Three centuries before Bette Midler started casting spells on screen, Salem was already the world's most famous witch town. Between February 1692 and May 1693, more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft and 20 were executed — so it made perfect sense for Disney to set its 1993 Halloween classic Hocus Pocus here. The good news for fans: most of the film really was shot in and around Salem, and several locations are still standing.

The film's 1600s opening scenes, where young Thackery Binx catches the Sanderson sisters luring his sister Emily to their cottage, were filmed at Pioneer Village in Forest River Park. It's a living history museum built in 1930 across three acres, complete with the thatched colonial cottages that gave the movie its Puritan look. You can visit it today.

The Ropes Mansion, Allison's grand white-columned house in the film, is another you can see in person. Dating from the 1720s in the Georgian Colonial style, it's considered one of Salem's finest 18th-century homes and is owned by the Peabody Essex Museum. Max and Dani's house — the one with the attic lookout tower that becomes a key plot point — is a private 1800s home at 4 Ocean Avenue, last sold for the equivalent of just under £655,000, so admire it from the street.

One location has changed beyond recognition. Phillips Elementary School, which played the teens' John Bailey High and its furnace-entrapping finale, closed in 1992, was used for filming, then converted into private residences. Meanwhile, the spooky cemetery where bullies Jay and Ernie torment Max is actually Old Burial Hill in nearby Marblehead — one of the oldest burial grounds in New England and the resting place of several Salem Witch Trial victims. The nighttime zombie scenes, for the record, were shot on a LA sound stage, as was the iconic ballroom scene where Winifred Sanderson sings I Put A Spell On You. That was filmed at the Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, a 1925 Art Deco landmark by architect Claud Beelman that's also appeared in Gangster Squad and Guns N' Roses' Welcome to the Jungle video.

For anyone who watches Hocus Pocus every October, a Salem pilgrimage writes itself. You can pair the filming locations with the city's genuine witch-trial history — museums, memorials and guided walks — and time it for the autumn, when Salem goes all-in on Halloween. Marblehead's coastal old town is an easy add-on, just a short drive away.