Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Ghost of Dr. Harris” is a tale of his experiences with the ghost of Reverend Doctor Thaddeus Mason Harris at the Boston Athenaeum.

As the story goes, Hawthorne claims to have seen Dr. Harris reading in the same spot in the Athenaeum, day after day, only later to have learned Dr. Harris had died days prior.

Hawthorne wrote the story for a friend, but it wasn’t published until Hawthorne passed himself. When we moved to 10½ Beacon Street, the ghost of Dr. Harris did not come along, although a portrait of him did – which you can see displayed on our first floor.