Lights! Camera! Action! HBO Film Crew in Danvers

A Hollywood film crew has been filming a pilot for HBO at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, 149 Pine St., Danvers, according to reports. Police put up barricades to keep the public away.

The HBO drama pilot, The Devil You Know (working title), is co-written by Orange Is The New Black creator Jenji Kohan, Bruce Miller and Tracy Miller.

“Described as a provocative period drama, The Devil You Know explores the circumstances around one of the most compelling chapters in American history — the infamous Salem Witch Trials in 17th century New England, where intolerance and repression set neighbor against neighbor and led a town to mass hysteria,” according to Deadline Hollywood.

The Rebecca Nurse Homestead sits on 25 acres of an original 300 acres occupied by Rebecca Nurse and her family from 1678-1798. The property holds the traditional saltbox home lived in by the Nurse Family. This is the only home of a person executed during the trials open to the public, according to the Rebecca Nurse Homestead website.

Another unique feature is a reproduction of the 1672 Salem Village Meeting House where many of the early hearings surrounding the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria took place.

Located on the grounds is the Nurse Family Cemetery. It has been a longstanding family tradition that Rebecca’s son and husband retrieved her body after her execution and secretly buried it here, according to museum officials. A monument with a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier was erected years later to commemorate this. Recently another victim of the Hysteria, George Jacobs, was buried here after being found in the middle of the last century on his former property in a lone unmarked grave. This is the only known burial site of anyone convicted of witchcraft during the Salem trials.

The Rebecca Nurse Homestead is a private non-profit museum.

Filming is expected to take several days.

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