The story
Dating to the seventeenth century, Howard Street Cemetery sits adjacent to the Salem Witch Trials Memorial and the site of the old Salem jail, where accused witches were held before their trials. Giles Corey, an eighty-year-old man pressed to death by heavy stones when he refused to enter a plea in the 1692 trials, is buried here, and local legend holds that his ghost appears before major disasters. The cemetery and its neighbor, Charter Street Cemetery, form the oldest preserved burial ground in Salem.