By Milena Fernsler
On Beacon Hill, Halloween isn’t just a holiday — it’s a neighborhood-wide transformation. Cobblestone streets lined with gas lamps and historic brownstones are overtaken by ghosts, cobwebs and devilish inventions that turn The Hill into one of Boston’s most photographed spectacles.
This year, Beacon Hill’s Halloween extravaganza has exploded on social media, turning the neighborhood into a pre-Halloween pilgrimage site for hoards of visitors – and that’s before the first trick-or-treater ever rings a doorbell.
“It’s really become a tourist attraction,” said one resident on Mt. Vernon St., as he squeezed through a cluster of children blocking the gate to his house. “‘I’ve never seen it quite like this before.”
It’s no surprise his yard is attracting some attention, given the three 12-foot skeletons that have taken residence among the hydrangeas, stirring a mysterious potion around a raised cauldron, their glowing eyes blinking beneath wigs and pointed black hats.
Tracy Darabaris came all the way from Pepperell, Massachusetts, just to photograph the annual display. She’s returned each October since she stumbled across the neighborhood on Instagram a few years ago.
The neighborhood’s profile leveled-up this year after being featured on widely circulated pages such as Boston.Com, Boston Design Guide and BucketListBoston.
Given the chaos of current events and her hectic day job at a doctor’s office, Darabaris said capturing the neighborhood’s fun and creativity was a welcome escape. “It’s a great stress reliever,” she said.
She stopped to photograph a home that has attracted attention on social media platforms for its whimsical take on the holiday.
“I can’t believe what these people have done,” she said, gesturing to an army of golden skeletons hanging from trees, lampposts, and climbing up a brick facade with the aid of an ornate pulley system. “They must have hired someone.”
Darabaris is on the money. While there is no official competition in the neighborhood, some residents go the lengths of hiring professional designers to outdo one another.
Aaron Wight and his crew from Parterre are crouched below the gargantuan witches of Mt. Vernon St., adding finishing touches before moving on to transform a nearby home into a scene from Starwars. He said the project will be their most elaborate yet.
Wight said word has spread that their company, a gardening service, started offering seasonal installations. This year he’s worked on five houses in the Beacon Hill area, with quotes ranging from $5,000 to as much as $20,000.
“It just gets crazier and crazier every year,” he said.
Wight said his team feels like “small celebrities” when they work, drawing curious neighbors, amateur photographers, and tourists who marvel at the displays in languages from around the world.
An anthropologist from England, Anastasia Piliavsky, is visiting her mother in Boston. They were paying respects to her father’s grave when they came across Beacon Hill. Having never seen the neighborhood around Halloween before, they were in for a bit of a shock.
“I’m surprised by the ostentation,” said Piliavsky. “Beacon Hill is a place of old money and reserve and elegance and this is the kind of thing I imagine they must have resisted for a while.”
On the contrary, residents embrace the occasionally quirky, intentionally excessive decorating tradition that has been an element of Beacon Hill’s identity for decades.
“People go all in,” said longtime resident Lisa Mullan Perkins. “It’s way bigger than Christmas around here.”
Exploring a different theme each year, from Barbie to the Boston Celtics, Mullan Perkins’ home stands out from the usual assembly of witches and skeletons. This year she followed her kids’’ requests for something spookier, riffing on what she sees as “the scariest thing on Beacon Hill” – the Boston rat.
An inflatable rodent twice her height with glowing red eyes greets passersby in her driveway. Her entryway is covered in tiny toy rodents, toothy cutouts, and a desiccated rubber rat carcass hanging by its tail on her door.
Mullan Perkins is cooking dinner for her kids, in a baseball cap that reads, “rat exterminator.” While a pot boils away on the stove, she says the family has had to replace their entire car twice on account of rodents chewing through the wires.
“We don’t welcome them, we don’t want them here,” she said, but “on Halloween, you put all sorts of things you’re scared of outside your house.”
While she’s wishing the worst for her furry, beady eyed neighbors this holiday, Perkins said she will be welcoming the costumed throngs of candy seekers on Friday.
“It’s insane,” she said. “There’ll be thousands of trick-or-treaters.” Sitting in her foyer is over $1,000 worth of Halloween candy. She predicts she’ll run out by 8 p.m.
With Halloween landing on a Friday night this year, the Beacon Hill Civic Association is expecting a record-breaking turnout. Neighborhood streets will be blocked by police barricades as usual, with roads from Charles Street to Joy Street closing from 4 to 7:30 pm.
“I just love how our neighborhood really welcomes people from all walks of life,” said Mullan Perkins. “It’s just a very friendly, open time.”
She said she’s even seen former U.S. State Senator and presidential candidate John Kerry handing out candy on his Lewisburg square doorstep just like everyone else.
Milena Fernsler is a student in the Boston University Journalism program. This story is a partnership between Beacon Hill Times and the Boston University Journalism program.