Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

TYPEHub Page — City

REGIONMassachusetts, USA

FIRST REPORT17th century (Cambridge Common executions)

STATUSActive

Cambridge, Massachusetts is one of the oldest cities in the United States, home to Harvard University, and the site of B. F. Skinner's death in 1990. Its long Revolutionary War and academic history has produced an unusually dense body of documented ghost stories, particularly concentrated around Harvard Square.

Harvard University

Harvard's campus holds several long-running ghost stories. Revolutionary War soldiers are said to still haunt Hollis Hall and Wadsworth House, both used to billet Continental troops during the war. The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library is associated with the ghost of Eleanor Elkins Widener, mother of Harry Elkins Widener, who died aboard the Titanic and in whose memory the library was built. Weld Hall is said to have its own resident spirit reported to unsettle new students, and Holden Chapel — originally built as a place of worship — later accumulated human bones during a period as an anatomy lab, discovered centuries afterward.

Christ Church and the Old Burying Ground

Christ Church, which sided with the British during the Revolutionary War, is said to be haunted by the ghost of a Redcoat soldier reportedly thrown from a wagon and buried beneath the church. The adjoining Old Burying Ground, the oldest such site in the area, holds the remains of Revolutionary-era figures alongside unidentified graves.

Cambridge Common

Once the site of colonial-era executions, Cambridge Common is associated with the death of Elizabeth Kendall, an Irish immigrant hanged in the mid-17th century after being accused of witchcraft, her "crime" reportedly amounting to speaking Irish in public.

Tory Row

This stretch of historic estates, once home to Loyalist sympathisers during the Revolutionary War, is associated with a broader collection of Revolutionary War-era ghost stories tied to the properties along it, including reports of five Hessian soldiers said to still play cards at the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House on Brattle Street.

"Jolly" Jane Toppan

In 1902, Cambridge Hospital nurse Jane Toppan confessed to 31 murders, having overdosed patients on morphine and atropine and reportedly climbed into bed with them as they died. She was found insane and committed to a state hospital in Taunton, Massachusetts.

Cambridgeport Baptist Church

This church, which burned down in 1881, is associated with local legend of Ann Hopkins, said to have been burned at the site during the colonial era after cursing it with fire as she died; residents reportedly heard cries and moans from the site for some time afterward.

Notable people

Psychologist B. F. Skinner died in Cambridge in 1990.

See also

• B. F. Skinner

External links

• The Harvard Crimson — A Ghostly Tour of Harvard Square
• Boston.com — Nine ghost stories in haunted Cambridge