Hella Haunted — The Spookiest Spots in San Francisco

A City Guide to Local Legends

The city by the Bay is teeming with history, both good and bad, since its inception as a Gold Rush hub and intersection of communities not seen anywhere else. Many myths, legends and campfire tales have been marinating for generations, passed down by communities who want to keep the stories alive. Many of these stories reflect the best and worst parts of San Francisco: its fervent innovation and elevation of what a city could be, coupled with its denial about its faults. 

This year has already played out like a scary movie, but to rev up for fall’s arrival and an impending Halloween, take a stroll (if you dare) through a handful of the enduring spooky sites the city can’t stop talking about.

If the sudden chill in the air the second you approach the lake wasn’t enough of a sign, this lake is haunted by one of the scariest kinds of poltergeists around: a grieving mother. There are a few different versions of exactly what went down at Stow Lake, but the enduring story is that roughly a century ago, a woman lost her baby at the lake to drowning, and never recovered from the traumatic loss. Not that you would ever hang out there at night, but if you do...expect some frantic company begging you for information on her infant.

Dubbed the “Mother of Civil Rights in California,” Mary Ellen Pleasant was one of the most prominent and lauded West Coast abolitionists, and she was filthy rich. She was born enslaved, but upon her emancipation and arriving as a free woman in San Francisco, she quickly became a self-made millionaire and used her fortune and influence to aid in the Underground Railroad network and strike down segregationist policies in the city. The park lies where her former Italian-inspired mansion used to stand, and legend has it, her ghost remains in the neighborhood. 

Another forest in San Francisco? Indeed, but the natural beauty of Sutro Forest’s dense eucalyptus trees, located near UCSF’s Parnassus campus, have bore witness to dozens of suicides in the late 19th and early 20th century. Often, according to newspaper reports at the time, the bodies were left undiscovered and undisturbed for weeks on end before their loved ones were able to locate them. Many believe these unfortunate souls remain in the forest to dissuade others from making the same decision.

At this point Charles Manson and his manipulation and drugging of young women and men into a “Family” murder cult in the Summer of Love era is common knowledge, especially bolstered by Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” But what many may not know is that for a while, Manson actually lived up north in San Francisco for a stint in 1967, at a house in the Haight that supposedly informed his approach to using drugs and the era’s “free love” optimism to recruit and control followers. It looks fairly innocuous now, but who knows what went down there and what taint remains?   

Known as one of the bougiest and classiest art museums in the city, the Legion of Honor sounds like the last place for ghosts to make their homes. But back in 1994, when the building was being retrofitted, it was discovered the esteemed institution had been built on a mass grave of upwards of 800 poor and working class San Franciscans who had died in the mid-to-late 19th century, likely migrants and immigrants who had arrived during the Gold Rush. The museum did its best to cover up this discovery, but rumors abound about noises and silhouettes around the medium that appear and vanish.  

The FOMO of not living during the era of Sutro Baths’ saltwater swimming pools hangs over all who both live in San Francisco and have just passed through. They burned down in the 1960s and were never replaced, but the ruins and neighboring Cliff House have bore witness to a number of calamities, and as a result, a number of lingering spirits. Shipwrecks under the Cliff House and a handful of deaths at the pools have led who dare venture down to the ruins at night may see Victorian ladies shuffling about, crewmembers of drowned ships and the mummies that were famously on display from former mayor Adolph Sutro’s personal taxidermy collection.

Remember the first time you watched “Alice in Wonderland” as a kid, and it was actually kinda scary? Well the Gregangelo Museum is like falling down a San Francisco rabbit hole and into a frenetic kaleidoscope. The Museum hosts a variety of immersive performance “tours” throughout the year in coordination with the seasons, even now during the pandemic. Right now their weekly tour is called “Riddle of the Sphinx,” and the eponymous Gregangelo knows what’s coming next!