Salem Massachusetts day trip

Travis and I have been studying Salem Mass. and the witch trials so we thought it would make a great "field trip" for the whole family. We left bright and early Saturday morning. Our first stop was a pirate museum where we learned about the history of pirates in Massachusetts. The museum was very dark and cold. I didn't learn a whole lot because I kept waiting for something or someone to jump out at us. Just as I relaxed one of the displays came to life ! Next stop, The Witch History Museum. It was amazing to me that the whole of the witch hysteria began with one woman. She was a slave living with a family. She told the young girls in the family stories of voodoo and things that supposedly happened in Barbados (where she was from). The girls then began to act "weird". A doctor could find no reason for the behavior of the children so it must be from the Devil. And so the hysteria began. The last museum was the Witch Dungeon Museum. Here we saw a court case reenacted from actual transcripts from 1692. We were then taken down stairs to a recreated dungeon. They say that it was so dark in there that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. You lived among the rats. The youngest imprisoned was a four year old girl. If this wasn't bad enough, if you were imprisoned you had to pay to be there and pay for your food. If you were to be hung, you paid the executioner. A trip worth taking... if you can get past the car ride... "he's touching me, she's looking at me, make her stop singing"!!!