Proctor’s Ledge, Salem 1692

The real, recently confirmed execution site, with a public memorial

Proctor's Ledge is a small city-owned plot of woods in Salem, Massachusetts, between two residential streets and behind a Walgreens pharmacy, at the base of Gallows Hill. The nineteen people condemned in the witch trials of 1692 were hanged here: Bridget Bishop on 10 June; Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe and Sarah Wildes on 19 July; Martha Carrier, John Willard, George Burroughs, George Jacobs Sr. and John Proctor on 19 August; and on 22 September Mary Eastey, Martha Corey, Ann Pudeator, Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Alice Parker, Wilmot Redd and Margaret Scott. Fourteen were women and five were men. Giles Corey was crushed to death by rocks for refusing to enter a plea, and at least five more of the accused died in the jails without trial.

Popular belief long put the hangings on the summit of Gallows Hill, in the 17th century common land just outside the town. The Salem historian Sidney Perley had identified the rocky ledge at its base early in the 20th century, but his findings were lost to time. In 1936 the city bought land in the area and renamed it Witch Memorial Land, yet built no memorial, and myth, misconception and conspiracy theory took Perley's place.

In 2010 Elizabeth Peterson, director of the city's Corwin House, the Witch House, brought together the Gallows Hill Project. Its seven members also included Emerson Baker and Peter Sablock of Salem State University, Benjamin Ray of the University of Virginia, the historian Marilynne Roach, Shelby Hypes of the Salem Award Foundation and the filmmaker Tom Phillips. They found a few lines of eyewitness testimony in the court records. Rebecca Eames of Boxford, brought to Salem for questioning, said she was held at the house below the hill, from where she could see people attending the executions, and that led the team to a specific house and ruled out the summit. Ground-penetrating radar, aerial photography and an analysis of the topography by Ray and Chris Gist of the university's Scholars' Lab confirmed the ledge, announced in January 2016.

There was probably never a gallows; more likely the executioners threw a rope over a large tree. There is no evidence anyone was buried here either, the ground being too rocky and the soil too shallow. Baker said the work was about healing rather than discovery. The city dedicated the Proctor's Ledge Memorial in 2017, and because the ledge sits among homes, it points visitors to the memorial and museum downtown rather than through private backyards.