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Ghosts & Gravestones Tour Offers Spooky Alternative to the Freedom Trail

AAA Horizons

Boston has long been known for its patriots and pioneers, but there is a flip side to the city’s storied history, a seamy side that’s not exactly promoted by the local chamber of commerce.

For those interested in more than what the Freedom Trail has to offer, Historic Tours of America has just the tour: Ghosts & Gravestones, a two-hour examination of Boston’s more infamous moments and spectral residents.

“We call it a ‘frightseeing tour,’” says Charlie Brazil, special projects and promotions manager for Historic Tours of America. “We take a somewhat humorous, but historically accurate tour of the darker side of Boston.”

The Massachusetts State House, perched atop Beacon Hill.

It’s appropriate, then, that this “dark” tour takes place at night. Conducted by trolley and on foot, tours depart thrice nightly from the corner of Charles and Boyslton streets. Ghosts & Gravestones will run from May 18 through the weekend of November 4, from Thursday through Monday.

The trolley bus portion of the tour, guided by drivers known as “caretakers,” winds its way from Beacon Hill through the North End and other neighborhoods of Boston. Guests are dropped off at Copp’s Hill and the Old Granary burial grounds, where “gravediggers” such as Mordecai and Solomon provide a who’s who of the cemetery’s residents.

“The gravedigger is in costume and boards the bus waving a lantern,” says Graeme Marsden, who plays Solomon. “We take the guests on a nocturnal perambulation about the graveyards.”

On one of these perambulations, the gravediggers point out the Boston Athenaeum, which hovers over the Old Granary like a grim gargoyle. One of the oldest private libraries in America, the 194-year-old Athenaeum is reportedly home to the shade of charter member Reverend Thaddeus Mason Harris.

Several days after the reverend died, Nathaniel Hawthorne spotted his spectre in the library. “He was a prominent freemason and was minister of the First Church in Dorchester,” Marsden says of Harris. “He’s been seen several times over the years, usually sitting in a quiet corner of the Athenaeum, reading.”

Fort Independence, the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe's "Cask of Amontillado."

The good reverend is one of the quieter ghosts on this tour. More cantankerous spooks are the norm, such as Fort Independence’s Captain Green. Located on South Boston’s Castle Island, the fort is the former home – and tomb – of Captain Green, an army officer with a nasty disposition.

Shortly after killing a popular lieutenant in a Christmas Day duel in 1817, Green was lured into a card game by the lieutenant’s friends, plied with liquor and “walled up” alive. Green’s grisly end, and the tale of Green’s ghost patrolling the fort’s ramparts, inspired a young private at the fort, Ed Poe, to write “The Cask of Amontillado” years later.

These tales, as well as those of the Boston Strangler and many others, can be heard on the Ghosts & Gravestones tour this summer.

“Because Boston has such a very rich history, we continuously update our stories and research new ones,” says Brazil. “We’ve found that the lives of the independent types who have lived in Boston make for great stories.”

The tour, which costs $29 for adults and $17 for children (four to 12), is rated PG-13. For more information, visit www.ghostsandgravestones.com.