Centuries after the last major witch hunts in Europe and parts of the United States, people continue to attribute amazing, romanticized powers to witches, which are reincarnated every year around Halloween. In cinema, theater, and television, they are often described as "evil," even though they can sometimes have good intentions. In reality, witches and people accused of using magic are ordinary people. Their stories—often not told accurately—have become sources of revenue for places associated with occult practices, such as Salem in Massachusetts and Zugarramurdi, the "Spanish Salem." But with the growing awareness of the persecution suffered by people suspected of witchcraft—mainly women—there is a growing unease about how we remember the men, women, and children who disappeared during the witch hunt episodes. A question arises: how to reconcile commemoration and commercialization? The answer is not simple. Every year on Halloween, images of women with crooked noses wearing pointed hats appear all over the world, but perhaps nowhere more than in Salem, in the United States. In the years before the coronavirus pandemic, nearly a million tourists rushed into the city in a kind of pilgrimage that generated 140 million dollars (about 118 million euros) for the city, whose name immediately evokes the witch trials of 1692, during which 19 people were condemned to death for witchcraft. Throughout the month of October, during which costumed tourists flood this symbolic city (more than 30 percent of the city's annual visitors come in October), police officers wearing pointed hat badges are photographed and glasses decorated with small witches are sold in hundreds. Similar scenes occur year-round in Zugarramurdi, in northern Spain, where 7000 people were accused of witchcraft during the Basque witch trials in the early 1600s. You can visit a cave not far from there, where magicians bargained with the devil (disguised as a goat); visit a museum dedicated to the history of the city and the trials; and buy witch-themed souvenirs. While some people enjoy these stereotypes, some researchers fear they may do more harm than good. The sale of dolls in souvenir shops like those found in Spain "perpetuates the idea that the so-called witches... were not victims of a terrible persecution, but fictional characters," explains Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch. "I don't think tourists who buy these dolls realize that these were women who were accused of fictitious crimes, then tortured in the most horrible ways and most often burned alive." From the end of the 16th to the middle of the 17th century, the fear of witchcraft spread throughout Europe. At that time, inheritance wars, unexplained diseases, and powerful women with morals considered a bit too free were all acts of witchcraft accusations. Dozens of thousands of innocent people were thus condemned to death and executed. Witchcraft is difficult to define. Britannica categorizes it as a religious belief and defines it as "the exercise or invocation of alleged supernatural powers to control people or events, practices generally involving witchcraft or magic." But witchcraft encompasses a wide range of cultural and regional beliefs, from shamanism to metaphysical ideas and pre-Christian folklore traditions. Hundreds of years later, this mistaken perception of witchcraft persists. As a result, witch hunts are also a 21st-century practice in many parts of the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Papua New Guinea. While the authorities of most countries prefer to turn a blind eye, some legal systems punish so-called witchcraft acts. In addition to having laws against witchcraft (a crime punishable by death), Saudi Arabia created an anti-witchcraft unit in 2009 within the national religious police department. Why have witch hunts intensified in some parts of the world? It is a question difficult to answer. In addition to the motives that prevailed in Europe at the beginning of the modern era, witchcraft can be a convenient excuse to respond to the growing problem of violence against women. "Violence against women has significantly intensified in recent years," says Federici. The very fact of not commemorating witch hunts can be a non-negligible explanatory element. "No 'Day of Memory' has been introduced into a European calendar," writes Federici in the introduction to her 2018 collection of essays Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women. Around the world, efforts are being made to move beyond the stereotype of the witch on a broom and realistically recognize these dark episodes of history. The "Proctor's Ledge" memorial in Salem is a modest landscape space where those accused of witchcraft were hanged in 1692. In Essex, England, a small plaque lists the names of the 33 victims who were held at Castle Park. In Scotland, a commemorative plaque in the Orkney Islands recalls that 80 people were killed at Gallow Ha'. Along the Fife coastal trail, three plaques recall the names of the 380 people accused of witchcraft. Also in Fife, government officials proposed in 2019 that a 200-year-old lighthouse be dedicated to the most famous witch hunt victim in the county, Lilias Adie (who died in prison in 1704 while waiting for her trial) and all the victims of witch hunts that took place in the country. However, this request did not materialize. None of these memorials, however, match the Norwegian Steilneset memorial. Built in 2011, the structure describes the lives of the 77 women and 14 men executed during the Finnmark witch trials in the 17th century. It can be admired at the end of the Varanger panoramic route, which runs along the Barents Sea, where accused witches were thrown. If they floated, they were considered guilty. Architect Peter Zumthor designed a long pavilion leading to a box made of steel and frosted glass. Inside the box, the artist Louise Bourgeois's sculpture The Damned, the Possessed, and the Loved (2007–2010) highlights a flaming steel chair surrounded by mirrors. Next to each of the 91 windows of the pavilion (one for each victim), you can read a text by historian Liv Helene Willumsen based on judicial archives—names of the victims, charges against them, and conviction. Among these names are Sámi Karen Edisdatter, the first of the 13 women accused of causing a shipwreck in 1617; and Marette, known only as "Torsten's woman," burned in 1645, who "left only a blue pants and an old sweater." "I was very aware of the danger of romanticizing the witch trials," says Willumsen. "I tried to handle the historical material respectfully, not to dramatize. I want to give the victims their dignity, a dignity they never had in their lifetime. I want to show that they were human beings [with] a name and a voice. [That] they lived in the villages of Finnmark." "AN UNEASY BALANCE" Steilneset has become a model for activists in Scotland, where the history of witch persecution is particularly dark. The residents are pressuring for wider recognition of the atrocities committed in the country at a time when protests against statues and other monuments inaccurately reflecting history are shaking Europe. People care "about accurately transmitting history," especially "women [who] are still not considered the equals of men in society," says Claire Mitchell, a criminal defense lawyer based in Edinburgh who launched a campaign for a legally supported pardon, apologies, and monument from the Parliament. But Mitchell acknowledges the potential of a memorial to create a difficult balance between honoring the memory of the victims and monetizing their stories. "What I want for Scotland is not simply to create a [tourist] attraction, but [for visitors] to understand the heritage and what happened here," she says, adding that the memorial must be "done the right way." "Commemorating an atrocity is not easy," writes Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize winner, in her essay "First, Kill the Witches. Then Celebrate Them" on the Salem witch-inspired tourism industry. "The city has transformed its secret shame into a salvaging grace." Despite all the kitsch around witches, Salem is one of the few places to have made a gesture of recognition of this part of its history. In the decades that followed the witch trials, the accusers officially apologized for the events of 1692. Three hundred years later, Salem erected a memorial to the victims, and in 2002, Massachusetts exonerated all the accused. The tourism sector has also been affected; modern-day witches now lead guided tours and explain the true history of the city, dispelling the stereotypes. This contradiction is all too familiar to Kristen J. Sollee. In her new book Witch Hunt, she recounts the experience of visiting sites associated with witch trials and those that interest self-identified witches, like herself. "After years of research," she writes, she "knows well the eternal conflict [...] inspired by witch tourism." A chapter describes the visit to Triora, in Italy, where "like Salem, the commercial side is disconcerting." Although she found it "assailed by mercantilism, there were also beautiful rituals and real community efforts to commemorate the witch hunts," says Sollee. "It's like Salem... we are between the dark and the salacious."