Underground Boston Ghost Tours: Gravestones and Gunpowder

Underground Boston Ghost Tours: Gravestones and Gunpowder is a one-hour evening walk from Boston Ghosts, a US Ghost Adventures brand, booking from $26 per person at our August 2, 2026 check. Seven stops are named and every one is flagged pass-by, which makes this a sidewalk circuit of the Beacon Hill and School Street block rather than a tour of interiors. It is the shortest and the cheapest of the four guided Boston ghost listings we track, and the only one of the four flagged wheelchair accessible. It is also the lowest rated of the four, at 4.2 from 269 Viator reviews.

What you will see

Seven stops, all named by the listing and all seven flagged pass-by. We hold no research on one of them, the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul, beyond its presence on that list, so we make no claim about it.

Harvey D. Parker's hotel opened on 8 October 1855, and the actress Charlotte Cushman died in it on 18 February 1876. The building you stand in front of is not the one she knew: the 1855 hotel was demolished from 23 November 1925 and the present fourteen-storey house opened on 12 May 1927. That disposes of most of the lore. Dickens did not write A Christmas Carol here, he wrote it in London in 1843, and his room no longer exists any more than the hotel he stayed in does. Harvey Parker did not die in the hotel; he died at 141 Boylston Street in 1884. Stephen King's "1408" was not based on room 303, and the Ho Chi Minh baker story is unverified.

The Granary Burying Ground was established in 1660 as the third burial ground in Boston Proper, neither the oldest nor the first: King's Chapel came in 1630 and Copp's Hill in 1659. It took its name in 1737 from a granary moved to the site Park Street Church now occupies. Roughly 2,345 markers stand over more than 5,000 burials, and the city says the stones were rearranged into rows, which is why the stones do not mark the bodies. The Massacre dead went in at two funerals rather than one, four after the procession of 8 March 1770 and Patrick Carr later. Mother Goose is not buried here. Benjamin Franklin is not here either, though his parents are. The severed-hands story about John Hancock has no documentary basis, and we print no tomb number for Samuel Adams because the sources give two.

Boston Common has been common land since 1634. The Great Elm that narration calls the hanging tree came down in a gale on 15 February 1876, so nothing you are looking at is the Great Elm. The evidence against the hanging-tree tradition is the city's own: Mayor Smith's 1854 tablet on the tree recorded its age, its decline from 1792 and the storm of 1832, and said nothing about executions. The Quaker executions did not happen on the Common at all, because the town gallows stood on Boston Neck. Ann Glover was hanged for witchcraft in 1688, probably not at the Great Elm, and she is often called the last witch hanged in America, which she was not.

Uphill, the Massachusetts State House is not the Old State House, and the confusion is constant: the 1770 Massacre and the 1776 reading of the Declaration belong to the Washington Street building. Governor Samuel Adams and Paul Revere laid the cornerstone on 4 July 1795, and the legislature moved in on 11 January 1798. Revere's firm sheathed Bulfinch's leaking shingled dome in copper in 1802, which is not gilding it; Revere did not gild the dome, and the gilding year is unsettled. Sylvia Shaw Judson's bronze of Mary Dyer was dedicated on the lawn on 9 July 1959, 299 years after the colony hanged her. No haunting with a name or a room is documented here, so we claim none.

The Boston Athenaeum was founded in 1807 and its 10 1/2 Beacon Street building opened in 1849. Hawthorne wrote its ghost story himself, describing the Reverend Thaddeus Mason Harris, who died on 3 April 1842, in the reading room. He did not see him in the building you stand in front of, which opened seven years after Harris died. The Athenaeum is a private membership library, not the Boston Public Library, and it does not admit walk-ins. It holds the 1837 Narrative of the Life of James Allen, one copy bound in the highwayman's own skin and confirmed human by the Anthropodermic Book Project: one volume, and not the skin of a man who was hanged.

The John Adams Courthouse closes the loop, built in 1893 to George A. Clough's design on the levelled stump of Pemberton Hill, cut down in about five months to October 1835, and renamed for Adams in 2002. Nobody was executed here and there were no gallows on this site. It is not the Charles Street Jail, John Adams never entered it, Pemberton Square is not colonial, and the 1692 witch trials have nothing to do with it. The one dated event the National Park Service records here is the trial of 23 National Woman's Party members on 24 February 1919.

Who it suits

An hour on your feet, $26, and the wheelchair-accessible flag. Of the four guided Boston ghost listings we track that is the shortest, the cheapest and the only one flagged accessible, which makes it the easiest to fit into an evening with other plans. The trade is the evidence base: 4.2 from 269 Viator reviews on August 2, 2026 is the lowest rating of those four, against 4.4, 4.6 and 4.6.

• Do not expect interiors. All seven stops are pass-bys, and the Athenaeum does not admit walk-ins in any case.
• No age rule is published. The single band runs 0 to 99, stating no minimum and no maximum, so ask the operator if that matters.
• Meeting point, group cap and weather policy were not captured. Take all three from the booking page.

How it compares

Four Boston ghost listings in our set are guided, and this is the only one from US Ghost Adventures. The others are Boston's Haunted Historic Streets Walking Tour from ExperienceFirst ($34, 1 hour 30 minutes, 4.6 from 190 reviews), the Haunted Boston Booze and Boos Ghost Walking Tour from Nightly Spirits ($36.16, 2 hours 30 minutes, 4.6 from 161 reviews, 21 and over) and the Boston Ghosts and Gravestones Trolley Tour from Historic Tours of America ($46.20, two hours, 4.4 from 2,570 reviews). All three were listed not wheelchair accessible on July 31, 2026 while this one was listed accessible, so read the flags listing by listing. Prices and review counts are from our August 2, 2026 check. Four is the denominator: it leaves out two self-guided Boston products, a 45-minute app walk and a two-hour audio walk, which we neither rate nor rank. Our Boston page has the rest.

Questions people ask

How long is it, and when does it run?

One hour, in the evening per our July 29, 2026 facts pass. No clock start time is verified, so take the departure from the booking page.

Do you go inside anywhere?

No. All seven stops carry the pass-by flag, and one of them, the Boston Athenaeum, is a private membership library that does not admit walk-ins.

Is there a minimum age?

The listing sets one band, adult 0 to 99, so it states no minimum and no maximum. That is a booking default rather than a policy, so ask the operator if it matters.

Is it wheelchair accessible?

It was flagged accessible at both our July 29 and July 31, 2026 checks, with stroller access recorded July 29. It is the only one of the four guided Boston listings carrying that flag, so do not assume it of the others.

Can I cancel, and when is my booking confirmed?

Free cancellation was flagged on August 2, 2026, and free to 24 hours out at our July 29, 2026 facts pass. The listing states confirmation within 48 hours.