Updated August 2026
Salem, Massachusetts. Home of the witch trials, approximately nine thousand candle shops, and, more importantly, if you ask me, the Sanderson Sisters. I have been obsessed with Hocus Pocus since 1993, when I was seven years old and fully, unapologetically fawning over Max Dennison. I was the exact same age as Dani at the time, which is a detail I bring up constantly and which nobody has ever asked about. The movie is somehow past its thirtieth birthday now. I’m choosing not to examine what that means about me.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you before you go: very little of Hocus Pocus was actually filmed in Salem. Max’s bedroom, Allison’s Halloween party, the graveyard where Billy Butcherson claws his way out of the dirt, all of that was shot on soundstages and suburban streets back in California. Disney came to Massachusetts for about two weeks of exteriors and then went home.
But those exteriors? They’re real, they’re standing, and most of them are free to visit. You can absolutely run amuck, amuck, amuck through this town on your own without paying anyone a dime.
This is the self-guided tour I’d hand a friend. Real addresses, honest logistics, which stops the dogs can actually come to — and everything re-verified for the 2026 season, because a few things have changed since I first wrote this, including one address I had flat-out wrong. More on that in a minute.
- In A Hurry? Here’s the Quick Rundown
- Why You Should Trust This Guide (Real Talk)
- The Sanderson Sisters, In Case You Live Under a Rock
- First: Do You Want a Guided Tour Instead?
- In the Town of Salem (All Walkable)
- Not In Town (You’ll Want a Car)
- But What About Hocus Pocus 2?
- Getting There & Surviving Salem in October
- Make a Day of It
- 🖨️ Printable Checklist
- Frequently Asked Questions
- A Few Final Thoughts from Vanessa, Loki, Freya & Caly 🐾
- In The Town Of Salem –
- Not In Town –
- Like This Post? Pin It For Later!
This post contains affiliate links. If you buy something through one of them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. it keeps the trailer rolling and the dogs in questionable amounts of treats. 🐾
In A Hurry? Here’s the Quick Rundown
- The six real stops: Max & Dani’s house (4 Ocean Ave) · Allison’s house / Ropes Mansion (318 Essex St) · Old Town Hall (32 Derby Square) · Phillips School on Salem Common · Pioneer Village (98 West Ave) · Old Burial Hill, Marblehead
- Can you go inside the Hocus Pocus house? No. 4 Ocean Avenue is a private home. Sidewalk photos only.
- Is the Sanderson cottage real? Nope. Soundstage in Burbank. Sorry.
- Dog reality check: Ropes Mansion garden and Salem Common = leashed dogs welcome. Both cemeteries ban dogs entirely. Plan around it.
- Hocus Pocus 2? Filmed in Rhode Island. Not here. Don’t come looking.
- Best time to go: A weekday in early-to-mid October. Take the train. Trust me on the train.
- Total time needed: 3-4 hours downtown on foot, plus a car for the last two stops.
Why You Should Trust This Guide (Real Talk)
I’m not scraping a press release here. I lived close enough to Salem for 7 years, and you better believe I went every October. It always makes my Millennial heart happy to get a piece of childhood back. I’ve walked these streets more times than I can count, usually muttering movie quotes under my breath like a complete goblin.
But this post was originally written years ago, and Salem changes. So before republishing, I went back through every address, price, and rule in it. I found things that had shifted, the Ropes Mansion reopened for tours, Pioneer Village is about to physically move, and one house number in my original post was simply wrong. It’s fixed below.
below.
The Sanderson Sisters, In Case You Live Under a Rock
A teenager named Max moves from California to Salem, hates every second of it, and can’t find his footing. To impress his crush Allison, he lights the Black Flame Candle — “Let’s light this sucker and meet the old broads,” and accidentally resurrects three witches executed in the 1600s for witchcraft.
Winifred, Sarah, and Mary then spend one Halloween night trying to suck the lives out of Salem’s children so they can stay young and beautiful forever. There’s a talking cat. There’s a zombie ex-boyfriend with his mouth sewn shut. There’s Bette Midler doing the most committed performance of her career. It’s perfect and I will not be debating this.
this.
First: Do You Want a Guided Tour Instead?
Totally fine if you’d rather be led around by someone who does this professionally.
Current 2026 Tour Options:
- Check out this, Official Hocus Pocus Movie Walking Tour including a fun swag bag!
- This Hocus Pocus Movies & More Walking Tour by Salem Historical Tour takes you to all of the film locations PLUS give you the history of Salem, it’s a two-fer!
- This top rated History and Hauntings Salem Guided Walking Tour gives you the best of all words, you’ll get to explore all of the filming locations, and some of the top sites in Salem!
That said? The DIY version below is free, dog-friendlier, and lets you linger at the house as long as you want. That’s the version I do.
Self Guided Hocus Pocus Tour
In the Town of Salem (All Walkable)
1. Max & Allison’s School – “Jacob Bailey High School”
📍 Salem Common; use 56 S. Washington Square for GPS
“What is this place? It reeks of children.
It is a prison for children.”
– the Sanderson Sisters
That big red-brick building on Salem Common is the real Phillips School, which closed in 1992, one year before filming, which made it the perfect empty “high school” for a film crew. It’s the exterior where Max unchains his bike, and later where the kids lure the witches into the kiln.
Storytime: I hung out on Salem Common a genuinely embarrassing number of times before I ever realized I was walking directly past Max and Allison’s school. Years. I’d sat on that grass eating a sandwich with my back to it.
Today it’s private condominiums, so this one is admire-from-the-Common only. Which is fine, because the Common itself is a gorgeous, leashed dog-friendly park.
📌 Pro Tip: GPS “86 Essex Street” (the address I used to list) drops you at the back of the building. The front, the side you recognize from the film, faces the Common.
🐕 Dogs: Yes, leashed, on the Common.
→ While you’re here: The Best Shops in Salem, Massachusetts
2. Allison’s House – The Ropes Mansion
📍 318 Essex Street
“Whoa! Check out this house!” – Max
“Rich people, I bet they make us drink cider and bob for apples.” – Dani
Allison’s house is the Ropes Mansion, a stunning Georgian home built in 1727 and owned by the Peabody Essex Museum. You have to stop here if only to stand on the sidewalk where Dani delivers the single most quotable line in the entire film. I’m not going to pretend I’ve matured past this.
The garden is still free, still open 365 days a year from dawn to dusk, and leashed dogs are still welcome. It’s tucked behind the house and it is the escape hatch from October chaos in this town. Easily my favorite dog-friendly stop on this route.
The house interior tours have resumed on weekends only, timed tickets required, $15 per person, or just $5 if you’re also buying PEM museum admission. Free for members. Entries at :15 and :45 past the hour, last entry 3:15 pm.
📌 Pro Tip: Fair warning straight from the museum, the interior never appeared in the film. Those party scenes were a California set. If you’re here purely for Hocus Pocus, save your $15 for the garden.
🐕 Dogs: Garden yes. Interior no.
→ Related: One Fall Day in Salem, Massachusetts
3. Old Town Hall – The “I Put a Spell On You” Party
📍 32 Derby Square
“I put a spell on you, and now you’re mine!” — Winifred Sanderson
The Halloween party where Winnie absolutely levels the room was filmed at Old Town Hall, the oldest surviving municipal building in the city, built in 1816. Exterior viewable anytime, free.
Nearby in Derby Square you’ll find The Lobster Shanty at 25 Front Street, an unrepentant dive bar slinging seafood since the 1970s. The lobster rolls are legitimately great, the spicy crab cake sandwich is one I still think about, and there’s local cider on tap and a dog-friendly patio. It’s also seasonal, roughly April through mid-January.
🐕 Dogs: Patio yes.
→ Go deeper: One Day of History in Salem, MA
Not In Town (You’ll Want a Car)
4. Max & Dani’s House
📍 4 Ocean Avenue
“Oh, look. Another glorious morning. Makes me sick.” – Winifred Sanderson
This is the big one. The house with the cupola over Salem Harbor, where the witches swoop in and grab Dani. Known as the Edward Blacomb Cottage, built in 1870, and it looks almost exactly the way it did in 1993, that concave mansard roof is unmistakable.
About 1.1 miles from Old Town Hall, a 22-minute walk or 5-minute drive.
📌 Pro Tip, and I mean this: Real people live here. Stay on the sidewalk across the street, keep it brief, don’t block the driveway, don’t knock, don’t wander onto the lawn for a better angle. The neighborhood tows aggressively and the street sometimes closes entirely on peak weekends. Be the visitor who doesn’t ruin it for everyone.
🐕 Dogs: Public sidewalk, so yes, but it’s tight and crowded. If your dog gets weird about crowds, this is a leave-them-with-Brian stop.
5. Thackery Binx’s Village – Pioneer Village
📍 98 West Avenue, Forest River Park
“I had to wait 300 years for a virgin to light the candle.” — Thackery Binx
The 1600s Salem in the opening, Binx’s home, the village, Emily wandering off, was filmed at Pioneer Village, built in 1930 and billed as America’s first living history museum.
2026 season: June 6 through November 1, weekends only, 12–4 pm, $5 admission.
🚨 Biggest news in this whole post: 2026 is the final season at this location. The entire village is being relocated to the Salem Willows, moved, in part, by barge. The City’s own reasoning is straightforward and a little sobering: the current site sits very close to sea level and floods, and climate change is accelerating the threat.
If standing in Binx’s village where they actually filmed it matters to you — and if you’ve read this far, it does, this October is your last chance. Planning 2027? Confirm where it’s landed first.
🐕 Dogs: Verify directly before you go; the relocation has shuffled policies. Forest River Park itself is leash-friendly.
6. The Cemetery Where Max Rides His Bike – Old Burial Hill
📍 50 Orne Street, Marblehead
Jay: “So where’re you from?” / Max: “L.A.” / Ice: “Tubular!”
The cemetery Max bikes through, where he meets Jay and Ice, is Old Burial Hill in Marblehead, founded 1638, about 16 minutes from downtown Salem. The drive is half the reason to go. Marblehead in October is stupidly pretty.
🚨 Dog owners, read this twice: Marblehead bans dogs from all public cemeteries, year round. Not discouraged, banned, with fines. Same at Salem’s Charter Street Cemetery downtown: no dogs, no exceptions.
This is the most common way I see dog-toting fans get caught out, and it’s a bad moment to discover at the gate after a 16-minute drive. Loki and Freya sit this one out. Caly, who would absolutely eat a headstone, sits it out with enthusiasm.
🐕 Dogs: No. Plan a hand-off.
But What About Hocus Pocus 2?
Hocus Pocus 2 was filmed almost entirely in Rhode Island, not Salem. The 1600s village set was built at Chase Farm in Lincoln, RI. Modern-day scenes were shot around Providence, Benefit Street, Federal Hill, interiors in the Cranston Street Armory, plus Newport.
Roll into Salem hunting sequel locations and you’ll come up completely empty. The Sanderson Sisters technically relocated to Rhode Island for round two, which is the funniest piece of movie trivia I know.
Getting There & Surviving Salem in October
Take the train. Salem is about a 30-minute ride from Boston’s North Station on the Newburyport/Rockport Line, and the $10 weekend pass gets you unlimited Saturday and Sunday rides. Extra trains run October weekends. Driving in on a peak Saturday is miserable and I don’t recommend it to people I like.
Or take the ferry. The seasonal Salem Ferry runs Long Wharf to Blaney Street in about 50 minutes, through October 31. Confirm fares before you commit.
Know the road closures. The Haunted Happenings Grand Parade is Thursday, October 1, 2026, first floats leaving Shetland Park at 6:30 pm, with the route barricaded and roads closing around 4 pm. On Halloween, downtown closes to traffic by roughly noon, public drinking is prohibited, and the night ends with a drone show instead of fireworks. September/October weekends, Essex and Front close to through traffic 9 am–10 pm.
When to actually go: A weekday in early-to-mid October. Same crisp air, same decorations, a fraction of the humans. Halloween day itself is a hard pass from me.
📌 Pro Tip: The city posts current-year rules at hauntedhappenings.org, usually early-to-mid September. This is the section of this post that ages fastest.
Make a Day of It
The Salem Witch Museum is the classic add-on, $19 adults, $17.50 seniors 62+, $16 kids 6–14, under 6 free, daily 10 am–5 pm. October quirk: tickets are online only, released after 10 pm the night before your visit. Set an alarm.
More Salem beyond the Sandersons: One Day of History in Salem · 9 Things to Know Before Visiting Salem in October · The Best Shops in Salem · One Fall Day in Salem · The Best Spots to Explore in Concord, MA
🖨️ Printable Checklist
| # | Stop | Address | Cost | Dogs? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jacob Bailey High School | Salem Common, 56 S. Washington Sq | Free | ✅ Leashed |
| 2 | Allison’s House (Ropes Mansion) | 318 Essex St | Garden free · House $15/$5 | ✅ Garden only |
| 3 | Old Town Hall | 32 Derby Square | Free | ✅ Outside |
| 4 | Max & Dani’s House | 4 Ocean Ave | Free (street view) | ⚠️ Crowded |
| 5 | Pioneer Village (Binx) | 98 West Ave | $5 · final season here | ⚠️ Verify |
| 6 | Old Burial Hill | 50 Orne St, Marblehead | Free | ❌ Banned |
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you visit the Hocus Pocus house?
Yes, you can view Max and Dani’s house at 4 Ocean Avenue from the public sidewalk. It’s a private residence, so no going inside and no stepping onto the property.
Can you go inside the Hocus Pocus house?
No. 4 Ocean Avenue is someone’s actual home. Street-view photos only.
Is the Hocus Pocus house real?
The exteriors are. Max and Dani’s house (4 Ocean Ave) and Allison’s house — the Ropes Mansion at 318 Essex Street, are both real and standing. The Sanderson Sisters’ cottage is not real; it was a soundstage set in California.
Was Hocus Pocus actually filmed in Salem?
Partly. Several exteriors were shot in Salem and Marblehead over about two weeks, but most interiors and a number of outdoor scenes were filmed in Southern California.
How far is the Hocus Pocus house from downtown Salem?
About 1.1 miles from Old Town Hall, roughly a 22-minute walk or 5-minute drive.
Are the Hocus Pocus filming locations dog-friendly?
Some are. The Ropes Mansion garden and Salem Common welcome leashed dogs, and the Lobster Shanty has a dog-friendly patio. But both cemeteries, Old Burial Hill in Marblehead and Charter Street in Salem, ban dogs entirely, year round.
Where was Hocus Pocus 2 filmed?
In Rhode Island, primarily Chase Farm in Lincoln, plus Providence and Newport. Not in Salem.
What’s the best time to visit Salem for Hocus Pocus?
A weekday in early-to-mid October. Full fall atmosphere without the peak-weekend crowds, and you can actually drive and park.
How long does the self-guided tour take?
About 3–4 hours walking the downtown stops, plus extra time and a vehicle for Pioneer Village and Old Burial Hill.
Chasing down these filming locations is one of my favorite dorky October traditions, and here’s the thing that gets me every time: I have never once been the only 90s kid standing on that sidewalk. There’s always someone else out front of 4 Ocean Ave, phone up, trying to line up the shot from the movie. Half the fun is the quiet solidarity of a bunch of grown adults independently humming I Put a Spell on You on a residential street in Massachusetts.
Go be one of them. Just, you know, stay on the sidewalk.
If this helped you plan, drop a comment and tell me which stop you’re most excited for, pin it for October, or send it to the friend you rewatch this movie with every single year. 🖤
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