Several of my ancestors are buried at Charter Street Cemetery. It is the second-oldest European American burying ground in the United States, clocking in at three hundred and eighty-nine years, and, perhaps, the most haunted place in Salem, Massachusetts. During my ancestors’ time, it was referred to as The Burying Point because it sat perched on a rise overlooking the South River.
One of the cemetery’s ghosts is a classic Lady in White who wanders along the southern perimeter wall. Perhaps she is searching for her grave which may have washed out to sea during a particularly bad storm.
There’s also a house built right on the edge of the cemetery with its large sitting room windows facing out toward the headstones. Anyone visiting would have felt as if they were having tea with the dead. Nathaniel Hawthorne found it so interesting he wrote a short story about it, bestowing upon it the nickname Grimshawe House.
Grimshawe House next to Charter Street Cemetery © 2025 S.A. Sizemore
Then there’s the memorial for those who were unjustly executed during the Salem Witch Trials. That sits at the north end of the cemetery. My family, of course, were involved in the trials. They weren’t the innocent victims, though. My folks were the ones who sent at least a dozen souls to the gallows and ruined countless other lives by getting them locked up in prison for months on end.
I should feel uncomfortable standing there, but I don’t, because I know how to properly pay my respects.
For a short window of time early in the morning Charter Street Cemetery is quiet. At dawn, the only things running around are the squirrels looking for some acorns that may have fallen onto one of the decomposed granite paths.
Once the cemetery opens at ten a.m., tourists meander through the narrow pathways until closing time at four p.m. Most are not entirely sure what they are looking at. Some even try to touch the ancient stones before a docent tells them not to. Others whisper that they think it’s part of a movie set.
I try to keep my mouth shut and yearn for some quiet while I visit the graves of my distant cousins, aunts and uncles, and my tenth great-grandparents.
Every night, especially when the weather is nice, the witch trials memorial becomes the star of the show. Its rectangular park, surrounded by a stacked granite stone wall, fills with people from dusk until about eleven p.m. Walking tour guides, one after another, bustle in, tell stories, and move onto their next location. Some groups are small. Others fill the memorial with dozens and dozens of people.
Salem Witch Trials Memorial © 2025 S.A. Sizemore
In August 2025 my ancestors made sure I could have some quiet time with them. Perhaps, in their weird way, it was a different kind of ghostly interaction.
A family of skunks had taken up residence under the house at the edge of the cemetery, the one with the graves outside its sitting room. Most nights this marauding band of black and white, and potentially smelly, mammals scurried through the headstones and weren’t to be seen for the rest of the evening.
But when I got to town, this family of nocturnal sulfur sprayers decided to get up-close and personal. Instead of darting into the shadows, one of them made a beeline right into the grassy center of the Witch Trials Memorial. I heard a tour guide say this was the first time they had ever seen one there. Of course, it was.
I grew up with skunks in my back yard, so I knew how to give them space and make sure a violent olfactory altercation didn’t not occur. The tours, however, weren’t about to chance it. They all stayed at the entrance to the memorial avoiding the skunk.
Meanwhile I got to have night after night of quiet contemplation with my ancestors.
Coincidence? Maybe.
The skunks became their own kind of haunting, inciting fear and trepidation in all who saw them, except for me.
Charter Street Cemetery © 2025 S.A. Sizemore
So, what did I experience while I stood on the edge of the cemetery all by myself for several nights? I felt nothing but calm and peace. Even when the tree limbs danced under the security lights and cast odd shadows, nothing made me feel uncomfortable about the space I was in. To be honest, it was more like a family reunion where everyone wanted to just sit around and hang with me while I wished them well.
There were a few odd sounds. On a couple of occasions I thought I heard something like a stone hitting a headstone, but it was probably just acorns falling from several of the cemetery’s ancient oak trees that time of year.
It wasn’t until I got home, that I made a discovery.
I took my DSLR camera with me to Salem and was shooting in RAW format so I could more easily adjust the color and lighting later on. (RAW is a digital photo file that isn’t processed or compressed, so you get a lot more data from the camera’s sensors.) What I found when I started reviewing the photos was quite startling. In multiple images there were two anomalies, one greenish yellow and one blue. They looked like small birds flying between the headstones. My first thought was lens flare, but it was the strangest lens flare I had ever seen. My camera, which I’ve been using for a long time, had never captured anything like it before.
When I showed it to a friend who’s a photographer, he was also startled by the images. He agreed that it was probably an unusual lens flare. But he also said of all the types of lens flare to show up, it was interesting that this particular one looked like angels darting around the cemetery.
I’ll let you be the judge. Here’s one of the photos.
Charter Street Cemetery Angels © 2025 S.A. Sizemore
Another spectral moment occurred as I visited the property of my 11th great-uncle, Deacon Nathaniel Ingersoll, in what was once Salem Village and is now Danvers. Nathaniel was the patriarch of the family and many of his sisters’ children lived right around him. He and several of his nephews filed multiple complaints against their neighbors in 1692 which helped fuel the witch panic. Nathaniel’s wife, Hannah, is also my blood relation. Her sister, Margery Collins Williams, was my tenth great-grandmother and part of a group of women called upon to examine the accused for a “witch’s mark”.
While I visited the property in Danvers, I took several videos. In most of them, you can hear a small breeze and every once in a while a car drives by. You can also hear me talking from time to time as I explain where we are. In the last video you can hear what sounds like whispering. Then, there is a loud bang. I don’t recall hearing such a noise at the time we were recording, and I probably would have said something about it.
The Ingersoll Ordinary © 2025 S.A. Sizemore
After turning up the volume and listening to the recording several times, I decided to have others hear it, as well. We all started agreeing on what we heard. Two distinct voices, one female and one male, seem to say two sentences.
“My niece is there,” says a woman in a hushed voice.
Then an older male voice says, “Let me work,” followed by something that sounds like a hammer hitting a board.
Both voices have rhotic New England accents, meaning they pronounce their “Rs” fully, very much like my North Shore ancestors would have.
My final spectral encounter happened as I walked down what used to be Ingersoll Lane (now Daniels Street) in Salem. While I was speaking about my eighth great-grandmother, my wife watched a small feather waft past my head and hit me on my left shoulder. I kind of brushed it off as if it was nothing… until it happened again a few moments later as we walked further toward the edge of the South River.
The corner of Daniels and Essex Streets in Salem. © 2026 S.A. Sizemore
The significance of feathers to this particular ancestor? Elizabeth’s occupation was a muff (hand warmer) and tippet (scarf) maker. She just happened to adorn her fashion accessories with feathers, which was a bit unusual in the 18th century.
At that point I finally said out loud, “Hello, Great-grandma.”
Of course, my encounter with her is going to end up in one of my books.
Want to learn more about my hauntingly delightful Salem ancestors?
Check out my new multi-award-winning book series that starts this September with Whispers of the Pale Witch. It’s a story four hundred years in the making.
Shall we begin?
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