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The Haunted House of The Seven Gables in Salem

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In the eerie mansion in Salem of The Haunted House of the Seven Gables, also known as the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion, discover what lurks in darkness and uncover secrets behind its perpetual terror.

Step inside The Haunted House of the Seven Gables and explore its halls of perpetual terror and darkness. The house is a 1668 colonial mansion in Salem Massachusetts, a place known for being a place of mystery and witchcraft.  

From ghostly figures roaming the corridors to mysterious tales of hauntings, prepare to discover what lurks in this fascinating haunted house.

“But as for the old structure of our story, its white-oak frame, and its boards, shingles, and crumbling plaster, and even the huge, clustered chimney in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality. So much of mankind’s varied experience had passed there,—so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed,—that the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart. It was itself like a great human heart, with a life of its own, and full of rich and sombre reminiscences.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Novel

The House of the Seven Gables is a real house that was known as The Turner House or the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion before the novel inspired by it came out. The thing that made it famous was the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne when he wrote a gothic novel inspired by the house in the 1850s. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne: (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He wrote the novel The House of the Seven Gables inspired by the house in Salem Massachusetts he used to visit.

The novel follows a New England family and their home where he explores guilt, retribution and atonement. The story is filled with hints at the supernatural and witchcraft and influenced horror writers like H.P Lovecraft. 

Read Also: Find some novels about witchcraft like The House of the Seven Gables: Here

Hawthorne, most known for the novel The Scarlet Letter, was himself born in Salem and grew up hearing stories about the house. His great-great-great grandfather was one of the judges in the Salem Witch Trials which the house also had a connection to. 

Explore the Legends of The Haunted House

From legendary tales of cursed spirits trapping guests to mysterious hauntings that have been reported through the ages, explore the legends that make The Haunted House of the Seven Gables one of the most haunted locations in the world. Learn about the curses that lurk in its dark corners, and find out about the secrets this house has been concealing for centuries.

The house was built as a place for peace and quiet, but ended up being in the center of one of the most notorious witchcraft trials in 1692 to 1693 were over 200 people in the puritan New England town were accused of witchcraft. 

John Turner Jr. lived in the house at the time with his sisters and wanted to protect them from the hysteria of the locals that accused their neighbors, their friends and family for being witches and in league with the devil. A part of the protection was to build a hidden staircase with the fireplace. 

In later years there were also uncovered a hidden dining room and accounting room to hide if any in the family were ever accused of witchcraft. 

The Salem Witch Trials

The Salem Witch Trials was a product of mass hysteria that happened in the British Colonies as well as in Europe at the time. It all started when two small girls started having these fits of contorting bodies, making strange noises and speaking gibberish. 

The Salem Witch Trials: A series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in 1692 and 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, 19 of whom were executed by hanging (14 women and five men). One other man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death after refusing to enter a plea, and at least five people died in jail.

This type of affliction seemed to spread to other girls and they were all diagnosed with witchcraft. And when the girls were interrogated, they started naming names about who cursed them, and a witch hunt began. 

A total of 14 women and 6 men were executed in the witch trials by hanging, one by being pressed to death. Another 5 died while in prison. 

Although the Turner family remained safe during those trials, the imprint and trauma of the witch hunt remained in all of Salem and ringed back for generations, something Hawthorne also discusses in his book. 

The Ingersoll’s and Hawthorns Ancestral Sins

After being in the Turner family for 3 generations it was sold to Captain Samuel Ingersoll as there were no remaining heirs. He had a daughter named Susannah, a cousin of Nathaniel Hawthorne who knew well and would come to hang out with. 

When inside the house, Hawthorne was inspired by the house and its quirky features and old history. There they also talked about their families involvement in a dark past. Hawthornes involvement in the Salem Witch Trials and Ingersoll’s involvement in slavery as an example. 

Susannah even advised him to put a W in his last name, which originally was Hathorne, to remove himself from his ancestral sin. Hawthorne often wrote about his guilt for his family’s involvement and in his most famed work, The Scarlet Letter, he even opens up with an analogy for it all. 

Is the House of The Seven Gables Haunted?

Mystery and terror await you as you attempt to uncover the secrets of The Haunted House of the Seven Gables. If you ask many of the tour guides, they will be quick to reply with a no. However, there are many who tell about another side of the story. 

One of the ghostly silhouettes that are reported to be seen is that of Susannah Ingersoll. There are not only one, but many paranormal activities that are said to take place within the old house. 

Today the dark wooden house is made into a museum and gets plenty of visitors that are looking for something paranormal, and many claim to have found it. A psychic visiting the house claimed to see a young boy play near the gables as well. Little footsteps can be heard from the attic followed by giggles and laughs.

A man can be seen climbing up and down the infamous staircase and lights are turning on and off and even the water faucets have a habit of turning on and on on their own. 

so, would you like to visit and see for yourself whether or not the house is haunted?

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References

House of the Seven Gables – Salem Ghosts

House of the Seven Gables – Wikipedia

The Haunted House of the Seven Gables

book, horror, Review

Witching Hour – 5 Books About Witches

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Witches have been around as long as women have been around. At times, they have been cursed, at times, praised. Depending on the time, it is always about power though, and how to use it among the rest of the human population.

Even if they are after you we are still fascinated by witches, the power within seemingly normal people. And perhaps that is one of the things we are drawn to. Because if people posses this great power within, why not you as well?.

This is a reading list of some of the books containing witches that we love.

Witch Child

By Celia Rees (2009)

This book was one of the books that got this writer into books about witches. More than an adventure of the witch myth and legend it is an exploration about the consequences of it. It is also dealing with a lot of issues just from one story, with women, religion and Native Americans. I also loved the next book, Sorceress

Synopsis: Welcome to the world of young Mary Newbury, a world where simply being different can cost a person her life. Hidden until now in the pages of her diary, Mary’s startling story begins in 1659, the year her beloved grandmother is hanged in the public square as a witch. Mary narrowly escapes a similar fate, only to face intolerance and new danger among the Puritans in the New World. How long can she hide her true identity? Will she ever find a place where her healing powers will not be feared?

Read it here

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The Bear and the Nightingale

By Katherine Arden

This first book of the Winternight Trilogy, was recommended to me by my creative writing lecturer. And, yes, thank you for that. This is sort of fantasy that is rare and witches that claimed their way to the throne so fast.

Synopsis: Beware the evil in the woods. . . In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, an elderly servant tells stories of sorcery, folklore and the Winter King to the children of the family, tales of old magic frowned upon by the church. But for the young, wild Vasya these are far more than just stories. She alone can see the house spirits that guard her home, and sense the growing forces of dark magic in the woods. . .

Read it here

The Witching Hour

By Ann Rice

She changed the world’s view on vampires, and she didn’t shy away from writing about the witches either. In the series Lives of the Mayfair witches. It centers on a family of witches whose fortunes have been guided for generations by a spirit named Lasher. The series began in 1990 with The Witching Hour, which was followed by the sequels Lasher (1993) and Taltos (1994). All three novels debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times Best Seller list. Cool fun fact: Even some of her character cross over to the Vampire universe of hers.

Synopsis: It begins in our time with a rescue at sea.  Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery—aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches—finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life. 

As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and—in passionate alliance—set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, the novel moves backward and forward in time from today’s New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and a château in the France of Louis XIV.  An intricate tale of evil unfolds—an evil unleashed in seventeenth-century Scotland, where the first “witch,” Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjures up the spirit she names Lasher… a creation that spells her own destruction and torments each of her descendants in turn.

Read it here

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The House of the Seven Gables

By Nathaniel Hawthorne

A classic one. it more suggest and hint at the supernatural to highlight the drama that enfolds, but nonetheless creates the same atmosphere many horror and supernatural writers strive all their life for.

Synopsis: This enduring novel of crime and retribution vividly reflects the social and moral values of New England in the 1840s. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man’s curse until their house is finally exorcised by love. Hawthorne, by birth and education, was instilled with the Puritan belief in America’s limitless promise. Yet – in part because of blemishes on his own family history – he also saw the darker side of the young nation. Like his twentieth-century heirs William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hawthorne peered behind propriety’s facade and exposed the true human condition.

Read it here

Witch of Portobello

By Paulo Coelho

A Paulo Coelho book is always filled with heart, thoughts and love. But do be careful of reading his work. There is always a danger of becoming “deep”.

Synopsis: How do we find the courage to always be true to ourselves-even if we are unsure of who we are?That is the central question of international bestselling author Paulo Coelho’s profound new work, The Witch of Portobello. It is the story of a mysterious woman named Athena, told by the many who knew her well-or hardly at all. Like The Alchemist, The Witch of Portobello is the kind of story that will transform the way readers think about love, passion, joy, and sacrifice.

Read it here

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