A Morbid History Tour with Bernadette Banner & Morgan Donner || Boston True Crime

hello so I'm here in Boston at a fancy pantsy a B&B the folks over at June's journey have set me and two other amazing beautiful youtubers here for the weekend sure you already know these ladies but of course Bernadette banner and Morgan Donner they are amazing and if you aren't already subscribed to them you should go do so right now go do it right now neither of these ladies have been to Boston before and while I myself am NOT a Boston a connoisseur I figured it would be fun to set them up on a little tour of Boston what makes a better tour than a morbid history murder ghost tour mostly because I myself have always been curious with the kind of darker history of Boston and I don't hear about it much so I decided to do a little research and give them a little bit of info and then it will provide you with convenient infographics to explain the stories a little bit more in depth like I mentioned earlier this video is sponsored by jeans journey and we will talk a little bit about that later but for now let's get started with the tour [Music] starting this tour off right first spot in our little tour this is the location of the great Elm which Boston East to do public executions on until 1769 and then it became a public gallows until the tree finally blew down in 1876 I think yes 1876 so as you can see there is no tree here but there is a convenient hard-to-find little plaque if you read it here the Sons of Liberty assemble Jesse Lee Methodist pioneer preached in 1790 conveniently does not mention the fact that many people were hanged on the tree back in the day much like other places during this time executions were a public affair and huge crowds would turn up to watch at the time Boston was strictly Puritan so anyone who didn't adhere to the biblical principles was exiled if they were to return they were sentenced to hang as was the case for a Quaker named Mary Dyer aside from religious dissenters in which I was doing air quotes like Quakers executions of criminals Native Americans and for people convicted of witchcraft also met their end on the tree this is the house of dr. George Parkman who on November 23rd 1849 was murdered and dismembered so this was kind of Boston's crime of the century and it was very very heavily reported mostly because of the social status of the murderer and murder II okay so I'm gonna give you the real sparknotes version of this murder so there are three main players here George Parkman who was a fancy pantsy request bust and elite John Webster who was a lecturer at Harvard Medical School and Ephraim Littlefield the janitor at Harvard Medical School and I am so sorry I probably butchered his first name speaking of butchering so the story goes in 1842 Webster borrowed money from Parkman then basically kept accumulating more and more debt so an 18-49 Parkman sought out a confrontation with Webster it would have probably gone something like this on November 23rd Parkman was out collecting debts as usual Webster visited Parkman's home and asked to meet at the Medical College at 1:30 p.m. at 1:45 p.m. Parkman was last seen and during the college after Parkman had been missing for a few days and his family was a little more than concerned Littlefield became nervous as people were starting to look at him for the disappearance he also was suspicious since Webster was acting odd on November 30th littlefield chiseled away at the wall under Webster's private lab this took a while he took a break and then the next day he finally punched a hole in the wall only to find a human pelvis a thigh and a part of a leg after more searching by the police they found partially incinerated body parts bones in the furnace a trunk full of more body parts stuffed inside body parts and overall just not a great time after a long back-and-forth classic game of who done it with blame-shifting toward the janitor because of course it was webster finally confessed that he killed Parkman in an act of self-defense after he became aggressive more air quotes over the debt so of course the only logical thing to do is chop him up and play the grossest game of geocaching ever [Music] so this is the King's chapel burial ground it was founded in 1630 and it was Boston's only burial ground for 30 years and as you can imagine because it's such an old spot and is in fact a cemetery it has a lot of tales that go with it some which may be a little bullcrap and some of it may actually have some truth to it one of these tales includes a man that was buried alive and by the time they realized oops and dug him back up again he was in fact dead another one of these stories includes a woman whose grave was made too short for her the grave diggers cut off her head and put it in between her legs so those are a couple of the spirits that are said to roam here quite understandably I would be pissed too another thing about these graveyards that's really interesting is the imagery on the old tombstones since the early settlers of Boston were Puritan their ethos was basically piety hard work education etc the religious views banned anything considered to be extravagant and also had a pretty strict views on who actually gets into heaven or who is just left to rot which led to getting a little creative with tombstones the most common motif was a wing a death head band named Colby with a simple inscription here lies the body of a dog later that got a little fancier with images of skeletons Father time and with some email poetry about the inevitability of death meant to scare visitors into piety [Music] welcome to the Omni Parker hotel [Music] so this is the oldest operating hotel in the United States it opened in 1855 and it is host to many famous characters including Charles Dickens John F Kennedy and John Wilkes Booth who fun facts stayed here shortly before assassinating Abraham Lincoln and he was seen practicing in the firing range in the vicinity military the Omni Parker House Hotel which is a frequent mention on lists like five of the most haunted hotels in the width there are quite a few ghostly sightings said to be chillin in this place why did I write that on the 9th and 10th floors a colonial bearded gentleman is said to be seen supposedly looking concerned people say it's the founder Harvey Parker wondering of the guests are enjoying their stay what a swell guy room 303 is what inspired Stephen King's 1408 with strange shadows and bathtub water turning on randomly it was eventually turned into a storage closet so you know there's some Fantasia going on in there at any given moment the elevator frequently stops on the third floor without pushing the button Charles Dickens used to stay on that floor and is said to still haunt the mirror that he practiced reciting a Christmas carol in also actress Charlotte Cushman died on the third floor in 1876 bad vibes all around [Music] stop on our little morbid history tour is the site of the Boston molasses massacre or as some of the locals apparently call it and I just learned this on my phone the Boston Massacre so this Massacre happened when a tank holding 2.3 million gallons of molasses ruptured sending a 15-foot wave of molasses traveling at 35 miles per hour throughout the North End unfortunately the term slow as molasses does not really apply to this situation because this extremely fast wave of molasses ended up killing at 21 people and injuring 150 the explosion is thought to have happened because of an increase in temperature for a January day the thermal expansion of the molasses mixed with the not-so-great condition of the tank led to at bursting at 12:30 p.m. witnesses reported hearing a tremendous crashing in a deep growling a thunderclap like bang and machine-gun leg sounds as the rivets shot out of the tank and when you sit back it's pretty terrifying to think about a literal tidal wave of molasses heading towards you at 35 miles per hour when you first think of molasses flood you sort of think of maybe the blob or that one scene from Austin Powers but in reality it was not like that at all for reference the record for the fastest running speed by an Olympic athlete was twenty-seven miles per hour this molasses also would have had shards of metal from the tank as well as pretty much anything it picked up along the way and as the morbid cherry on top of this proverbial pie all the while this was happening the air would have smelled sickly sweet speaking of sweet we're not gonna do that let's talk a little bit about the whole reason the three of us were brought together in Boston this weekend in case you guys haven't seen Bernadette's video about this massive new update to June's journey go check it out we created a club and chose our name and little design so the main feature in this brand new update is called a detective lounge and basically what it is is it allows a more social aspect to June's journey like we did you can create clubs where you and your friends can face off against other teams give coffees or energy to each other and a bunch of other features and now it's time for a showdown we faced off against the community manager team over at June's journey in a game of spot the difference which was intense and basically all conversation ceased as we put on our observation pants usually your team will get matched up randomly but I guess the Joon's journey team wanted to see what we were made of in this game you basically compete against the other team to see who can spot the difference quicker and with as many objects as you can find after complete concentration and the occasional shouting of random items that we found butter apples jerrican oh oh wait no he was nice a score ended up being pretty dang close so we decided to test our skills in a game of Time Rush if you want to see how that riveting competition ends go watch Morgan's video and again thank you Jun's journey for sponsoring this video and bringing us all together for the weekend to check out not only this brand new update but also the main game which is in 1920s a hidden picture game you can go download the game for free through the link in the description and that concludes our little morbid history tour around Boston make sure you go check out the other two ladies amazing videos and I will see you in my next video bye ee hi bug [Laughter] [Laughter] bring shenanigans miss Bernadette this is a commercial it's you may feel uh one of these lives I'm sold folks over at ginger judolette flip ha and for murder and for morbid alright if you like w41 bow one Boeing make sure I don't book errs this is why I should script out my videos honestly nope I hate that no no no no where's the bottom Wow and they were roommates [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Rachel Maksy

Views: 275,953

Rating: 4.9860334 out of 5

Keywords: bernadette banner, morgan donner, rachel maksy, boston tour, morbid history tour, boston true crime, boston history, vintage style, vintage, boston ghost tour, boston, molasses flood, george parkman, omni parker house, history

Id: z7IumnaL6YQ

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 16 2020