The "New England" region was a somewhat unofficial designation that encompassed six states in present-day America.
It boasted the finest educational environment in the country, even the world, with renowned elite universities such as Yale, Harvard, and MIT all located there.
Most of this land's early settlers had been English Puritans fleeing religious persecution. Even America's earliest pioneers had been the "abandoned children" of various European nations at the time.
They crossed the ocean to begin new lives in a barren, savage land, hoping to become a new aristocracy beneath another sky.
Perhaps that was why America, as a nation and a people, had never felt much attachment to or gratitude for its own "roots."
Most of New England bore deep marks left by all manner of intolerant religious customs and harsh laws, giving rise to countless horrifying tragedies and incidents.
And Salem, one of New England's oldest ports and an otherwise unremarkable industrial city in Massachusetts, possessed an especially famous title—the "City of Witches."
"...This way! Darling, you wouldn't want to miss the witch-burning experience. I guarantee that Agatha's Witch-Hunting Town is Salem's most authentic witch-themed attraction."
The woman had thick dark-brown, nearly black hair. She was tall, broad-boned, and possessed an astonishingly loud voice.
Dressed in a seventeenth-century-style grayish-white corseted gown, with a black-and-white crest pinned to her collar, she stood at the entrance to a witch attraction built from old farmhouses, hands on hips as she loudly called out to draw tourists inside.
"...Five dollars! Five dollars gets you access to all witch-hunting attractions, and you can personally take part in the 'Burned Witch' experience!"
Emma Howlett and Master Mark from the New York Sanctum stood at the street corner across from an oak fence. This was considered a suburban area even within Salem.
The entire gloomy,