142 haunted destinations cataloged across Massachusetts, spanning 22 counties. The collection features museum, cemetery, and haunted hotel — every listing verified with family ratings, accessibility info, and practical visit logistics.
Hull, MA
Nantasket Beach in Hull, Massachusetts, occupies a narrow peninsula at the mouth of Boston Harbor. The area has been inhabited since the Plymouth Colony established a trading post there in 1621. Hull's maritime history is defined by shipwrecks — dozens have occurred in the harbor approaches — and by lifesaving hero Captain Joshua James, credited with saving more than 500 lives from wreck in Boston Harbor.
Cambridge, MA
Wadsworth House was built in 1726 as the residence for Harvard president Benjamin Wadsworth and was used as a president's home until 1849. It is Harvard's second-oldest surviving building and briefly served as George Washington's headquarters in July 1775 before he moved to the larger Vassall House (today's Longfellow House). In 2016, Harvard installed a plaque at the building memorializing four enslaved people — Titus, Venus, Juba, and Bilhah — who lived and labored there.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPCambridge, MA
University Hall is a granite Harvard administration building designed by Charles Bulfinch and completed in 1815. It originally housed faculty offices and four large student dining halls. The building was the site of the 'Rebellion of 1818,' a food fight that escalated into mass expulsions, and of the 1969 student takeover protesting the Vietnam War. A 2022 memorial by sculptor Martin Puryear, located adjacent to the building, commemorates enslaved people whose labor contributed to Harvard.
Cambridge, MA
Christ Church Cambridge was built 1760–1761 to a design by Peter Harrison, the first formally trained architect to work in the British colonies. It is a National Historic Landmark and the oldest church building in Cambridge. The congregation, founded in 1759 as an Anglican parish for Cambridge's Loyalist gentry on Brattle Street's 'Tory Row,' fled at the outbreak of the Revolution; the building was used to quarter Connecticut Continental troops during the Siege of Boston.
Cambridge, MA
Hicks House was built in 1762 for John Hicks, a Cambridge carpenter and one of two known Cambridge participants in the December 1773 Boston Tea Party. Hicks was killed on April 19, 1775 — the day of the Battles of Lexington and Concord — while fighting British troops withdrawing through Menotomy (now Arlington). The house was moved in 1928 and integrated into Harvard's Kirkland House as its library.
Salem, MA
The Joshua Ward House in Salem, Massachusetts was built in 1784 for merchant Joshua Ward on the foundation of Sheriff George Corwin's 1692 home. Salem craftsman Samuel McIntire executed the interior woodwork, including the oldest surviving staircase attributed to him. President George Washington stayed at the house during his 1789 New England tour. The property currently operates as The Merchant, a Lark Hotels boutique property.
Boston, MA
The Sherry Biltmore Hotel, a residential building at 150 Massachusetts Avenue (then numbered 146), was the site of a five-alarm fire on March 29, 1963 that killed four people. Berklee College of Music purchased the building in 1972 and converted it into a residential dormitory.
Boston, MA
The Boston Conservatory was founded in 1867 as an independent music conservatory. The building at 8 Fenway occupies the former site of a 19th-century hospital. The Boston Conservatory merged with Berklee College of Music on June 1, 2016, becoming Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
Boston, MA
Boston Light, established in 1716 on Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor, is the oldest lighthouse in the United States. The first keeper, George Worthylake, drowned with his wife and daughter in November 1718, a tragedy that Benjamin Franklin later versified. The original tower was destroyed by British forces in 1776; the current 89-foot granite tower was completed in 1783. Boston Light is the only staffed lighthouse in the US, maintained by the US Coast Guard.
Boston, MA
Built in 1923 as one of the original Sheraton Hotels, Kilachand Hall (formerly Shelton Hall) was purchased by Boston University in 1954. Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill lived in suite 401 from 1951 until his death in November 1953.
Boston, MA
Copp's Hill Burying Ground was established in 1659, making it Boston's second-oldest cemetery. The North End hillside served as the site of Boston's colonial-era free Black community's burials — including the Snowden family plot with more than 1,000 interments — as well as the graves of influential Puritan ministers Cotton Mather and Increase Mather. During the Revolutionary War, British troops occupied the hill as an artillery battery and used the headstones for target practice; the marked bullet holes on patriot Daniel Malcolm's headstone remain legible today.
Boston, MA
The Cutler Majestic Theatre at Emerson College, originally the Majestic Theatre, is a 1903 Beaux Arts opera house in Boston's Theatre District. Designed by John Galen Howard and commissioned by Eben Dyer Jordan, the theater served as a vaudeville house, a movie theater, and finally as a restored opera house operated by Emerson College.
Boston, MA
A fortification has occupied Castle Island in Boston Harbor since 1634, making it one of the oldest continuously fortified sites in the Western Hemisphere. The current masonry fort was built between 1834 and 1851. On Christmas Day 1817, officers Robert Massie and John Drane fought a duel on the grounds; Massie died of his wounds. An 1905 renovation uncovered a skeleton in military dress chained to the wall of an abandoned casemate, corroborating a long-standing local legend of entombment. Edgar Allan Poe was stationed at the fort in 1827.
Boston, MA
Fort Warren is a granite pentagonal coastal fort on Georges Island in Boston Harbor, designed by Colonel Sylvanus Thayer and built between 1833 and 1861. During the Civil War it served as a training facility for Massachusetts regiments and a prison for Confederate soldiers and civilian officials. The fort was decommissioned in 1947 and is now part of the Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park.
Boston, MA
Granary Burying Ground is Boston's third-oldest cemetery, established in 1660 on Tremont Street and renamed in 1737 for the granary building that once stood on the adjacent site of the present Park Street Church. Notable burials include three signers of the Declaration of Independence — Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Robert Treat Paine — along with Paul Revere, James Otis, the five Boston Massacre victims, and members of the Franklin family.
Boston, MA
Designed by architect Gridley James Fox Bryant and opened in 1851, the Charles Street Jail was one of the most modern prisons of its era — built on the radial plan with an octagonal rotunda and four granite cell wings. It operated continuously until 1990, housing inmates including Albert DeSalvo (the Boston Strangler), Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and James 'Whitey' Bulger. A 2007 adaptive reuse converted it into the 298-room Liberty Hotel while retaining the rotunda, catwalks, and granite shell.
Boston, MA
Harvey Parker opened the Parker House in Boston in 1855 on School Street, establishing what would become America's longest continuously operating hotel. The property occupies historically layered ground: the site previously held the Boston Latin School and the pre-Revolutionary Mico mansion. The current 551-room building, rebuilt in 1927, has hosted presidents, writers, and dignitaries for 170 years and is the birthplace of both the Boston Cream Pie and Parker House rolls.
Boston, MA
Riverside Theatre Works operates inside the 1897 French's Opera House on Fairmount Avenue in Hyde Park, Boston. The original opera house was built by L.J. French, suffered a fire in 1898, and was rebuilt larger and reopened in 1899. Riverside Theatre Works was founded in 1981 and moved into the opera house in 1983.
Boston, MA
The Pilot House at Lewis Wharf was built in 1839 as a dormitory-style inn for ship captains and harbor pilots stopping overnight in Boston Harbor. It now functions as a waterfront restaurant in Boston's North End/Atlantic Avenue corridor.
Cambridge, MA
Apthorp House was built in 1760 for the Reverend East Apthorp, the first rector of Christ Church Cambridge, in what was then a rural stretch of Tory Row. Its grand scale earned it the nickname 'the Bishop's Palace.' British General John 'Gentleman Johnny' Burgoyne was held there in 1777–78 after his surrender at Saratoga. The house is now the residence of the Adams House Faculty Deans.
Cambridge, MA
Cambridge Rindge and Latin School includes the War Memorial Recreation Center, which commemorates World War II soldiers. The facility houses a pool, gymnasium, and other athletic spaces within the school infrastructure.
Cambridge, MA
The Hooper-Lee-Nichols House was built around 1685 for Richard Hooper and is the second-oldest surviving residence in Cambridge. The building has passed through several families — Hooper, Lee, and Nichols — and is now the headquarters of History Cambridge (formerly the Cambridge Historical Society). It sits on Brattle Street's historic 'Tory Row.'
Cambridge, MA
The Vassall–Craigie–Longfellow House was built in 1759 by John Vassall, a wealthy Loyalist whose family fled at the outbreak of the Revolution. The house then served as George Washington's headquarters during the Siege of Boston from July 1775 to April 1776. From 1843 until his death in 1882, the house was the home of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It is now a National Historic Site administered by the National Park Service.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPCambridge, MA
Lowell House is a Harvard upperclassman residential House opened in 1930 as one of the original seven Houses funded by Edward Harkness. Designed by Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch and Abbott in a Georgian style, it is named for the Lowell family — a Boston Brahmin clan whose members included poet James Russell Lowell, astronomer Percival Lowell, and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Amy Lowell.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPCambridge, MA
Massachusetts Hall, constructed 1718–1720, is the oldest surviving Harvard building and the second-oldest academic building in the United States. It was designed as a student dormitory and has served as a barracks for Continental troops, a classroom building, an office building, and — since 1939 — the office of the Harvard president. The upper floors are still occupied by freshman students each year.
Cambridge, MA
Memorial Hall is a High Victorian Gothic complex completed in 1878 to commemorate Harvard's Union dead from the U.S. Civil War. Designed by Ware and Van Brunt, the building contains three main spaces: the Memorial Transept (the commemorative space), Sanders Theatre (a horseshoe-shaped performance space), and Annenberg Hall (now the freshman dining hall). The building is notable for omitting the names of Harvard's 64 known Confederate dead from its commemorative tablets.
Cambridge, MA
Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge and Watertown, Massachusetts, dedicated in 1831, is the first rural-style cemetery in the United States. Founded by Dr. Jacob Bigelow and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society on 72 acres, it broke with the Colonial-era model of dense urban churchyards and inspired more than 175 rural cemeteries across the country over the following four decades.
Cambridge, MA
The Old Burying Ground at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Garden Street was established in 1635 — one year before Harvard's founding — and was Cambridge's primary burial ground for nearly two centuries. It contains the graves of early Harvard presidents (including Henry Dunster, the first), Revolutionary War soldiers, and notable Cambridge colonists.
Cambridge, MA
The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library was built 1913–1915 as a memorial to Harvard alumnus Harry Elkins Widener (Class of 1907), who died aboard the RMS Titanic in 1912. The library was funded by his mother, Eleanor Elkins Widener, and houses the Widener Memorial Rooms — a preserved private library and reading rooms commemorating Harry's book collection.
Salem, MA
The Hawthorne Hotel opened July 23, 1925, constructed on land that had once been Bridget Bishop's apple orchard — Bishop was the first person executed during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The 93-room hotel was built at the initiative of local businessman Frank Poor, who envisioned a modern commercial hotel for Salem, and was inaugurated with a city-wide parade organized by the Salem Chamber and Rotary Club.
Salem, MA
Captain John Turner built the earliest section of this seaside mansion in 1668, making it one of the oldest surviving timber-framed houses in North America. Nathaniel Hawthorne's cousin Susanna Ingersoll lived here and inspired his 1851 novel of the same name. The site became a museum in 1910 under Caroline Emmerton's settlement association.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPSalem, MA
Howard Street Cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts opened in 1801 on the open field where Giles Corey was pressed to death during the 1692 witch trials. The 2.5-acre burial ground holds roughly 1,100 markers and sits next to the historic Salem jail site.
Salem, MA
Old Burying Point on Charter Street is Salem's oldest cemetery, established in 1637 and the second-oldest burying ground in the United States. The 1.47-acre cemetery contains roughly 700 headstones and 17 box tombs dating from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, including the grave of Salem Witch Trials magistrate John Hathorne.
Salem, MA
For over 300 years the precise location of the 1692 executions was uncertain. In 2016, the Gallows Hill Project — a team of scholars from Salem State University — confirmed through historical and geographic analysis that Proctor's Ledge, a rocky outcropping at the edge of Gallows Hill Park, was the actual hanging site. A granite memorial was dedicated July 19, 2017, the 325th anniversary of the first executions.
Salem, MA
Established in 1938 as the first National Historic Site in the United States, Salem Maritime preserves nine acres along Salem Harbor and twelve historic structures, including the 1762 Derby Wharf, the 1819 Custom House, and the Friendship of Salem tall-ship replica.
Salem, MA
The Salem Witch Dungeon Museum opened in 1979 inside an 1897 East Church chapel at 16 Lynde Street. It presents a live courtroom dramatization of a 1692 witch trial using transcribed dialogue, followed by a guided tour of a replica dungeon.
Salem, MA
The Salem Inn occupies three distinct Federal-period homes on Summer Street in Salem, Massachusetts. The oldest, West House, was built in 1834 by Captain Nathaniel West — the first Salem mariner to circumnavigate the globe. The adjacent Curwen House (1854) and Peabody House (1874) complete the ensemble, all listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Salem, MA
The Jonathan Corwin House at 310 Essex Street is the only surviving structure in Salem with direct ties to the 1692 Salem witch trials. Built circa 1675 and purchased by Corwin that same year, the house served as the site of pretrial examinations for several of the accused. The property has operated as a museum since 1948 under City of Salem ownership.
Salem, MA
The Jonathan Corwin House, known as the Witch House, was begun in 1675 by Captain Nathaniel Davenport and completed by Judge Jonathan Corwin (1640-1718). Corwin served on the Court of Oyer and Terminer that condemned 19 people to death by hanging during the 1692 Salem witch trials. The house was restored in 1945 by Historic Salem, Inc. and has operated as a city museum since 1947.
Plymouth, MA
Built in 1749 on Plymouth's Town Square, this two-story wood-frame building is believed to be the oldest wooden courthouse in the United States. In December 1778 the privateer brigantine General Arnold wrecked off Plymouth in a blizzard, and the bodies of dozens of frozen crewmen were brought to the courthouse before a mass funeral and burial.
Plymouth, MA
Cole's Hill, a low rise overlooking Plymouth Rock and the harbor, was the first cemetery used by the Mayflower Pilgrims. During the 'starving time' of the winter of 1620-1621, roughly half the colony died and was buried here, the graves left unmarked. A storm in 1735 washed human remains down the hill into the harbor.
Plymouth, MA
The John Carver Inn & Spa is an operating full-service hotel in the center of Plymouth, near Plymouth Rock and the waterfront. It is named for John Carver, the Plymouth Colony's first governor, and hosts the annual Plymouth ParaCon paranormal convention.
Plymouth, MA
The Mayflower Society House at 4 Winslow Street in Plymouth was built in 1754 by Edward Winslow, a loyalist and great-grandson of Pilgrim Edward Winslow, third governor of Plymouth Colony. The General Society of Mayflower Descendants bought the house in 1941 and operates it as a museum and its headquarters.
Plymouth, MA
The Spooner House at 27 North Street in Plymouth was built in 1749 for a widow, Hannah Jackson, and soon sold to Deacon Ephraim Spooner, a Plymouth merchant. The Spooner family occupied the house for more than 200 years. The Plymouth Antiquarian Society acquired it in 1920 and runs it as a historic house museum.
Plymouth, MA
The Taylor-Trask Museum is operated by the Plymouth Antiquarian Society and comprises two buildings: the 1725 Taylor House and the 1894 Trask Museum. The complex holds the society's Victorian-era furnishings and decorative-arts collection in the center of historic Plymouth.
Nantucket, MA
The Jared Coffin House at 29 Broad Street in Nantucket is an 1845 brick mansion built by whaling shipowner Jared Coffin. It is often called the first brick mansion built on the island. The building survived the Great Fire of 1846 that destroyed much of downtown Nantucket, and it operates today as an inn.
Nantucket, MA
The Nantucket Old Gaol on Vestal Street was built in 1805 for about $2,090 to replace an earlier jail. Constructed of massive oak timbers reinforced with iron, it held prisoners until 1933. The town transferred it to the Nantucket Historical Association in 1946, and it operates today as a museum.
Nantucket, MA
The Unitarian Universalist Meeting House, also called the Second Congregational Meeting House or South Church, was completed on Nantucket in 1809. Its tower houses the island's celebrated Town Clock and Portuguese bell. The congregation's first minister, Seth Freeman Swift, was ordained on April 27, 1810, and served until 1833.
Nantucket, MA
The Wauwinet began as the Wauwinet House, which first welcomed guests in 1875 at the remote eastern end of Nantucket. Named for a Wampanoag sachem of the island's eastern region, it grew through the early 1900s under owner James A. Backus and, after a major 1986-1988 renovation by the Karp family, reopened as the luxury inn The Wauwinet.
Provincetown, MA
Crowne Pointe is a restored Victorian mansion in central Provincetown that was home to a Yankee sea captain near the turn of the nineteenth century. Three carriage houses on the property historically lodged fishermen between voyages. It now operates as a luxury inn and spa.
Provincetown, MA
On July 26, 1974, the body of an unidentified woman was found in the Race Point dunes within the Cape Cod National Seashore in Provincetown. For nearly five decades she was known only as the Lady of the Dunes. In October 2022 the FBI and Provincetown police identified her as Ruth Marie Terry, born in Tennessee in 1936.
Provincetown, MA
The Pilgrim Monument is a 252-foot all-granite tower in Provincetown built between 1907 and 1910 to commemorate the Pilgrims' first landing in 1620. Its cornerstone was laid by President Theodore Roosevelt and it was dedicated by President William Howard Taft. It operates as a climbable observation tower with a museum at its base.
Provincetown, MA
Universalism arrived in Provincetown in 1820. The Church of the Redeemer (Universalist) was formed in 1829; the current Greek Revival meeting house, designed by Benjamin Hallett, was built in 1847 by off-duty seamen and fishermen and is the only surviving steeple in Provincetown. Listed on the National Register in 1972.
Worcester, MA
The Higgins Armory Museum opened January 12, 1931, founded by industrialist John Woodman Higgins of the Worcester Pressed Steel Company. Architect Joseph D. Leland designed the steel-and-glass building, originally called The Museum of Steel and Glass, to display Higgins's arms-and-armor collection. The museum closed at the end of 2013 and the collection was integrated into the Worcester Art Museum.
Worcester, MA
Fenwick Hall is the original 1843 academic building of the College of the Holy Cross, founded by Benedict Joseph Fenwick, the second Bishop of Boston, who named the college after the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. The cornerstone was laid June 21, 1843; the building was destroyed by fire in 1852 and rebuilt, reopening in 1853. It remains the campus's flagship structure and houses its prominent clock tower.
Worcester, MA
Opened November 24, 1928, as the Plymouth Theatre by architect Arlan W. Johnson, the building originally featured a Robert Morton pipe organ. It was renamed E.M. Loew's Center for the Performing Arts in 1980 and became The Palladium by 1990. Today it operates as a 2,160-seat rock and metal concert hall with a 500-seat upstairs room.
Worcester, MA
Higgins House was built in the early 1920s by industrialist Aldus C. Higgins and his wife Mary (May) Higgins as a 29-room Tudor Revival mansion designed by architect Grosvenor Atterbury and modeled on the c. 1525 Compton Wynyates Castle in Warwickshire, England. The Higgins family lived in the home until donating it to Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1971; it now houses WPI's Office of Alumni Relations.
Barnstable, MA
The Barnstable House was originally constructed in 1713 in Scituate and moved to its current Route 6A location above a freshwater spring in 1716. It has served as a private home, an inn, and a tavern across three centuries, and is one of Cape Cod's most documented colonial structures.
Barnstable, MA
The Barnstable Restaurant and Tavern operates on Route 6A in Barnstable Village, a stretch of the historic Old King's Highway lined with colonial-era buildings. It is one of several village sites woven into local haunted-history storytelling, anchored by the legend of Lucy Paine, a child tied to the neighboring Barnstable House.
Barnstable, MA
The Old Gaol in Barnstable Village was built in 1690 and is among the oldest surviving wooden jails in the United States. It held debtors, petty criminals, and others in cramped, unheated cells before the county built larger facilities. The structure now stands on the grounds of the U.S. Coast Guard Heritage Museum on Route 6A.
Bridgewater, MA
Tillinghast Hall is the original dormitory building at Bridgewater State University, dating to the 1800s. The building was destroyed in a major campus fire on December 10, 1924, and was rebuilt, reopening in 1926. It remains a prominent administrative and residential building on campus.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPBridgewater, MA
Camp Titticut was first settled by Native Americans in the 1500s and served as a seasonal settlement and burial ground. In 1930, the site was developed as a boys' summer camp, operating through the 1950s. Excavations in 1946 uncovered numerous Native American artifacts and remains. Most buildings were destroyed in the late 1980s.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPBridgewater, MA
Hockomock Swamp is a 16,950-acre freshwater wetland in southeastern Massachusetts, the largest such wetland in the state. The swamp's name comes from the Algonquian word commonly translated as place where spirits dwell, and the area sits at the center of the so-called Bridgewater Triangle, a roughly 200-square-mile area named by cryptozoologist Loren Coleman.
Fall River, MA
The Lizzie Borden House at 230 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts was built in 1845 and purchased by banker Andrew Borden, who modified it into a single-family residence. On August 4, 1892, Andrew and his wife Abby were killed with a hatchet in separate rooms. Daughter Lizzie Borden was tried and acquitted; the murders remain officially unsolved.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPFall River, MA
Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River was established in 1855 and covers more than 100 acres of landscaped, elevated ground in the rural-cemetery tradition. It is the burial place of many of the city's mill-owning families and of Lizzie Borden, acquitted in the 1892 murders of her father and stepmother, who was buried in the family plot in 1927.
Fall River, MA
The Quequechan Club building at 306 North Main Street in Fall River was built in 1861 as a private home in the Colonial Revival style. In 1894 it became the home of the Quequechan Club, a social club for the city's mill-owning and professional class. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 16, 1983.
Gloucester, MA
John Hays Hammond Jr. was one of the most prolific inventors in American history, holding over 400 patents by his death. Between 1926 and 1929 he built Hammond Castle on the Atlantic shoreline of Gloucester, Massachusetts — a medieval-style structure housing his private laboratory, an extensive collection of Roman, medieval, and Renaissance artifacts, and one of the largest pipe organs in private ownership.
Gloucester, MA
Dogtown is an abandoned inland village on Cape Ann, divided between Gloucester and Rockport, Massachusetts. First settled in 1693, the village grew to roughly 100 families by the mid-1700s before declining after the War of 1812. By 1828 the community was effectively abandoned, leaving cellar holes and stone walls that survive in present-day conservation land.
Gloucester, MA
Stage Fort Park in Gloucester sits on the site where the Dorchester Company landed in 1623 to attempt the first English settlement of Cape Ann. The point was fortified beginning in 1635 and garrisoned intermittently through the Spanish-American War. The fort visitors see today was reconstructed in the 20th century, and the grounds are now a public waterfront park.
Springfield, MA
The building at 1676-1700 Main Street began as the Massasoit House hotel in 1843. In the late 1920s, part of the hotel block was rebuilt into the 3,200-seat Paramount Theater, which opened in 1929 as one of New England's first theaters purpose-designed for sound film. It was added to the National Register in 1979, operated from 1999 to 2008 as the Hippodrome nightclub, and has sat largely vacant since.
Springfield, MA
Springfield Armory was the first national armory of the United States, established by Congress in 1794 on a site that had served as an arsenal since 1777 during the Revolutionary War. For 174 years it produced military small arms, including the Springfield Model 1861 rifle-musket of the Civil War and the M1 Garand of World War II, before closing in 1968. The site became a National Historic Site under the National Park Service in 1978 and now houses the world's largest collection of American military firearms.
Springfield, MA
Theodore's Booze, Blues and BBQ occupies the ground floor at 201 Worthington Street in downtown Springfield, with Smith's Billiards — one of the oldest continuously operating pool halls in New England — directly next door at 207 Worthington Street and one floor above. The two businesses are intertwined: Theodore's diners can have food carried upstairs to Smith's, and Smith's customers comp their table time by eating at Theodore's. The block sits in the heart of downtown Springfield's tavern and entertainment district.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPTaunton, MA
Pearl E. French was born August 21, 1878, and died March 26, 1882, from spinal meningitis at age three. Her parents commissioned an Empire-style rocking chair headstone carved from granite as a memorial, titled "Her Vacant Chair" after a poem about childhood mortality. Her cousin Veva Lucille Johnson, who also died of meningitis, was buried beside her in 1884.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPTaunton, MA
Mayflower Hill Cemetery, off Hodges Avenue in Taunton, served as the burial ground for patients of the Taunton State Hospital who died at the institution and were not claimed by relatives. Many were interred in a potter's field and marked only with numbered metal stakes rather than named headstones, a practice common at nineteenth- and twentieth-century state asylums.
Taunton, MA
Taunton State Hospital opened in April 1854 as the second state asylum in Massachusetts, set on a 154-acre farm along the Mill River. Its domed Kirkbride-plan administration building was a regional landmark; the dome was removed in 1999, a major fire struck the center of the building in March 2006, and the remaining historic sections were demolished in 2009-2010. The campus remains an operating state psychiatric facility.
Assonet, MA
The Freetown-Fall River State Forest covers more than 5,000 acres across Fall River, Freetown, and Lakeville, Massachusetts. Established in 1913, it offers more than 50 miles of trails. The forest is associated with the so-called Bridgewater Triangle and with a series of documented crimes, including the 1978 murder of teenager Mary Lou Arruda.
Assonet, MA
The Old Village House in Assonet, Massachusetts is a historic Victorian-era home in the village of Assonet, part of Freetown. The structure is the subject of a long-running local ghost tradition. The current building is privately owned, and detailed documentary history of the property is limited in publicly available sources.
Brockton, MA
Cape Cod Cafe opened in 1939 on Route 28 in Brockton, Massachusetts, taking its name from the road's role as the primary route to Cape Cod. The building previously operated as a funeral home. Third-generation owners now run the restaurant, maintaining the same bar pizza recipe developed in the early years.
Brockton, MA
Melrose Cemetery at 88 North Pearl Street is the largest cemetery in Brockton, Massachusetts, covering 126.5 acres and managed by the City of Brockton. The burial ground has roots extending to the mid-19th century and absorbed burials relocated from the earlier Mulberry Street Cemetery site, which dates to approximately 1820.
Concord, MA
The 1716 structure at 48 Monument Square in Concord, Massachusetts was the home of Dr. Timothy Minot when the Battles of Lexington and Concord occurred on April 19, 1775. Minot's home served as an operating room for soldiers wounded in the first engagement of the American Revolution, with Room 24 functioning as the primary treatment space. Ralph Waldo Emerson later lived in a portion of the property during his early career.
Concord, MA
Concord's Sleepy Hollow Cemetery was designed by landscape architects Cleveland and Copeland in 1855 and dedicated on September 29 that year with a speech by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The cemetery's Author's Ridge holds the graves of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Alcott.
Danvers, MA
Danvers State Hospital was a Kirkbride Plan psychiatric facility designed by Nathaniel Jeremiah Bradlee, opened in 1878 on a hill overlooking Danvers, Massachusetts. The hospital closed in 1992. The Kirkbride was largely demolished in January-June 2006 for AvalonBay's apartment redevelopment, with only the outermost brick shell of the administration block and immediate adjacent wards retained as facade.
Danvers, MA
Built circa 1678 by Francis Nurse, this farmhouse in what was then Salem Village (now Danvers) is the only surviving home of a person executed in the 1692 Salem witch trials open to the public. Rebecca Nurse, 71 years old and a respected church member, was accused in March 1692, tried, initially acquitted, then convicted and hanged on July 19, 1692, despite a petition of 39 neighbors attesting to her innocence.
Gardner, MA
Sylvester K. Pierce built the 26-room Second Empire mansion at 4 West Broadway, Gardner, between 1873 and 1875 at the height of the city's reign as the chair-manufacturing capital of New England. His wife Susan died of bacterial illness within weeks of the family moving in.
Gardner, MA
The SK Pierce Mansion in Gardner, Massachusetts was built between 1873 and 1875 for chair manufacturer Sylvester K. Pierce, a prominent figure in what became known as the 'Chair City.' Designed by E. Boyden & Son in the Second Empire style, the nearly 7,000-square-foot structure features a mansard roof, four-story tower, and elaborately detailed woodwork largely intact today. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2022.
Lowell, MA
Lowell Memorial Auditorium at 50 East Merrimack Street was designed by the architectural firm Blackall, Clapp and Whittemore and formally dedicated September 21, 1922 by Vice President Calvin Coolidge. Built to honor Lowell's military veterans of all wars, it seated 4,000 at opening and was reduced to 3,000 after a $6.5 million renovation completed in 1984. It now hosts approximately 250 events per year under management by Spectacle Live.
Lowell, MA
The Boott Cotton Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts were established in the 1830s as part of the nation's first large-scale planned industrial city. The mills employed thousands of young women — the famous 'mill girls' — under conditions that deteriorated sharply as the textile industry matured. Mill No. 6, now managed by the National Park Service as part of Lowell National Historical Park, preserves one of the few remaining intact mill weave rooms in the country.
Medfield, MA
The Medfield Insane Asylum, established in 1892 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, operated as one of Massachusetts's primary psychiatric institutions for nearly a century. Its on-grounds cemetery was in use from 1918 to 1988 and holds 841 graves — most originally marked only by numbered concrete markers. In 2005, a Boy Scout Eagle Scout project restored the markers and added patient names to each stone.
Medfield, MA
Opened in 1892 as the Medfield Insane Asylum, the campus was Massachusetts's first facility built entirely for chronic mental patients and the first in the state to adopt the Cottage Plan — a design in which patients lived in separate residential-scale pavilions rather than one large ward building. At its peak the 58 brick buildings housed approximately 2,200 patients.
New Bedford, MA
The New Bedford Armory at 5 Sycamore Street was built in 1903 as a Massachusetts state military armory for the local National Guard. After the Guard relocated, the building stood largely vacant; the City of New Bedford took ownership of the structure in the 2010s and has weighed reuse options for it since.
New Bedford, MA
The New Bedford Free Public Library opened to the public on March 3, 1853 and is among the earliest free municipal libraries in the United States. The current building at 613 Pleasant Street was originally constructed in the 1830s as New Bedford's city hall, was reconstructed after a 1906 fire, and was occupied by the library beginning in 1910 after the prior library and city hall building combination was rearranged.
Pittsfield, MA
The corner of South and West streets in Pittsfield has held inns since 1823. In 1862 the United States Hotel stood on the block, where a killing took place in its basement kitchen. The current Crowne Plaza high-rise was built on the site in 1971.
Pittsfield, MA
Bridge Lunch was a downtown Pittsfield diner near the railroad underpass at North and Eagle streets. It is remembered now for a 1958 episode in which customers reportedly saw a steam locomotive race along the nearby tracks decades after such trains had stopped running.
Adams, MA
The W.B. Plunkett Memorial Hospital was built in 1918 by industrialist William B. Plunkett to serve the town of Adams, Massachusetts. The hospital was expanded in 1923 and again in 1932. Its license was suspended in 1973, and the building was later converted to senior-citizen condominiums.
Amherst, MA
Built in 1728 by Samuel Boltwood Jr., Stockbridge House is the oldest house in Amherst. It passed to his daughter Abigail and her husband John Field, a prominent landowner who was imprisoned as a Loyalist on his own farm in 1777. The house was acquired in 1864 as part of the first land purchase for Massachusetts Agricultural College, the forerunner of UMass Amherst.
Ashland, MA
John Stone built his public house in Ashland, Massachusetts in 1832, opening it in 1834 as The Railway House in anticipation of the railroad expansion that would run through town. The tavern operated under various names until its current branding as Stone's Public House. The Ashland Historical Society documents several ghost stories associated with the building.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPAttleboro, MA
St. Stephen's Cemetery is a Catholic burial ground at 683 South Main Street in Attleboro, Massachusetts, established in 1889. The cemetery is associated with the parish of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs in Seekonk and serves descendant Catholic families from Attleboro, Seekonk, and surrounding southeastern Massachusetts communities.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPBaldwinville, MA
New Boston Cemetery is all that physically remains of the village of New Boston in Templeton/Baldwinville, Massachusetts. The community was displaced in the 1940s to make way for the Birch Hill Dam flood control project. The surrounding land became Otter River State Forest, established in 1915 and expanded with Civilian Conservation Corps labor in the 1930s. The cemetery holds graves dating to the 1700s.
Brewster, MA
The Crosby Mansion in Brewster, Massachusetts is an 1876–1888 Colonial Revival estate built by Cape Cod native Albert Crosby on his return from Chicago. Designed in part to display his art collection and host his second wife Matilda's lavish entertaining, the mansion later served as a restaurant, music school, and summer camp before falling into disrepair. The Friends of Crosby Mansion began state-supported restoration in 1992.
Burlington, MA
Burlington Mall, opened in 1968, is a shopping center in Burlington, Massachusetts housing various retail establishments including Sears. The mall has served the region for decades as a commercial shopping destination.
Charlestown, MA
Warren Tavern is one of the first buildings constructed in Charlestown after the British burned the town during the June 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill. It opened in 1780, named for Dr. Joseph Warren, the physician-patriot who sent Paul Revere on his midnight ride and was killed at Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775 — his body subsequently mutilated by British soldiers. George Washington and Paul Revere were among the early patrons, and the building is considered the oldest operating tavern in Massachusetts.
Deerfield, MA
The Deerfield Inn opened in 1884 in the preserved colonial village of Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts, one of New England's most intact 18th-century streetscapes. Operating continuously for over 140 years, the 24-room boutique inn has been managed by Historic Deerfield, Inc. since the mid-20th century, when former innkeeper Cora Carlisle sold the property to the organization's founders.
Devens, MA
Camp Devens was established in September 1917 on roughly 5,000 acres in the Massachusetts towns of Ayer, Harvard, Lancaster, and Shirley to serve as an induction and training facility during World War I. It became the permanent Fort Devens in 1931, served as the World War II reception and training center for New England, and operated as the home of the 10th Special Forces Group from 1968 until its 1996 decommissioning under Base Realignment and Closure.
Duxbury, MA
The front section of The Sun Tavern was built in 1741, making it one of the oldest standing structures on the South Shore of Massachusetts. The building served various residential and commercial purposes before becoming a restaurant in the 1930s. It was renamed The Sun Tavern in 1987 and is currently operated by Gary, Debbie, and Annie James.
East Otis, MA
The Knox Trail Inn is a roadside restaurant on Route 23 in East Otis, Massachusetts, along the historic Knox Trail — the route taken by Henry Knox in the winter of 1775-1776 to transport 60 tons of captured Fort Ticonderoga artillery overland to George Washington's siege of Boston. The Knox Trail's Massachusetts segment passes through the southern Berkshires.
Fairhaven, MA
Henry Huttleston Rogers, a Standard Oil partner and Fairhaven native who became one of the wealthiest industrialists of the Gilded Age, built the Millicent Library in 1892 in memory of his daughter Millicent Gifford Rogers, who died of heart disease at age 17. Dedicated on January 30, 1893 — what would have been Millicent's 20th birthday — the library was deeded to the Town of Fairhaven and has operated continuously as a public institution.
Falmouth, MA
The Doctor Francis Wicks House in Falmouth was built in 1790 for Dr. Francis Wicks and his family. It later became the home of Dr. Aaron Cornish in 1827 and was eventually left to the Falmouth Historical Society. It now anchors the society's Museums on the Green campus at 55-65 Palmer Avenue.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPFitchburg, MA
Dean Hill Cemetery, unofficially nicknamed 'The Rev,' is a roughly one-acre burial ground in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, established in 1791 for Revolutionary War veterans and their families. It contains about 39 interments dated from 1791 to 1901 and sits in a secluded location atop Caswell Road, a narrow dirt road. The grounds are enclosed by a low dry-laid stone wall and remain a municipal historic cemetery.
Greenfield, MA
The Eunice Williams Covered Bridge spans the Green River north of Greenfield, Massachusetts, near the spot where Eunice Williams was killed on February 29, 1704, during the French and Native American raid on Deerfield. The current bridge dates to 1972, replacing an earlier 19th-century covered bridge destroyed by arson in 1969. A historical marker beside the bridge commemorates her death.
Groton, MA
The Groton Inn at 128 Main Street traces its lineage to 1678, predating the American Revolution by nearly a century. The original structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and destroyed by fire in 2011. A 60-room boutique replica opened on the site in May 2018.
Hanson, MA
Camp Kiwanee sits on the historic grounds of "The Needles," a summer estate built by industrialist Albert Cameron Burrage between 1899 and 1905. The property is now operated as a public camp facility offering summer camping, day trips, and event hosting.
Hull, MA
Fort Revere stands on Telegraph Hill in Hull, Massachusetts, where Fort Independence was built as a star-shaped fortification in 1777 to protect Boston Harbor. The site was renamed in honor of Paul Revere and saw use through World War II, ceasing military function in 1947. In 1778, roughly 200 French soldiers died of smallpox at the fort and were buried on a grassy slope below the hill.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPLancaster, MA
Arthur W. Blood Town Forest is a 600-acre town-managed forest on Brockelman Road in Lancaster, Massachusetts. The forest was established in 1946 with a land donation from Arthur W. Blood; the family surname accounts for the colloquial Blood Forest nickname rather than any historical event.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPLeicester, MA
Officially the Friends (Quaker) Cemetery, Spider Gates Cemetery is a small private burial ground established in 1740 at the site of the former Leicester Friends meetinghouse in the Manville section of Leicester, Massachusetts. It earned its nickname from a set of ornate iron gates installed in the 1890s whose sun-ray design was thought to resemble a spider's web. It remains an active cemetery maintained by the Worcester Friends Meeting.
Lenox, MA
The Wyndhurst estate in Lenox, Massachusetts is a 380-acre Gilded Age property with a Tudor manor house and several historic cottages, including one once occupied by Harriet Beecher Stowe. After decades operating as Cranwell Resort, the property was acquired by Hyatt's Miraval brand in 2017 and reopened in 2020 as Miraval Berkshires and Wyndhurst Manor & Club.
Lynn, MA
Dungeon Rock is a geological feature in Lynn Woods Reservation — a 2,200-acre municipal park in Lynn, Massachusetts, the second-largest city-owned park in the United States. In the summer of 1658, a group of pirates arrived at Lynn Harbor via the Saugus River, trading tools with locals before retreating into the woods. One pirate, Thomas Veale, settled in a cave in the Lynn forest. An earthquake that year collapsed the cave entrance, sealing Veale within. In 1852, spiritualist Hiram Marble began excavating the rock guided by Veale's ghost in séance, spending thirty years — and his family fortune — digging a 135-foot passage that ended in a pool without treasure.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMarblehead, MA
Old Burial Hill is a hilltop cemetery in Marblehead, Massachusetts, established in 1638 on the site of the town's first meeting house. It contains hundreds of 17th- and 18th-century graves, including many unmarked Revolutionary War burials, and a 1998 commemorative stone for Wilmot Redd, the only Marblehead resident executed during the 1692 Salem witch trials.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMiddlefield, MA
Mack Cemetery is a small family burial plot in Middlefield, Massachusetts, situated behind the town offices along the Skyline Trail. One grave marker bears only the letters 'IT,' with no name, date, or other identification. The origin of the stone is disputed; oral tradition holds that an unknown laborer died in town and was buried anonymously.
Middleton, MA
The Blue Door Bed and Breakfast is a colonial-era house at 20 East Street in Middleton, Massachusetts, dated to 1692. The property operates as a bed-and-breakfast in the heart of Essex County's Salem-witch-trial-era landscape.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPNewburyport, MA
Old Hill Burying Ground is Newburyport's oldest cemetery, established in 1729 on a hillside above what is now Bartlet Mall. It contains some of New England's most elaborate early tombstone carving, family mausoleums of the city's colonial elite, and a documented historic African American burial section with 18 unmarked graves confirmed by ground-penetrating radar in 2023.
North Adams, MA
Construction of the Hoosac Tunnel began in 1851 and concluded in 1875 — 24 years of work that cost an estimated $21 million and 135 verified lives. Workers called it the Bloody Pit. The deadliest single incident occurred October 17, 1867, when a naphtha lamp explosion and subsequent shaft flooding killed 13 men trapped 538 feet underground. The first train passed through on February 9, 1875, and the tunnel remains the longest active transportation tunnel east of the Rocky Mountains.
North Andover, MA
Harold Parker State Forest was established in 1916 and named for Harold Parker, the first chairman of the Massachusetts State Forest Commission, who died that same year. The 3,000-acre forest in Essex County encompasses the remnants of an eighteenth-century farming community: stone walls that once marked property boundaries, cellar holes of houses that no longer stand, and numerous unmarked graves distributed through the woodland that was once agricultural land.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPNorth Truro, MA
In 1776, a man named Thomas Ridley died of smallpox in the Truro area. Out of fear of contagion, his body was buried far from the rest of the population, deep in the woods of North Truro. The small headstone still stands among the pines behind the former Montano's Restaurant, one of the more obscure colonial dark-history sites on Cape Cod.
Northampton, MA
Northampton State Hospital opened in 1858 as a Kirkbride-plan psychiatric institution. Built for a few hundred patients, it eventually held more than 2,000, closed in 1993, and saw its main building demolished in 2006-07. The grounds are now the Village Hill development, and a patient cemetery remains.
Orleans, MA
The Orleans Waterfront Inn was built in 1875 by Captain Aaron Snow on Town Cove. Over the following decades the building served several uses, including a period in the 1920s when it operated as a brothel, before becoming the waterfront inn and restaurant it is today.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPPalmer, MA
The cemetery referenced in Shadowlands material as 'the Hidden Cemetery off Flynt Street' is the Palmer Center Cemetery, founded in 1734 at what was then the religious, social, and government center of colonial Palmer. The first documented burial is Martha Parsons, who died March 30, 1737.
Paxton, MA
Moore State Park in Paxton, Worcester County, preserves the site of a former mill village powered by Turkey Hill Brook, which descends 90 feet over a 400-foot run. The first mills — a gristmill and sawmill — date to 1747. By the 19th century, the site supported at least five watermills along with a tavern, quarry, and schoolhouse. Sections of the park were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
Peabody, MA
Bishop Fenwick High School is a private coeducational Catholic college-preparatory school founded in 1959 by Cardinal Richard Cushing on a 59-acre campus in Peabody, Massachusetts. It was the first coeducational Catholic high school on Boston's North Shore.
Quincy, MA
USS Salem (CA-139) was commissioned in 1949 as a Des Moines-class heavy cruiser, the most powerful all-gun cruisers ever built by the US Navy. She served as flagship of the US Sixth Fleet and Second Fleet in the early Cold War. In August 1953, following a massive earthquake in the Ionian Islands of Greece that killed approximately 800 people, Salem deployed to the disaster zone and served as a floating hospital. An unknown number of Greek civilians died in her morgue during the operation. Salem was decommissioned in 1959 and is now the only preserved US heavy cruiser still afloat.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPRoyalston, MA
The Old Royalston Center Cemetery, also called Olde Centre Cemetery, is the town of Royalston's earliest burial ground, located on the Athol Road. Burials were moved here from an earlier east-square site found unsuitable. The 1858 hearse house at the cemetery's northwest corner is part of the Royalston Historic District.
Sandisfield, MA
The New Boston Inn at the junction of Massachusetts Routes 8 and 57 in Sandisfield is one of the oldest inns in the United States, with its origins traced to Daniel Brown's 1755 tavern license. The current Federal-style main building was constructed around 1790 by Brown's grandson, Sanford Jr. The inn served the stagecoach route between Hartford and Albany through the early nineteenth century.
Scituate, MA
Mordecai Lincoln, the great-great-great grandfather of President Abraham Lincoln, established a mill and homestead in Scituate, Massachusetts around 1691-1692. The site at 62-68 Mordecai Lincoln Road is administered by the town's Mordecai Lincoln Property Committee, with public access along a half-mile loop trail and active restoration on the house and outbuildings.
South Hadley, MA
Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, founded in 1837 by Mary Lyon, is the oldest of the Seven Sisters colleges. Abbey Memorial Chapel was built in 1938 as a gift from Emily Abbey Gill, housing two significant pipe organs including an 1897-era instrument and a C.B. Fisk tracker organ installed in 1984.
Stockbridge, MA
The Red Lion Inn traces its origins to 1773, when Silas Pepoon established a tavern and inn at the corner of Pine and Main Streets in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Continental Army soldiers passed through during the Revolutionary War. Destroyed by fire in 1896, the inn was rebuilt in 1897 and has operated continuously since. Jack and Jane Fitzpatrick purchased it in 1968 to prevent redevelopment and restored the original name, The Red Lion Inn.
Sturbridge, MA
Old Sturbridge Village opened in 1946 as a living history museum recreating rural New England life in the 1830s. It spans 200 acres in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, with over 40 original structures relocated from across the region. It is the largest living history museum in New England and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.
Ware, MA
Aspen Grove Cemetery sits at the intersection of Pleasant Street and Aspen Street in Ware, Massachusetts, founded on a twenty-five-acre parcel donated by Orrin Sage and expanded in 1890 and 1910. The cemetery contains a Civil War monument completed in 1867 and the grave of baseball Hall of Famer William Candy Cummings.
Watertown, MA
The original Hosmer School in Watertown, Massachusetts was established in 1900 on land donated by Dr. Hiram Hosmer, father of pioneering neoclassical sculptor Harriet Hosmer. The school takes its name from the Hosmer family; as of February 2022, a rededication ceremony formally included Harriet Hosmer in the school's official name. Harriet Hosmer was born in Watertown in 1830, became the most celebrated female sculptor in nineteenth-century America, and died here in 1908, buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.
West Springfield, MA
Storrowton Village Museum is an outdoor living-history complex of nine 18th- and 19th-century New England buildings assembled by Helen Osborne Storrow beginning in 1927 and dedicated in 1929 as the first permanent attraction on the Eastern States Exposition grounds. Each building was relocated from its original community in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and reassembled around a traditional village green.
West Yarmouth, MA
The Yarmouth Resort, formerly the Flagship Inn, sits at 343 Main Street on Route 28 in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts, a mid-Cape Cod tourism corridor. It operates as a 137-room family resort with indoor and outdoor pools and is positioned within walking distance of Englewood Beach.
Westminster, MA
Wachusett Mountain in Westminster, Massachusetts is a 2,006-foot peak that has hosted human activity for centuries. The first Summit House was constructed in 1870 and expanded in 1874; a second Summit House followed, hosting up to 30,000 visitors annually at its peak. The third Summit House, completed by 1908, was destroyed by arson in December 1970. Today the mountain operates as a ski resort.
Winchendon, MA
Lake Dennison Recreation Area is a 121-acre Massachusetts state park in Winchendon, part of the 4,221-acre Birch Hill Flood Control Project leased from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers since 1976. The lakeshore was a summer-cottage destination by the 1930s with a dance pavilion, summer-camp boarding house, and steamboat cruises. A small family plot with Revolutionary-era stones sits within the recreation area.
Winthrop, MA
In October and November 1675, during King Philip's War, the Massachusetts Bay Colony forcibly removed between 500 and 1,100 Praying Indians — Native Americans who had converted to Christianity and lived in 'praying towns' — from mainland communities and interned them on Deer Island in Boston Harbor. The colony provided no food, no shelter, and no means of return. An estimated 500 people died of starvation, exposure, and disease during the winter of 1675–76. The island is now part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, and annual commemorations by tribal descendants mark the history of what happened there.