Salem Halloween Safety Challenges Mount Amid Rising Costs, Terrorism Fears

SALEM, MA — Salem's annual monthlong-plus Haunted Happenings celebration of all things Halloween faces rising public safety costs and challenges as visitation continues to set new records each October.

In a meeting of the Salem City Council Committee on Community and Economic Development, Mayor Dominick Pangallo, Destination Salem staff and public safety officials said that while violations were down, and general resident feedback was more positive in 2024 over previous years, concerns for 2025 and beyond include rising police costs compared to revenues because of measures necessary following the recent attacks at large-scale public gatherings in New Orleans and Vancouver, as well as public safety overtime from the new collective bargaining agreements.

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"Our biggest costs related to public works and public safety are rising more quickly than revenues even though revenues are growing," Pangallo said. "As we think about this October and our newly settled (public safety) contracts, those overtime costs are going to be going up considerably. We're anticipating — especially as we're looking to put in place additional public safety measures — we are going to be in a position this coming October that expenses could be considerable, and we want to be cognizant of that."

Pangallo said the goal is to have the tourism sector generate enough revenue to offset the costs to taxpayers. He said that includes the use of local meals and lodging taxes to pay for Haunted Happenings expenses, reviewing of fees to offset costs, a parking surcharge for private lots, and the likely implementation of a shuttle fee charge from the free satellite lots this year to pay for that service.

He said costs related to the Halloween month came in at about $643,000, with revenues at about $716,000. Visitation to the city was measured at more than 1 million during the month, including a record 87,000 people on Halloween alone — which was a Thursday night with near-record temperatures of 80 degrees.

"We are constantly looking for ways to generate additional revenues from visitors to offset those costs," Pangallo said. "The topic of sponsorships has been discussed. We do want to be cognizant of crossing the line where it appears we are overly commercializing what happened here (in the 1692 Witch Trials). I'm very sensitive to people expressing concerns about the perception that the city is profiting from a real, true tragedy that happened.

"We don't want to be feeding into that feeling people do have while recognizing that we have very real costs related to a million people coming into our city and any opportunity we have to export that onto other places than our taxpayers, we have to explore that."

Salem Police Lucas Miller said the city creates essentially a "second police force" for the month, using Salem officers as well as State Police and regional law enforcement resources in order to protect the downtown while maintaining services and response for the rest of the city.

"Based on the events of New Orleans, Vancouver, Germany and others," Miller said, "I anticipate some of these costs going up next year. I do intend to use our partners, both federal and state, to try to increase the overall coverage of Salem.

"But there is no substitute for Salem police officers patrolling Salem streets."

Miller said parking violations were down amid better communication on ways to travel into the city that do not include driving and parking downtown, and that the days of cars pulling into illegal parking spots, as tow trucks are removing the cars previously illegally parked there, appear to have subsided.

He said there were three arrests and three people taken into protective custody on Halloween alone, down from previous years.

Salem Fire Chief Alan Dionne said most of that department's response calls were related to trips and falls, and dehydration from an unusually warm Halloween weather season in 2024.

Changes residents and visitors can expect in 2025 also include the likely end of the Halloween fireworks in exchange for a drone-powered light show that is expected to be less disruptive in light of development in the area of Salem Harbor.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)