Thu, Oct 8
Boston’s go-to local guide
200,000+ Bostonians use Secret Boston to find the city’s best spots and events.
The Move
Coming up in Boston
Thu, Oct 8
Sat, Oct 10
Sat, Oct 17
Places to go
-
Via Cannuccia
- Cozy
- Upscale
-
Little Sage
- Cozy
- Upscale
-
Willie’s
- Cozy
- Lively
-
Prima Boston
- Lively
- Trendy
- Upscale
Guides
Haunted places in Boston
Boston has been accumulating dead people since 1630, so the ghost stories had time to pile up. The places are real, ghosts, possibly. Harvey D. Parker opened the hotel in 1855. The hotel has published the ghost stories. In a 1992 Boston Globe interview quoted by the hotel, bellman John Brehm said he first heard about Parker’s ghost when he started work in 1941. The story then was that Parker roamed the 10th-floor annex. Around 1950, a guest said she saw a heavyset man with a black mustache in that hall. Security went up and found nobody. Other reports from that floor are a rocking chair in a room that does not have one, and lights moving down the corridor. In a separate story, a mother and daughter in room 1012 said a man in old clothes stood at the foot of the bed and then vanished. At breakfast, his portrait was hanging in the dining room. The granite building beside Massachusetts General Hospital was the Charles Street Jail, finished in 1851. In 1973, after prisoners revolted over the conditions, a court found the jail in violation of the inmates’ constitutional rights. The last prisoners left on Memorial Day weekend in 1990. It reopened as The Liberty Hotel in 2007. The rotunda, the catwalks, and some of the cells are still there. CLINK. serves dinner in the old cells. Alibi is in the former drunk tank. Ghost tours describe footsteps and former prisoners. The hotel’s own history does not. The theater opened in 1903. The stories that get repeated are a well-dressed couple in the balcony, a little girl who supposedly takes gifts left for her, and a former mayor who died in his seat during a performance. There is no record of a Boston mayor dying at the Majestic. People who have worked in the building still describe a man in a suit in the balcony lobby, and a child’s voice in the house. The restaurant opened in 1826, in a building that was already old. During the Revolution the second floor was headquarters for Ebenezer Hancock, paymaster of the Continental Army, and soldiers were paid where people now eat. Staff have talked about flickering lights, electronics that quit, footsteps, and a man in colonial clothes bent over a desk. Tour guides say that man is Hancock. A separate story involves a chef named Henry, seen by a coworker around the time Henry died. John F. Kennedy’s booth is upstairs, with a plaque. Ghost tours add a Kennedy haunting. The restaurant’s history page mentions the booth and stops there. Photo by Robert Linsdell King’s Chapel Burying Ground opened in 1630. It is the oldest burying ground in Boston proper. It filled up, and in 1660 the town opened the Granary Burying Ground nearby. Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and the Boston Massacre victims are there, along with thousands of people who no longer have a stone. Both grounds are regular stops on ghost tours. Visitors report footsteps, cold spots, and someone in colonial clothes who is not leading a tour. The sightings are not verified. Fort Warren is on Georges Island in Boston Harbor. Construction ran from 1833 to 1861, and during the Civil War the fort held Confederate prisoners. The ghost story is the Lady in Black. In the version Boston Harbor Islands tells, she is Melanie Lanier, who rowed to the island to free her husband Andrew, a Confederate prisoner, and was hanged in black. Historians have not found a record of her. Edward Rowe Snow is the one who spread the tale. Georges Island is a ferry ride. Check whether the boats are running before you go.
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.
Get to know Boston
How the Irish saved Halloween in Boston
Samhain (pronounced SAH-win or SOW-in) is an ancient Gaelic festival that marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter Halloween customs turned up in other American colonies. Massachusetts sat them out. Anglican and Lutheran churches kept All Saints' Day. Maryland's Catholics did too. In the South, Scotch-Irish settlers, Scots who had lived in northern Ireland, sometimes went out in costume and called it guising. The Puritans who settled here took a dim view of all of it. The Commonwealth Museum's history of the holiday traces the night to Samhain, the Celtic new year on November 1, when the dead of the past year were thought to come back for a verdict. Disguises, and a candle in a hollowed turnip, were supposed to keep the spirits away. In the eighth century, the museum says, Pope Gregory III set All Saints' Day on November 1. The eve became All Hallows Eve. Halloween is that name, worn down. The church would rather you dressed as a saint. What people actually did on October 31 still changed from one place to the next. Artist's depiction of Pope Night in Boston, 1768 Pope Night was a different riot Boston already knew how to wreck an evening in early November. The occasion was Pope Night, November 5. Old North Church traces it to Guy Fawkes Day, the anniversary of the 1605 plot to blow up Parliament. The North End and the South End each built an effigy, the pope and often the devil, and hauled it through the streets. The crowds met and fought for the figures. North End winners burned them on Copp's Hill. South End winners burned them on the Common. Isaiah Thomas, who was in the fights, wrote that broken heads were not infrequent. In 1764 a boy was run over by a cart and killed. Houses along the way were expected to hand over money. Skip the payment and the windows could go. That is still not Halloween. The Commonwealth Museum says the connection to later Halloween pranks is not clear, and that Guy Fawkes Day is a stretch as an origin. Pope Night was an anti-Catholic riot with its own date. In 1775 George Washington ordered the army to stop burning the pope in effigy. The colonies wanted Catholic allies in Canada. Old North treats that order as the end of the holiday in Boston. Traditional Irish halloween Jack-o'-lantern made out of a turnip. Photo by rannṗáirtí anaiṫnid County Cork, then a pumpkin The customs Bostonians now recognize arrived with Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century, after the Great Famine began in 1845. In County Cork, the museum says, people wore costumes on Halloween and announced themselves at a house with cow's horns. Food or a drink from the household was supposed to bring prosperity. The lantern was a turnip with a candle in it. Once those immigrants were here, a pumpkin did the job better. There is more face on a pumpkin than on a turnip, and less of a fight. They did not invent trick-or-treating. One older thread, also in the museum's account, is the medieval soul cake: bread for the poor, prayers for the dead in exchange. The pillowcase version came later. Costumes, a stop at the door, and a lantern were the Irish Halloween traditions that Boston actually got. The Globe caught on in 1884 On October 31, 1884, the Boston Daily Globe ran "Why Thousands Will Think of Erin Tonight." The Commonwealth Museum cites the headline. Halloween historian Lesley Bannatyne quotes the article. It describes Ireland, not a candy route through Boston: a church fast that fell apart when the party started, colcannon sent from the country, and "parties of young men and their sweethearts" going house to house among relatives and friends. The candy holiday was still ahead of that. Newspapers, magazines, and clubs from the Scouts to the Rotary spread Halloween in the twentieth century, the museum says. Trick-or-treaters were being spotted in Wellesley by the 1920s. After the Second World War, the baby boom made it a product. Manufactured costumes and decorations arrived then.
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.