The Dumb Supper: Dinner with the Dead is featured in the pages of Boston Magazine. This is by far our most spiritual and emotional event!

Death Wish
By Erin Byers
Boston Magazine, October, 2004

A Salem restaurant offers food, wine, and a knock on mortality’s door.

Some dinner parties may seem dull, but here’s one that’s actually meant to be deadly: To celebrate the season of the occult, Salem’s Lyceum Bar & Grill welcomes the deceased and their loved ones for a ghoulish communal meal. The Dumb Supper, hosted by witch elders Shawn Poirier and Christian Day, gives guests one final moment with their dearly departed.

Diners will eat in silence; speaking, Poirier and Day say, disrupts the spiritual currents. The four-course feast, an offering to the dead, will feature butternut squash soup and rosemary-glazed chicken roulade stuffed with spinach and peppers. Guests wear skull masks for anonymity, paying their respects to their honorary guests.

“Obviously, it’s a little odd,” says Elizabeth Brewin, who runs Lyceum’s catering services. But after the meal, speaking resumes and the masks come off. Guests share experiences, swap stories of apparitions, and enjoy coffee and tea over Ouija boards.