Burns says that the commercialization may be in poor taste, but says it is important for the local economy.
"To the extent that it demeans the 19 people that were killed, I think it's poor because there's quite a connection here between Halloween and the people who were hung," he says. "But the business people feel that if Salem is going to do anything, this is the direction we're going to go in."
Burns says that the city currently does a thriving trade in witch-related T-shirts and other paraphernalia and that tourists are especially interested in this period of the town's history.
Some of those tourists erroneously believe that Roger Conant, the founder of Salem and a surveyor of the town along with John Perkins, was also a witch.
The belief persists because a statue of Conant replete in "flowing black garb" stands in front of Salem's church-turned-museum.
"They don't understand that that was just the attire of the period," says Burns.