Ten creepy Boston discoveries – The Boston Globe

A building of crushed glass. Dorchester’s “portal to hell.” Carved stone tablets at Millennium Park.

Six years ago, my colleague Heather Hoop-Bruce and a few other journalists had the opportunity to tour a long-abandoned subway tunnel under City Hall Plaza with the head of the city of Boston’s archaeology team, Joe Bagley.

“It was dark and creepy, especially because there are these big alcoves on the side that were dark and seemed to go on,” said Heather, who is the director of visual strategy for the Globe’s Opinion section. “Boston just has a history of weird, weird stuff and of course, there are weird vibes everywhere.”

After the tunnel tour, Bagley showed the group some other cool (read: creepy) locations. And that sparked an idea: One day, she decided, she would do a project that highlighted some of these fascinating findings.

That day arrived earlier this year. Heather asked the city’s archaeology team for a list of all the oddball items and discoveries they had, and she chose the 10 that she found the most interesting.

The project includes broken dolls found at the bottom of an outhouse at a 19th century school for girls, mysterious contraptions from a North End brothel that hint of a sordid past, and a rotten tooth from the days of much more painful tooth extractions.

During the editing process for this project, Heather said that her editors (who she loves!) removed a few creepy details. For example, she wanted to highlight that the abandoned well under Government Center isn’t fully filled.

“From what I can tell, there’s just a chunk of space there,” she told me. So she wrote, “It’s probably just crammed full of ghosts.” But her editors insisted that detail wasn’t necessary. “It is though,” she said with a laugh. “You know it is.”

The project includes a map where you can find the creepy sites for yourself — if you dare.

FOXBOROUGH The Patriots could have quit on their coach, the Globe’s Chris Gasper writes, but they didn’t give up. Instead, they gutted out a victory over Aaron Rodgers and the Jets. (The Boston Globe)

PLUM ISLAND, Mass. An anonymous donor will give $1 million to the US Fish and Wildlife Service for the maintenance of the iconic Pink House in Newbury, but only if the agency stops its planned demolition of the house this week. (Boston.com)

BOSTON Free, affordable — and spooky — things to do in the city this week include a Halloween bash, a free performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and ghostly trivia. (The Boston Globe)

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY The university is locking some of its restrooms because of reports of “activity in relation to prostitution.” (The Huntington News)

HYANNISPORT The iconic Cape Cod mansion adjacent to the Kennedy compound is for sale. The asking price: $19.8 million. (The Boston Globe)

RHODE ISLAND Speaking of mansions, top R.I. realtors recommended houses that Globe columnist Dan McGowan could buy if he wins Mega Millions. The options include a Newport mansion with two gorgeous libraries and marble fireplaces. (The Boston Globe)

VERMONT Wood turtles could soon be a threatened species, and the population is facing a slew of challenges such as invasive weeds, black market demand, and increased flooding that drowns the turtle eggs. (VTDigger)

NEW ENGLAND Allergy season is getting longer now that the winters are shorter because of climate change. You can also blame the abundance of ragweed. (The Boston Globe)

SALEM, Mass. Wands remain a sacred instrument for real-life witches. That’s why some are upset that their revered tool is being sold as a toy. (The Boston Globe)

DELHI Thick, toxic smog is enveloping northern India and eastern Pakistan just days before the start of the Hindu festival of Diwali. Air quality across the region is set to worsen as winter smog season approaches. (CNN)

BURUNDI A traditional melodic yodeling greeting done exclusively between women — called akazehe — is fading. Few young people know what it is, let alone know how to perform it. (The Associated Press)

The decision by the billionaire owners of The Washington Post (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos) and The Los Angeles Times (medical inventor and transplant surgeon Patrick Soon-Shiong) not to endorse a presidential candidate this year broke decades of tradition and set off a firestorm of criticism and recriminations.

Several notable writers and editors at both papers have resigned in protest, including the head of the LA Times’ editorial board, Mariel Garza, who wrote in the Globe that “the owners of these two newspapers inadvertently illustrated the perils of a second Trump term in stronger terms than we could have done in any endorsement.”

The Post newsroom is said to be in turmoil. Ann Telnaes, an editorial cartoonist for the Post, drew a devastating indictment of the Post’s motto, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Both papers have lost subscribers.

Former Post executive editor Marty Baron, who worked for Bezos during the first Trump administration (and was formerly the top editor at the Globe), took to social media to criticize the paper’s decision, calling it “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.” He told Globe media reporter Aidan Ryan that “the pillars of democracy, particularly media institutions, need to stand up for what’s right.”

Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, who now teaches at Northeastern University, called the decision “craven and cowardly” in an opinion piece for the Globe. “That’s journalism’s most important mission: to hold power accountable and give people the information they need to make important decisions,” she wrote. “Casting a vote for president certainly qualifies as one of those decisions.”

And former Globe editor Brian McGrory, chair of the journalism department at Boston University, writes that the Post should change its slogan from “Democracy dies in darkness” to “Reputations are ruined in silence.”

Here’s what media critics and others are saying:

The New York Times: The Times has an inside look at how the Post decision happened, starting in late September when senior news and opinion leaders of the paper first got a hint that Bezos was cooling to the idea of a presidential endorsement. It came during a working visit to Bezos’ sprawling home on an exclusive island in Biscayne Bay. During a discussion about the paper’s opinion section, it became clear that Bezos had reservations about endorsing. But the editors thought he was persuadable.

NPR: Media correspondent David Folkenflik says the decisions not to endorse have stoked fears that news outlets “are preemptively self-censoring coverage” that could offend former president Donald Trump. Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of the news site Semafor, told Folkenflik that it appears the newspapers’ owners are making accommodations in case Trump is elected so they don’t antagonize him and suffer retaliation – especially if they have business dealings with the federal government, as Bezos has.

Reliable Sources: In his media newsletter for CNN, Brian Stelter points out that newspaper endorsements don’t appear to make a significant difference in the outcome of political races. But when a decision not to endorse is made in an effort to appease one of the candidates, that’s a problem. He also referred to “anticipatory obedience,” the situation where people “sometimes try to protect themselves by ceding power and currying favor with aspiring authoritarians.”

Media Buzz: On his media criticism show, Fox News’ Howard Kurtz called the Post decision “a profile in non-courage … an absolute wimping out,” given that the paper regularly tells readers what to think on its opinion pages.

The Guardian: Margaret Sullivan, a Guardian US columnist who writes on media, politics and culture, said there was no way to see these decisions other than as an “appalling display of cowardice and a dereliction of the two newspapers’ public duty.”Sullivan previously was the media columnist for the Post, and she had some strong words for her former employer: “This is no moment to stand at the sidelines — shrugging, speechless and self-interested.”

Columbia Journalism Review: CJR executive editor Sewell Chan was the LA Times’ editorial page editor in 2020 and 2021 and presided over their endorsement of Joe Biden in 2020. While expressing respect for Soon-Shiong as “a decent and thoughtful person” who rescued the paper from “the doomed and recently bankrupt Tribune Company,” Chan pointed out that owning a newspaper carries great public responsibility. “In my view, media proprietors should hire leaders they trust and then let them exercise their judgment,” he wrote. “If the aim here was to insulate the Times from accusations of political bias, it seems this intervention may have had the opposite effect.”

NOTE: The Boston Globe editorial board, which is independent of the Globe newsroom, endorsed Kamala Harris earlier this month.

ELSEWHERE IN POLITICS

Trump’s Madison Square Garden event turned into a rally with crude and racist insults. (The Associated Press)

What is the “red mirage” or the “blue shift” and will it happen this year? (CNN)

Where we share our adventures around New England and rate them for Starting Point readers.

Rating: Bagged (💰) | Tagged (🏷️) | Dragged (❌)

This Armenian and Middle Eastern bakery is serving high-quality baklava that sell by the pound. They’re not too sweet, and if you’ve never been, the friendly owner will give you some tips about the flaky pastries: everything is hand-made (including the butter), how to properly heat them up, and most importantly, don’t refrigerate them. Rating: Bagged 9/10 (💰)

I really dislike touristy activities, but someone visiting me wanted to check out this museum because you get to throw wooden boxes that supposedly contain tea into the water. Although dreading it, I actually had a lot of fun. It’s an immersive and interactive experience with a thoughtful layout. It’s basically the definition of camp, so just lean into it. Rating: Bagged 8/10 (💰)

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Diamond Naga Siu can be reached at diamondnaga.siu@globe.com. Follow her on X @diamondnagasiu and Instagram @diamondnagasiu.