It may be a central gathering spot for tourists and families, but the Boston Common also houses a veritable community of ghosts. Under the rule of the puritans in the eighteenth century, the park was used as an execution site for murderers, thieves, pirates, Quakers, alleged witches, and other local accused criminals, guilty or otherwise. The condemned were hung from a tree, which locals affectionately nicknamed the “Great Elm,” until 1769, when the tree was replaced by a gallows. The last hanging on the Boston Common took place in 1817.

Although the condemned weren’t given official burials and were instead disposed of in the Charles River, their friends and families often snuck into the Common under the cover of night, cut the bodies down, and buried them somewhere in the park, at the risk of their own lives.

This practice became so common that Holly Nadler, author of the book Ghosts of Boston Town referred to the park as “one big anonymous burying ground.”

Unbeknownst to the general public, bodies steadily accumulated under the Common’s soil until 1895, during the construction of Boston’s first underground trolley station, at what is now the Boylston Street Green Line stop. In his book Ghosts of Boston: Haunts of the Hub author Sam Baltrusis estimated that the excavation unearthed “between 900 and 1,100 bodies, buried in shallow graves beneath the Boylston Mall.”

As a result of this mass un-burial, the Boylston Street station has gained a well-deserved reputation as Boston’s “ghost station.” Passengers and T workers alike have observed spectres drifting along the subway tracks, and into the abandoned tunnels connecting Boylston Street with the South End. The section of the Green line connecting Boylston station to Arlington station is considered particularly haunted, and has become a sort of rite of passage amongst T operators, with veteran operators pointing out human-shaped clouds of mist to new recruits. One particularly notorious spirit that haunts Boylston’s so-called ghost station is a British soldier in full redcoat regalia holding a musket, who appears in the middle of the tracks and glares menacingly at T passengers. The operators of Boston’s ghost tours speculate that this unwelcoming spirit was one of the victims of an unjust hanging, and unable to rest, continuously revisits the site of his death.