Of all the places I investigated near the Boston Common, the most haunted has room for many ghosts and a two-hundred-year-old proprietor who makes sure that everyone is comfortable.
Do any of the ghosts who reside at the Omni Parker House hotel originate from the fatal limbs of the old elm?
Read on and make your own decision.
A Ghost for a Host
James Smith stepped into the room across from the ballroom and froze. A shadowy figure had just rushed past him. He whirled around, trying to get a closer look, but the thing had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He shuddered and went back to work.
After working many years as a bartender at the Omni Parker House hotel, he takes the unusual happenings in stride. “We have employees who are too afraid to go to the ballroom alone,” he told me, as he escorted me to the large room with the rounded ceiling.
James is not afraid, but he normally does not talk about the ghosts. We took the crowded service elevator as he gave me a quick tour of the most haunted spots in the hotel. The male employees who shared the elevator appeared spooked when I asked them if they had ever encountered ghosts in the hotel. They all shook their heads no, but something in their eyes told me they were fibbing.
The Omni Parker House, a short walk from the Common, is crawling with ghosts. (Leslie Rule)
“People say they’ve seen ghosts on the sixth floor,” James told me. It is usually a fleeting glimpse, but full-figured apparitions have been spotted there.
James Smith is one of the few Omni Parker House employees brave enough to go to the ballroom alone. (Leslie Rule)
Years ago an elderly woman saw a ghost outside of room 1078. It materialized as an indefinable cloud and gradually took the shape of a man. The heavy-set gentleman with the black moustache stared at her for a moment and then vanished.
Everyone said that she had seen the ghost of Harvey Parker. He was a twenty-year-old farm boy with barely a dollar to his name when he arrived in Boston in 1825. Seven years later he was a restaurant owner, but his ambitions did not end there. In 1855 he opened the grandest hotel the city had ever seen.
Harvey died at seventy-nine in 1884. Many believe the perfectionist still tries to run the hotel and often helps out.
But why would he throw teapots? Waitress Heather Alvarado was startled when she was in a storage room, and the pots seemed to leap off the shelf toward her.
Maybe Harvey is not alone. Maybe he is surrounded by a few less helpful ghosts. The area has seen more than its share of violent death, partly due to its proximity to the Boston Common.
Do those who were so cruelly executed there creep over to the hotel? If they do, Harvey would surely make them feel welcome. He had a reputation for playing the consummate host to the wealthiest guests or the most ordinary of citizens.
A. Hafeez Yassin agrees that Harvey is among the ghosts who wander the hotel. He was alone in the ballroom one day, cleaning up after a party and listening to reggae music on his radio. Suddenly, the station abruptly changed, skimming over a dozen channels until it settled on a classical station. “That’s the kind of music that Harvey would have listened to,” he said.
Another employee was exhausted after a long day but had not quite finished his work in the ballroom. He had one more table to set up. He left the room for a moment, and when he returned, the table had been magically set. He looked around astonished. No one else had been in the area.
It was probably Harvey, he figured, still helping out at the hotel that had made him a multimillionaire.
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OMNI PARKER HOUSE
60 School Street
Boston, MA 02108
(617) 227-8600
Ghosts of Salem
When most folks think of Salem, Massachusetts, they conjure images of witches in tall, crooked hats, riding brooms against a full moon. It is an image that the city has done little to discourage.
It was 1692 when teenaged girls began acting silly and sparked a hysteria that burned through Salem Village. The little town (now known as Danvers) was near today’s city of Salem.
The teenagers’ odd behavior was blamed on the devil, and soon neighbor was accusing neighbor of witchcraft. Many residents were jailed as accused witches, including a four-year-old girl.
In the horrific end, nineteen people were hanged and one was crushed to death.
The murder of twenty innocent people may very well account for the paranormal activity that swirls around the area today, including some of the following places:
First to Die
According to the managers of the Lyceum Restaurant, the classy eatery was built atop Bridget Bishop’s old apple orchard. The very first villager hanged for witchcraft, Bridget was a colorful character who managed to annoy her neighbors with her flamboyant dress and her tendency to speak her mind.