How to Do the Hocus Pocus Self Guided Tour Without Wasting Your Weekend
Salem, Massachusetts has about a dozen locations tied to the 1993 Hocus Pocus film, and you can walk or drive through most of them on your own. You don't need a licensed guide, a group booking, or anything more than a phone with a map. The town is small enough that the sites cluster within a mile or two of each other downtown. The core sites are relatively straightforward. Start at the Liberty Tree square area near the Witch House, move toward Congress Street for the exterior shots, and work your way toward the waterfront. The Beverley House (the "Witch House") at 20 Nose St is the only structure in Salem that was actually used during the 1692 executions, though the movie used a different facade for the Sanderson sisters' home. The exterior of the house in the film is actually the Old Burying Point Cemetery area and certain brick buildings along Washington Street. Here's what I'd actually do on a Saturday afternoon in October, because that's when every tourist in the state shows up and the sidewalks become an obstacle course. Go on a weekday. Get there by 9 AM. Park at the Canal District lot on Derby Street and walk uphill. The first stop is the Salem Athenaeum area near Federal Street, where several street scenes were filmed. From there, head to Liberty Street and the old custom house area. The graveyard scenes use the Old Burying Point Cemetery, but it closes at dusk and they don't let you in after hours. I learned that the hard way on a trip last November when I showed up at 5:45 PM thinking I could just peek around the perimeter — the iron gates lock at 5 and there's no back entrance.
For the house the Sanderson sisters live in, the movie used a private residence on Charter Street, not the Witch House. That's a common misconception. The actual address isn't publicly posted anymore because residents complained about the foot traffic, but it's in the residential area just off Essex Street. You can see it from the sidewalk. There's no plaque, no signage, nothing. Just a regular house that people photograph through a fence. The windmill scene comes from the Saugus Iron Works area, which is about twenty minutes north of downtown Salem. If you're serious about hitting all the locations, you'll need a car. The Ferris wheel scene from the climax was filmed at the Salem Willows Park area near the ferry terminal, and that's still a public park where you can stand on the exact spot. The boardwalk there gets rebuilt periodically, so the exact view of the water might look slightly different than the movie, but the geography is the same. One thing nobody tells you: the Salem tourist season peaks between September and early November, and during that window some of these locations become nearly impossible to photograph without a crowd in the frame. The library steps on Washington Street where certain scenes were shot can have thirty people standing on them at once in late October. I usually recommend either going in April or November after the main crowds thin out, or accepting that your photos will have strangers in them and moving on. The locations don't change because of crowd size, so the tour is still valid year-round.
If you want a reference map, the Salem Tourism website has a walking tour PDF that covers many of these spots, though it includes a lot of general Salem history that isn't movie-related. For a purely Hocus Pocus-focused route, I'd skip the generic pamphlet and just use Google Maps with the addresses I've mentioned. It takes about three to four hours if you're walking and taking photos at each spot. Two hours if you're driving and just looking. The one location people always miss is the exterior of the magic shop, which was filmed at a storefront on Federal Street that has since been converted into a restaurant. It's still recognizable if you know what you're looking for — the arched doorway and the window display area — but it doesn't look like the movie anymore. The sign is gone. The interior was completely redone. You'll need to squint a little to see past the current tenant.
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