Scavenging

Over Halloween weekend, we also went on a neat BU-sponsored scavenger hunt through the graveyards of Boston, which they called "Mummies, Ghosts, and Graveyards!" The man in charge was really excited and wanted us to participate despite our repeated assurance we were just doing it for fun and not competitively. However, it should be noted that we would have totally kicked butt had we been fully invested in the challenge.

We skipped the first destination, which was the Museum of Fine Arts (Lolly gets free admission, but Lu would have had to pay). The second destination on the list (which was our first) was the Old Granary Burying Ground and the Memorial to John Hancock.

There is a local legend that grave robbers dug up John Hancock's body and stole his hand, the same hand that signed the Declaration of Independence. It is possible that the body was also removed when the graveyard was reconstructed in the 19th century. Whatever the truth is about the mystery behind John Hancock's remains, the leafy cemetery is a pleasant site to visit and be among Boston's patriots, long lead, but never forgotten.

Next was the King's Chapel Burying Ground and the grave of Elizabeth Pain, followed by a lot of sites at the Mt. Auburn Cemetery, founded in 1831 as the first rural cemetery in the U.S.

Legend has it that Elizabeth Pain was the model for Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (you can still see the 'A' on the tombstone). From the book: "So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the scarlet letter. And, after many, many years, a new grave was delved, near an old sunken one, in that burial ground beside which King's Chapel has now been built."

The grave of writer Henry Longfellow in the Mt. Auburn Cemetery (suuuper creepy, it was raining and the water on the lake and the fact that no one else was there was eerie)

Grave of Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Church of Christian Science.. rumor is that there was a phone installed in her tomb in case she decided to rise from the dead and needed someone to dig her out

Sphinx Monument, commemorating the preservation of the Union and the end of slavery after the Civil War

Bigelow Chapel, built in the 1840s