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5 funny horror movies to watch on Halloween for people who just can’t handle it

Halloween movies are way more fun when you don’t need a Xanax. With these five you get ghosts and vampires and a hungry plant, and enough comedy to help you through the scary parts. Blood levels vary. A horror comedy can still wreck you if the joke gives up halfway through. The funny Halloween horror movies that leave you able to sleep are the ones that stay comedies. Young Frankenstein is rated PG, and the scare is mild. What We Do in the Shadows is rated R, and the blood is intentional. Gene Wilder plays a scientist who introduces himself as Fronkensteen, which is how hard he is trying to quit the family, and then finds his grandfather’s notes and runs the experiment anyway. Mel Brooks made Young Frankenstein in black and white so it would look like the old monster movies, then filled the castle with people who cannot keep a straight face. Marty Feldman is the assistant. Peter Boyle is the monster. Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, and Cloris Leachman are in the house too. The film opened in December 1974 and it is rated PG. The British Board of Film Classification calls the horror mild and the sex references moderate. One of the jokes is the monster in bed. You do not need the earlier Frankenstein films. You need to be all right with a dirty joke in a laboratory. The Ghostbusters to put on is the 1984 one. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson lose their university funding and open a ghost-removal business in a New York firehouse. Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis live in the same Central Park West building, which is how the mess reaches the city. There is a sequel, a reboot, and later movies about a new generation. The one with the ghost in the red circle is this one. It is rated PG, and the first ghost is a jolt. In the New York Public Library, an elderly librarian turns on them and they run. Murray never looks as frightened as the plot is asking him to be. The possession scenes get strange. The movie keeps handing the job to people who brought the equipment. Get the 1988 Beetlejuice, not the sequel. Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin die, fail at haunting their own house, and hire Michael Keaton, which goes badly. Winona Ryder is the teenager who can see them. Catherine O’Hara is busy making the house worse. The dinner where the new owners lose control of their own bodies is the reason to watch it with other people. It is rated PG. The images are not mild. A face comes off. A woman carries her own head. A teenager writes a suicide note, and there is a hanging gag. The afterlife is a dreary waiting room. If those pictures are the ones you were trying to avoid, skip to the plant. Little Shop of Horrors is a musical, so the horror arrives with songs, and the monster is a plant. Rick Moranis plays Seymour, a flower-shop clerk whose miserable little specimen starts drawing a crowd once he feeds it blood. Ellen Greene is Audrey. Steve Martin is the dentist, and the song explains the career choice: he likes the work because it hurts. Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops sings the plant. It is rated PG-13. People get eaten. Frank Oz reshot the ending after test audiences hated a finish in which the plant ate the cast, so the version that played in theaters is the less mean one. A cut where the plant wins is the ending they threw out. The plant is an enormous puppet, which helps if what you cannot stand is violence that looks real. Mute the dentist if the dentist is the actual problem. What We Do in the Shadows, the movie from 2014, is not the FX series. Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement play vampire housemates in Wellington who have had centuries to learn the dishes and still have not. A bouncer will not let them into a club. The television show started on FX in 2019, with a different cast, on Staten Island. Same kind of joke. Many more nights of it. This is the bloody one. The British board classified the film 15 for strong language and bloody violence: bites, large blood spurts, and some gory injuries, played for comedy. In the United States it is rated R. If a dark house is what keeps you up, this is easier than a straight horror movie. If blood is what keeps you up, Young Frankenstein is still at the top of the list, and the vampires can do their own washing-up.

5 Boston pet hotels for when your besties just need to get away

Boston dogs can get a suite, daycare and even a bedtime snack. Cats have rooms too. These five boarding spots include a South End dog hotel, a Charlestown stay and a West Roxbury resort with cat villas. The dog still needs a bed, and the cat has not agreed to any of this. One Boston pet hotel will not board a new dog until it has done three days of daycare. Another stops drop-off at noon. MSPCA-Angell will not take a pet it has not already seen. A new dog cannot book The Urban Hound the week of the trip. The hotel, at 129 Malden Street in the South End, wants a full-day temperament test on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, then three full days of daycare, and only then a boarding reservation. Staff stay in the building overnight. The lobby does not. The rooms are a standard 4-by-6 and a larger 6-by-10. Posted non-holiday rates are $105 and $135 a night, daycare included. The solo rate drops the group play and substitutes four walks. Half the stay is due up front, and that deposit does not come back. Cancel inside 72 hours and the card is charged for the whole reservation. Holiday weekends want 10 days’ notice. Food has to arrive in a labeled bag for each meal. A small blanket is fine. One toy is fine if it is quiet. Dogs older than six months have to be spayed or neutered. The vaccine list includes both rounds of the canine flu shot, so a last-minute booking can die there. Suite Escape puts dogs in glass-fronted suites at 200 Terminal Street and walks them in the Charlestown Navy Yard. It is taking new clients. The tour is by email, not by wandering in off Terminal Street. Drop-off ends at noon every day, Sunday included. Pickup runs until 8 p.m. A flight that lands after lunch does not get the dog in the door that afternoon. At Red Dog on 274 Southampton Street, a dog stay is either social or private. Social means daycare and two potty walks, after the dog passes a daycare evaluation. Private means no other dogs, and four potty walks. Cats have separate rooms, meals the way you wrote them down, and a report card at pickup. Half the bill is due when you book. A dog or cat that is 10 or older needs a senior questionnaire before the stay is confirmed, and Red Dog will not give that older pet an injection. The care team is there overnight. The lobby is not: weekdays 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. It is also closed for check-in and check-out on New Year’s Day, Easter, Memorial Day, the Fourth, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The Boston price list includes a bedtime tuck-in with the Presidential Patio and the Seasonal Suite. On a cheaper room, the tuck-in is an add-on, and so is a pup cup or a mid-day snack. Luxe Pet Resort, at 1220 VFW Parkway in West Roxbury, will sell a cat a Beachfront villa for $100 a night. Garden View is $50. A standard villa is $45. Food and the litter box sit in separate parts of the room. Two cats from the same house can be joined through a porthole. Dogs get their own crate-free suites, daycare included, at a posted premium rate of $90 a night. Peak dates add $10 for a dog and $5 for a cat. Luxe says someone is on site all night. The hours for walking in the front door do not match from one part of the site to the next, so ask for the pickup time before you pay. Grooming and dog hikes are extra. Dry food has to be portioned by meal. Wet food can stay in the can. MSPCA-Angell boards healthy dogs and cats at 350 South Huntington Avenue, and only if that pet has seen one of its non-emergency veterinarians in the past year. An emergency visit does not count. The suites are separate from the hospital wards. Dogs get four private walks a day, and photos go out twice a day. If the animal gets sick, the vets are in the same building. Pets that need more care than a healthy stay can be booked as medical boarding instead. Bathing is available before pickup. Drop-off and pickup run 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day. A boarding assistant can be reached from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. After that, nobody at the boarding desk is picking up. Get the tour. Ask which vaccines they want, whether a new dog has to pass a trial day, who is in the building after the lobby locks, what time pickup actually ends, and what the stay costs once the deposit and the holiday rate are on the bill.

5 apple-picking trips near Boston made for adults

Stay for hard cider, beer, or a meal once the bag is full. Apple picking is better when filling the bag is only the first part of the plan. These farms pair the usual fall activity with hard cider, beer, wine, good food, or somewhere worth staying after you have gathered far more apples than any household needs. None of these orchards is adults-only. Children will still be present. The difference is that each place gives adults something to do besides supervise a bag of Honeycrisps and pretend the corn maze was their idea. Belkin Family Lookout Farm has its own brewery, cidery, and year-round taproom, and it sits only 17 miles from Boston. That makes it the easiest option when you want apple picking near Boston without handing the whole day to Route 2. The South Natick farm grows apples and Asian pears and produces its own hard cider and beer. After picking, go to the Taproom for drinks and farm barbecue, or eat outside at The Lookout while it is open for the season. The current menu runs burgers, barbecue, shareable plates, and an apple cider donut ice cream sandwich that undoes the orchard walk fairly quickly. U-pick admission is required to enter the orchard, and outside food and drinks are not allowed. Check the current picking schedule and Taproom hours before you leave. The orchard and dining areas keep different schedules. Carlson Orchards pours cider beside the trees that produced it. The 100-acre farm in Harvard grows more than 20 apple varieties and runs a Cider Barn serving drinks made from its own fruit. Pick-your-own runs daily during apple season, but the Cider Barn opens Friday through Sunday. Plan for that. Going on a Tuesday and finding the cider half of the trip closed would be a needlessly wholesome outcome. The Cider Barn serves several house-made hard ciders, including bottles made with heirloom American and European cider apples. The retail store has sweet cider, baked goods, and fruit for anyone who wants apples without removing them from a tree. Carlson asks visitors to check daily updates before coming because available varieties change through the season. Pets are not allowed in the orchard. Nashoba Valley Winery turns apple picking into lunch and drinks. The Bolton property stacks an orchard, winery, brewery, distillery, tasting room, outdoor dining, and restaurant on one hill. It is less a quick pick stop than a full schedule. Start in the orchard and buy bags before you pick. Once the apples are handled, the tasting room offers wine, beer, cider, and spirits produced on the farm. The outdoor Knoll serves lunch and drinks. J’s Restaurant covers the more formal version of the day with dinner and Sunday brunch. Weekend winery tours include tastings for guests 21 and older; reservations help. Restaurant service, tastings, tours, and orchard access have separate hours, so decide which parts matter before you go. Otherwise you can finish picking just as the thing you actually drove to Bolton for stops serving. Cider Hill Farm in Amesbury is strongest on a Friday afternoon. The farm has apple picking, a bakery, a farm store, hard cider, food trucks, and cider donuts that often become the point of the trip. The smartest adult move is one of the farm’s Fall Fridays. The 2026 series runs Friday afternoons through October 23, with apple picking, hard cider, guest food trucks, and live music. It is a better use of Friday than sitting in traffic at 5:15 while insisting you left work early. Picking tickets are sold by bag size, and the orchard has moderate inclines and uneven ground. Tickets may be available on arrival, but buying them before the trip removes one possible disappointment. Leave the dog home. Pets are not allowed on the farm. Red Apple Farm in Phillipston is the farthest trip on this list, and it also gives you the most reasons not to turn around right after picking. The farm grows more than the standard supermarket lineup, with varieties ripening from late July through October. September brings McIntosh, Honeycrisp, Macoun, Cortland, Empire, and several harder-to-find apples. The exact selection depends on the harvest, so call before driving if you have one particular apple in mind. After the orchard, the farm has its own Cidery and the Brew Barn, a restaurant and taproom serving local beer, Red Apple Farm hard cider, and barbecue. Live music is part of the schedule. That is enough to make the long drive a fall day trip instead of a grocery errand with better scenery. Picking conditions can change quickly. The farm recommends calling to confirm what is available that day. Check three things before leaving: what apples are available, when the orchard stops admitting pickers, and when alcohol service begins. Those hours are rarely identical. Pick first. Most orchards close their fields before their bars, restaurants, or taprooms stop serving, and nobody has improved an apple-picking trip by arriving after the orchard gate shuts.

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Get to know Boston

Boston Explained How the Irish saved Halloween in Boston
Boston’s weather beacon has a special signal for the Red SoxBoston’s weather beacon has a baseball setting. The red and blue lights on the old John Hancock building were designed to announce a forecast, but a flashing red signal during baseball season has also meant a Red Sox home game was postponed. Apparently rain is not specific enough until it affects Fenway. The beacon sits on the Berkeley Building at 200 Berkeley Street in Back Bay. It is the older Hancock building, not the much taller glass tower at 200 Clarendon Street. If you are looking for the lights on the glass one, you have the wrong Hancock. How to read Boston’s weather beacon The basic weather-beacon code uses two colors and two behaviors. Steady blue means clear weather. Flashing blue means clouds. Steady red means rain, while flashing red is the snow signal. Notice both parts before trying to read it. Blue alone does not supply the whole message, and neither does red. Whether the light holds steady or flashes makes the difference between two forecasts. The familiar rhyme pairs a clear view with steady blue, clouds due with flashing blue, rain ahead with steady red and snow instead with flashing red. You do not need to recite it on the sidewalk. Remembering the colors and the flashing pattern will do. The system gives you a broad category rather than a detailed forecast. It cannot tell you how many inches of snow to expect, what time the rain will start or whether your particular walk home will be dry. That was never information two colors could comfortably carry. The lights arrived after the building The Berkeley Building opened in 1947. Its weather beacon first lit on March 15, 1950, according to Atlas Obscura’s history of the structure. The beacon rises above the office tower, making the signal visible beyond the immediate block. A building that communicated by colored light was a useful idea before everyone carried a screen. Someone who knew the code could glance up and get the message without buying a paper or waiting for a broadcast. The weather service has not been continuous. The beacon went dark during the 1973 energy crisis and returned in 1983. In 2020, steady blue was used as a tribute to hospital workers during the pandemic, temporarily giving a familiar color a different meaning. Those interruptions are a reason to understand the lights as a piece of Boston history, rather than treat every photograph of them as an exact record of the weather. A blue beacon in an old image may be carrying a message other than clear skies. The Red Sox got their own signal The baseball connection extends beyond a rainout. After the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, the beacon flashed red and blue together. The usual forecast could wait. The combination was repeated for the championships in 2007 and 2013. It is a pleasingly Boston use of an office-building fixture: two colors responsible for clouds and precipitation recruited to announce that the Red Sox had done something worth looking up for. The Curse of the Bambino story explains why 2004 carried so much weight. The championship ended a wait that had lasted since 1918, long before the Berkeley Building or its lights existed. Look for the older Hancock The two Hancock buildings can make directions confusing. The Berkeley Building is the one with the stepped top and beacon. The reflective glass skyscraper is 200 Clarendon, the later tower associated with the same company. The beacon belongs in a wider collection of Boston signs and signals that people recognize without necessarily knowing their original job. A corporate building can become a reference point for people who have never worked inside it. View the lights from a public sidewalk or another open vantage point, and give yourself a few seconds to distinguish steady from flashing. For a game-day decision, check the Red Sox’s announcement directly. The skyline is good at shorthand, but it cannot explain what happens to your ticket. Boston’s streets make absolutely no senseTake a wrong turn in downtown Boston and the city seems to rearrange itself behind you. A street bends without warning, changes its name, feeds into something called a square, and sends you back toward the place you just left. The usual explanation is that Boston paved over cow paths. It is repeated so often that it sounds like established history. The better explanation involves a small peninsula, private property, enormous amounts of fill and several towns that became Boston after laying out streets of their own. Boston’s streets started on a much smaller piece of land When English colonists established Boston in 1630, the Shawmut Peninsula was connected to the mainland by a narrow strip called Boston Neck. The route across it roughly followed present-day Washington Street toward Roxbury. There wasn't much room to leave town. The National Park Service describes the original peninsula as a place of three prominent hills, wetlands and estuaries. This was Massachusett land long before English settlement. Much of the ground that now seems inseparable from downtown Boston was still water. Early streets connected the places colonists needed to reach: houses, meetinghouses, markets, docks and fresh water. Routes fitted around slopes, shorelines and property. What served a small port town did not anticipate delivery trucks or someone trying to make a left turn on the way to a parking garage. The cows had other things to do Cows and sheep really did graze on Boston Common. The city eventually banned grazing there in 1830. That history explains why livestock belongs in the story, but it doesn't establish that wandering cattle determined the street plan. Ralph Waldo Emerson helped the idea stick. As Boston.com recounts in its examination of the cow-path story, he wrote, “we say the cows laid out Boston.” The article's historians point instead to fresh water, property boundaries and the original terrain as practical reasons for the early routes. A path used by animals might also have been used by people. That possibility is a long way from explaining an entire city. The cow story survives because it is easier to remember than the history of somebody else's property line. Boston made more land and gave it different streets Boston spent centuries creating room to grow. Hills were cut down, tidal areas were filled and the shoreline moved outward. The Leventhal Map & Education Center's account of landmaking describes both the physical work and the financial incentive: new ground could become valuable property. The result is particularly easy to see in Back Bay. Its rectangular blocks look different from the older streets downtown because they came from a different process. Planners could set out a street system for land being created, rather than fit roads around an existing waterfront town. Arthur Gilman produced his Back Bay plan in 1856. Filling began the following year and continued for almost four decades, according to the Friends of the Public Garden's history of Commonwealth Avenue Mall. The broad central mall gave the new neighborhood a long, planted space between its roadways. Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester and Hereford streets even proceed alphabetically. Commonwealth Avenue, Newbury Street and Boylston Street run alongside one another. For a few blocks, Boston gives you a system you can remember. Boston also bought into other towns' street maps Today's city includes communities that developed separately. The city's annexation timeline records Roxbury joining in 1868 and Dorchester in 1870. Charlestown, Brighton and West Roxbury followed in 1874. Hyde Park joined in 1912. Those places already had roads, town centers and property boundaries. Becoming part of Boston did not erase them or require their streets to meet a Back Bay grid. A trip across the city can take you through several different systems without a sign announcing the change. Later traffic rules added another complication. One-way streets and turn restrictions can make a short route on foot a much longer trip behind the wheel. Knowing where a place is and knowing how to drive there are separate accomplishments. To see the difference without dealing with either problem, start on foot in Back Bay. Follow its rectangular blocks, then cross toward Beacon Hill's older, narrower streets. The change in the map is right under your shoes. Why Bostonians say “wicked” so much“Wicked good” is a compliment. “Wicked expensive” is a complaint. The same word does both jobs without any concern for whether the subject deserves praise. In Boston, “wicked” often means very or extremely. It turns up the volume on whatever comes next. Say someone is wicked tired and you mean they are very tired, not that they have become a worse person. The meaning comes from how the word is being used. That is the useful thing to know before attempting a Boston impression. You can pronounce every R and still use the word correctly. You can also drop every R and put “wicked” in a sentence where it sounds like you learned to speak from a souvenir sweatshirt. Why Bostonians say wicked before almost anything In this usage, “wicked” is an intensifier. Merriam-Webster records its adverbial meaning alongside the older adjective meaning morally bad. The two uses can occupy the same language without confusion. A wicked person and a wicked good sandwich are different propositions. Think of “wicked cold,” “wicked funny” or “wicked crowded.” The word strengthens the description. It does not tell you whether to like the thing being described. Someone saying the restaurant was wicked busy might be recommending it, explaining a long wait, or wishing they had stayed home. The placement is more important than putting on an accent. “That was wicked good” has the familiar local construction. “That was wicked,” meaning excellent, is another slang use, but it does a different grammatical job. Adding the word everywhere will not make every sentence sound more Boston. The Puritans do not get automatic credit Boston’s reputation makes an origin story involving stern Puritans tempting. But the fact that an old word existed in England does not prove that seventeenth-century settlers brought this particular local use with them. The language program A Way with Words discusses “wicked” as a New England intensifier. That regional association is useful. It does not supply the name of the first person who said it, or a neat date when everyone in Massachusetts agreed to start. There is no need to invent a founding ceremony. People repeat words they hear in their families and communities, and a familiar expression can feel entirely ordinary to one speaker and immediately regional to another. “Wicked” works perfectly well without a colonial certificate of authenticity. Ordering a frappe does not require dropping an R Other local words need a little more translation. A frappe is a thick milkshake; the familiar New England pronunciation rhymes with “cap.” The spelling can make visitors expect a different word, especially if they are thinking of a coffee drink. For an order, the menu is more useful than a debate over terminology. Ask what is in the drink if the distinction matters. Regional vocabulary is interesting until it becomes the reason you receive something other than the ice cream you wanted. “Bubbler” means a drinking fountain, with a history that reaches beyond Massachusetts. Our bubbler explainer separates the regional word from a frequently repeated manufacturing story. Calling it a water fountain is also a perfectly effective way to ask for water. Vocabulary is not the same as an accent The Boston accent concerns sounds: which R’s a speaker pronounces, what happens between words, and how vowels are formed. Vocabulary concerns the words chosen. They overlap in conversation, but one does not require the other. A person raised here might say “wicked” constantly, occasionally, or never. Another might arrive from elsewhere and pick it up. Neither case is a useful citizenship test. Boston contains more than one way of speaking, and ordinary conversation is less uniform than the movie version. If the word is new to you, listen to what follows it. Good, bad, fast, slow, cheap, expensive: the next word does the describing. “Wicked” just makes sure you heard. Bostonians call drinking fountains ‘bubblahs’Ask for a bubbler in parts of New England and someone may point you toward a drinking fountain. Ask in Wisconsin and the same thing can happen. Boston does not have this word to itself, even when it pronounces the ending differently. “Bubblah” is a written attempt to capture the local pronunciation of “bubbler.” The object is familiar: a fixture that sends up a stream of water for someone to drink. Its regional name has generated a surprisingly persistent origin story involving a plumbing company and a trademark. A bubbler is a drinking fountain Merriam-Webster identifies “bubbler” as a drinking fountain. The word is not a joke invented for visitors or a different kind of beverage. If someone tells you there is a bubbler down the hall, they are giving you directions to water. The name is descriptive enough. Water rises from a small outlet, making a short bubbling stream. “Drinking fountain” describes its purpose; “bubbler” describes what the water appears to do. Neither name requires a complicated explanation to be useful. That does not mean every Bostonian uses it. A family’s vocabulary, where someone went to school and the people around them all help shape which words feel ordinary. Hearing “water fountain” from a Boston resident is not evidence that they are secretly from somewhere else. The Kohler story needs a correction One popular account claims that Kohler invented the fixture, called it the Bubbler and watched the brand name become a general term. Versions of the story even identify an inventor named Harlan Huckleby. WUWM investigated that account with historian Beth Dippel, who had worked with Kohler’s archivist. The company records did not establish the supposed employee, and the dates in the story did not fit the business’s manufacturing history. Kohler did later make a design called a bubbler. But the word was already in use. That is the important distinction: a company using a name does not establish that it invented the name. Dippel discussed an older attachment on school water containers as one possible explanation. She presented it as a theory. The reporting does not replace one tidy invention story with another proved beyond doubt. Why the final R sometimes disappears The spelling “bubblah” moves the discussion from vocabulary to pronunciation. In the traditional Boston accent, an R after a vowel may disappear before a pause or another consonant. That is the pattern people are trying to represent with the “ah” ending. It does not mean a speaker removes every R from every word. R’s at the beginning of words remain, and an R can connect a word to a following vowel. The same person can sound different when saying a word alone and when using it in a sentence. The word and the accent also travel separately. A speaker can call a fixture a bubbler while pronouncing its R. Another can have a strong local accent and call it a drinking fountain. Treating those choices as inseparable makes a caricature out of ordinary speech. Other words that can trip up a visitor A frappe is another useful example. The dictionary records the thick-milkshake meaning and the pronunciation “frap.” Recognizing the word helps you order; copying the server’s accent adds nothing to the transaction. Then there is “wicked” used to mean very. It changes the strength of a description rather than naming a different object. These are separate features of regional English, not a script that everyone in Boston follows. A bottle-filling station may stand beside a traditional drinking fountain, but the fixtures serve different actions: one fills your container, while the other lets you drink directly from the stream.The next time you hear “bubblah,” you do not need to settle a trademark dispute or demonstrate your local credentials. You just need to find the fountain.

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