Tours in Somerville

After years of teaching preschool, Sue Merlino graduated to a new passion in life when she turned her enthusiasm for bicycling and her hometown into a career exploring Concord's history atop a two-wheeler. Her resulting brainchild, Concord Bike Tours, wends through the heavily treed lanes of the city, elucidating the history of notable locations such as the Emerson House, the abodes of lesser-known abolitionists, and the site where Thoreau kissed his first tree. Four regularly run tours take up to 10 bicyclists on 2.5- to 3-hour journeys, with optional sidecars for children younger than 8 provided. Sue and her family will also plot custom trips for clients interested in longer rides, different scenery, or preparing for a Jeopardy! audition.

Bastions of the abolitionist movement, Boston and its progressive citizens helped motivate activists across the nation to stand against slavery, thus fanning a flame that contributed to the Civil War. During a 90-minute Boston Civil War tour, groups walk among historically significant sites where figureheads such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison publicly asserted their outrage and sought refuge from enraged mobs. While strolling through Beacon Hill on Sunday, knowledgeable guides point out the African Meeting House—a recruitment center for Massachusetts' all-black regiment—and the homes of famous authors such as Louisa May Alcott, who pulled from her experience as a Union Army nurse to write Hospital Sketches in 1863.

Boston, Portland, San Antonio, Phoenix, Miami, Providence ––each city possesses a distinct culture, a varied cuisine, and a subset of neighborhoods full of hot spots and hole in the walls. All of these inspire the guides of Citywide Food Tours as they craft tasting adventures that both expand patrons' palates and illuminate the city in which they live. The gastronomic sherpas lead walking tours through the streets to local eateries and food trucks while dropping tidbits about the area’s history, such as its major battles and most attractive mayors. Guests get to taste three courses’ worth of the city’s finest cuisine at the stops, filling up while meeting new friends.

The Histrionic Academy follows the enduring footprints of America's first steps, bringing to life the iconic men, women, and events that helped forge the United States into existence during the Revolutionary era. Throughout the extended, 90-minute Tour the Freedom Trail walking tour, groups weave across the first 1.2 miles of Boston's Freedom Trail behind the proverbial torches held by guides dressed in colonial garb. Up to 16 of the city's historical landmarks along the tour's route act as links to the past, enabling tour takers to see the actual locations where Paul Revere famously hung out and memorized the horse alphabet.

In addition to Freedom Trail adventures, The Histrionic Academy also swings open its vault of knowledge during school field trips and a variety of other tours. The Plymouth Night tour raises hairs by shuffling visitors through haunted locales beneath the eerie glow of the moon while hunting for ghosts and ghouls in their paranormal hangouts, learning about the dark shadows cast by the city on a hill and the proper safety gear needed for attempting to climb to the moral high ground. The Salem's 1692 tour relives the hysteria of witch hunts by sailing through city streets atop gas-powered brooms.

Kim and Corey were working for a ghost-story tour company in Salem when they noticed something. Well, it wasn't really something, so much as the absence of something that caught their attention. Tourists walked away from their ghost-story tours disappointed, seeking a more intimate encounter with the famous bumps in the Salem night. So the duo decided to start their own tour company, putting their private practice to good use. They founded Paranormal Salem and armed their guests with ghost-detecting equipment before taking them to some of Salem's most notoriously haunted sites.

Their ghost tour's hands-on style has earned them accolades such as Best New England Attraction of 2012 from About.com, and a featured spot on the Biography Channel's My Ghost Story. Their late night tour begins at the Witch Trials Memorial before embarking on a two-hour exploration of indoor and outdoor sites that are rife with stories of ethereal sightings, strange noises, and eerie stomach growls.

Between writing pieces for magazines such as Boston Spirit and Stuff and teaching writing classes at the Boston Center for Adult Education, freelance journalist Sam Baltrusis wrote his book Ghosts of Boston: Haunts of the Hub. In its pages he reveals 300 years of city history and ghost stories. He details unexplained sounds and hovering objects seen inside the Hub’s dorm rooms, apparitions witnessed on the Boston Common, and a colonial British solider glimpsed on the tracks at the Boylston station. His deft pen has also led him to become a regional stringer for The New York Times and his second book, Ghosts of Cambridge: Haunts of Harvard Square and Beyond hits shelves in September 2013.

Not content with relegating his words to the page, Sam also brings them to life through seasonal walking tours. From May 25 to November 3, guides lit by handheld lanterns lead guests through the shadowy streets of Harvard Square. They divulge stories of murder and recall Cambridge's ominous history. They also answer questions such as which Harvard hall is the most haunted, which area church is home to the ghost of a British redcoat soldier, and which famously mustachioed ghosts are just wearing fake mustaches. When he's not guiding in-person guests, Sam doubles as a paranormal expert on the Biography Channel's, "Haunted Encounters" and on Ryan Buell's Paranormal Insider Radio.