions, and it is largely at the root of Salem’s current status as the Halloween capital of the world supporting a tourism industry that brings four million visitors to town (which itself has a population of almost 45,000) a year and generating about $140 million in spending in just October alone. It’s a quirky fact as most of the events of the witch trials happened in what is now Danvers. The old adage that tragedy plus time equals comedy, or in this case frivolity, proves true.
That boost in tourism is what has brought actor and writer Gretchen Wylder to Salem every Spooky Season for the past 10 years, as she is also a pagan and reads tarot cards, often having as many as 350 customers just in October. Wylder describes Salem as a bit of “pagan Disneyland” and says that for every wax museum, haunted house, and costumed revelry, there is a serious community of a variety of spiritual practices and expressions of pagan beliefs. It would appear that the witches won. Or do old habits die hard? That’s at the core of the autobiographical show 2026 Salem Witch Trial, which Wylder is bringing to the Post Office Cabaret this Women’s Week.
“I took a serious traumatic experience and turned it into art,” says Wylder.
After coming annually to Salem for so long, Wylder decided it was time to get a place of her own. She discovered a cute cottage community in a neighboring town and thought it would be perfect. However, it was a private Christian campground, and while it gave her a moment’s pause, Wylder was still intrigued. She was raised in a Christian household, and paganism is not so rigid as to exclude other faith traditions. She was also in a personal exploration of what Christianity meant to her, so it felt right. And all was good…for a while, until it was discovered that she was a “gay witch who read tarot cards in Salem.” And much like poor Samantha in the 1960s sitcom Bewitched, she soon fell prey to an army of Mrs. Kravitzs who descended, making her life miserable. She saw the community turn from friendly and kind, to becoming zealots and acting like a cult ensconced in hysteria. The harassment became so consistent it forced her out of her home.
The parallels between the witch trials and her own experience were obvious. It all inspired her to write the dark comedy 2026 Salem Witch Trial, which explores patriarchal systems and how they manifest in mainstream organized religions, how the Bible has been used to justify bigotry, the role of women as healers and spiritual practitioners throughout history, as well as the accusations of witchcraft throughout history up to modern times. Wylder notes that between 1450 and 1750 historians estimate 100,000 across Europe and the British American colonies were prosecuted for witchcraft, with 40,000 to 60,000 being killed. Currently, several areas in sub-Saharan Africa have sporadic outbreaks of witch trials, with portions of northern Ghana home to “witch camps” where hundreds of marginalized women live.
Now settled in the safety of Salem this October, Wylder feels at peace there, while acknowledging the balance of honoring those lives lost so many years ago, the freedom to practice her spiritualty and be her authentic self, and, yes, have some Halloween fun. “I feel like it is a powerful thing to realize that whenever people overcome oppression it’s something to celebrate,” says Wylder. “I love it here.” And she’s begun to read tarot cards at Pentagram: Witchcraft and Magick Shoppe, a queer owned business. Salem and Provincetown have quite a bit in common, with both providing safe harbor to those who might not fit in elsewhere, which is in part why she’s so excited to come here for Women’s Week. And she enjoys introducing visitors to Salem to witchcraft and seeing people open their minds to other ways of thinking.
So, who comes to have Wylder do a tarot reading? “It’s all of the above,” says Wylder. “I have some regulars and I have some baby witches who are exploring it all for themselves. I, of course, get a lot of first timers in town for the Halloween season. And believe it or not, I get a lot of Christians, lots of Catholics, who will say, ‘don’t tell my pastor I am here.’”
Gretchen Wylder presents 2026 Salem Witch Trial at the Post Office Cabaret, 303 Commercial St., Monday, October 12 and Tuesday, October 13 at 8:30 p.m. Tickets ($30/$40) are available at the box office and online at postofficecafe.net. For more information call 508.487.0006.
