For more than a quarter-century, the stories have centered on children—phantom figures said to shimmer with an iridescent glow. Neighbors claim these spectral babes come into nearby homes on Beacon Hill, where they rummage through toy chests, scatter playthings across stairs, take porcelain dolls from glass cabinets, and set dogs a-snarling.

In 2001, one woman who lived near the cemetery told the Post-Intelligencer’s Jon Hahn that she had tried to sell her house several times, always in vain: “Everyone knows about the ghosts.”

But the strangeness of Comet Lodge, the historic cemetery on South Graham Street in Beacon Hill, runs deeper than tales of glowing children. For much of the 20th century, the burial ground was a place of concealment and confusion, where things grew tangled, hidden,

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