Pirate in the Pumpkin Patch
Season 2 Episode 14
In this haunting Thanksgiving-week episode of The Grim, host Kristin unlocks the wrought-iron gates of King’s Chapel Burying Ground, Boston’s oldest cemetery and one of the most actively haunted sites on the Freedom Trail. Once a humble pumpkin patch belonging to Isaac Johnson, the grounds grew into the city’s first field of the dead—a place where colonial grief, Revolutionary history, and restless spirits have shared the same soil for nearly four centuries.
Listeners are guided through the cemetery’s origins, from its earliest unmarked burials and Puritan settlers to the forced construction of King’s Chapel on stolen land under Governor Edmund Andros. Kristin explores the unsettling Victorian “improvements” that rearranged the headstones—but not the bodies—giving rise to chilling legends of displaced souls wandering the tidy 19th-century paths in search of their lost graves.
This episode dives deep into the cemetery’s extraordinary cast of residents, including
• John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony
• Mary Chilton Winslow, believed to be the first woman to step onto Plymouth Rock
• William Dawes, the “other” midnight rider
• Influential theologians, Salem Witch Trials figures, early authors, and Boston’s first bookseller
Gothic lore intertwines with documented history as Kristin unravels King’s Chapel’s most enduring ghost stories: the Headless Madam, a woman desecrated at burial; the man believed to have been buried alive; the lingering myth of Captain Kidd’s hidden grave; and sightings of shadow figures, spectral children, unexplained whispers, and the eerie “Little Girl in White.”
Listeners will also hear how the burying ground inspired literature—possibly even The Scarlet Letter—and why its most iconic headstone, Joseph Tapping’s memento mori, remains one of the most striking pieces of funerary art in New England.
Blending historical depth with atmospheric storytelling, The Pumpkin Patch Burying Ground offers a chilling walk through one of Boston’s most storied, spectral sites. Whether you’re a ghost hunter, history lover, or Freedom Trail explorer, this episode uncovers the eerie beauty and lingering legends of King’s Chapel Burying Ground—where the dead never rest quietly.
Tune in, step through the veil, and descend with us into the hauntings of history.
