Ghosts of Boston comes alive at Parker

In keeping with the Halloween spirit, I made my way into the Omni Parker House Hotel Tuesday night seeking spirits of one kind or another. My desires were most likely to be satisfiedIn a meeting with Holly Mascott Nadler, . As author of Ghosts of Boston Town, and a self-proclaimed “ghost-feeler,” Nadler was the woman to see for a ghoulish good time.

And the Omni Parker House Hotel would be just the place to meet such a person. On first glance the Parker House seemed normal enough, controlling the doormen, the chandeliers and all the other trappings of a hotel of repute. Having been forewarned by Nadler’s collection of ghost stories, however, I was very conscious of the reputation of Parker House as the oldest haunted hotel in America.

As I took the elevator up to the mezzanine level, I remembered a scene in a movie about another haunted hotel where a ghost lures one of its victims into an empty elevator shaft. Yet, upon reaching my destination unharmed, the elevator doors opened, revealing a large man in a top hat and tails who kindly introduced himself as Mr. Harvey Parker, owner of the Parker House Hotel and chief spook. Nibbling politely on cheese and cucumber spears, I listened to Nadler discuss some of the stories of Ghosts of Boston Town.

Nadler tells 25 individual yet equally haunting stories of ghosts, possession, murder, demons and suicide, including the story of the Parker House. With three centuries of history in historic old Beantown, there is plenty of room for all sorts of spirited characters, as Nadler points out in her introduction. Not even our own humble Universitas is immune to charges of possession, as BU was a one-time owner of 4 Charlesgate, where in the 1970s, haunted happenings in relation to a supposed suicide forced one room in the dormitory to be permanently closed. One wonders if the administration made any reference to this when it was sold.

Feeling sufficiently spooked at this point, I found myself approached by the yes-still-deceased Harvey Parker, who offered a tour of his hotel, and some of his personal favorite haunts. Accompanying Parker was Mr. Seamus Murphy, an employee of the Parker House for almost 30 years and resident expert on the Hotel’s seamier side.

The first step on the tour, right outside the mezzanine, was a mirror which hung in Charles Dickens’ room while he stayed at the Parker House. It was described as the very same mirror in which he had practiced his dramatic reading of his own A Christmas Carol. Some Parker House guests and staff members claim that sometimes when you stare into the mirror, the current background appears to be gone. Replacing it, however, is, in some cases, a room Dickens would have seen and, in some cases, Dickens himself practicing for that great dramatic reading in the sky. Sadly, this intrepid reporter saw only a scruffy bearded poor college student with shaggy hair and an empty wallet.

Moving on, we headed to the third floor. Here, Mr. Murphy informed us that elevators would mysteriously open at the third floor, despite there being no one around to summon them. On the third floor was the Dickens room, where Dickens and other writers of his age, such as Hawthorne, Thoreau and Longfellow entertained guests. The room where Dickens stayed during his visits to Boston remains in use as a conference room, and according to Seamus, more than a few sober and upright businessmen have exclaimed that the old style fireplace in the room, an original from Dickens’ era, gives off heat, despite being connected to no known heating source. Knowing a little something myself about some of the methods of feeling warm despite no real source of heat (if not an expert on being sober and upright), I can offer my expert testimony in favor of this ghostly rumor.

Across the hall in Room 303, however, it is the ghost and not the businessman, who seems to be inebriated. According to Seamus, a businessman with a penchant for cigars and whiskey died in this room. A ghost after my own heart. One might think that perhaps it was the patrons and not the ghosts imbibing, but according to Seamus, more than a dozen complaints of the foul stench of smoke and alcohol have been reported.

The next stop was the tenth floor which Parker said was his own personal favorite haunt, despite the floor’s non-existence during Parker’s time. At this point, I began to wonder why it was that supposedly haunted places look haunted. Is it one’s imagination at work? Or perhaps the psychic resonance of the building’s more ghastly inhabitants?

Perhaps Nadler would argue that later. (You thought I forgot about her didn’t you!) Indeed, her own personal interest in architecture comes through clearly in her writing as she seems at home discussing European-style haunted hotels and the Medieval turrets of possessed apartments. Her aptitude for this kind of writing helps Ghosts of Boston Town immensely, offering a sense of style and spooky setting that might otherwise be lacking.

None of this made me any more comfortable as we sauntered down the narrow hallways of the tenth floor, where staff and guests alike see eerie white lights and hear horrendous rap tap tapping. But regrettably, our little band saw and heard nothing as Seamus explained the floor’s history, and Parker piped up with an impressive number of one-liners and rim shots.

The tour completed, we returned to the mezzanine, where I stuffed my pockets with some more munchies, and calmly said my good-byes to the ghost and the ghost feeler. Both warmly wished me farewell, as I made my departure from the spirited world of ghosts and goblins to the drearier and less exciting but perhaps scarier world of professors and deans.

Ghosts of Boston Town is much like my time with its author. Both are intriguing and eclectic, interesting if you are willing to accept and interact with both the historic and the phantasmal. It is worthy read for the skeptic and the believer, but best read by those willing to put aside deeper judgments and simply enjoy.