Salem safety plan evolves for Halloween 2025 as visitor numbers continue to surge past 1 million

As witches, warlocks and millions of revelers descend upon Salem and its narrow 17th century roadways this fall, it’s not necessarily the massive crowds that keep the Witch City’s police chief up at night.

It’s the memory of a split-second accident from his days with the NYPD, when a driver in Washington Square Park mistook the brake for the accelerator, killing four people and injuring 27 more.

“Anytime you have this many people in a small space, there is danger,” Salem Police Chief Lucas J. Miller said. “I worry a lot about simple crowd movement, and mundane vehicular danger — you have people in the street, they can be hit by cars.”

“And then, of course, there is the very real consideration of an attack, right?” the police chief said.

Haunted Happenings events officially kicked off in Salem the first week of October, with the annual Grand Parade lighting up downtown Thursday night.

But the cobblestoned streets have already been mobbed since at least September, as thousands of tourists arrived to shop, dine and soak in the eerie charm and candlelit mystique of Halloween in the Witch City.

With a record-breaking 1,040,600 visitors last year, an 8.6% increase over October 2023, and a 37% spike on Halloween Day alone, public safety officials are enhancing their approach in preparation for another season of major crowds and high-stakes coordination.

And with Salem’s popularity continuing to surge, how do officials plan to keep its millions of visitors safe from overcrowded chokepoints, wayward vehicles and other dangers?

Chokepoints and crowds

Salem’s colonial-era streets weren’t built for a million visitors, but every October, that’s exactly what the historic city gets.

“Salem is only eight square miles and when you just carve out the downtown, where most of the visitation happens, it’s considerably smaller,” said Mayor Dominick Pangallo.

“It’s a historic city. Our roadways and sidewalks are charming and historic and quaint and small, and that presents additional challenges when you start adding in tens of thousands of people,” Pangallo said.

Washington Street and Essex Street are the city’s main chokepoints of pedestrian traffic during Haunted Happenings, both Miller and Pangallo said. Each stretch through the heart of downtown on a direct route from the MBTA station and to the popular Peabody Essex Museum, lined with more shops, eateries and attractions.

Other high congestion spots include the Salem Common green — located in Washington Square near the iconic Salem Witch Museum, John Ward House and Hawthorne Hotel — and the historic waterfront, Pangallo said.

In response to the 2024 record crowds, the city has once again doubled its 95-officer police force through outside partnerships.

But this year’s reinforcements mark the largest influx of external support seen in the past five years, Miller said.

The multi-agency coordination involves officers from communities like Peabody and others in Essex County, along with the MBTA Transit Police and State Police, whose officers annually manage the visitors in vehicles, on bikes, on foot and in plainclothes.

Another new effort came by way of more than 1,000 pedestrian and hard barriers shipped up from Boston this year, used for the first time Thursday to block revelers from crossing the street during the parade.

These barriers will be distributed through the city for the season to control crowd movement, prevent overcrowding in dense areas and protect pedestrians, Miller said.

Police will close roads at any point in October if they determine they should be shut down for any public safety reason, and a stricter schedule of road closures was released at the beginning of September.

• Read more: Salem’s complete list of road closures and parking bans

The department sets up a central command post at its station every year for real-time crowd management.

It also uses drones and counter-drones and pays close attention to the pedestrian mall on Essex Street for overcrowding, Miller said.

Medical emergencies are managed by officers on four-wheelers who can deploy into the crowds with ease and bring people out.

Information booths are available at key locations like Salem Common.

The ever-evolving public safety management is all part of the city’s planning that starts right after Halloween ends every year, Pangallo said.

“October is first and foremost a public safety operation,” said Salem Mayor Dominick Pangallo. “We plan for it all year long, holding after-action reviews in November to look at what we did this year that we might want to change for next year.”

“We’re always trying to build on what we’ve learned from previous years and best practices, what we’re seeing in different kinds of communities around the country and around the world, as far as things that we might need to prepare for and try to mitigate danger from,” he said.

Concerns of a vehicular attack

While no public threats of an attack have been made against the Haunted Happenings festivities, the possibility remains on Miller’s radar.

“Salem looms large in the American imagination,” Miller said.

“I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine somebody being drawn here [for that] by all the different things that Salem represents — the historic significance, plus the atmosphere of tolerance that Salem has built up over a long period of time,” Miller said.

He also reiterated the accidental New York City attack in 1992, where a driver unintentionally barreled into a crowded park.

Miller pointed to the heavy officer presence this year and the cement barriers brought up from Boston. The barriers will also be placed in alleys this year and other areas accessible by vehicle to pedestrian pathways.

This specific consideration on vehicular attacks is an example of city officials’ commitment to monitoring nationwide public safety concerns to adapt quickly, said events risk management expert Linda Robson.

Robson is a professor in the Endicott College School of Business and developer of the Robson Risk Management Model, a framework for the events industry to help identify and assess risks, apply strategies and evaluate the outcome.

• Read more: Salem reviewing safety plans in wake of New Orleans terrorist attack

Robson said Haunted Happenings has always been safe overall and that Salem officials’ public safety planning “works.”

“This year, what they’re doing is coming after the vehicular accident in New Orleans at New Year’s Eve. Salem is always examining different things that are happening,” she said, in reference to the attack that killed 15 people and injured 57 in Louisiana on Jan. 1.

And before this season’s kickoff, Witch City officials were actively notifying the public on road restrictions and the number of expected visitors, Robson highlighted.

“The transparency is the big part,” Robson said, adding that Salem should “absolutely” be looked at as an example to other event organizers in their public safety efforts, accountability and coordination.

“The city has done a good job at creating policies and procedures that help to keep people safe,” she said.

“A lot of people go to events and suspend the responsibility of being aware of their surroundings — I would say, don’t do that — but by the same token, you shouldn’t feel nervous, because there’s no reason to here,” Robson said.