Latest / The Grim: Haunted Cemeteries & Graveyard Tales / Light Above, Silence Below | The Old North Church Crypt, Boston, MA

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Light Above, Silence Below | The Old North Church Crypt, Boston, MA · The Grim: Haunted Cemeteries & Graveyard Tales

0:13
Kristin: Grim morning and welcome to the Grim.
0:16
Kristin: I'm your host, Kristen.
0:18
Kristin: On today's episode, we'll be opening the gate and entering the Old North Church crypt.
0:23
Kristin: Located in Boston, Massachusetts.
0:25
Kristin: The aroma of coffee mingles in the air.
0:28
Kristin: The gates stand open.
0:30
Kristin: Step carefully.
0:31
Kristin: It's time to descend into the hauntings of history.
0:35
Kristin: It's a strange feeling visiting a place that you've only ever known from history books.
0:40
Kristin: You go in carrying this fixed image, something distant, and then you're standing there, and it changes.
0:47
Kristin: It becomes something real, smaller, and sometimes quieter but heavier too.
0:52
Kristin: The Old North Church is one of those places in American history.
0:57
Kristin: Most of us know it for a single moment.
0:59
Kristin: The lanterns in the steeple and the signal that's in Paul Revere into motion.
1:04
Kristin: It's such a powerful image that it tends to flatten everything else.
1:08
Kristin: The church becomes a backdrop, a symbol.
1:11
Kristin: But it was never just that.
1:13
Kristin: Before the lanterns, before the revolution, before it became a line in a poem.
1:18
Kristin: It was something far more uncertain.
1:21
Kristin: In the early 18th century, Boston was still deeply shaped by Puritan belief, and anything outside that world was met with quiet resistance.
1:29
Kristin: What would become the Old North Church began in 1723 as Christchurch, an Anglican congregation trying to exist in a place that didn't entirely welcome it.
1:40
Kristin: King's Chapel, the city's first Anglican church, had simply run out of space.
1:45
Kristin: Its pews were full, its congregation grew, so a second church was planned, not out of ambition, but a necessity.
1:52
Kristin: The land that they had chosen the north end wasn't the most desirable, but it was practical.
1:58
Kristin: It sat slightly inland from the harbor, away from the established meeting houses, and more importantly, it was cheaper.
2:05
Kristin: It was also higher than the surrounding churches, a detail that would matter far more than anyone realized at the time.
2:11
Kristin: Construction began in 1723.
2:14
Kristin: It was a building shaped by many hands in many places, stonemasons like Ebenezer Clow, carpenters like Thomas Benton, people whose names didn't always survive in memory, but whose work still does today.
2:27
Kristin: By December 29, 1723, the church opened its doors.
2:31
Kristin: However, it wasn't finished.
2:33
Kristin: Inside, much of it was temporary, with simple pews, unfinished details, and a structure still taking shape.
2:40
Kristin: Around any families gathered that first day to hear the church's first rector, Timothy Cutler, deliver a sermon meant to define the space.
2:48
Kristin: For mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.
2:52
Kristin: But much like early America, the reality didn't quite match the words.
2:55
Kristin: Black congregants, both free and enslaved, were pushed to the upper gallery, separated from the main floor, and pews themselves weren't just places to sit.
3:04
Kristin: They were owned, sold to members of the congregation, giving them not just a seat, but a voice in how the church was run.
3:11
Kristin: It was a house of worship, yes, but also a reflection of the world outside its walls.
3:16
Kristin: And still it grew.
3:18
Kristin: More pews were added, galleries have expanded, chandeliers were hung from the ceiling, and an organ eventually filled the space with sound.
3:26
Kristin: By the mid-18th century, hundreds gathered here, merchants, labors, loyalists, patriots, all sitting under the same roof, even as the ground beneath them slowly began to shift, and above them all, the steeple rose higher into the Boston skyline, waiting for a moment that it would finally be called upon.
3:45
Kristin: But when you step closer, when you stop seeing it just as a symbol, you begin to notice the details that most people miss.
3:52
Kristin: Its style is unmistakably English, but also not.
3:55
Kristin: The church's style, known as Georgian, almost appears to be a pattern after the work of Christopher Wren, the same architectural language used in London cathedrals after the Great Fire, built to feel established in a land that wasn't quite just yet.
4:10
Kristin: And yet, strangely, no one knows exactly who designed it.
4:14
Kristin: There's no definitive architect tied to the building.
4:18
Kristin: A later report couldn't find evidence that anyone in England was directly consulted.
4:23
Kristin: Instead, the design seems to come from those closest to the project, men like Anthony Blout and William Price, working from inspiration rather than instruction.
4:33
Kristin: One theory points to a print of St.
4:35
Kristin: James's church in Piccadilly as a guide, but even that's incomplete, missing key architectural details, so the church becomes something in between, part London, part Boston.
4:46
Kristin: Familiar but not quite.
4:48
Kristin: The building itself is tighter than you might expect, around 96.5 feet long, just over 50 feet wide, fitted almost exactly to the limits of its narrow lot, with little room to spare.
5:00
Kristin: The main space, the nave, stretches around 70 feet, rising roughly 42 feet high.
5:06
Kristin: At one end, a square tower anchors the structure.
5:10
Kristin: At the other, a curved apse softens it, and above it all, the steeple.
5:14
Kristin: The foundation runs deep, up to 11 feet in places, made of rough stone.
5:19
Kristin: Above that, thick brick walls laid in English bond, some nearly 2.5 feet thick.
5:24
Kristin: The tower walls are even heavier, over three feet, built to carry the weight of everything above.
5:30
Kristin: Here there are 42 windows made up of more than 2,000 individual panes.
5:35
Kristin: Light doesn't just pour in, it filters, controls, and deliberates.
5:39
Kristin: And because the plot was so narrow, there's no side entrances, everyone enters the same way through the western tower.
5:46
Kristin: It's a small detail, but it changes how the space feels.
5:50
Kristin: No matter who you were, wealthy, poor, loyalist, or patriot, you came through the same door, but then there's the bells.
5:58
Kristin: For such a narrow structure, it has eight of them hidden in the belfry just beneath the spire, cast in 1744 in Gloucester, England.
6:06
Kristin: They were installed the following year, making them the oldest set of change-ringing bells in North America.
6:12
Kristin: Each one is unique, different weights, different tones.
6:15
Kristin: Together they produce over 40,000 combinations when fully rung, but more often they were simply chimed, one person pulling one rope at a time.
6:24
Kristin: And among those early bell ringers was a young Paul Revere, long before the lanterns, long before the ride.
6:31
Kristin: Inside the church was never meant to be plain.
6:33
Kristin: Unlike the simpler burritan meeting houses around it, the space was designed to feel more ornate, more in line with the Church of England.
6:41
Kristin: Box pews filled the floor, owned, not shared.
6:44
Kristin: The current ones within are replicas, but they follow the same original design, arranged around three aisles.
6:50
Kristin: Galleries line the upper level, supported by rows of square columns wrapped around the space on three sides.
6:56
Kristin: And these galleries weren't just architectural, they were social.
7:00
Kristin: They held those pushed to the margins, black congregates, the poor children, separated from the main floor below.
7:07
Kristin: The organ installed in 1759 still sits above the nave, surrounded by four carved angels, each holding a trumpet.
7:14
Kristin: Those figures were taken from a captured friendship donated to the church.
7:18
Kristin: And even here, history lingers in unexpected ways.
7:22
Kristin: And then there's the crypt, because beneath everything, the pews, the aisles, the worn wood of the sanctuary, the church was something most visitors never fully consider.
7:32
Kristin: The cellar was converted into a crypt in 1732, when space for burials in Boston was already becoming scarce.
7:40
Kristin: Thirty-seven tombs were built, and over time more than 1,100 people were placed here, not laid side by side, but stacked, coffin upon coffin, in chambers that could hold dozens at a time, some known to history, others fading into obscurity, but I'll tell the story of a congregation, not just a symbol.
8:01
Kristin: The first is the man who gave the church its voice, Timothy Cutler, who was the first rector of Christchurch, arriving in Boston in 1723, and remaining here for more than 40 years.
8:12
Kristin: But his story doesn't begin in Angelicism.
8:15
Kristin: It begins in conflict.
8:17
Kristin: Keller was once a congregationalist minister educated at Yale, deeply rooted in the Puritan tradition that defined New England.
8:25
Kristin: And then, in a move that shocked many of his contemporaries, he renounced those beliefs and converted to the Church of England.
8:31
Kristin: It wasn't a quiet decision, though.
8:33
Kristin: It cost him his position, his standing, and his certainty, but it led him here.
8:38
Kristin: At Old North, he built not just a congregation, but a presence, guiding the church through its earliest, most uncertain decades.
8:45
Kristin: His sermons filled the space long before revolution ever touched it.
8:49
Kristin: He baptized, buried, and bore witness to a community still finding its place in a divided city, and when he died in 1765, he didn't leave the church behind.
8:59
Kristin: He was laid to rest beneath it, still, in a sense, at the center of the place he helped create.
9:04
Kristin: Though if Cutler represents the church's beginning, the next name in the crypt represents its fracture.
9:10
Kristin: Major John Picard was a British Marine who stood on the other side of the conflict that would define this building's legacy.
9:16
Kristin: He was there at Lexington and Concord, present at the opening moments of the war that would define the very congregation beneath this roof.
9:24
Kristin: And months later, on June 17, 1775, he stood again, this time at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
9:31
Kristin: Accounts say he was leading his men forward when he was shot.
9:34
Kristin: Some claim he fell into the arms of his own son.
9:37
Kristin: Others say he died almost instantly.
9:39
Kristin: What is certain is that he was carried from the battlefield not as a symbol, not as an enemy, but as a man who had just lost his life in a war still finding its shape.
9:48
Kristin: And the story gets complicated.
9:51
Kristin: History records say that Picarne was brought to Old North Church and buried beneath it.
9:55
Kristin: A British officer laid to rest under a church that still, only weeks before, had helped signal the resistance against the very army he served.
10:03
Kristin: But some historians believe the remains in the crypt may not be his at all.
10:08
Kristin: His son William also fell at Bunker Hill, and there are accounts suggesting that the major's body was eventually transported back to England, leaving a question that has never been fully resolved.
10:18
Kristin: Whose bones rest here may depend on the source you trust.
10:22
Kristin: What doesn't change is the weight of it.
10:24
Kristin: The idea that even in death, in a city raw from war, someone brought him here to this ground, whether it was the father or the son, a British soldier was buried beneath an American church at the very moment those two things were becoming opposites.
10:40
Kristin: There's something haunting in that, that even in death, the divisions of war softened just enough to share the same ground for burial.
10:48
Kristin: The third name belongs to a generation that stood between worlds, the fading shadow of an empire, and the uncertain shape of a nation becoming itself.
10:58
Kristin: Samuel Nicholson came of age not in the earliest days of colonial uncertainty, but at the turning point.
11:04
Kristin: He had already fought for independence in a navy that barely existed, commanding ships when the nation itself was still an argument, not a certainty.
11:13
Kristin: Before he was entrusted to one of the most famous vessels ever built, the USS Constitution, Old Ironsides, a ship that would come to embody a new nation's resilience, its refusal to break under pressure.
11:26
Kristin: Nicholson was there at the beginning of that story, guiding the ship through its earliest years, through a conflict with France that tested a navy still finding its footing.
11:35
Kristin: He helped shape a vessel, not just a reputation, something disciplined, enduring, and unmistakably American.
11:42
Kristin: His life was tied to something emerging, something forward-looking.
11:46
Kristin: And yet when he died in 1811, he was brought back here, into a space already filled with colonial lives, British officers, and early ministers, placed among them, not separate from history, but folded into it.
12:00
Kristin: I think that defines this crypt more than anything, that divided in loyalty, duty, and still in death, buried within the same soil.
12:08
Kristin: It deepens the Old North crypt, as if in the end, history doesn't divide us as cleanly as we think.
12:15
Kristin: It gathers us, and it keeps us closer than we expect.
12:18
Kristin: And yet for a place that insists it isn't haunted, the crypt has a way of making you wonder.
12:24
Kristin: In the spring of 2025, a package arrived at Old North Church.
12:28
Kristin: No return address, no name.
12:30
Kristin: Inside carefully wrapped was a single brick and a note with just two sentences.
12:36
Kristin: My husband took this from the crypt.
12:38
Kristin: We have had a bad string of luck, and we want to return the brick.
12:42
Kristin: That was all.
12:43
Kristin: No explanation of what bad luck had been, no indication of when the brick was taken or why.
12:49
Kristin: Staff suspect it happened sometime around 2023 in a restoration project, when loose debris was easy to pocket and look out with, but no one knows for certain.
12:59
Kristin: The brick sits now in the crypt, placed on a pillar and enclosed in a transparent ace alongside its note, and the questions it raises have never been answered.
13:08
Kristin: Why did he take it in the first place?
13:10
Kristin: What calamity followed that unnamed couple across the country?
13:14
Kristin: What made them decide finally that the brick was to blame?
13:17
Kristin: Holdnorf's own staff put it plainly in two sentences.
13:21
Kristin: That anonymous writer raised more questions than many authors do in 500 pages.
13:26
Kristin: They've also extended an open invitation.
13:29
Kristin: All is forgiven, they've said, that they just want to know the truth.
13:32
Kristin: And so far no one has answered.
13:34
Kristin: Two weeks after the brick was installed back in the crypt, though, the lights went out.
13:38
Kristin: No tripped breaker, no obvious explanation, and the electrician was called, the problem was resolved.
13:45
Kristin: The staff had been careful not to overclaim, though.
13:48
Kristin: The executive director has said plainly that this is a sacred space, not a haunted house.
13:54
Kristin: The brick is lighthearted.
13:56
Kristin: It's really what you make of it.
13:57
Kristin: And of course she's right.
13:59
Kristin: But the crypt holds over a thousand people.
14:02
Kristin: It holds a minister who gave up everything he believed to build something new.
14:06
Kristin: It holds a soldier or perhaps his son, buried beneath a church that had just helped light the fire revolution against him.
14:13
Kristin: It holds a naval captain who spent his life moving forward, then came back here to rest among the dead of a world that no longer existed.
14:22
Kristin: Over a thousand people stacked in silence beneath a city that has spent 300 years walking over them.
14:29
Kristin: Maybe the lights did just flicker.
14:31
Kristin: Maybe the brick is just a brick.
14:33
Kristin: Or maybe the crypt simply has feelings about what belongs to it and what doesn't.
14:38
Kristin: For now, the stories of Old North Church slip back into stone and the dead return to their uneasy rest.
14:44
Kristin: Thank you for walking with us through the veil and at Old North Church crypt, descending once more into the hauntings of history.
14:52
Kristin: The gate is sealed, the veil drawn, yet death keeps no calendar, and so we shall return, as we always do, on the grim.