A Beacon Hill Halloween

Halloween was always an oversized event among the habitues of the backside of Boston’s Beacon Hill. The residents of the posher front side of the Hill and Back Bay residents described our neighborhood as a “working-class slum.”

But we noted that they always crept into our neighborhood for the outrageous at Halloween. Costumes, impromptu parades, bizarre behaviors, and general mayhem, which was Halloween in our neighborhood.

It was an interesting part of town with a very diverse population. The base level was the average Bostonian with firmly established roots in the area. Additionally, there were nurses, technicians, and physicians from the Eye and Ear and the Massachusetts General Hospitals. Then there were the old West End refugees from the neighborhood that the city had cleared for “redevelopment.” Lastly, there were the Folkies, who resided there for the cheap rent.

It was a real neighborhood, and it was Home. It was also whacked out on Halloween. Seeing the hospital crew doing a fake surgery on a monster wasn’t unusual. IV bottles were full of a horrid Vodka cocktail that everyone would suck from periodically, including the patient. Every building had at least one open house party. And on Charles Street for many years, there was a very risque semi-official parade. It seemed as if the workday slowly sunk into a celebratory revel that was much less proper Bostonian and much more out of Petronius the Arbiter’s Satyricon of Nero’s Rome.

I always tried to make it back to Boston for this holiday. All I had to do was sit on the stoop at our folkie Paradise on Grove Street. Eventually, all the goblins, ghosts, ghouls, politicians, and unvirtuous dead would stream by.

There was another side to this, However. Boston’s Finest was busy with brawls, drunks, and emergencies—likewise, the fire department. If you were, unfortunately, working in the emergency department of the General, there were suicide attempts, alcohol intoxications, insertion of foreign objects where they did not belong, and all sorts of other real horrors that out competed the false ones on the streets.

Luckily, the MTA—public transportation—stopped running early. So sometime around two AM, people caught the last trolleys and trains to Cambridge, Dorchester, and Southie. By three, only the truly dedicated witches and ghouls roamed the streets with bedraggled broomsticks and gauze wrappings. When the sun started to come up, only the litter left from the partying was there to greet it.

Christmas in Boston was lovely, with the Common lit up and the stores decorated. But it lacked the gritty and decadent ballyhoo of Halloween. Nowadays, you go to Salem for the Halloween experience, but back when the world seemed a bit younger at heart, you could find your mayhem closer to home.