Boston Common’s Darkest Secrets | Executions, Witch Trials & Ghosts (Ep 225)

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very spooky hello everyone I like that we did it okay we're ready okay okay we got this this is we got this two girls one ghost we are your host ghostesses hostesses whenever I think of hostesses I think of the Hostess treats oh yeah I guess like those little I think I'm like trying to think of all of the different Hostess treats is the hostess is it that brown one that has the like swirly white glaze on top or as Hostess the brand I think

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it's the brand yeah it's the brand because there's a bunch of there's like ho-hos Twinkies yes Ding Dongs what a like strange names Ding Dongs I freaking loved Ding Dongs there's all of them well we are your Ding Dongs that's Korean hi I'm Sabrina hello hello just so everyone knows I'm recording I've been like a record on the road typical so I'm like wherever I know behind the spot I'm not recording Nomad yeah you are you've got people to see places to go babies babies to snuggle kittens to make per so many things family to see I guess babies is family but um so that being that I am recording in my brother-in-law's office and there are a lot of men here and their voices May pick up so it's probably not Sven just it's not fun is

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basically my FYI just another man I also because I can hear them all on their business calls I'm so curious if they're going to hear us talking about ghosts and what the heck they're gonna think honestly that's going to make their day better because it's bringing so much newness to their office I'm sure that they don't regularly talk ghosts over there water coolers bringing a bunch of ghosts over here who knows yeah

Marblehead cat story

um speaking of not ghosts but cats you just triggered a memory I have that I had meant oh I've been meaning to tell you this for like a month or two once I learned but you know how my friend Allison she lives in Marblehead and I go up and I visit her and we hang out Marblehead and she she's a cat person they have three cats they're cats spend a lot of time Outdoors on leashes they're they're hanging out having the best freaking life ever right on the beach there's another cat that lives on their street in Marblehead that doesn't belong to anyone but belongs to the entire

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Street which I think is like so cute and so wonderful I cannot for the life of me remember this cat's name but apparently the cat showed up like 10 years ago and everyone just takes care of the cat so the cat will go and basically I think get as many lunches and dinners as the cat wants and we'll go from house to house and just be like cuddled and fed and given water and we'll go into all these people's homes like it's an open door policy with this cat but there's one particular family that the cat really likes to sleep with and so most of the nights this cat is with this one particular family on the street but if they go out of town the cat has like ranked his favorites for who to go to next like Ugh my main family at night isn't here so I'll just go knock on this person's door and so everyone just collectively has a cat on this Wednesday Marblehead right by the ocean you know what this is the greatest dream to be that cat for

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sure but um also this just proves that cats are so freaking smart and this cat is living the life and has manipulated in the best way and trained all the humans on this street and is thriving like he's the king of the court and it's just a known thing like when Allison and and her boyfriend had moved in there they were just basically introd to the cat and all the names the new neighbor it's your cat now too what's his name I can't remember should I text her and ask her sure and then maybe we'll find out halfway through the this episode let me out stay tuned basically that's our you have to listen to the whole episode to find out where what the name of the cat is because I know you're all so invested now I was okay so I feel like we've been

Podcast updates and ghosts

doing so many collabs and crossovers that we might have some new listeners and I just wanted to say welcome hello

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welcome we apologize in advance because it is very likely that at some point during your listening experience you will meet Sven or our resident ghost yes Sven encompasses all spirits who come to visit our podcast we like to think Sven is the nicest um and then the dark things we don't take credit for at all we're so sorry but there's a chance you may get haunted we just recently had one of our most recent reviews was I love this podcast so much but things started happening and I'm so sad that I cannot listen anymore shoot Honestly though that we get it and that makes sense and sometimes people have to take breaks but our expectation and our hope is that you come back but we understand if you need to take like a three five month break because activities picking up unfortunately for us well fortunately and unfortunately um we don't take breaks but we pivot

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topics when things get a little too active that's when we start to incorporate some of the like fluffier Kinder warmer stories that's when you start to incorporate the fluffier warmer stories yes not me yes that's when I when I say I'm 50 of two girls one ghost and I will not continue with the darkness for the next two weeks technically work we're each 33 span Sven is although spend is not listed on our business title so maybe that's where some of the hauntings come from just like a little bit of like oh hey what about me I'm literally in the title because last October was definitely our one of our scarier haunted experiences and then when I talked about La eurona that one freaked me out a bunch because suddenly all the pipes in my apartment started making all these noises and I would like hear the dripping faucets and it happened like two or three days and then you had one which I don't even know do you remember what the topic was

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that you started to research and then you had test live stop Yes we we brought this up with what can I say who we did a crossword with or should I wait sure it's coming out okay when we just recorded with National Park after dark Danielle and Kathy which were super excited for everyone to hear that one it comes out August 1st I believe yeah um yeah we recorded very early because they've got a lot going on yeah they have so many cool trips that they're going on so August yes you'll hear that but I had forgotten about this until we recorded with them because we were talking about I can't remember how it came up but early days this is Maybe one the our first year of the podcast we did an episode about past lives and I had researched I was ready to go we set up to record and I just like in the hour leading up to recording I got bad vibes like I just had not even bad vibes but more of like I felt like you know when you have when

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you're super empathetic and you just take on the feelings and emotions of people around you I felt that and it was a heaviness and it was a sadness and my gut was just like I think it's related to this story I don't so you were researching one particular past life story it wasn't just like a compilation it was one person one person yeah and so I had to say hey Corinne I know we were about to record but uh can uh we do it tomorrow because I need to re-research what yeah I picked I am so curious to what caused that for you like was it I don't know this person's soul or like something that chipped off of them that was ready to hear you talk about this sort of thing or was there something else kind of like lurking and lingering I don't know well because I don't know what the story was about I don't know

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who you were covering I forget to be honest I think it was a woman but yeah I don't know I don't know I don't remember and yeah it could be very possible I lived in a complex with a lot of people like I could have been picking up on something else who knows I really I really don't um but I think it was early enough it really does rattle you though when you have that sort of it's almost like an intrusive feeling instead of an intrusive thought like when you absorb somebody else's emotions and it's really uncomfortable and it's really hard to shake it always makes me feel ill when it happens to me yeah yeah and then you don't know how to deal with it because it's not yours right you're like I can't yeah what do you even do like there's nothing to work through there's no one to call to say I'm sorry we broke up I just know that someone broke up like yeah or something you know maybe just take a shower and give it to the water because that's supposed to fix the water maybe give it to the water anyway this is all to say

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um we apologize if you're new and you do get haunted but we hope you keep coming back and we

Boston environmental setting

we've had YouTube for now a year and I feel like we haven't done a ton of marketing or like promoting it so hey if you want to see what we're wearing because I'm wearing my overalls and you know how I love overalls um you can go check us out on YouTube and watch all of our episodes we've been doing it for a year so you can see our faces you can see us react to things um you can see our eyes dart back and forth as we read things off of our computer I don't know it's fun take a sip of tea every time I touch my face which is you're gonna have a gallon of tea by the end so if anyone's struggling with drinking enough water that's a fun game I'm also curious if people see anything behind us while we're recording oh well the fires in Canada are roaring so if anyone sees anything outside of our windows at this

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moment unfortunately I think it's going to be smoke because it is coming down the east coast and it is bad to be outside it's like so it's yellow and hazy and Smoky outside I can only imagine what it's like for all those poor people who are experiencing it like in their own homes because yesterday when I walked outside my lungs and me I didn't realize that there were fires even going on at the time and I texted Brian who was at work and I was like my lungs feel like hot and the outside smells like burning wood chips and there's a haze of what's going on because part of me was like holy is Boston on fire and that's how bad it is it feels like that's how bad right right here yep and there's not that's yeah it reminds me of a couple years ago when there were those fires up north in California and they were coming down it was so bad um awful but well here we are

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I'm so excited this is the two-parter and I've been I've been holding this one in my backseat for a while I feel like I love doing two-parters and this one could have been like a 18 parter because really what I'm doing is I'm focusing on some hauntings in Boston and Boston is old and it is haunted and there are so many spots there are places that I have lived there are places that I frequent and there's just skeletons in our back doors everywhere literally here yes in your backyard under the backyard probably in everywhere in the frames of some houses I'm sure there's people stashed away in the cellars brick walls yes yeah seriously I mean you've got you've freaking haunted you've got history you've got the mob like Whitey Bulger and all of that going on there's just it's Beyond just being one of like the earliest settled places and then also going dating back to

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native tribes yeah yeah there's so much here and I feel like also we started the podcast when I moved back to Boston and I feel like those two things happening at the same time simultaneously reignited or not even reignited ignited because it had never been an interest in the past my love of history and so now I love history and I get to see it everywhere when I walk around and we get to research places every single week on this podcast and so I just feel like a huge place in my heart for Boston and so on this episode I'm going to focus on uh one particular area and then we'll move very close to that area in the next episode oh

Virtual haunted tours idea

so if you've ever been to Boston Massachusetts chances are you've walked through America's oldest city park which is Boston Common which Sabrina you have walked through many times so you know exactly where I'm going to be talking about you know what makes me really

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happy about this episode is I visited you in Boston a couple times now and every time I have you take me on like the same little haunted tour and we go through like the same spots because so you know you are the best actually you're going to know all of these spots I'm going to talk about too but I never get sick of it and I'm so excited that everyone else gets to experience it just close your eyes imagine Korean holding your hand and excitedly showing you all these spots eyes wide can't wait to tell you about deaths and hauntings and burials because it's a it's the best thing you can ever do Sabrina I have a new business idea for us and this one I suddenly feel extremely passionate about and I'm going to be pissed if anyone copies us before we're able to what does this happen I think that we should create some sort of virtual AI creation of ourselves where we people can use their like cell phones or whatever and when they're going

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through different places haunted places different cities different towns we pop up as like a person and it's like here's what's happening here and then we walk like they follow us like we're our own little Avatar that's pre-programmed to bring people on Haunted tours and everyone I already have a voice I already I have I hear it hey follow me I'm gonna show you this haunted place it's just doing like the the classic like actually that would be because I assume if we get to do it that it would be our actual bodies but I like the idea that we would pretend to be even Faker versions of us and like do the whole we should be ghosts we have like the ghost tail wait wait this is so good good I'm already mad at the world that I don't just know how to do this right now this is okay well this this reminds me of my other idea that we had when we were walking through Austin when we were there together and I was

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like there are so many drawings and pictures of what these towns look like back in the day that I think it would be so cool to have a virtual reality a VR experience where you can walk through what the towns look like in different time periods because you know dirt roads there's horse and buggies going by or the old-timey early cars right you can just set it to like 1810 and see what happens yeah and then fast forward 30 years and it's like a completely different city ugh it really would be but like combining all those together it would be so awesome if like instead of just sitting in your own I mean I guess there's the benefit of doing this too from like your own couch and being able to walk through this like virtual reality if you had some way to do it while you're actually there which kind of reminds me of all the Apple updates that that are coming which are really freaky the Apple glass if you haven't seen this you guys it is

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Black Mirror it is scary how scary like we are we are years away from having chips in our brain and we can just like have like with our eyes or our hands click on things it is so scary it is happening now it made me really panicky when I was watching all that because I was like this is simultaneously so cool that we're able to like dream up these things and potentially make them a reality but why do them like what how does that I mean the reality is is hundreds of years ago people probably had the same questions and fear about different things that were happening that we experience today as normal life but it's so hard for me to picture how that affects us and what we'll be like in the future and that's what scares me it's gonna be like um Wally where we're all like sitting in like Wheelchairs and just like drinking sodas and pressing buttons and don't have to move to go anywhere but it

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is really cool it's crazy if people want to see it um they can also this is a good crowdsourcing cream you can continue in a minute but like we don't have any abilities to Tech like with tech or engineering to create any of this if you're listening and you're like oh I do this at breakfast it's easy peasy um okay email us then yeah don't even keep your secret skills to yourself no or to your ability that you're working for yeah give us all of your Trade Secrets abandon any uh contracts you have with your employer and come help us we can't pay you yet but you can be but it will be spectacular when it actually yeah skeleton will all be rich in experience in history which is what I'm going to attempt to do for all of you now is it enrich you okay in the history of Boston you already enrich us every day about being in our lives and in our ears oh

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thank you so much all right I'll shut up now continue I like hearing your voice way more than hearing mine so I would be happy to just sit back and drink my tea today no no if it's your turn I did this last week okay fine and I'm doing it next week too because it's two-parter that you chose it I know I can't complain I'm not complaining

Boston Common history

fast and common if you've been to Boston there is a big big Park basically in the center of Boston it kind of divides like Beacon Hill the theater district downtown if you're coming from the North End you'll probably likely find yourself there Back Bay it kind of sits all right in the middle the public garden is right next to it and so if you've ever been to Boston for more than 12 hours the chances of you walking through this are pretty high because Boston's not a big city and it's also 50 acres so you really do whether you're going to see

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the things that are at Boston Common uh or just cutting through it to get to other places in Boston the chances of many of you who are listening having stepped foot here I think is pretty high which is why I really wanted to do this so when you're walking through Boston Common visitors wander through the winding Trails they follow the red brick road of the Freedom Trail which cuts through there and you can also admire some of the Beautiful Things there's a carousel for kids to play on there's lemonade stands there's amazing views from Frog Pond which little kids play in in the summer and in the winter they turn it into an ice skating rink which is super fun so cool so cool there's many monuments there's just different places where people post up to just hang out picnic beneath the Shady trees play frisbee by the slope of the Hill let their dogs all fleas Frolic around with other City pooches and there's also a lot of I guess like rallies and political speeches and things that happen here too so it's a it's a big

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place for people to gather whether for a Leisure or to be a tourist or for other various reasons but as people are wandering through here what most people don't realize is that they're walking above dead bodies potentially thousands who are cool cool cool cool cool cool okay let's back up history lessons now in the early 1600s Boston Common was a farm owned by William blackston also spelled Black Stone in some accounts but I'm going to call them blackston he was the first European settler in Boston William blackston had arrived to Weymouth Massachusetts in 1623 and he moved from Weymouth up north a few miles to what we now know to be Boston and at the time Boston was mostly mud flats it was super swampy it was like a little peninsula there were some natural springs Rock bulges it was just like super super

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beautiful and William was struck by its beauty and and by all of the land and let's remember that there were a lot of native people who lived here first and so he was the one white guy and he was like this is great and he lived there for five years before writing to Isaac Johnson about how perfect this would be for settlement and Isaac is listening and he's like oh I do think that this sounds like a great idea so he brings a group up to the area and they settle in what we now know to be Charlestown which Sabrina you've also been to Charlestown where was Isaac before this they're all in oh so well they all came from England but I'm pretty sure they were all chilling kind of more within the like Weymouth Massachusetts to Rhode Island section okay okay and so people were starting to like migrate up north eventually again like Maine and all of those areas because take more land was their motto yes it

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was super unfortunate yeah I don't know what else to say it sucks we're all aware here of how um we know horrendous some of the early or all of the early settlements were and that it was not necessarily A we're friendly it was more of like get out we want this now yes agreed yeah and so I mean whether William blaxton told Isaac about this area of Boston or not it would have happened because that's just what was happening everyone was migrating north south west and just kind of taking over colonizing America so before Isaac died in 1630 his dying wish was for the settlement that was across the river because he settled in Charlestown but across the river the area where blackston lived he really wanted it to be named Boston after his hometown in England that's nice that it

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wasn't like named after him no no it was just it was a it was named very lovingly after a place that he loved and cared about and he saw how beautiful it was here and felt a connection to it and so he named it Boston because it reminded him of just like all of the the good things and loving things in his life I guess but within this deal I guess when Isaac's dying breath essentially was to name this place Boston William blackston who was the one who told Isaac to come here he was like oh okay well I feel like there's going to be more attention coming here now and there's more people moving here so I would like to negotiate a deal here and be granted 50 acres of this newly named Boston to keep for myself because I've been living here for a long time and I don't want to lose all my land and all the beauty and all the vastness of the space at the time 50 acres was 10 of that whole entire area so with a large

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large amount because Boston remember was just a little bit of a peninsula so now

Geographic changes in Boston

I'm going to give a little bit more of a history lesson we've turned into a history in horror and Hans podcast we have and I love it I guess we've always been that way but I think it's been more we've really really become history Buffs and I feel like history Buffs might be like you guys aren't history Buffs so don't come at me but we feel like we are if I told my younger self that I would be this interested in history as an adult to be like huh you dummy no you won't no she wouldn't have said that she'd be like okay she didn't say anything okay so now Sabrina's looking at an image and we're gonna put it on display here in YouTube so if you're looking at this image which is kind of like an asepia tone this is what Boston used to look like it was this tiny tiny little Peninsula and Charlestown is kind of like that uh

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tortilla shaped mound of land right across the way so that's kind of where the settlement was and then blackston lived in what is Boston where you can see like how the settlement had sort of built up but for the most part it was almost like an island like it was barely a peninsula there was barely land connecting this thing so it was quite small and then the next photo that we're going to display is what William blackston's house looked like so he had this quaint little cottage along all of the marshes and the ocean and all of these trees and just everything that was here and it was so beautiful over the years the next photo the one that's in green and blue is what Boston looks like now so the dark green is what the shoreline looked like in 1630s so this is when blackston was there when Boston was becoming Boston and then the light green

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it's it's from 1995 but it's essentially exactly what it looks like today one-sixth of Boston today is landfill they added it in the majority of Boston was not here originally it's amazing that's so much it's so much yeah so basically over the past few centuries people would fill in all the marshes and the tidal Flats because they wanted more land to build on and they built all the land pretty much on sea level too so essentially this is what this is like the thing that eats up so much time in my brain is I don't understand what Boston's plan is for 50 years from now because it's going to be underwater and they keep building new buildings and I'm like is everyone who lives on like the first and second story who has an ocean view just going to be looking at a cement wall because I have no idea how they're they can't just like lift the entire city maybe they can but I don't know how to do that that's yeah

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I don't know I don't know it is really impressive though that they were able to add that much land yeah it's fascinating it's fascinating to me that like instead of expanding that way they expanded into the water right yeah and the other thing too is like the the Topography of Boston is so different now too because when when you wander around Boston if you go to Beacon Hill and the North End which are two and I guess Boston Common which is what we're talking about all of those places existed originally and the North End in Beacon Hill had Hills you know they had like little mountains and originally this area was I'm going to butcher it but it was like some sort of like French or so pronunciation of basically like three mountains because there were three mountains here but they have over time either completely demolished mountains or sliced so much of the hills away to create a much more like livable and

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buildable flat land isn't it wild but we are able to do to our terrain yeah it is crazy also these photos are giving me flashbacks to middle school high school and college where you would do the map they would give you a map and then you had to it would they would give it to you blank and you had to write like the rivers and the countries and yeah oh I was terrible worst nightmare really Oh I thought I was so good at it that forget history forget math but memorizing where things were I was all over that Globe wow okay but for people who live in Boston or have been to Boston if you live in Back Bay or seaport those things you're on fully on top of landfill that did not exist basically in a morbid way you're going underwater you're going underwater and back then 10

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wasn't down knowing how much bigger Boston is despite it still being a very small City 10 wasn't a ton of land but it was still a lot for what the space was so

Colonial land disputes

Blackstone had negotiated this deal got 10 of the land around 50 or so acres and unfortunately for blackston just three years later the 4 000 Puritan citizens who now took up shop in Boston said ooh we don't think it's very cool for anyone to own that much land so let's make the ownership of that much land untenable let's make your life miserable less peer pressure the crap out of you until you give us your land so basically the Anglican Pastor blackston who did not Vibe with the Puritans he was bullied into selling back 44 of his 50 acres to the Puritans for what would be in today's money fifty five hundred dollars that's it yeah

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it was like nothing upsetting oh poor guy I was expecting it to be like 3 million million dollars yeah no he lost a lot of land for barely anything the land quickly was turned into the Town Commons so it was a place for the 4 000 plus residents to gather together it was a place for them to also let their cattle graze for the next two centuries so basically people would have a bunch of cattle they'd just like let them freely go and graze eventually there were restrictions on the cattle that I was reading about because a lot of the Richer people would come in and they'd have like 70 cattle that they'd let loose and the amount of space that were on the common like could not sustain that many cattle eating and so there were limits on how many cattle could be in there eventually but it was just a an important place for everyone to kind of gather together and also important to know is the colony grew over decades and because they're growing and because their infrastructure isn't what

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it is today the Charles Street side of Boston Common which is where I basically lived right there in in uh Beacon Hill up on the hill that side of Boston Common was The Unofficial Dumping Ground because it was the lowest flattest part of the area and so people would just basically put all of the like gross rotting food and items and all of their own Theses over there and it was quote a moist stew that wreaked and that was a mess to walk over a moist stew yeah gross so gross and apparently it became or it remained a kind of a moist gross stew until 1895. yuck anyway wow okay Langston was pissed he did not get along with these people and he was

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like whatever fine I'm out gave away his 44 Acres of the 50 acres and then he moved himself 35 miles south and became the first European settler again the first white man is really Paving the way uh heading to this one particular area of Rhode Island so he was just roaming around there he was hoping to just quietly settle on some land um he also so it was said which we know history is Rewritten so I don't know how much truth there is to this but apparently he was very good friends and very friendly with the native groups there and the individuals in that area so he was the one person that kind of moved in but they all lived really peacefully together um I don't know if that's true yeah yeah you hope it's true I hope it's true too his life sounded pretty sweet he would just tend to his cattle he would Garden he even cultivated the first variety of

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American Apple which is called the yellow sweding and he had the largest library of the colonists at the time so he just like he was a scholar he was a scholar he just like lived peacefully in his little cabin in Rhode Island but then his property was burned down during the king Phillips war so it doesn't exist anymore

King Philip's War and death

but King Phillips wore perfect segue back to Boston Common we have talked about the King Philip's War a few times but the very extremely extremely quick version of events is that essentially native tribes and colonists had a sort of deal in place and the colonists kept violating the alliance that they had with the native people so tensions Rose and soon there was a full-on war between the colonists and the native tribes in New England it lasted just under three years it is the deadliest war in colonial American history killing about 30 percent of the colonists wiping out many of the native

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tribes killing hundreds of them and enslaving a majority of others so it was absolutely devastating Boston sauce on just like an alarm yeah didn't they put the native tribe the leader his head on a stake on a stick yes they did what was his name so I can I'm gonna butcher all of this history but I'm pretty sure it was like his dad Philip it made King Philip oh King Philip yes King Philip yeah King Philip's War because his dad was maintaining maintaining the tensions kind of was like trying to appease everybody and then when his dad passed and King Philip came into into Power wasn't he the one that was like I'm butchering this but I think he was the one that was like no we're not taking this yeah yeah they were just being walked all over and I also can't remember why because

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his name isn't Philip but it became Philip and I can't remember the reason why let's see meta comment yeah that was his name meta comment yeah so it was a name given to him by the settlers okay there we go see it just wasn't was obviously a very very bloody event and it stretched far outside of Boston it was in Rhode Island it was in Maine it was in Connecticut it was all over New England there's a map you can look at too online to see kind of like all of the native tribes and everyone who was affected all of the land and it's expansive so Boston was one of the places that there were tensions and that war took place during this time tantamas was a very well-known Native American nip Mook leader and he was also a spiritual healer and during the war colonists forced him and his family to Deer Island where he had previously given this rebellious speech that was obviously

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against the colonists right and so the colonists were like you were mean to us and so they grabbed all of his family and him and they marched him to Deer Island which I can literally see I I could I wish I could just like easily turn my computer and like zoom in on the screen so everyone could see it but I'm staring at Deer Island right now and they brought him there they whipped and tortured him but he escaped which was a very exciting turn of events he had a chance but unfortunately his son was promised by the colonists that his father and his family would be safe if they just gave up his father's hiding place which the son did because he trusted them and Lord knows what other horrible things they did to get this information out of this poor boy when the colonists found tantamouse they placed this is graphic they placed a noose around his neck they marched him publicly down the street all the way to Boston Common to a large tree which is

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over a century old called the Great Elm and it was said that this Elm had been planted a century before for Prosperity which is very ironic given the role that this tree is about to play for us in this story over the next two centuries does this tree still stand no it does not okay good here he was hung and left for others to see his family was then taken and sold into slavery and during this time in colonial era public executions were sort of sick entertainment for people and large large crowds would gather to watch other people being murdered so tantamos and 44 other Native Americans were publicly executed by hanging on the great Elm during this war and it can be assumed that each execution drew a crowd I'm really curious because I you know I think for a really long time in history

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hangings were like a public thing that people came to and yeah it seemed like it was a source of entertainment in a way but I do think about like the Coliseum and like ancient Rome yeah I do Wonder though if there were people who were just like this is horrendous why are we doing this and if there was this expectation that you had to go yeah and if you weren't there there was something wrong with you I know that is an interesting thought because it's like is it human nature to be fascinated with those things is it conditioned are we repulsed but is there something that pulls us even closer to the event because of the repulsion like what did those people experience how many people were ill watching that and refused to go versus the people who were like let's go have tea in the park and watch four men be hung yeah I don't know it's so hard to know because my mind and again like this is probably societal and

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because I was raised learning how horrific this is that I'm like absolutely not I could never imagine myself if that were publicly a thing that still happened I could never imagine doing that and imagine how different it would be if you were young though and witnessed all those things and you were four years old and it was a normal part of your upbringing right but then at the same time think about our society and our fascination with True Crime and murder and like the amount of documentaries and I guess maybe we're not like fully witnessing someone be killed but we're still fascinated by it it's The Morbid curiosity it exists within us okay so at the time a large majority of

Puritan and Quaker conflict

the population in Boston were Puritans now the Puritans themselves were a reformed religious group that we've talked about before they previously belonged to the Church of England and

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they basically were like Ugh this church that we belong to it feels too similar to Roman Catholicism we think we should eliminate the ceremonies we should eliminate any practices that aren't rooted in the Bible we should have a lot more like strict rules and and live a very very specific way and so really the Puritans a lot of them that was like a motivating force for them to come and colonize basically I was reading somewhere someone said like the thing people aren't talking about is that America was founded by a group of like religious fanatics yeah and it's true it's true I mean I guess kind of everywhere was like religion has played such a controversial role in history and there was also such a desire to be like I mean this is why the Revolutionary War occurred right like it was like oh well I'm doing all this and so I want to have

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a unique take and I want to be different from where I came from and that causes tensions I'm pretty sure like the English accent or American accent came because they wanted to sound different then where they came from I've heard that too so they gave themselves like a new twang basically yeah to be different yeah someone else can fact check that but they were all in their Madonna era yeah what if I just start talking in a weird way like just to it's hard to not adopt other people's accents like do you find that like when you're around someone with like a southern 100 yeah I find myself very quickly starting to imitate them it's hard to get yourself out of it I'm like what even is my accent like what is my voice beside aside from a reflection of everyone around me I don't know I'm a parrot okay so the Puritans themselves they were these reformed religious members

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previously part of the Church of England they came with America came to America with all of these ideas of how to live and so they themselves once evolved from their roots and and were trying to make a name for themselves and yes they could not and yet they could not be less accepting of other offshoots of protestantism uh specifically those who followed the religious Society of Friends those that we call Quakers so some differences here between Puritans and Quakers Puritans thought that certain people were chosen by God for salvation and that humans are hopelessly sinful Quakers believed God is inside everyone and you could talk directly to God and Jesus if you wanted to everybody had an inner light so basically the Puritans were like no they're specific people who who can preach the word and in our prophetic and Quakers were like no I think all of us can pray and and speak

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directly to our source and our savior Puritans had very rigid rules and laws about who they were uh what you could practice what you could believe which included strict gender roles whereas Quakers had religious freedom they promoted the separation of church and state they believed inequality they supported everyone especially the Native Americans and women could also be preachers so they could not be more different though offshoots basically of the same religion right the Puritans thought the Quaker's way of life was absolute blasphemy they were a danger to society so what did they do they enacted several laws against Quakers and then they tortured and killed them Massachusetts was the most active state in New England to do so Quakers were put in stock in pillory so I'm gonna display a photo and Sabrina you have a photo right now too so stock

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and pillory are the two devices that are these wooden Contraptions where people were basically locked in either their feet were locked into place so they they couldn't move or it's like the thing that I think we see most often where your hands and your head are through this wooden plank and you're trapped in place yeah I don't understand why the one photo of the man is like constantive thinking he's he's in timeout he's contemplating his choices is he contemplating his why are we so horrendous as a species like what I don't know and it's so bizarre to these depictions of people like that the one the photo that you're referencing it's like this guy who has all of the buttons perfectly done on his pants and his jacket and he's wearing his wig and he has his shiny little loafers on and he's like trying to present to society as this person maybe who has it together and yet he's about to be brutally tortured by fellow human beings it's

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it's hard to wrap my mind around us being able to do all of that at once that these things aren't mutually exclusive but so the Puritans they would grab these Quakers and they'd be like you think different than me and they would whip them with these three corded and knotted whips they would find the Quakers and prison the Quakers mutilate them vanish them kill them a few examples of this and these are not good so if you don't want to hear them skip forward a few minutes but just North of Boston there were three Quaker women who were preaching in the Seacoast of New Hampshire they were arrested by the Puritans and they were sentenced to walk naked down to the waist which was a common thing for them to do to women was to basically like strip them so that their chest their breasts were exposed to embarrass them like Game of Thrones yeah and they would make them walk the 80 miles in the

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middle of winter right uh I don't know if these specific women were but right I know that they were stripped they were tied to the back of a cart they were whipped publicly and basically they would every time they passed through a town they would cause a lot of commotion the the Puritans would so that people would come out and get to witness the embarrassment of these Quakers these women I'm just picturing that scene in Game of Thrones they're like Shame Shame and like people are throwing vegetables I'm sure it was very similar they're moist stew at oh they're moisture that's what I'm gonna say now sorry I gotta go deal with some moists too yeah I like when you come out of the bathroom you're like oh instead of saying like give it a beat or like there's some moist stew in there you might wanna I wanna wait you might get some very confused looks yeah they're running in like what stew no different kind of Stew my friend no

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guardiloo gardenoo eventually these women were rescued by a Quaker who was living in Maine over in Kittery which is where my fake ID was from when I was under age um and protected similar to the to these women herodias Gardener was a Quaker woman who was stripped down to the waist and made to walk 60 miles home to Weymouth Massachusetts she had an infant at the time and she walked the entire way at least from what I could see in the reports walked the entire way holding her infant and continuing to like feed and breastfeed her infant when her child needed to all while being tortured and publicly humiliated for 60 miles I just said give me chills but some people were never rescued and some people never made it home enter Mary Dyer Mary had lived in Boston and had a

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traumatic event happen to her she gave birth to a stillborn child that had many defects and so this child was still born and if it hadn't been it probably wouldn't have lived very long either based on what I was seeing written about this child and so it was really really devastating to her it was absolutely heartbreaking to her and her husband and so she had to bury this child in secrecy because there was a lot going on at the time and basically having given birth to this child in the way that she did and and with the defects that this child had it would have been basically bad news for her people would have viewed her as doing something wrong you know like we're coming up on which trial era Witch Trials right yeah right so she buried this child in secrecy however the society that she lived in in Boston found out and she was viewed as a monster after a decade of hardship and of being a societal Outcast she was tried and banished for her crimes which was

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basically having a stillborn child stillborn which she had no control over no no can you imagine I can't this reminds me of the witch series of events yeah yes yeah you're right because that's also very religious based it was yeah I think the family is kicked out for not having the same religious views totally and it's set in the same exact era as what happened right here with Mary Dyer so she was banished from Massachusetts for both having a stillborn and for her beliefs because she was not fully bought into the Puritan beliefs so she originally headed to Rhode Island where she lived for a little bit and then she boarded a ship and she headed to England she stayed back in England for five years and it was here that she was hard introde and converted to quakerism she received what does that mean hard it was introde sorry I just meant like she

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was introduced to Quakers like got like a crash of course I think I'm using like gen Z slang I spent too much time on Tick Tock is that like a horse a hard intro yeah I've heard it a lot but maybe it is Gen Z I don't know yeah basically it's like getting a crash course like you're fully exposed to something very quickly okay this episode for so many reasons is just making me contemplate life in a pretty morbid way and I'm really glad I have therapy after this it's not your fault it's more of just it's just more Humanity I'm just like yeah yeah I love how we came into this episode with so much enthusiasm like yeah Boston so much history it's so rich in stories and fascinating and I were like this is super depressing and very sad but you'll

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get to ghost stories and all of that oh I will yeah probably still depressing but more exciting in a way right and also let's remember this isn't just a full-on Boston episode I am focusing on Boston Common specifically in the stories that are tied to that and so unfortunately there's a lot of sadness that happened specifically at Boston Common

Mary Dyer’s martyrdom

so Mary Dyer she's a Quaker now it was said that she was given the gift of ministry and she returns to Boston when she returned to Boston she was immediately imprisoned and banished for being a Quaker quite the homecoming for her why'd she come back that's my expression she she had a very determined Spirit where I think she was like no one can tell me what to do she was she was the people she was a protester right like she's the person picketing in front of the White House of her time basically saying like we deserve religious freedom you can't

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control where I live and and what I believe in just because you disagree with me yeah she she took on that role and she was confident and comfortable being in that role um and so she did go back to Boston and every time she was released from jail she would be banished she would return and then she'd be imprisoned again and eventually the Puritans are like okay we know a way to banish you Mary dyer for good and that is to kill you so Mary and three other male Quakers were to be executed together on October 27 1659 Mary walked hand in hand with two of the convicted men of the three on either side of her and her closeness the fact that she was in between them she was holding their hands and right between them made people very uncomfortable with the physical touch that she had with these guys and they very quickly moved to execute her and the three others it actually took place

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on the Boston Neck so this wasn't in Boston Common but it was right next to it and they hung the two men first and then when it was Mary's turn to step out her arms and legs were bound her face was covered by a handkerchief and she just as she was about to have the board taken out from under her she was suddenly excused a petition from her son had come through and authorities needed to review their actions so basically what I read was that essentially they were insinuating that the authorities needed to talk about what the next and like proper move forward would be because the two men who had just died were were dying as Martyrs like there was already a stir and some gossip and these two men were now Martyrs and so to ensure that people didn't get too riled up and too rebellious they should let Mary go to soften the martyrdom of the two men before to like

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lessen what they just given their lives for okay well good for Mary no Mary's or maybe not Mary's super unhappy about that she's like oh she wanted if I can't live the way that I want to freely in my community I'm in a diet martyr and no one can stop me and her poor son is like trying to find a way to save his mom she's she's mad though she's like I could have died of martyr and these people are never going to change and so the next day she writes to the general court and tells them this quote my life is not accepted nor availeth me in comparison with the lives and Liberty of the truth and Servants of the Living God for which in the bowels of love and meekness I sought you yet nevertheless with Wicked hands have you put two of them to death which makes me to feel that the mercies of the wicked is cruelty I rather choose to die than to live as from you as guilty of their

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innocent blood so she's she's sharp with her words and she leaves after that to Rhode Island she spends a year down in Rhode Island with her life and then she returns to Boston with a plan she would either change the laws or she would hang as a woman and as a martyr yeah Mary ten days after she returns to Boston she was brought to Governor Endicott the report of the exchange is as follows Endicott says are you the same Mary Dyer that was here before Mary says I am the same Mary Dyer that was here the last General Court Endicott says you will own yourself a Quaker will you not and she says I own myself to be reproachfully so-called Endicott says sentence was passed upon you the last general court and now likewise you must return to the prison and there you remain till tomorrow at nine o'clock

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then dense you must go to The Gallows and there you will be hanged till you are dead and Dyer says Mary Dyer says this is no more than what thou said before so she's like you always say this yeah what are you even trying to say nothing's changed and endicott's like but now it is to be executed therefore prepare yourself tomorrow at nine o'clock and Mary says I came in obedience to the will of God the last General Court Desiring you to repeal your unrighteous laws of banishment on pain of death and that same is my work now and Earnest request although I told you that if you refuse to repeal them the Lord would send others of his servants to witness against them so she's basically she's like you're the evil and every you believe in God he's watching you wow and it is said

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that then he asked Mary Dyer if she was a prophetess in which she responded that the Lord did speak to her and she began to speak she began to to say what she heard what was coming through her from her connection with God and he yelled away with her away with her she was put in jail and on June 1st 1660 she was brought to the Gallows to the great Elm Tree in Boston Common though there were some reports that she too was killed on the Boston Neck but most of them say Boston Common um and she was asked one last time if she would comply if she would save herself and she refused so she died a martyr there's a statue in her honor that has been erected in the State House lawn the Boston or Massachusetts state house looking out onto the Boston Common oh wait okay didn't we aren't they putting up a monument of some kind where the tree was in Boston Common that's what we thought because remember there

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was all that construction when we were going by because we were waiting to like see where the plaque was where the elm tree had been they're doing so I don't know because I remember you yeah were telling me about this tree which is why I thought it was still there but you're right yeah yeah there is a statue now like an art installation of someone who's like holding themselves and like basically like weeping and crying and I have no idea if it's like to honor what had happened there or not I should look that up but yeah they were they were putting something up when we were there because we were trying to go see the spot so her statues there looking out onto the commons and people have heard Eerie sounds come from this general area and they see a woman in puritan clothing that a lot of people believe could be Mary Dyer in 1894 a writer of the independent wrote an article about the quote White Witch of the common so over 100 years ago there were already rumors of on this place being haunted and the article wrote about an

1:00:00

apparition that had first appeared on June 1st 1750 which was the 90th anniversary of Mary Dyer's death and apparently there had been a man who was in the park that night in Boston Common and he was really drunk he was feeling super low and an apparition walked up to him and she spoke to him and she told him things that he refused to ever repeat ever again he was like I I cannot tell you what she told me but he completely turned his life around he sobered up it changed the entire trajectory of his life and so a lot of people believe that this was the spirit of Mary Dyer because it would make sense her beliefs her quakerism uh her basically speaking from God and being a bit of like a prophet a minister of of sorts it would make sense that she went and spoke to him and had this like really deep and touching conversation so that makes me wonder because you're saying like this is the first time her spirit

1:01:00

was really reported or written about but it makes me wonder how many other people had experienced or been visited by her but because the information was so personal that they kept it to themselves and never told anyone right because this was 150 years later that this person is talking about like writing an article on what happened 150 years before to someone with the spirit of someone who died 90 years before that right so yeah it it's convoluted it's hard too with so many of these documents to know like what was truth what was rumor what was for the excitement and entertainment of readers too right but I'm sure there's been a ton of people who've experienced her many other people have lost their lives to the Hanging Tree the great Elm in Boston Common those accused of theft murder or just having different beliefs from others because it was a great place for people to gather to

1:02:00

witness these things it was a warning sign to others they would let people hang there for days and so it made it a very perfect place to kill accused

The witch of the Common

witches Anne goody Glover is Boston's most famous accused witch she was a strong-willed Irish woman who worked for a wealthy family in Boston and this family that she worked for they had a 13 year old daughter and if we remember what we were like as teen girls 18 year olds can you imagine what we would have been like during this era probably terrible and similar to what this 13 year old girl was like where she got in a fight with goody didn't like what goody was saying she accused Goody's daughter of stealing laundry from her family and so Ann goody Glover was like I'm not gonna let that accusation slide and she had a really

1:03:00

harsh conversation with all of the kids at the family about like lying and accusing people and all this stuff and so the kids of the family who she worked for were like okay we're gonna start acting strange we're gonna suddenly fall ill we're gonna do all these things our diagnosis we're Bewitched by you Ann goody Clover so my question because the like there was a lot of Witchcraft and accusations in Europe before it made its way to the colonies and and all that but it's just so fascinating because it was like it's the work of the devil so it originates in like religion and then it just becomes this dramatized like horrific accusation and it was like from what it sounds like children couldn't be children they couldn't have imaginations they couldn't play they couldn't come up with any sort of scenario that is exciting and

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stimulating to their minds they had to be perfectly like still and quiet and anything that they did that was creative and creating these scenarios would be considered them being Bewitched and if they are you have to figure out who Bewitched them and goodie was an outspoken outspoken Irish woman who was a very easy target to point fingers at for this family in the interrogation of Anne goody Glover she was unable to recite the Lord's Prayer in English perfectly instead she did it in a bit of a mix of like broken Latin Gaelic some English because she probably didn't fully know English either so she or at least the Lord's Prayer perfectly in English with translation and so that was viewed as oh my God she must be in commune with the devil there were also some small doll like figures found in her home that were determined at the time to be hosts to spirits and demons in actuality these

1:05:00

were figurines of Catholic saints or at least that's what people think that they are now today but goodie was found guilty nonetheless she was brought to Boston jail to await her fate it is also said that when she was in jail awaiting her faith that people would hear her speaking to someone in jail and so people were like she's arguing with the devil she's talking to the devil but could it be that she was calming herself or maybe praying to her God yeah probably most likely or I don't know the fact that you're alone in a prison like I talked to myself at home yeah sometimes if I go too long without speaking for like a few days I'll just say something out loud to see if I lived alone I would do that all the time yeah yeah and it would always be a little croaky and awkward yes possess you know yes so goodie she's brought to the great Elm in Boston

1:06:00

Common on November 16 1688. the crowd shouted and mocked her they taunted her goody spoke out to the crowd and what she said it differs according to various accounts but generally she gave the same sort of message and it was basically the death will not fix anything the children will never be relieved they've been Afflicted they will remain Afflicted there are more witches you're basically is what she's saying and they're like well who are the witches and she's like I'm not giving up any names but that makes so much sense because if if I were in her shoes I feel like I would almost do the same thing where it's like there's nothing you can do in that moment to stop what is happening to you you've seen it happen for decades to people before you who had different beliefs who were accused of something so why not get that one last jab to your accusers why not make them fear you even in death it is interesting because there's also stories we've heard where people who were accused were tortured

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until they said and like confessed that they were a witch I do wonder if there's this you know psychologically if there's this aspect of if someone says to you enough you're a witch you're a witch you're a witch and they're beating you they're hurting you they're torturing you that you do you're like I must believe it yeah well there was I can't remember which Psych class it was that I took but there was a day where we talked about false confessions and they played the tape of this boy who I think was like 10 years old and the way that the interrogators the investigators were speaking to him they basically made him they tried to get him to confess to killing his sister his younger sister who had passed away and he is completely distraught and believes that he did like he at first he didn't kill her and he was innocent but because of the way that they were speaking to him he was convinced that he

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did something horrible to his sister killed her and just had no memory of it and so he's super upset trying to like come to the realization that he's this horrible monster and he was convinced of it because of other people's words despite the truth there's a lot of evidence of that there are people who get so confused after hours and hours and hours of being questioned that yeah you question your own reality I question my own reality all the time I know it's hard enough when you have really realistic dreams to understand what's real I was just thinking of that speaking Yeah yeah every day I'm like was that real did I have that conversation and like maybe everything's real and we just enter some other world in our dreams so it's just like the different fake differentiating between oh God [Laughter] we would totally be brought to the great Elm if we were having this conversation back I told you this episode is really

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making me contemplate some bigger questions about life so my gosh thank God for therapy no I couldn't agree more okay so goodie is hung from the tree and she dies she was the very last accused witch killed in Boston and this was in 1688 three years before the witch hysteria in Salem Massachusetts visitors in Boston Common have reported seeing a woman who appears strikingly similar to what Ann goody Glover was said to look like she's a woman in Puritan Era clothing she's crying she's sometimes heard screaming in agony and just heartbreak I think so people are like this seems a lot like Ann goody Glover some people are like well could this be Mary Dyer but maybe personality wise they're both pretty headstrong but it might seem like Mary Dyer was a bit more

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prepared for her life to be taken from her and while Goody's Spirit may still be restless here Boston has established an official goody Glover day in her remembrance which is November 16th and there's a plaque in her honor that now reads not far from here on the 16th of November 1688 Good Wife Ann Glover an elderly Irish Widow was hanged as a witch because she had refused to renounce her Catholic faith having been deported from her native Ireland to the Barbados with her husband who died there because of his own loyalty to the Catholic faith she came to Boston where she was living for at least six years before she was unjustly condemned to death this Memorial is erected to commemorate goody Glover as the first Catholic martyr in Massachusetts which is like another thing that's so impressive too like she saw what happened to her husband in Barbados when he was killed

1:11:00

for yeah speaking out in his beliefs and she still I mean there's so many examples of it like the Holocaust yeah people people are awful okay moving on to a more awfulness yeah yeah Ann hibbens is another woman whose life was taken simply for speaking her mind she didn't agree with a carpenter that was working in her house and so she spoke up about it and then she was hanged from the great Elm just like many others many women who spoke against what was happening and the rulemakers the men there was eventually a windstorm that brought the great Elm down this happened in

Hauntings and the Great Elm

1876. I like that it wasn't a windstorm all of the spirits are just shoving that thing to the ground I walked through the common yesterday actually because I I just kind of wanted to like go look at all the places that I was talking about again yeah with the lens of having researched it versus just like

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generally knowing it as I walk through and there are so many Elm trees I like really freaked me out just looking around it's like man we talk about the great Elm but how many of these other trees here could have just you know some one-offs well okay here's a more positive look on that what if I mean I'm sure Boston state has or Boston has a city in Massachusetts has like planted a lot of these Elms but I like to think that now this land like each Elm represents the Souls Lost to that other ohm wow they're unfortunately are not enough trees in the common to even account for the number of people who died there okay that I imagine to continue with my positivity I imagine all of this intricate rooted system of the nature the trees the plants that are existing underneath Austin Commons are

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running it's like the bloodstream of these roots are the spirits and the Soul trees don't forget no yeah they hold the memory yeah it makes me wonder too like speaking of of trees I wonder how many trees previously existed there and did the trees themselves were they because you know when there's a tree that's ill and and diseased depending on what a tree is going through other trees might pump nutrients towards it or they might take nutrients away and basically kill the tree to save all the others in the forest and around that and it makes me wonder if there was just something so wrong with everything that was happening there from a tree's perspective that the trees themselves like Unearthed this great Elm to try to stop I like that you know I was talking to someone recently and they had a plant

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that was dying and so they not without really thinking about it just moved it and it ended up moving it next to another plant and this is like they're not potted they're potted independently not sharing the same soil or anything the next day they came out and the plan that had been dying totally alive again and it was just like in my mind it's like oh it needed a friend yeah it is so sweet I actually have found that when I propagate plants if I just have some cuttings just like randomly throughout they immediately die but if I put them next to a pothos they do well specifically pothos which if you use the water from your pothos plant if you have any in water you can dump just a little bit into plant cuttings and it does help them root quicker anyway plant tips oh interesting the world is interesting a little green okay so over there

1:15:00

the yeah the great Elm was knocked down by the wind in 1876 and now there's a plaque that stands basically right in front of where the great Elm is and the plaque upsettingly so says nothing about all the executions no mention of it what does it say just like it says here's where the God what was that there was like some group I keep wanting to say the Minutemen but I don't think it's that it was like some group of people had like formed it was like the first place where this one particular wrong on like so many levels I'll have to I'll have to go walk because I didn't walk on that side of the common yesterday I guess I did but I was I didn't cut through right next to the plaque but I should go back and see if there's anything new after they did all the construction in that one section yeah or do we need to start like a

1:16:00

petition a petition probably okay so there's been a lot of death here in this area and at the hands of the tree or the people who executed people on the tree visitors of the common often report seeing pale apparitions hanging from the trees still in the park so while the great Elm is gone people still see bodies swaying from these trees oh surrounding trees people also say that they hear what sounds like a rope creaking against a tree branch oh that's really really sad so sad there's also a local shop owner nearby I think it was like a tobacco shop that I read and he said that he often hears chains rattling early in the morning and he was like I wonder if it could be goody but I was like goody it doesn't really seem like something Ann goody Clover would do to me it sounds more like this could be a

1:17:00

result of some of the Phantom soldiers that haunt Boston Common you should go knock on or like I don't know go stop by that shop the tobacco shop yeah there's only a few figure it out ask what time you like they hear it and I don't know camp out and you hear anything also here's another great suggestion for me to give people Boston common is not safe to be in walking alone at night so good to know don't don't go ghost hunting unless you're in a large group because it is is it kind of like Central Park yeah there's just a concentration of crime right in that general area so there's like the side that we walk on usually to cut through which even at night I wouldn't do that and then there's there's generally like a pretty big police force outside of um the the T the train station goes right

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through there and there's just a lot of activity right on one corner of the common and I've heard of some horrifying things that some of the police people I know who know people who work as police officers in Boston I have seen there so don't work through it at night despite your desire to hear hear the ghosts

Revolutionary War in Boston

okay so a century after the witch hangings and all this other stuff there is the Revolutionary War Boston Common was used as a camp for over 1 000 British soldiers so that's where they posted up and they lived in the common like it was more than just like them Gathering their troops there they like literally post stuff and lived there as they were preparing to fight everyone and it was from here from Boston Common that the British soldiers

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split up into I think it was three different brigades to leave the common and begin their Journey West to Lexington and Concord to fight in the Revolutionary War which Paul Revere if anyone's a history buff we know Paul Revere did his midnight ride he took a boat from the North End to Charlestown grabbed a a horse and then rode out to Lexington and Concord to warn people that the Redcoats were coming the British are coming isn't there I think I recently heard that Paul Revere wasn't alone that there was another person with him and no one remembers his name oh probably I mean why don't we know the name of the guy that was in the steeple like that can I see the staple too there's uh the old North Church is literally in the steeple like there was the guy who was the lookout who was like I'll do one Lantern if they're coming if the British

1:20:00

are coming by sea one of their coming one if I no sorry one if by land two if by Sea and that influenced how Paul Revere got himself over to Charlestown into to save everyone yeah there's a lot of other people involved I just Googled it okay it says four men and one woman made late night rides alerting the early Americans of what dangerous lay ahead Paul Revere Samuel Prescott Israel Bissell William Dawes in Sybil Ludington and this one sentence is funny it says while Paul Revere wrote into history on April 18 1775 his fellow writer William Dawes gelped into undeserved Oblivion oh my God it is also if anyone's coming to Boston you can go see one of the lanterns that was hung in the North End it's in the church that you can go into and the other one is in Concord Massachusetts I've seen both okay so the British

1:21:00

it's this big thing in history now that we know that they came from that area and they were posted up there and this whole thing the Revolutionary War but there were plenty of British British soldiers that also died in the common because amongst themselves they had rules and laws and when people committed crimes fellow British people soldiers they would try them their fellow British men and kill them like use the Gallows that were in the common many people have seen the spirits of these soldiers because they see spirits in this period appropriate like period clothing Red Coats like soldiers uniforms and there's one particular spot along the common that you may not expect to see a spirit of a soldier uh but people do and it is in the subway station it is on the tee I thought you were gonna say on the carousel oh oh I

1:22:00

win the carousel oh man the carousel is actually very close to where there was the how are we describing it also like gross sludge the meat stew the moist the moist this yeah moist stew moist do yeah the carousel is like right right there so no but when people it's it's early morning so only when people are riding the train early morning they will see sometimes a British soldier dressed in his complete red coat Ensemble holding a musket and standing on the tracks on the tracks that must be really unsettling to observe yeah and also very I'm curious about the spirit is it residual is this Spirit momentarily like blips it glitching blipping into our timeline and what do they think I mean how confused are they questions that will never have an answer it is confusing because also I mean I

1:23:00

know a lot of Boston's been filled in with landfill but Boston Common existed and it's not it's not like like this band is appearing 30 feet below earth so it's not like he was always there unless his unless he was buried there and he's just appearing where he was buried in like a mass grave you know After the Revolutionary War there

The story of Rachel Wall

was another notable execution in Boston Common and it is the execution of a female pirate Rachel Schmidt was born in 1760s Pennsylvania and she left home at age 16 because she loved the ocean and she just really wanted to live by the water and so age 16 she married fisherman George wall I have no idea how old George was the two eventually moved to Boston together I love Rachel already you can have Andrew Ranson I want Rachel okay well I'll see how you feel at the

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end of this because I'm kind of back and forth on her because it's one of those things where like if it's true what she did you you begin to hate her but then you're also like well these history books and and all these people who were accused and executed half them didn't do what they said they did and there's a lot of sexism and she's a woman so okay excited to learn her and George they move I think they spent some time maybe in like New York City or something like that and then they eventually moved to Boston together Rachel is working as a maid in Beacon Hill she seemed quite pleased with her life because she was working on the hill surrounded by the sea life is good there's marshes it's beautiful she smells the Ocean Air and they have a really good group of friends like she has a thriving social life there but George wants more for their lives he's like yeah it's fun it's comfortable it's beautiful but where's the thrill so at her at his encouragement George

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Rachel and a group of their male friends or maybe George's male friends they together become Pirates they came up with a plan to steal a ship the Essex was the ship that they stole it operated near the Isle of Shoals in New Hampshire which you covered in an episode of years ago the Isle of Shoals very haunted place lots of crime um and the Essex they stole the ship it is the vessel that they used to then basically bait other ships in to pirate and steal and Martyr so they waited for when they first got this boat the SX they waited for a day when the water when there was a storm rolling in so like the water was churning the sky was dark and gray you could barely tell the difference between what was Sky what was ocean and they dressed up the Essex the stolen ship like it had been damaged during the storm and Rachel was the bait

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so she would cry she waved her hands in distress as there was this passing ship coming by and the ship comes up and they're like oh my gosh like her boat looks destroyed they're like where's your husband first question and she's like I don't know he left me he abandoned me I'm I'm out here she's in total distress they dock up beside her they get off to help her and all of the men her husband included Rush her saviors and they kill those people they used the strategy 12 times killing at least 24 people in two years okay here's my question what is the purpose of killing said people the thrill of killing was it truly just that or like were there was there a booty to be gotten they could have gotten the booty regardless because most of these ships it would be like two people on a boat and then a big group of them they could have rushed them and stole their stuff and left these people alive but they

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didn't how many of them were on their pirate ship I don't I have no idea okay but it wasn't but it said it was a group it was a larger group okay so it was like I would guess maybe like six versus two I don't know what the motive was to kill these people because they it seemed like in almost every instance they didn't need to I mean they never needed to but no one ever needs to yeah yeah unless it's like someone attacking you and you're protecting yourself self-defense yes Karma eventually caught up to George he drowned in a shipwreck Rachel was with him but miraculously she was saved she returned to Boston and she went back to working as a maid but the thrill of crime you know she got a little taste of it and she was like this life is too mundane for me I can't just work as a maid so she continued to be a pirate on her own she became notorious for stealing docked ships in the Boston Harbor uh she was

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caught many times and she was convicted of petty theft and larceny and I don't believe she ever murdered anyone on her own um I think it was probably just the male group of pirates she was with who did it before uh but she was always released every time she was caught she was released but she never really felt dissuaded from continuing with the crimes because she was always released and so she began to expand she was now a pirate and a highway robber on March 18 1789 Rachel wall approached 17 year old Margaret Bender on the public Highway in Boston Massachusetts Margaret was alone perfect Target and Rachel approached her tore her Bonnet off of her head placed Rachel Place Margaret's Bonnet on her own head and then took Margaret's shoes and buckles and ran it was all the detail the Bonnet is like such a specific strange Choice yeah it's also just like she didn't need to

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steal any of those she didn't need to do that it was like a taunting thing you know yeah big bully move yeah it was also said and I don't know if this is true but it said that Rachel stuck her hand into Margaret's mouth and attempted to yank Margaret's tongue out so Rachel not sure how I feel about Rachel what's going on yeah uh she's caught for doing this she's sent to jail and on August 25th of that year she's found guilty she admits to her crimes as a pirate but she denies the murders and highway robbery so this is one of those things where I was like I don't know like can we believe her do we know like there's no way to know yeah there's no way to know it's with everyone who was tried at that time like we have no idea whether they were male female child adult we don't

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know if what they said to have done is what they did it is interesting that after she you know started her own branch of pirating that there was murder was not a part of it that does make me wonder if the murder was perhaps more of the men her husband and the other Pirates Forte and their choice and hers was more of the getting what she wanted which was like I don't know people's things also what did she do with the ships that she would steal from the harbor what would she do with them I don't know I don't know I think maybe just take them for a joyride to say that she could she probably docked him back up again just somewhere else I bet she had the best stories oh I'm sure it's also hard because like let's remember she was married to this man at 16 years old like how much

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was shaped in her life and of how she behaved as an adult from this marriage and what she was exposed to and what they did when she was young Governor John Hancock he signed the order to execute Rachel wall by hanging and at the time the great Elm was still up it's not the 1800s of course he signed it the classic guy in his signature John Hancock thousands of people came to watch Rachel uh she spoke to them she said she was innocent she forgives all of those who accused her but she basically was telling people she was like if there's one warning I can give you it's that women girls especially you guys got to be careful because you too despite your innocence and despite how you feel you live your life you could be tried and hanged just like me I too am innocent this could be you tomorrow Rachel wall was 29 years old she was the last woman hanged in Massachusetts and she's New England's

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only female pirate wow her spirit has been linked to various paranormal activity in the common though I really don't know how people can tell who's who either I mean that's the biggest bandana running around yeah maybe she's wearing the Bonnet that she still at the moment in the buckles she's got buckles on her hand she's running I don't know many people have seen two women dressed in Victorian era clothing arm in arm taking a stroll through the park and occasionally sitting to rest and chat with one another on the benches so I'd love to know who those women are I was gonna say that doesn't sound like Rachel at all it doesn't sound like Rachel's a five that doesn't make me wonder too like are these women who their spirits they knew each other and just like had such a good friendship that this is almost like a residual stain that they left in the park was there some sort of trauma that happened to them during this time period that they are like actively

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haunting there or are they two completely separate spirits that became friends in the afterlife I love that or are they just you and I you know types of people who pass lives or I mean more like just like buddies who are like let's stay ghosts this is fun let's just walk around and people watch Yeah Yeah well yeah it seems like they love people watching but if you look at them it said that they disappear pretty quick so you're not really supposed to acknowledge them hard to don't make eye contact

Common facts and burial grounds

there's a cemetery right next to the park as well it's the central burying ground uh notable artists have been buried there some of America's earliest poets participants of the Boston Tea Party and more and then just steps away from that is The Granary bearing ground where Paul Revere is buried the common has obviously seen some things deaths hardships riots rallies crime War celebrities and so much more but to name a few of the non-ghostly and more notable facts about the common

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uh fireworks displays began in the common in 1745 which is so much earlier than I would have guessed if I was hearing that at trivia the last known execution in the common was in 1817 which means the Boston Common was used as a Gallows for almost two centuries 1817. wait okay so when was when did Rachel get hanged she was the like mid to late uh 1700s okay so she was the last woman choose Last Woman yeah okay 1789 that's when she was okay so for 30 more years people were three more years I'm executed okay black people and Native Americans were not allowed in the park in Boston Common until July 4th 1836. they were famous and historical figures that gathered here like George Washington John Adams General Lafayette MLK led a civil rights rally here in the common and since 1987 Nova Scotia in Canada has

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donated the annual Christmas tree to Boston as a thank you for Boston's Red Cross and Massachusetts Public Safety committee's efforts following the Halifax explosion of 1917. so still to this day over a hundred years to this day yes we still get a tree a Christmas tree from them the Boston Common was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987. in Boston also installed the first Subway in the United States which bordered the common and I have just a few more facts for you guys you seem excited about these ones that is a little bit ghostly oh okay good can I real quick tell a story and this is um related to the Boston Commons so we have managers David and Zach and you and I were together and They Don't Really represent podcasts necessarily I think we might be their only podcast they also would never naturally listen to our podcast they're not normal enthusiasts

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no I I don't know that they believe I mean maybe they do we haven't clarified but anyway I think everyone is incredibly wacky and scary yes and they try to be very nice when we talk about things that we're doing but they're always like okay it's like that grandmother who tries to be supportive but does not get you at all um and they'll call us and be like are you okay knowing some of the things we do places we go to they're like just checking in making sure you're not possessed we were together and we're walking around in Boston when they called and we were like we're actually at Paul Revere's gravestone right now and they kind of gave this like laugh of what I don't know how to respond to you it was more but of course what you're doing we had a business meeting with them with someone else and they called us like six minutes after that meeting ended to debrief and we were already at Paul Revere's gravestone so they were like oh yeah what the hell

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the cemetery we're spooky guys and I love it

Paranormal encounters

okay okay so Boston started working on pioneering America's first subway system back in 1895. so this was a very exciting thing to happen but what they had not expected was to unearth more than 1 000 dead bodies beneath the common many British soldiers buried from the Revolutionary War but many others were dismembered and unmarked Graves just a few feet below the Earth thought to be people who were executed people who were poor people who were ill and had died from diseases okay dismembered though is different than just yeah dead yeah okay

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a Boston Post article from the time said quote the work on the commons is proceeding cautiously as new tombs are met at every step yesterday was gathered up a great box of Bones among the Heap were seven skulls one of them covered in long brown hair covered in yeah still had their hair okay I was picturing like coming out of like all parts of their body oh no no their skull their skull okay okay okay but I mean let's think about that there's a box of skulls but they Unearthed like there's just body parts with like every it's all mashed together people are just being thrown I guess underground all of the bodies that were discovered during this dig were moved to the central burying ground Cemetery I think some of them were I mean it was so long after so many people had died that I don't think there was a way to identify most of them and any that were identified if there were living relatives I think that's a

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very rare thing but maybe a few people were moved elsewhere but the majority of them were brought to the central burying ground Cemetery which is in the corner of the common Cemetery within the common those over a thousand people their bones were just dumped right back in one hole together with a single headstone marking the spot it's difficult right because there's no way to identify these people and you want to give them some type of recognition but how do you do that and especially if they're digging up this many they're probably just trying to do the best they can totally with rebury what more could they do I mean there's no and it's also like a resource thing too like how do how do you identify people and it seems like a very impossible task but I think some people might have been but the majority were all put together in one grave and in that one grave they were then uh recognized with a single

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tombstone just as the executions had drawn a crowd to the common the promise of seeing a dead body being Unearthed during this dig Did the same and people flocked to the common to watch the construction project I do think that's better than watching people actually be executed yes I agree because I will admit I would never go watch an execution that is incredibly disturbing to me I would definitely post up in front of a construction site if I knew Bones from people who lived hundreds of years before me were being on Earth I think if it was something where it's like this could be someone from 20 years ago that would equally disturb me but for some reason the amount of time between me and those people in my mind I'm like yeah it's my morbid curiosity I feel like I would be intrigued enough to potentially it is a bit like archeology and the digs that occur all over the world a lot of them

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they do end up finding remains and they're very you know I don't know how they did it here but they're very very careful with how they remove them and try to you know retain how they are and find all these incredible old artifacts you're right we put we slap the label of archeology on it and then it sounds professional it's legit Farm Urban curiosity is now a profession yeah um it's said at this time unfortunately people began body snatching people were stealing the bones of these yeah poor people and auctioning them off which does make me wonder because you know how there was all that drama with like Harvard and various other medical schools that had actual Body Snatchers and like were grave robbing to get bodies to I mean skeletons are expensive I wonder how many might have ended up just like on

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display at one of the universities nearby it's like who's buying these well I guess maybe they're a lot of these people are yeah very historically significant so maybe a lot of buyers in response to all the interest and concern and now crime associated with these unearthings the city placed a large canvas around the construction project to try to Shield people from seeing it but many people I guess the ones that were less excited about the discovery of these bodies they raised concerns about a few things they were like okay surely digging up thousands of dead rotting bodies would pose some sort of Health threat right half of them are decaying basically out in the open for short periods of time like during the construction project um and many of them were people who had died from illnesses and sicknesses so there was a lot of concern for People's Health the air quality the plants in the park because some trees started to die

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as well so it was kind of a I don't know what was going on but people were like okay you can be dazzled and fascinated and disgusted by what's going on but let's also remember like we we could also be the living could be in danger here as well so the train station was built uh the T the train that goes alongside the park I think it's a one of the stops still exists from the original dig and now it's a little the path has a little bit different but it still offers hauntings of its own so in addition to that Redcoat soldier that is seen in the early morning people hear moaning and wailing ebony from deep within the train tunnels and the fact that it's a tunnel makes it probably even spookier and Echo and travel in strange ways yeah three years after the train system was installed there was a gas explosion which killed six people and in more recent times and I find this super disturbing the biography channels show haunted encounters face to face tried to get a reaction from the Spirits by

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playing sounds of people screaming and the sounds of explosions but all their equipment was shut off immediately so the ghosts were like f u you're out of here that reminds me okay this is this is my comparison is when there was a kitten one stuck underneath a or hiding underneath a car and I was trying like I was literally like crawling under trying to get it I was like What if I play the sound of like a mama cat meowing that and it didn't work no but you were doing you were what you were doing [Laughter] elicit a reaction from something in front of you but yours was to save Abraham yes to repeat the trauma that these people have experienced to potentially see a ghost for their own entertainment or to make profit for their own yeah television in the 1970s a

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man named Dr Recker which I wrote or I read that he was a retired dentist he was walking by the cemetery in the Boston Common and was startled when he saw a young girl who appeared to be dressed in a very dirty oversized white dress her face appeared to be covered with some sort of like ash or dirt she was staring at him and she was standing completely still unblinking and so he was like oh this is kind of creepy he looks away and when he does the girl appears again in his eye line in a different spot and this continues to happen so every time he changes the direction of his eyes she appears again in the distance right in front of him and so he's freaked out he's moving quickly through the common he's going down the sidewalks and everywhere she is there he's trying to make it to his car he then grabs his keys from his pocket as he's nearing his car and he suddenly feels a cold chill wash over him she's there her little hand reaches out

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and throws his keys to the ground he's able to pick up his keys and get to his car and she's not there anymore but it does make us wonder why was she trying so hard to get his attention and why was she trying to make him stay my nipples oh my God spooky that is I'm just curious like yeah did she try to save him like did she not want to get him did she not want him to get in the car was she trying to just like Rachel was she just being a bit menacing those are all great patterns because it's all It All Leads back to us not understanding the other side and what different Spirits can go through and what they have access to because it's like yeah was she was she a demon was she

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just a child who was confused and was like looking for help was she frustrated or did she have some sort of insight into what would happen to him if he got into his car at that particular time that he would have if he hadn't ran to his car because she was freaking him out like so many questions especially because we often hear you know a spirit appearing in your periphery and then disappearing and that's kind of all you see but for the spirit to continue to show up in front of him Vision wise and then all the way to his car and intentionally grab his keys and throw them like that feels very very purposeful but yet mysterious and in the few reports that I was reading that told this story it didn't make it sound like she was ever walking it made it sound like she was just always just poof poof poof poof standing and staring and unblinking and so I feel like it would be even more terrifying the fact that you just keep seeing this little girl who's completely Frozen still like a statue and then suddenly she reaches out

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and slaps the keys out of your hand I wish I could do that like that would be such a cool superpower just to like blip wherever you wanted the blip yeah she's the flash yeah so to wrap this up today

The Boston Strangler

millions of people visit the common each year people who wander around the cemetery say they feel a heaviness in the air a general feeling of being watched the feeling of being in a crowded space despite being completely alone the feeling of deep sorrow overcoming them men in military uniforms can be spotted walking through the grass and disappearing moments later the strange noises glowing orbs and darting Shadows startle both locals and tourists who Venture through this well-traveled park and many suspect that there are thousands of more bodies below hidden just below our feet until the next big dig and there's more to this area than what we've just uncovered for the citizens of the 1960s there was a new threat looming

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over the city a Strangler was on the loose you've got a great knack for hanging for Cliffhangers Cliffhangers The Boston Strangler is there much mob stuff in Boston Commons I did that look that up and I didn't really see anything which surprised me I think a lot of it was mostly concentrated in Charlestown and Southie um but also I imagine that it happened like in the secrecy of buildings and undergrounds they're not like operating in the park no no yeah right out in the open in the park no yeah they might be able to do that same thought you know clandestine meetings but they're not doing the the murdering and stuff throwing someone into the car and heading towards the Charles River do a little dumping and uh upper Mystic Lake this is incredible Corinne I'm one you're such an

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incredible Storyteller um who compliments today Sabrina two um this is all me making up for you for saying a mean thing about your hand modeling career oh on campus our stories people were taken aback by that I wasn't I knew what you meant I I didn't mean it in a mean way you meant like the way I made my hand cooking because someone was like oh let's see your nails and then I like put my hand up just like like in a weird way and you were like yeah I love Ukraine but you do not have a career in hand modeling and people are like yeah and also like not the beauty of my hands but just like I had nothing to do the weird puzzles I had yeah I was like yeah all right here you go it was just weird it was like the moist stew of hand modeling that like when you came in I'm making it worse okay I'm done I can't even recreate how bad it was but

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whatever I did with my hand was super ugly but I think I was like oh thanks [Laughter] mean it wasn't it was it wasn't my posing skills which I don't have yeah anyway I I was complimenting you but then also it was just so fascinating and I love that it's a two-parter you're doing such a good job and I can't wait for part two oh thank you I'm excited for part two I haven't even written it yet that's fine it's gonna be great it will be I believe it um I'm enthralled I'm hooked I found a shorter story

Listener story and conclusion

um not specifically about Boston Commons but it is about Boston and it is a the subject line really just hooked you know speaking of being hooked it's from our listener Danielle and it's called solving crimes from the

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other side hey girls and ghosts I started your podcast in 2020 and I was a skeptic but now that I have binged all of your episodes I am a firm believer yes that is the highest praise that makes me feel so good it's the best thank you thank you welcome Danielle welcome to the dark side Danielle said which you're a witch yeah we're all witches here yes whether you know you know it's a compliment now I have never had a personal experience with the Paranormal other than a shadow person used to watch me sleep but my family has after listening to the last encounters when you asked for first responder stories I knew I had to email in this story takes place right after my great grandfather passed away in the mid-1950s he passed suddenly and worked as a detective in Boston his death came as a shock to his wife my

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great-grandmother and his three kids my two great uncles and my nana when they learned of his passing my great-grandma was overwhelmed with grief caring friends convinced her to go lay down and rest and they would take care of the kids she went into their room to close her eyes but she kept seeing my great-grandfather's face she got up and told everyone that she can't sleep because all she could see was him when she closed her eyes everyone told her you need to rest and it was just the grief and shock again she tried but when she closed her eyes again she saw him and he was saying something but she couldn't hear so she went out again to tell her friends what was happening and one of them said okay we'll go back to bed and see what he has to say so again she goes back to bed and one more time and one more time closes her eyes she focused on him and tried to listen to what he was saying then she saw him

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and heard him say my shirts check my shirts my shirts check my shirts over and over annoyed she got up once more and told everyone about what he said and everyone was a bit confused and unsure why she was seeing and hearing this when she kept trying to sleep then she put the pieces together before he died he was working on a big case on a gang in Boston this was before computers so all of the files were on paper she was convinced it had something to do with that but was still too overcome with grief to actually look so she sent both of my great uncles to search they searched the closet tore apart the dresser drawers checked all of his coat pockets and nothing then they looked one more time in the dresser and they found a case File taped underneath his shirt drawer they immediately brought it to the station and with the evidence he found they arrested the top gang members no

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way that is incredible yes go solving crimes from Beyond the Grave Danielle said thank you for all you do and turning the skeptic into a Believer see you on the other side Danielle oh I can just only imagine how excited he probably felt realizing that he he might have a huge piece of the like missing puzzle like a missing puzzle piece to help Crack the Case and I'm sure he was probably waiting for like a few more things to line up to present all of this and then when he passed clearly his Spirit was like oh my God I never got the opportunity to give them what I found I have to tell someone I have to have this figured out yes and there's so much to this that we could dive into but the fact that he you know I mean it's so tragic that he died so suddenly and there was no real peace for the family and it must be so

1:56:00

tragic to have experienced but for her for him to show up and be so focused on the case yes right is I think probably telling about how are you okay yeah my shirts quick I only have 30 seconds here but then at the same time because of the verification that it did solve the case in his message was you know founded in truth and they found this it must have given them some peace to be like oh he's okay he's on the other side yeah you got to prove multiple things without one visit yeah yeah exactly yeah wow I love that amazing and Incredible use of spirit Power to come back and give the message and for that message to not feel like gibberish right like they right

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she believes it's so clear and she searched yeah she found exactly what he was saying right yeah so clear wow and I'm glad all the friends were like just listen to him then yeah yeah so supportive yeah so nice well I'm so excited for part two Corinne Boston baby Boston okay everyone we'll see you next week when Corinne again Grace is our ears with her beautiful voice and her wonderful research and until then we'll see you for encounters and campfire stories every Tuesday on patreon what else um YouTube you can watch us do our thing you can see some photos that Corrine has referenced in the story we've merged social media yeah the good stuff you know I do a lot of good things cooking too so I would advise that everyone just follows us on

1:58:00

everything because yes I think in my eyes you'll be rewarded follow us into the dark be great it's a good time over here it's just going to be a depressing two weeks with my Boston stories but we'll come out of it and it will but you know what it's depressing but extremely informative and interesting and while dark we're telling stories of people who perhaps were wronged and while they don't have actual Justice maybe we can do their stories Justice yeah and these are some of the stories you're not going to hear on your freedom trail tour so you have us to tell you we are anti-histories yes thank you for joining us thank you to our editor Christina for editing we're so grateful for all of you and we will see you on the other side

1:59:00

very spooky