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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 best Korean BBQ restaurants in Boston
Korean BBQ in Boston can mean settling in around a grill with several cuts of beef and pork, or ordering a plate of bulgogi with a bowl of stew. Those are different meals, and choosing the right restaurant starts with knowing which one you want. These five places cover Boston, Cambridge and Medford. Naksan has staff cook the meat for you. Sura offers all-you-can-eat barbecue. Seoul gives downtown diners barbecue combinations alongside a much broader menu. Gather people who are willing to share, then work out the order together. Naksan Korean BBQ is on Commonwealth Avenue, where staff handle the cooking at your table. Its beef and pork combinations come with egg soufflé and a choice of kimchi or soybean stew. For a bigger meal, the Grand Tour adds beef tartare with caviar, several beef cuts and ice cream. Japanese A5 Wagyu is another option. This is a place to look at the combinations before adding separate dishes. Let the size of your group and the cuts you want guide the order. Naksan’s reservation policy says Friday and Saturday dinner is walk-in only, and parties larger than seven should call. Sura Korean BBQ in Medford is the all-you-can-eat choice on this list. The Boston menu currently lists a $30 regular package and a $40 premium package per person, before additional charges such as tax and drinks. Everyone in the party must choose the same package. Premium adds short-rib options and beef tongue. You select meat from the self-service area and cook it at your table. The meal also includes the appetizer and salad bar and made-to-order Korean dishes, including pancakes and steamed egg. Reservations are offered. Start with a manageable selection; you can decide what to repeat after the first round. Korean Garden in Allston offers both tabletop barbecue and dishes cooked in the kitchen. The barbecue menu lists short ribs, beef brisket, pork belly, chicken and shrimp, with a minimum of two orders for table cooking. The broader menu includes kimchi pancakes, rice cakes, soups and bibimbap, which helps when a group wants more than grilled meat. Its posted hours run later Thursday through Saturday than on the other nights. Confirm the last kitchen order if you are heading over late; the closing time alone does not tell you when a full barbecue meal can still begin. Koreana gives Cambridge diners a tabletop barbecue option on Prospect Street near Central Square. The built-in grills have ventilation above the cooking area, and the menu includes galbi, bulgogi and pork belly. Seafood scallion pancakes, cold noodles and tofu stews give you several ways to round out the meat order. Choose it for a meal where the table is sharing, rather than trying to fit barbecue into a rushed lunch. Ask the restaurant about the grill setup and ordering requirements when arranging your visit. A pancake for the table and a couple of different meat dishes make a more varied starting point than everyone choosing the same thing. Seoul Restaurant on Cambridge Street offers Korean barbecue plates alongside sushi, noodles and stews. The barbecue combinations pair choices such as beef bulgogi, pork belly or LA kalbi with soft tofu stew, cold noodles or stone-pot bibimbap. That gives you a way to order barbecue as part of a complete individual meal. It is a useful downtown option when everyone wants a different dinner. One person can choose a barbecue combination while another orders soup or sushi. Reserve through the restaurant’s website if you are planning an evening visit, and specify what kind of meal you have in mind. Before booking Korean BBQ in Boston Ask for a barbecue table if you want the grill, and confirm any minimum order before sitting down. Compare the price of a meat combination with its recommended party size, rather than assuming every listed price is per person. At an all-you-can-eat restaurant, agree on the package with everyone at the table and order quantities you expect to finish. For drinks afterward, our Boston speakeasy guide includes choices in Boston and Somerville. If part of the group would rather skip barbecue, the restaurant guide offers shared plates and other dinner options.
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.
What the colors of the Zakim Bridge lights mean
Green on the Zakim does not automatically mean the Celtics. Purple does not have one permanent meaning either. The Zakim Bridge lights change for holidays, memorials, and awareness campaigns, and the same color can stand for several unrelated things in a single year. MassDOT publishes a dated lighting calendar. Match the night to the entry, check that the Zakim is one of the bridges listed, and you have a better answer than guessing from the color alone. That last part matters. The state schedules several bridges on the same page. An entry for the Longfellow or the Braga is not automatically an entry for the Zakim. Where to check the Zakim Bridge lights The MassDOT bridge lighting schedule lists the occasion, color, date, and participating bridges. Use the current year, especially if the photo you are looking at has been reposted without a date. The 2026 calendar is a useful demonstration of why a universal color key would fail. Green has already been used for St. Patrick’s Day, Boston Legacy Football Club, and Living Donation Week. Blue has appeared for World Parkinson’s Day and for the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11. Those are not competing theories. They are different nights. A blue bridge photographed in April cannot explain a blue bridge photographed in September. Two September nights this year make the point. On September 11 the Zakim was blue. On September 13 it was green, and that night the Zakim was the only bridge on the list. Same week. Different colors. Different reasons. Multi-color displays can be easier to tell apart, though the date still matters. The schedule names combinations as well as single colors. Read the full line before attaching a meaning to a picture, particularly when the occasion is a memorial or a health campaign. Who gets to decide MassDOT’s bridge lighting policy, dated November 14, 2023, says special displays express the agency’s official views. The bridges are not a public billboard and not an open platform for anyone’s message. A change needs approval from the department’s Office of the General Counsel and the transportation secretary’s concurrence. The policy covers state and federal holidays, other national observances, and public commemorations and celebrations at the national, state, or local level. The calendar can still move after that approval. A screenshot is useful evidence of an earlier plan. The live page is the better place to check what is scheduled now. The Zakim is one of several state bridges with programmable lights. The policy also names the Longfellow, Fore River, Kenneth F. Burns, and Braga bridges. Matching colors across the state can be one coordinated observance, not a coincidence. Why blue looks familiar Blue is also the bridge’s ordinary night look. Color Kinetics, which worked with MassDOT on the LED system, describes the design as blue-lit towers with the cables picked out in white. The company cites architect Miguel Rosales, who wanted a formal entrance to Boston. The LED system was unveiled in December 2012. It replaced older metal halide lights that had been on the bridge since it opened in 2002 and had grown dim. The new fixtures can hold the familiar blue or shift for a listed occasion. The lighting is not a new coat of paint. It is a programmed change. Blue by itself is therefore not enough to identify a tribute. Check whether a special blue display was on the calendar for that night before assigning it a meaning. Read the date before the symbolism For an old photograph, establish the date before looking up the color. For a night you have not seen yet, check the calendar again close to the date. If the page has no matching entry for the Zakim, leave the occasion unconfirmed rather than borrowing one from another month or another bridge. The fastest route to the answer is the least dramatic: date, bridge name, calendar line. Boston has other lights with a code, including the weather beacon on the old Hancock. This one usually comes with a schedule.