Ghosts of Boston Town: Three Centuries of True Hauntings

By Holly Nadler

Book Overview

Ranging from the 18th century to the present and from Beacon Hill to windswept Cape Ann, Holly Nadler's collection of true ghost stories from Boston and its environs offers a varied sampling of supernatural phenomena. Many of these tales offer a satisfying dose of ghoulish and frightening details; others are colored with a certain poignancy or even humor.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0892725354
• ISBN13: 9780892725359
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Down East Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.7" x 9.9"

Customer Reviews

Personality...and terror.

This book was too short. I have to say that's why I'm knocking off a star from my rating, though I'm aware of how difficult the process of collecting true ghost stories can be. Regardless, this book has a lot of personality; that of the author especially, who brings out the personalities of those telling the stories and thereby even the personalities of the ghosts themselves. I give most of the credit to the more firsthand, "contemporary" stories in this book, rather than the more historically-based stories, simply because they are some of the most unique and the most TERRIFYING I have ever read. Previous reviewers have been more thorough in describing the range of stories in this book, but trust me, the people who relayed their experiences firsthand to the author conveyed something that history cannot... Fear. I'll leave it at that. Boston, one of Americas first metropolises, MUST have more stories than this...and I'm patiently waiting for them to come forward.

BOSTON'S GHOSTS COME ALIVE!

Many areas of the United States can boast a rich heritage of ghost stories: Gettysburg, the old west, the deep south, etc, all have their great traditions, but none has ever so captured my interest as the ghosts of New England, and specifically Boston. As author Holly Mascott Nadler points out, Boston's long history of the weird dates from the Salem with trial episode to modern day where much of the architecture of colonial times still stands today. Nadler takes readers on a whirlwind tour of some of Boston's most well-known hauntings and some not so well known. From haunted houses to haunted inns and everything in between, it is a compelling look at a city brimming with chills. Among the over two dozen tales in this book you'll read about: "The Tainted Honeymoon" where a bachelor named Jim moves into an apartment on Beacon Hill and soon discovers it's haunted by an occasionally helpful female spirit. But things soon turn ugly when Jim meets a woman and they marry. Her pleasant demeanor soon turns rude and downright happy on their honeymoon and the marriage is quickly annulled. Was the spirit so in love with Jim that it ruined his marriage? In "The House of Nightmares" we learn about two mid-20's friends who move into an old home and soon experience all manner of spectral occurrences, often violent, including an apparition of a thing they are convinced is not human. A psychic tells them that a boy went insane within the house and his suffering trapped a demon within the house feeding on the energy. Needless to say the two men soon moved out. We find that Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado" was based upon a true incident. When Poe was just 18 he joined the army and was stationed at Ft. Independence on Castle Isle. Poe begins inquiring about a monument erected in memory of a Lt. Massie. He learns that Massie had been killed years earlier in a sword duel with another officer, a bully named Captain Green who goaded the inexperienced Massie into the duel. Grief-stricken, Massie's comrades got Green inebriated one night, led him into the dank lower dungeons, shackled him, and walled him up alive. A shackled skeleton would be found behind a wall by a work crew nearly a hundred years later in 1905. Another literary giant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, had his own spectral experience. Hawthorne often frequented a private library to read and research. The library was also frequented by a minister named Dr. Thaddeus Harris and while the pair were not friends, they would exchange courteous nods. Hawthorne is saddened one evening to learn of Harris's death but he's then shocked to see the old minister, sitting in his same old spot in the library the following day, even giving Hawthorne a nod of acknowledgement. Among Boston's most somber locations is the Central Burying Ground in Boston Common. First established in 1634, the sight would be the final resting place of all manner of people of ill repute including thieves, murde