Perhaps the only thing scarier than the Boston region’s housing costs is its traffic. And, after that, these 17 spooky spots. Salem doesn’t have all of the fun around Halloween.
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The Boston region’s most haunted locations, mapped
These spooky spots include the Cutler Majestic, Park Street Station, and Boston Common

Powder House Square tower
A windmill used to stand where the tower now does, and it’s said that the ghost of an old man the windmill accidentally shredded still rattles about the place.
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Hooper-Lee-Nichols House
Five Hessian soldiers, still in town from the Revolution, have been playing cards since 1915, when construction of a new wing on the house awakened them.
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Christ Church Cambridge
The church off Harvard Square was a redoubt for Tory sympathizers during the Revolution. One British soldier, buried as he was under the church building, is said to still haunt the pews, looking for his regiment.
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Cambridge Rindge & Latin School
The ghost of an old man apparently haunts a hallway memorializing World War II.
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Charlestown Bridge
An 18th-century Bostonian named Peter Rugg is said to have disappeared on a stormy night during his return trip from Concord.
The clatter of his horse and carriage can still be heard on the west side of the expanse, which is also known as the North Washington Street Bridge.
Meanwhile, repairs starting in mid-2018 are set to haunt commuters for years.
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Omni Parker House
Harvey Parker, the hotel’s developer, who died in 1884, is said to inhabit the 10th-floor annex. A spooked guest once described him as "a heavy-set older man with a black mustache," according to the hotel’s website.
Elevators are also said to arrive on the third floor (where Charles Dickens stayed for a time) without any buttons having been pushed or anyone awaiting a lift.
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8 Walnut Street
This townhouse was the home of Dr. George Parkman, who was murdered and dismembered in 1849 in Harvard’s Holden Chapel, the university’s first cadaver room. It was one of the most sensational murder cases of the 19th century.
He continues to disquiet his old home, which should not be confused with 33 Beacon Street, where his family lived post-murder.
Parkman left that townhouse to the City of Boston, and it serves as the official—though rarely used—home of the mayor.
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1 Milk Street
Near this spot was the location of a grand Tudor mansion called Province House that served as the residence of royal governors until the Revolution.
As British troops evacuated the region, so a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story says, an old housekeeper named Esther Dudley stayed behind to await the return of the king’s men—a return, of course, that has never come.
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Park Street Station
The wails and moans of chronically late Red Line riders are said to haunt the busiest station along America’s oldest subway route.
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Boston Common
America’s oldest public park was three centuries ago the site of public hangings. Some of the poor souls executed there are said to still roam about.
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Cutler Majestic Theatre
Ask an Emerson student and you may very well hear tales of moving chairs and suspicious power outages at the Beaux-Arts palace.
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Kilachand Hall
Moody playwright Eugene O’Neill died in 1953 in Suite 401 of Boston University’s Kilachand Hall (formerly Shelton Hall). Students still run into him today.
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4 Charlesgate East
The ghosts haunting the old Charlesgate Hotel (and B.U. and Emerson dorm) are said to be so brazen they set traps for unsuspecting persons.
The building is now a condo.
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Washington Street and East Berkeley Street (formerly Boston Neck)
This former spit of land was the site of many a hanging back in the day, including, in 1648, the execution of the first New Englander convicted of witchcraft.
The isthmus no longer exists, of course, but the troubled souls of the strangled still murk about.
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Georges Island
The island was the site of a notorious Confederate prison, and the angry widow of an inmate haunts it: The so-called Lady in Black. She came all the way from Georgia to rescue her man, only to die in the attempt.
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Lamartine and Green streets in Jamaica Plain
A ladylike ghost is said to have started wandering the intersection of Lamartine and Green streets, around Johnson Park in Jamaica Plain, late at night starting in the 1880s.
She is often so tuckered out by the traipsing that she can be seen resting on area walls and fences.
Everett Square Theatre
The partially rehabbed Hyde Park landmark hosts a fairly pleasant ghost who has earned the sobriquet "Smilin’ Al" in honor of Al Jolson, who played the Everett a century ago.
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