Oh hell! Satanic temple opening international headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts

An eerily nondescript building located in the town responsible for America's infamous Salem witch trials will soon be the international headquarters of the Satanic Temple.

The over-sized white clapboard home is just a mile from Gallows Hill in Salem, Massachusetts, where a dozen people were hanged for witchcraft in the 1690s.

"The history of Salem is also part of the history of Satanism," said temple spokesman Lucien Greaves. The town is a "very appropriate place" for the temple, he told the Boston Globe.

The Satanic Temple headquarters will be open to the public with art installations, lectures and film screenings, said Greaves.

There won't be any black masses, he promised. Besides, zoning regulations might make it illegal to arrange gatherings of disciples of the Great Horned One.

"And we're not going to be going door to door proselytizing," Greaves said. "We don't want to cause any controversy in the community in Salem."

In reality, Greaves insisted, Satanists do not worship an anti-christ — nor any other deity.

Rather, he said, Satanism preaches anti-authoritarian, independent thought and a belief in science as a way to understand the world.

Greaves most recently made headlines with promises to create Satan clubs at public schools throughout the US.

Greaves and his supporters were seeking to make a point about the separation of chuch and state, and to create a foil to the the Christian Good News Clubs found at public schools across the land. If an evangelical God can set up shop at a public school, why can't the devil, wondered Greaves.

The action plan included a forked-tongue-in-cheek parental permission slip for children to attend the clubs. It's unclear if any ever got off the ground.

The temple also lobbied loudly but unsuccessfully in Oklahoma City for a bronze statue of Baphomet — a winged figure with the head of a goat and body of a human — to be displayed next to a Ten Commandments monument on state capitol grounds.

The Ten Commandments monument was later removed after a court ruled that a religious sculpture cannot be displayed on government property.

In another stunt, Satanist Greaves also vowed to turn the (now late) ultra-right-wing pastor of the Westboro church, Fred Phelps, gay in his grave.

The Massachusetts temple-to-be is being modified this week with security cameras and steel bars on the window because sometimes people discriminate against Satanists.

The headquarters of the Temple — which has about 40,000 members in the US, according to Greaves — will be open in October just in time for the 250,000 tourists who flood the notorious town the month of Halloween.

Salem residents seem to be taking the development in stride, though few were thrilled about the idea.

"It wouldn't be my favorite thing to put there,"coffee and bake shop owner Robert Liani Jr told the Globe.

"It was a little surprising, but I guess we're waiting to see what kind of art they show there."