18 Real Haunted Places in Massachusetts: The History Behind Each Legend (2026 Guide)

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Massachusetts has more documented supernatural folklore than most states, largely because of the Salem witch trials of 1692. The ghost stories reach well beyond Salem, though: into Boston's oldest hotels, a Berkshires mansion, a 19th-century railway tunnel and a stretch of southeastern swampland nicknamed a “triangle.” Below is the documented history behind each site, with the legend clearly marked as legend.

Quick answer if you're short on time: The Salem Witch Trials Memorial and Proctor's Ledge (the confirmed 1692 execution site) are both free and open to the public with no ticket; the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River is a museum and inn where you can sleep in the room where a body was found; and the Omni Parker House in Boston is a working luxury hotel with a long-running ghost-story reputation.

1. The Lizzie Borden House (Fall River)

On August 4, 1892, Andrew Borden and his second wife, Abby, were killed with a hatchet inside this house on Second Street. Andrew's daughter Lizzie was charged and, after a widely followed trial in New Bedford, acquitted in June 1893. No one else was ever convicted, and the case remains one of America's best-known unsolved crimes.

The house now runs as a bed-and-breakfast and museum. Staff and guests report footsteps, shadowy figures and cold spots, particularly in the upstairs guest room where Abby's body was found, which can be booked overnight. The house has appeared on Ghost Adventures and other paranormal programs.

Can you visit: Yes. The Lizzie Borden House offers daytime tours and overnight stays, including in the room where Abby died.

2. Salem Witch Trials Memorial (Salem)

Dedicated on August 5, 1992, by Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel for the 300th anniversary of the trials, this was Salem's first public monument to the 20 people executed in 1692 (19 hanged and Giles Corey pressed to death). Architect James Cutler and artist Maggie Smith won an international design competition with a granite wall enclosing three sides of a small park and 20 cantilevered stone benches, each carved with a victim's name, method of execution and date.

No specific ghost story is attached to the memorial. Its reputation is atmospheric: visitors often describe an unusually heavy silence among the benches, especially at dusk, set apart from the busier witch-themed streets nearby.

Can you visit: Yes. The memorial is free, outdoors and open to the public.

3. Hoosac Tunnel (North Adams)

Work on this 4.75-mile railway tunnel through the Hoosac Range began in 1851, and it opened to trains on February 9, 1875. The original estimate was about $2 million; the final cost was about $21 million. Accidents killed or seriously injured about 195 workers, with 135 deaths verified, earning the project the nickname “the Bloody Pit.” The worst single disaster came on October 17, 1867, when naphtha fumes ignited in the hoist building over the Central Shaft. The burning hoist collapsed into the shaft, trapping 13 men about 538 feet below; months later, workers found that some had survived long enough to build a raft before they died.

Ghost lore says workers' moans can still be heard inside. Popular retellings describe an 1868 investigation by an engineer named Paul Travers into voices crying out in pain, and an 1874 tale of a hunter, Frank Webster, who vanished near the tunnel and later claimed unseen voices had beaten him with his own rifle. We could not find period documentation for either story, and they are best treated as folklore.

Can you visit: Only from outside. The tunnel is an active rail line and entry is illegal and dangerous; the portals can be seen from public access points.

4. The Joshua Ward House (Salem)

Built in the 1780s for merchant Joshua Ward, this brick Federal-style house stands on the site of the home of George Corwin, the young High Sheriff of Essex County during the 1692 trials. Corwin carried out the court's sentences and seized property from the accused, and he was the sheriff when Giles Corey, then about 81, was pressed to death under stones in September 1692 for refusing to enter a plea.

Legend holds that Corey cursed the sheriff and the town of Salem as he died, though no contemporary record confirms it. Corwin died in 1696, and tradition says his body was first buried in the cellar of his house to keep it from creditors. Ghost-tour guides call this one of the most haunted houses in Salem, with stories of guests finding unexplained scratches or marks on their skin, which storytellers attribute to Corey or Corwin.

Can you visit: Yes. The building now operates as The Merchant, a boutique hotel.

5. Houghton Mansion (North Adams)

Built in the 1890s for Albert Charles Houghton, North Adams's first mayor, this mansion is tied to a chain of deaths in August 1914. On August 1, the family car, carrying Houghton, his daughter Mary and family friend Sybil Hutton, went off the road in Pownal, Vermont; it is usually said the chauffeur swerved to avoid road work. Mrs. Hutton was killed almost instantly and Mary died later that day. Houghton died at home on August 11, and the chauffeur, John Widders, shot himself the next day.

The Masons bought the house in 1926 and still use it as a lodge, occasionally opening it to paranormal investigators. It has appeared on Ghost Hunters, and visitors report footsteps on the stairs and cold spots that storytellers link to the family's grief.

Can you visit: Partially. The mansion is a private Masonic lodge but hosts scheduled public paranormal tours and events.

6. The House of the Seven Gables (Salem)

Built in 1668 for sea captain and merchant John Turner, the house stayed in the Turner family for three generations. Captain Samuel Ingersoll bought it in 1782, and it passed to his daughter Susanna Ingersoll, a cousin of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne visited often, and the house helped inspire his 1851 novel The House of the Seven Gables. Susanna Ingersoll died in 1858.

Staff and visitors most often name Susanna as the house's ghost, said to be seen at an upper window. A child is also said to haunt the attic, with reports of small footsteps overhead in rooms that are empty. These are visitor stories; the museum itself focuses on the house's literary and maritime history.

Can you visit: Yes. The House of the Seven Gables is a museum with regular guided tours.

7. Danvers State Hospital (Danvers)

Opened in 1878 on Hathorne Hill, named for the family of witch trial judge John Hathorne, this Kirkbride-plan asylum was designed for about 500 patients but held more than 2,000 by the late 1930s and 1940s. Accounts of overcrowding, shock therapy and lobotomies contributed to its grim reputation. The hospital closed in 1992, and most of the buildings were demolished in 2006; part of the original Kirkbride facade survives within an apartment complex.

Some locals connect the site's unease to its link with Hathorne. Before demolition, trespassers in the abandoned buildings reported voices and wailing sounds. Separately, literary historians believe the hospital inspired the Arkham sanatorium in H.P. Lovecraft's fiction, and it later served as a filming location for the 2001 horror film Session 9.

Can you visit: Not inside. The surviving buildings are private apartments, though the area can be seen from public roads.

8. Hammond Castle (Gloucester)

Inventor John Hays Hammond Jr., often called the “father of radio control,” built this cliffside castle between 1926 and 1929 as a home, laboratory and setting for his collection of Roman, medieval and Renaissance artifacts. Hammond and his wife, Irene, were interested in spiritualism, and he is reported to have hosted séances and telepathy experiments there, including sessions with the medium Eileen Garrett.

Hammond died in 1965. Visitors claim he never really left, and some report sensing his presence or catching odd shapes in photographs of the great hall. As with the other sites here, these are anecdotal reports.

Can you visit: Yes. Hammond Castle Museum is open for tours and seasonal events.

9. Fort Warren (Georges Island, Boston Harbor)

Built between 1833 and 1861, Fort Warren served as a Union prison during the Civil War, holding Confederate soldiers and political prisoners. It is best known for the legend of the “Lady in Black,” said to be Melanie Lanier, a Confederate officer's wife who rowed to the island to free her husband, accidentally killed him in a struggle and was hanged in black robes. No wartime record confirms that any woman was executed at the fort, and historians credit the story's popularity to the 20th-century writer Edward Rowe Snow.

The legend persists anyway. Visitors describe a woman in black robes near the old prison casemates, and the tale is a fixture of park ranger talks and local ghost tours.

Can you visit: Yes. Georges Island is reached by seasonal ferry as part of the Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park.

10. USS Salem (Quincy)

The only surviving Des Moines-class heavy cruiser, USS Salem was commissioned on May 14, 1949, and decommissioned in 1959. She served as flagship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet on seven Mediterranean deployments. In August 1953 she was the first American ship to reach the Ionian Islands after a devastating earthquake in Greece, providing relief supplies and medical help; ghost-tour lore adds that bodies of victims were stored aboard, a claim we could not confirm.

Staff at the museum ship say the officers' mess and galley are the most active areas, with objects found rearranged, which some attribute to a former cook. Visitors also report unexplained sounds elsewhere aboard.

Can you visit: Yes. USS Salem is a museum ship at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy and has hosted evening paranormal events.

11. Bridgewater Triangle & Hockomock Swamp (Southeastern Massachusetts)

The “Bridgewater Triangle” was named by cryptozoologist Loren Coleman for roughly 200 square miles of southeastern Massachusetts linked to decades of reported strange phenomena. At its center is the Hockomock Swamp, one of the largest freshwater wetlands in the state; its name is often translated from Algonquian as “place where spirits dwell,” though translations vary.

Reports include glowing lights over the trees, unusual animal sightings and a red-haired hitchhiker on Route 44 in Rehoboth. Some connect the area's reputation to King Philip's War (1675–1676), the conflict between English colonists and the Wampanoag and allied nations that was fought partly in this region.

Can you visit: Yes. Parts of Hockomock Swamp are protected conservation land with public access, though most of the “triangle” is ordinary towns and roads.

12. Old Burying Point / Charter Street Cemetery (Salem)

Used as a burying ground since at least 1637, this is Salem's oldest cemetery and one of the oldest in the United States. Among those buried here are Judge John Hathorne, one of the most aggressive magistrates of the witch trials; Simon Bradstreet, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; and Richard More, a Mayflower passenger and the only one with a documented gravesite.

Ghost tours call it one of the most haunted burial grounds in New England. Stories include a woman in a powder-blue dress seen near the back of the grounds and, inevitably, Hathorne himself walking among the graves after dark.

Can you visit: Yes. The cemetery is open to visitors during posted daytime hours.

13. Proctor's Ledge (Salem)

For more than a century, the 1692 hangings were assumed to have taken place on the summit of Gallows Hill. In January 2016, the Gallows Hill Project, a team of historians and researchers, confirmed that the executions happened at Proctor's Ledge, a lower outcropping between Proctor and Pope Streets. On July 19, 1692, five women, Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, Susannah Martin, Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Wildes, were hanged there. The City of Salem dedicated a memorial at the site on July 19, 2017, the 325th anniversary.

Because the site went unmarked for more than 300 years, visitors often describe the small memorial among houses as quieter and more sobering than Salem's commercial witch-trial attractions.

Can you visit: Yes. The Proctor's Ledge Memorial is free and outdoors.

14. Colonial Inn (Concord)

The oldest part of this inn dates to 1716, when it was built for Captain James Minot. Part of the building was later owned by John Thoreau, grandfather of Henry David Thoreau, who lived there while studying at Harvard. In April 1775, at the start of the Revolutionary War, the building is said to have stored arms for the Concord militia, and tradition holds that one room served as a makeshift hospital for wounded men.

The inn has been featured among Historic Hotels of America's haunted hotels. Its best-known story dates to 1966, when a honeymooning couple in Room 24 reported a figure at the foot of their bed. Other guests have described a soldier in period dress and objects moving on their own.

Can you visit: Yes. The Colonial Inn is a working hotel and restaurant.

15. Omni Parker House (Boston)

Opened in 1855 by Harvey Parker, this is the longest continuously operating hotel in the United States. Parker ran the hotel until his death in 1884, and Charles Dickens stayed here during his 1867its guest list included Charles Dickens, who gave his first American reading of A Christmas Carol to a Boston audience while staying here in 1867.#8211;68 American reading tour.

Guests describe a man in 19th-century clothing they take to be Parker, often on the tenth floor and near Room 1012. Others report an elevator that stops at the third floor, where Dickens stayed, with no one waiting. The hotel acknowledges the stories as part of its history.

Can you visit: Yes. The Omni Parker House is a working hotel in downtown Boston.

16. Fairbanks House (Dedham)

Built for Puritan settler Jonathan Fairbanks, this is the oldest surviving timber-frame house in North America. Tree-ring dating in 2001 showed its oldest timbers were felled between 1637 and 1641. Eight generations of the Fairbanks family lived in it; a family association took it over in 1904 and opened it as a museum in 1905. It is a National Historic Landmark.

The house is said to contain traces of folk-magic protections against witchcraft, such as marks carved near the hearth and old shoes concealed in the walls, a practice documented in many early New England houses. Staff anecdotes include flashlights failing and alarms going off without cause, though guides generally describe the atmosphere as calm rather than threatening.

Can you visit: Yes. The Fairbanks House is a museum with seasonal tours.

17. The Witch House / Jonathan Corwin House (Salem)

This was the home of Judge Jonathan Corwin, who served on the court that tried the accused in 1692. It is the only building still standing in Salem with direct ties to the trials, and accused people are believed to have been questioned here. Corwin bought the house in 1675 and lived there for more than forty years; several of his children are reported to have died young in the years before the trials.

Ghost lore holds that the house is haunted by those Corwin's court condemned. Visitors report children's laughter, cold spots and a figure resembling Corwin. There is no investigative record behind these claims, only accumulated visitor accounts.

Can you visit: Yes. The Witch House is a museum run by the City of Salem.

18. Provincetown Inn (Provincetown)

Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, is where the Mayflower Pilgrims first anchored in November 1620, and the town's long history of shipwrecks, whaling and fishing has given it a large share of Cape ghost stories. The Provincetown Inn sits at the town's far west end, near the harbor breakwater and a marker for the Pilgrims' first landing.

The haunting here is a simple one: guests and staff describe a shadowy figure moving down one of the inn's long corridors late at night, with no name or backstory attached. It is a modest story next to Salem's, but one that comes up often among locals.

Can you visit: Yes. The Provincetown Inn is a hotel open to guests seasonally.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most haunted place in Massachusetts?

The Lizzie Borden House in Fall River is usually named the most haunted single site in the state, given its unsolved 1892 double murder and the fact that visitors can book an overnight stay in the room where a body was found. Old Burying Point Cemetery in Salem is a close second among historians of the paranormal.

Where were the Salem witches actually executed?

Not at Gallows Hill, despite the name — a 2016 research project confirmed the real execution site was Proctor's Ledge, a lower outcropping nearby. Both the Salem Witch Trials Memorial (dedicated 1992) and the Proctor's Ledge Memorial (dedicated 2017) are free and open to visit.

Are Massachusetts's haunted hotels safe to actually stay in?

Yes — every hotel on this list, including the Lizzie Borden House, the Colonial Inn, and the Omni Parker House, is a fully licensed, operating property that welcomes overnight guests and often markets its ghost stories as part of the stay.

Sources

• Lizzie Borden House – official site
• History – The House of the Seven Gables
• The Witch House – City of Salem
• Fairbanks House – Fairbanks Family in America
• Hoosac Tunnel – Wikipedia