Researchers this week pinpointed the exact spot where 19 witches were hanged in Salem centuries ago: a wooded area now overlooking a Walgreens.
Salem Mayor Kimberley Driscoll plans to erect a small memorial at Boston Street between Proctor and Pope streets after seven scholars with the Gallows Hill Project confirmed it to be the location of the 1692 hangings.
“This is part of our history and this is an opportunity for us to be honest about what took place,” she told The Boston Globe.
Previously, it was believed that the witches met their maker on Gallows Hill.
Researchers used aerial photography, eyewitness accounts and advanced mapping technology to make their determination of the area, known as Proctor’s Ledge, as the killing spot.
The work, which spanned five years, also relied on previous research done by historian Sidney Perley, who had also earmarked the area after extensive research.
Lead researcher Emerson “Tad” Baker and his team also used the 1,000 records from the Salem witch trials.
True believers have long suspected that it was where the witches were killed.
“[We] asked locals where they thought it was and every last one of them told us to go to this location,” said Wiccan Michele Ruscitti, who visited Salem in 2006 with her husband. “I found it odd, since the town embraces their history, that there were no markers there. None … just a Walgreens on the corner.”