Beacon Hill residents are known to go all out for Halloween, with ghoulish decorations that attract the masses. Brownstones are outfitted with 10-foot-tall skeletons, ghosts and that hang from balconies.
Not everything is devilish, though: A butterfly-themed display has attracted spectators and taken the Internet by storm.
“Halloween’s honestly one of the best times,” Beacon Hill resident Max Marchetti told the Beacon Hill Times recently. “It feels like people from outside the city come to the city just for Beacon Hill.”
He and other spectators will be treated to all sorts of scary and fun things at the Beacon Hill Civic Association’s Halloween celebration on Saturday evening.
For residents, Halloween brings out mixed emotions, with some people hailing the decorations as the best part of Beacon Hill and others calling it a spectacle.
“It’s fun to see the decorations,” said Betsy Peterson, an 88-year-old resident, who described the neighborhood’s Halloween showing as “over the top” and a waste of money for her liking. “But all I can think of is how much money and effort people are putting into those decorations, which are going to go into a landfill. So it makes me sad.”
In the days before Halloween, groups of families took pictures of the decorated stoops. Young women, in full makeup, lined up to capture photos in front of the decorations for their social media feeds. And some retirees and parents posed with their children and grandchildren in front of giant ghouls. All collected memories to savor.
Bridgett Quinn, another Beacon Hill resident, said her son loves looking at the decorations.
“I feel like each year they get more intricate,” Quinn said. “Halloween is kind of crazy but also very fun. We go through lots and lots of candy…I’m happy to see it bring joy to a lot of little kids.”
Peterson said that during the day on Halloween, children come out to play, and people sit on their stoops with pumpkins.
“It’s really wonderful,” she said. “But then it gets crowded.”
Laura Leal, a Boston University student, said she and her friends took a trip to the neighborhood recently to capture the elaborate decorations for her Instagram feed
“We just posed in front of…the doorsteps because they’re really nicely decorated right now,” Leal said.
