When a colleague told me that one of his wife's goals in life was to spend Halloween week in Salem, Mass., I felt it only fair to warn him.

I was brewing up an anti-Salem column in my cauldron.

Salem is a historic seaport and the hometown of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The impressive Peabody Essex Museum is located there.

It's the other Salem I'm horrified by -- the one that sports cartoon-like witches on its police cars. The Salem that is home to the "Festival of the Dead," which features such events as the "Witchcraft Expo" and the "Retro Zombie Ball."

I shiver at the thought of the Salem that boasts of its statue honoring the 1960s TV show, "Bewitched."

Salem is Witch City, all right. But that's nothing to crow about.

In 1692, 150 people were imprisoned on suspicion of practicing witchcraft in Salem and environs. Nineteen of them were hanged. One was pressed to death under stones. Four of the accused died in prison.

They were not witches, of course. Many were women who regularly mouthed off or marched to their own tunes. All were innocent.

One of the judges in the trials, Samuel Sewall, a relative of the Sewalls so important in Augusta history, later publicly apologized for his role in the tragedy. He spent one day a year fasting and praying in atonement for the rest of his life.

There stands no better memorial to what happened in Salem than Arthur Miller's play, "The Crucible." Written at the height of the persecution of suspected communists led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, it sought to expose what happens when people go after supposed witches.

Lives and careers are ruined. Sometimes, people die.

In the 1980s, a number of day-care center operators across the country were suspected of being witches in the guise of child abusers. The accusers' fantastical stories of satanic rituals were worthy of the most hysterical Puritan 'tweens.

This is why the real story of what happened in Salem should not be corrupted by fanciful images and celebrations of witches. Salem has much to teach us, even though it's not clear what happened there. The suggested explanations range from bad rye making people crazy, to politics, religion or mass hysteria.

It may have been a simple matter of bored, restrained girls gone wild. After they were caught dabbling in the black arts, the girls thought of a way to turn suspicion away from themselves and onto others. The adults then saw an opportunity to ruin malcontents and other anti-social types -- and perhaps seize their property -- so they let the accusations fly.

Bottom line: There were no witches then. Aside from people who call themselves witches, perhaps practice Wicca, and purport to levitate people, there are no witches now. People do not go flying through the air on broomsticks. Nobody now, or then, walked around in black peaked caps.

Sorry, but in Salem, and everywhere else "witches" were allegedly rooted out, there were only innocent people, murdered by their accusers.

Kathleen Kent is the author of "The Heretic's Daughter," a novel based on the story of her ancestor, Martha Carrier, who was one of the "witches" hanged at Salem. In a YouTube video, she recounts how her grandmother would say that Martha was not a witch but "a ferocious woman." Such a person was simply not acceptable in the patriarchal Puritan society of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

I was fascinated by the story of Salem from an early age. Even at 11 years old, I subconsciously recognized, and delighted in, the power Ann Putnam and Betty Parris wielded. They had that town twisted around their pointing fingers.

On the conscious level, though, the fascination is about the legend of witchcraft. Ah, to have the power to whip up a potion and give it to the subject of your crush to drink. Instant love! Don't we all have a little Harry Potter in us, dying to be able to mumble "accio" of a morning and have our toothbrush rise to our sleepy mouths?

Now, though, I mourn the death of women who dared to be different, to speak out. We are never out of danger. Then, we were witches. Now we are something that rhymes with it.

Salem has memorialized the victims. The Witch Museum tells the story of the trials. But its gift shop sells floating pens.

You know, because witches float.

Uppity women just drown.

Liz Soares is a freelance writer and the author of "All for Maine: The Story of Gov. Percival P. Baxter." She welcomes e-mail at lsoares@gwi.net.