Samuel Pickman House
The Samuel Pickman House, a weathered first-period saltbox built around 1664 at the corner of Charter and Liberty streets, is one of Salem's oldest standing homes; it now abuts the 1992 Witch Trials Memorial and the Old Burying Point cemetery, and the Peabody Essex Museum, which bought it in 1983, reopened it as the cemetery's welcome center. Folklore holds that an 18th-century resident, descending into madness, chained his young daughter in the attic and starved her before killing his wife and hanging himself. Visitors photographing the house have long reported the pale figure of a small girl gazing from an upper window, and museum staff across the way claim to hear children's voices in the dark. Historians note no record confirms the chained-girl tale, leaving it firmly in the realm of legend, yet the small dark house beside the graves of the witch-trial dead remains one of the most retold haunted sites in Salem.
📍 43 Charter Street, Salem, MA 01970, Salem, MA · Get directions