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Published: 12/24/2022
How Charles Dickens Haunts Boston’s Omni Parker House Hotel
Legends surround the Omni Parker House Hotel in downtown Boston. Of all the tales to have sprung from the longest continuously operating hotel in the United States, my favorite centers around Charles Dickens and his A Christmas Carol.
Back in October 2022, I spent a night at the Parker House to try to track down a ghost. No, not the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present or Future, but of Charles Dickens himself. This stay kicked off our autumn New England trip through Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
What’s the connection between Charles Dicken and the Parker House?
Call me a bad English major, but I’d completely forgotten that Charles Dickens had visited the United States until a guide dropped this fact on a Boston trolley tour during my first visit to the city.
This British literary great might be forever linked with English slums, but he actually visited America twice. His first trip took him all across eastern North America with stops in places like Cincinnati, St. Louis, Richmond, and Quebec.
Upon his return in 1867, the Parker House was a natural place for Dickens to stay in Boston. After all, the hotel was already a magnet for American literary types. The Saturday Club – whose members included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and John Greenleaf Whittier – met monthly at the Parker House. (Fun fact: The Saturday Club inspired the creation of The Atlantic Monthly magazine which is still published today!)
Dickens spent hours practicing his readings in front of a large mirror in his third-floor Parker House suite before launching a speaking tour around the upper Eastern Seaboard. Naturally, when he took to the American stage, he opened with A Christmas Carol.
What’s Boston’s connection with A Christmas Carol?
No, Charles Dickens didn’t write A Christmas Carol in Boston. And by the time, he was reading A Christmas Carol to a Boston audience in Tremont Temple, the story was 25 years old. But there’s a fascinating contributing factor to Dickens’ choice to open his American speaking tour with this cozy, redemptive Christmas tale.
Believe it or not, at the time of the reading in 1867, Bostonians had only been legally allowed to celebrate Christmas for a decade. One measly decade.
That’s right, those no-fun Puritans had banned the celebration of Christmas way back in 1659. It took Queen Victoria and Prince Albert making Christmas looks so fun with their ice skating and Christmas trees and carols for Massachusetts to get some serious FOMO. Christmas became a public holiday in Massachusetts in 1856. This also explains why Christmas factors so prominently in another New England literary classic from the same time period: Louisa May Alcott published Little Women in 1868.
How Charles Dickens joined the Omni Parker House Hotel legion of ghosts
The Omni Parker House is said to be one of the most haunted buildings in America. The plague of ghosts stems in part from the hotel’s old age. Although it’s not the oldest hotel in the United States, it has continuously operated from its location at the corner of School and Tremont Streets ever since Harvey Parker converted an old mansion into a hotel and opened it to the public in 1855.
In its nearly 175-year history, the Parker House has hosted an endless stream of famous/infamous guests. John Wilkes Booth stayed here just days before assassinating President Lincoln. It’s where JFK announced his run for Congress and also proposed to Jackie.
With 550 guest rooms, that’s a lot of different energy in the Parker House on any given night. It’s no surprise that some of it lingers on. On top of that, ghosts can just drift across the street from Boston’s oldest cemetery at King’s Chapel.
But of all ghosts coming and going from the Parker House, two ghosts are credited with the majority of the hotel’s otherworldly experiences.
Guests often claim to see an apparition of the hotel’s founder, Harvey Parker, on the 10th floor. Meanwhile, our pal Charles Dickens haunts the hotel’s elevators. Staff say the elevators mysteriously rises to the third floor (the floor where Dickens’ suite was located during his 1867 visit), even when no one’s called it.
FYI: if you stay at the Parker House, the 9th, 10th, and 11th floors of the hotel are said to be the most haunted.
The Ghosts at Omni Parker House Hotel Today
It’s interesting that both Harvey Parker and Charles Dickens are said to haunt a building that neither man ever set foot in. The Parker House Hotel these men knew was demolished and rebuilt in the same location in 1927. (One wing of the hotel remained open during the construction; hence the “longest continously operating hotel” claim.) The Omni hotel chain acquired the historic hotel in 1983.
But while Dickens’ actual Parker House suite is long gone, the hotel recognized Dickens’ continued celebrity and before its demolition, preserved the gigantic mirror from Dickens’ suite. Unbeknownst to hotel officials, the door to Dickens’ suite was also preserved. Today you can visit the mirror on the hotel’s first mezzanine, while the door is displayed in the hotel’s museum in the basement.
I’m happy to report that our stay at the Parker House was free of encounters with the other world, despite my mother standing in front of the Charles Dickens’ mirror and saying “Charles Dickens” three times after I specifically told her not to. Apparently doing so can open the portal to the otherworld.
Considering that our stay fell just a few days short of Halloween, I thought for sure we were in for a visit from the Victorian literary great. But honestly, the scariest thing about this mirror is how massive it is!
If you stay at the Omni Parker House Hotel
When we needed a place to spend one night in Boston at the start of our New England road trip in October 2022, I immediately thought of the Omni Parker House. Not only did I want to see that Charles Dickens’ mirror, I still felt sad about not popping in for a Boston cream pie during my last Boston trip.
As the only hotel located along Boston’s Freedom Trail, you can’t beat the Omni Parker House’s convenient location. You’re just a couple blocks away from Boston highlights like the Boston Common, theatre district, and Faneuil Hall. We’d passed the Parker House numerous times during that first visit to Boston and I got a special thrill when our cab pulled up in front of the revolving door on School Street and a Parker House doorman greeted us.
Of course, you pay for that convenience. Our one-night stay on a random October Wednesday would have cost nearly $400 (that’s without the optional add-on charge for breakfast) if I hadn’t used credit card points. Don’t worry, if you have flexible dates, you can often find much better deals. Still, you can expect to pay about $200 a night to stay in even the smallest room at the Omni Parker House.
On top of the room charge, the hotel also charges a separate nightly $20 room fee to cover various services offered to you during your stay, including bottled water at the check-in desk. FYI: credit card points don’t cover this. The card you provide at check-in will be charged.
Inside the Omni Parker House Hotel
When you duck under the Omni Parker House Hotel marquee sign and swing through the School Street revolving door, you emerge in a beautiful, dark wood-paneled lobby with all the “waspy” hallmarks you’d expect in New England wealth. Clusters of tall wing-backed chairs sit atop damask carpet under the light of various chandeliers. The bank of infamous (and impressive) elevators dominates the east wall near the check-in desk.
The 15-floor hotel features more the 500 guest rooms and 21 suites. But once you get above the first few floors, you could be in any American hotel. While the upper levels of the hotel are clean and tidy, they lose most of the luxurious features that make the lobby and mezzanine feel special.
Perhaps the most distinguishing factor of the Omni Parker House guest rooms are how small they are! The deluxe room we stayed in had two double beds and was just 210 square feet. That’s nearly 100 square feet smaller than an average American hotel room. A traditional room at the Omni Parker House is 125 square feet. The rooms go down to 90 square foot single room! Surprisingly, our room didn’t feel particularly cramped; the smaller beds really help maximize the small space.
The hotel currently offers two restaurants – Parker’s Restaurant and The Last Hurrah – as well as a grab and go coffee shop and, of course, room service. Other amenities include a fitness room, computer work stations, and 23,000 square feet of meeting space. I loved that their meeting rooms are named after New England greats including several women: Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Isabella Stewart Gardner.
The Last Hurrah at Omni Parker House Hotel
While Parker’s Restaurant is currently just open for breakfast and lunch (and has a dress code), the Last Hurrah whiskey bar provides a casual spot to unwind each evening. The bar is open from 4 p.m. – midnight every day. Endless framed photos and memorabilia from the Parker House’s storied past line the walls.
In addition to limited food service, the Last Hurrah offers a full bar. Be sure to check out their lineup of specialty cocktails including a Boston Cream Pie martini.
I chose the Boston Tea Party martini – a lemony cocktail made with earl grey infused gin. My teetotaler parents opted for actual hot tea and were pleased to find a great selection. We’d already stuffed ourselves at Legal Sea Foods’ Downtown Crossing, so we just came for a nightcap and of course, a slice of Boston cream pie!
Maybe it was our kind waiter, maybe it was the fact that every table in the bar was filled with happy, content guests, but our visit to the Last Hurrah was a highlight of our entire New England trip. We loved people watching from our street level table. We even got to show off our Boston cream pie to a curious passerby!
(The Omni Parker House has a second bar, Parker’s Bar, which is a British style pub, but it’s temporarily closed.)
What about that Boston Cream Pie?
Despite all of its celebrity guests (and ghosts!), the Omni Parker House Hotel is best known among Boston visitors as the birthplace of the Boston cream pie. This famous dessert made its debut in 1855 at the hotel’s grand opening.
Apparently at that time, chocolate wasn’t frequently used in baked desserts. When the Parker House chef rolled out a chocolate covered version a colonial dessert known as pudding cake pie, it was quite the revolution. If you lined up all the desserts in the world, it would be a while before I selected a Boston cream pie, but if this is the dessert that got chocolate in the bakery, I have no choice but to applaud it.
Essentially just a yellow cake with vanilla custard filling and chocolate fondant icing, the Omni Parker House version of Boston Cream Pie is a little fancier than what the average home baker creates. The Boston cream pie we received at the Last Hurrah was individually sized and served atop a thin layer of raspberry jam with a side of whipped cream. The sides were coated in vanilla custard and slivered almonds, while the chocolate fondant was swirled on the top in a distinctive spiderweb design.
If you don’t have a Boston trip in your near future and you want to try it, you can order an 8″ Boston cream pie from the Parker House kitchens via Goldbelly.
I’m not quite sure how you get your hands on the hotel’s other culinary contribution: the Parker House roll. Presumably you’ll need to order an entrée either at the Last Hurrah or Parker’s Restaurant.
Should I stay or just visit the Omni Parker House Hotel?
The choice is yours, but I loved spending a night at the Parker House! It was so fun to immerse myself in the hotel’s deep New England history. Thanks to the hotel’s amazing central location, we were always within walking distance of whatever we wanted to do including grabbing a bite down in the theatre district, taking a quick stroll on the Freedom Trail, or heading up to North Station to catch a train to Portland, ME. The staff was all super friendly and helpful too.
While I definitely think it’s worth staying at the Omni Parker House Hotel, considering the petite rooms, I don’t recommend a stay longer than a night or two. Our one-night stay was just enough time to sate my curiosity.
However, if you prefer to stay elsewhere in Boston, you should definitely swing by the Omni Parker House for a visit. With the prominent role the hotel has played in Boston, the hotel definitely expects guests to just walk in off the street. Perhaps the best way to experience the Parker House as a non-guest is to stop into the Last Hurrah bar in the hotel’s ground floor. Don’t forget that Boston cream pie and to give Charles Dickens your best regards!
