Haunted Happenings: History with a ghostly twist
By Jasmine Ferrell, Staff Writer
@JasmineInBoston
For the next few weeks, Jasmine will be exploring Boston and the surrounding areas and recommending spooky places and attractions to check out before Halloween.
In the spirit of the season, I’ve spent days generating ideas for a blog series, and I’ve come up with one to focus on the perfect tree decorating scheme. Oh wait, never mind. That would be for Christmas, and it’s still the middle of October. I guess that one will have to wait.
When October shows its face on that inspirational wall calendar, horror season hits, and everyone out there is searching for the best terrors. There are numerous commercial haunted sites, trails and the like, but what did I want? Authenticity. This week and the two following I strive to reveal the best Boston’s notorious history has to offer, but to start, I needed some education. Ghost tours are a popular tourist scheme, and if you shell out the top money you can be escorted to a picturesque grave yard where you’ll hear tales, whether true or not, told by a charismatic tour guide.
PHOTO CREDIT ANDREW OLSEN, BOSTON NIGHT TOUR GUIDE
Often times these are more for show, but they’re also not half bad and at a low cost. During “The Boston Night Tour,” with admission of $15, an educated tour guide took us to many actual sites of Boston’s best ghost encounters while he informed us about the legitimacy or the questionable nature of each story. I was lead personally by the ideal paranormal researcher, Andrew, who had a long ponytail, a paranormal museum t-shirt and had one of those beards and voices most associated with wisdom. He was a believer.
Starting at the actual site of the Boston massacre, the group learned the story of Crispus Attucks and his ghost. When some construction on the square had begun, people would come off the street into the Old State House exclaiming that one of their tour guides just disappeared. Time after time, the witnesses described the same man: a tall man, with broad shoulders and a red top hat. He was supposedly standing at the exact spot where Crispus died, suddenly clutching his chest and collapsing to the ground, then disappearing. Although there were documentations of the dying tour guide sightings, the team couldn’t find anything. Strange, isn’t it?
A spirit communication is attempted on Boston Common / PHOTO COURTESY BOSTON NIGHT TOUR
Next, we proceeded to the back door of the Old State House to hear the story of the cursed figure head. This one carved woman was supposed to have killed hundreds of men while surviving multiple exploding ships and burning buildings without being scorched. Even the tour guide questioned this claim. Was it really cursed, or is this more the case of finding the common factor? Because it was a tour, there were more than just these two spots of course, but I can’t give everything away. For further enticement, though, I will reveal that the tour concludes with a ghostly conversation in the most haunted place in Boston: The Boston Common.
Next week, I will test my own belief and attempt a private investigation of The Common, so be prepared to be blown away by all the amazing evidence that I hopefully find.
The Daily Free Now 
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