What It’s “Really” Like to Grow Up in One of the Most Haunted Towns in America (Exclusive)

A Salem, Mass. native (and tour guide) shares his firsthand encounters with ghosts and how the "Witch City" became Halloween central

Steeped in dark history and believed to be a hotspot for all things paranormal — Salem, Mass. has unsurprisingly become the place to be on Halloween.

Known for its infamous Witch Trials in 1692, the town draws in huge crowds each fall and is one of the most highly-visited destinations during spooky season. In fact, the city welcomed 1.2 million tourists last year, and it expects to surpass that number this year, according to NBC 10 Boston.

Believers (and skeptics!) can book one of the many haunted history tours offered around the city in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a ghost, a witch or even a vampire. Mason, a Salem native, grew up in the town and now leads such a tour for its many visitors.

The U.S. Ghost Adventures guide was actually born on the tricentennial of the witch trials in 1992 and tells PEOPLE that growing up in Salem easily made Halloween his “favorite holiday” for as long as he can remember. Naturally, making a career out of Salem's dark history has led him to have some eerie firsthand experiences.

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As a kid, he remembers, "the atmosphere here at Halloween was really great, especially the downtown area. They used to have re-enactors who would dress up like early colonial settlers. They would take horse-drawn carriages up and down the cobblestone streets that are mostly brick now. We had a lot more of that history feeling and it wasn't quite as busy.”

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While he remembers an older cousin telling him “weird stories” about the old town jail in Salem, his own firsthand experiences with the supernatural happened when he was an adult.

His strangest encounter occurred last year on Halloween day.

He had stopped near the Samuel Pickman House, which dates back to 1665, to tell a story to the tour group he was leading.  While he had his back to the nearby low stone wall, something sinister happened.

“In the middle of speaking, I felt a hand grab the back of my jacket and tug on it, like a child trying to get your attention. It tugged three or four times,” he says. “I finished speaking and I looked behind the wall — there's nobody there. I would've at some point seen or heard someone rush away. There was just nothing.”

Mason came to the conclusion that the encounter may have been linked to the children who he says died of smallpox there in the 1700s. And he ominously notes how “people have seen faces of the kids in the windows on the second floor.”

Some of his other spooky experiences include seeing a glass cup fly off a shelf while he was sitting at a bar, and hearing “blood-curdling” screams in the alleyway behind a restaurant called Rockafellas.

“It's bizarre to me that it actually does happen a lot in the October season. I've been having conversations with people about this,” he says. “Is it the energy that the crowds bring when they expect to see something haunted that draws it in?”

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As for how locals feel about the ever-larger crowds that have been flocking to Salem in recent years, Mason says “most of them hate it,” especially because of the traffic and difficulty finding parking. However, he notes that small businesses and restaurants thrive during this time and the revenue they make during the fall helps them “get through the slow season.”

He adds that tourism has especially been booming following the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the biggest tour group he’s led since then has been 40 people.

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“We've gotten a lot busier in the last few years since COVID ended, and we went viral on social media,” he says, referring to the popularity of a TikTok phenomenon dubbed “WitchTok.”

Looking back, he notes that Salem “always got busy in the Halloween season, but nothing like today.”

To book a haunted history tour of Salem with Mason, visit salemghosts.com.

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