Quick Escape: Brave ghost hunting around San Francisco

San Francisco is a hot destination for foodies, shoppers — and ghost hunters.

It is, in fact, said to be one of the most haunted cities in the world.

This self-tour will put you in, or near, the proximity where so many others have claimed to see ghosts.

Alcatraz

Before you leave San Diego, go online and book a tour of Alcrataz.  Make it the last tour of the day. That  ferry departs at 4:20 p.m.  (Thursdays through Mondays). Your passage includes a personally narrated boat tour around the island and a guided tour from the dock into the main prison. It’s a  two-and-a-half hour endeavor and will run you about $33.

When you’re taking your tour, you’ll see the sun setting behind the Golden Gate Bridge and  see San Francisco fade from sunshine to twilight. Then you’ll be enveloped in darkness.

Perfect for visiting visit prison cells where cold-blooded killers from around the country did time.

Alcatraz was known for its vicious prisoners and the sometimes excessive punishment the guards used to keep them in line. Many prisoners left this world at the hands of their captors. Guards murdered prisoners; prisoners killed guards; prisoners killed prisoners.

Life at Alcatraz was all about death and trying to avoid it. The island had its own morgue.

Paranormal activity

Much of the paranormal activity reported comes from Cell Blocks A, B and C and is believed to be prisoners still shaking their cell doors, screaming and tugging at the clothes of tourists.

Visitors and rangers also describe smelling smoke, hearing moans and being touched by cold hands from the darkness (and not flesh and blood hands — although that would be just as creepy).

A few people have claimed to have seen full-bodied apparitions inside of cells. Happy Halloweeeeeeeen.

Golden Gate Bridge

Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge during a day drenched in golden sunshine is inspiring — but some visitors report thick late night/early morning fog taking on body-like shapes of specters passing in front of cars.

It’s no surprise.

More than 1,200 people (that they know of, anyway) have plummeted to their deaths from this bridge. Abandoned rental cars are found, engines still running — passenger doors still open (sans drivers) and blocking traffic.

If this doesn’t creep you out enough, how about looking further into the history of the Chrysopyla Straits — named by Army Engineer John C. Fremont in 1846. Today, those words translate into Golden Gate Straits.

Entire ships and their crews were lost passing through the dangerous GGS. In 1853, the steamer SS Tennessee disappeared into the sinister swirling fog where she was annihilated against the rocky shoreline by currents. The wreck claimed an entire crew of more than 100.

The Tennessee wasn’t the only ship to go down near the GGB. Dozens of private sailboats as well as commercial and military ships have run aground or sunk in the GGS taking hundreds of lives. Soup-like fog and ripping winds are mostly always contributors to the nautical disasters that have occurred for centuries in the mouth of the bay.

Take a walk

If you feel daring (and are well-clothed) take a late afternoon stroll across the bridge (remember to check and see what time the access on your side of the bridge closes). Many GGB pedestrians report having clothes tugged, unexplained feelings of dread and depression, as well as thoughts of suicide while looking over the rails to the deep blue below.

Some feel unexplained cold spots and as if they are passing others — who are gone when they turn to take a second look.

If you want only a drive-by experience of the haunted Golden Gate Bridge, travel on a foggy night. You may feel the hair on your arms prickle as you catch a glimpse in your rearview mirror of a shadow person in your backseat. A high percentage of the GGB, as well as Hwy 1, paranormal reports are uninvited backseat passengers.

However you wish to experience this location, make sure you have enough gas to get to the other side, this is one bridge you don’t want to get stuck on.

Seal Rocks

After an exhausting day of sorting imagination from fact, this is a great place to bed down.  But be careful crossing Highway 1, if you opt for a stroll on the beach. Drunken drivers speeding away from their last empty glass have killed hundreds of travelers.

And avoid driving the highway at night — unless, you’re looking for a Lady in White hitching a ride in your backseat, or swerving to miss the ghost child crossing in the swirling fog as he tries to find help for his mangled, bloody parents — who perished many, many decades ago on that dark stretch of highway.

Fort Point

Avoid the crowds and visit Fort Point in the early morning, or late afternoon.

The architecture of the fort has been called,  “one of the most perfect models of masonry in America.” The winding staircases and brick arches are magnificent – and they are said to put some visitors into a hypnotic state. Anyone can easily imagine themselves transported through time while visiting this Civil War labyrinth.

You may even find yourself experiencing a strange black and white déjà vu — one from 1958, to be exact. Master of Macabre, Alfred Hitchcock, filmed the scene from Vertigo in which James Stewart fishes Kim Novak from the freezing bay when she apparently tries to do herself in while in a trance-like state.

Fort Point is situated directly under the San Francisco side of the Golden Gate Bridge and offers rare ground views of the bay, as well as the underbelly of the bridge.

But don’t be surprised if you suddenly feel that someone is watching you…  According to a ranger working onsite, one explanation of the eerie feeling of being watched could have something to do with the death of a soldier stationed at Fort Point.  That soldier, Pvt. James Atchison, died there on Jan. 5, 1865, of unknown causes.

Another theory of the creepiness felt on the grounds, dates to one dark and stormy night in 1901. People were awakened by the last screams of survivors hanging on to slippery, jagged rocks they tried scaling to escape the pounding surf.

That was the night the steam ship SS City of Rio de Janeiro smashed against the rocks near Fort Point (very close to where Stewart fished Novak out of the drink). The boat fell apart and passengers fought tooth and claw over the small number of lifejackets - and quickly overfilled the available lifeboats (most of which sank like rocks).

In less than 20 minutes, 129 people were lost to the Strait’s deadly freezing waters that eventually took them back from whence they came. Or, did it?

Wind surfers who brave the currents with only a fiberglass board between their bodies and nature’s temper, report hearing screams in the surf and feelings of their sails being tugged at by unseen hands.

Sutro Baths

The Sutro Baths ruins are just to the north of the San Francisco Cliff House resautrant. (The cold, modified architecture now housing  the Cliff House is a mere ghost of its former eight story, monolithic, Victorian self — or even the cozy incarnation that came just before it, for that matter.)

But the building is easy to access and parking available is available just across  Highway 1.

So, who haunts the Sutro Baths?

What’s left of the Sutro Baths is truly a location that feeds the imagination. That’s because what came before the ruins is just as mind-boggling as the monolithic hole left behind on the spot where it once bloomed.

The history of this location is long, drawn out and dotted with tragedies and characters from the Victorian era. Built in 1896, the Sutro Baths was once the leisure center of San Francisco’s working class.

Mad genius

Today, visitors  see only the crater that was once was the grandest bathhouse in the world. Adolph Sutro,  was the mad genius and former mayor of San Francisco, who decided to become the great entertainer of the masses. He built six indoor pools that provided sea water of varying temperatures and a seventh freshwater structure (all 499.5 feet in length and 254.1 feet wide).

The guy was incredibly smart, as he built the sea water pools so that every high tide they would fill up with fresh ocean water and recycle about 2 million gallons of water an hour.

During low tides, an underground pump in a pipe, still visible today, would flood seawater in at a rate of 6,000 gallons a minute.

The visionary also built concert seating for 8,000 in a ‘If you build it they will come, ‘ leap of faith.

Sutro filled his building with museums encasing the unique artifacts he’d collected while traveling the world — as well as a large collection of taxidermied animals he’d hunted and killed in all corners of the Earth.

To say the least – Sutro was the P.T. Barnum of San Francisco.

He lived in very close proximity to the Sutro Baths in a mansion with an amazing outdoor statue collection. At the time, such luxuries of leisure were only available to San Francisco’s elite.

Sutro planned it so that the masses could take a train (one of the only ways to reach the cliff location) for a nickel, and then swim for a nickel in his facility. When the train line raised the price to a dime and put a dent in his business, Sutro built his own train line.

In 1966, the  Sutro Baths burned to the ground while in the process of being demolished.

Sutro today

Visitors now find concrete walls, blocked-off stairs, passageways, and a tunnel with a deep crevice in the middle - the pipeline that brought in the saltwater.

There are signs all over the place advising people of the dangers of entering the area — including warnings of unpredictable waves that knock people down and sweep them out to sea.

Still, people come — and people die here.

Be forewarned, it’s a beautiful location for daytime hiking, but an amazingly easy place to have a fatal accident at night.

There are local stories of the ghost of a young woman believed to have drowned when she was swept out to sea here. She is most commonly called forth by teens who leave candles in the darkness of the cave for her to move with her ghostly hand, or put out all together.

Passerby report glowing orbs coming from the caves in the early morning hours and disembodied screams and moaning.

Even in the daytime, this place has an eerie feeling — as it is most of the time blanketed in fog.

If the waves don’t get you, winds have been known to blow people off of the cliffs.

This is a very lonely place. If you decide to visit, you are definitely on your own - or you might find yourself wishing you were  –without that third-wheel touching you with her cold, dead hand.

Sally Richards is an author and journalist who leads a  Ghosts Happen paranormal investigation team in San Diego.

IF YOU GO

Know before you go: When you book your flight, book a rental car. San Francisco will be much cooler than the warm fall San Diego is experiencing. Be sure to pack a small LED flashlight (to see your way through those darker locations), a case of bottled holy water and a thermos (you can fill with hot chocolate or coffee at any 7-11). Don’t forget comfortable, rubber-soled walking shoes - and your cell phone charger in case you need to call for help…

Alcatraz: Learn more about the ghosts of Alcatraz at: http://www.prairieghosts.com/gpalcatraz.html .

Check out these Alcatraz ghost stories at  http://crime.about.com/od/prison/a/alcatrazghosts.htm .

Learn about the history of Alcatraz ghosts at http://www.prairieghosts.com/gpalcatraz.html .

Ticket info: http://www.alcatrazcruises.com/website/buy-tickets.aspx

Golden Gate Bridge info: http://goldengatebridge.org

Check out Golden Gate ghost stories: http://www.hauntedbay.com/features/goldengate.shtml

Learn weird facts about the Golden Gate: http://www.weirdca.com/location.php?location=88

Fort Point Info: — www.nps.gov/fopo/index.htm

Sutro Baths — http://www.outsidelands.org/sutro_baths.php

A history of Adolph Sutro –   http://www.nps.gov/goga/historyculture/sutro.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ci6PbyB0Y

A Sutro Baths Edison film from the Library of Congress

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNl1_Bup6uc&NR=1

Entertainment at the Sutro Baths

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTMVfu6fj_g

A weird teen film about the myth of the ghost in the cave (adult language)

Staying there:

The Seal Rock Inn - http://www.sealrockinn.com/

Great Highway Inn - http://www.greathwy.com/loc.html

Ocean View Motel - http://oceanviewmotelsf.com/

Beach Motel - http://www.beachmotelsf.com/

Websites for haunted San Francisco: Compare your ghost-hunting techniques and watch some Youtube videos to put you in the mood.

San Francisco: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjOoaYB0iw8&feature=related

Alcatraz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZc4c8ORWGd8&feature=related

Haunted Presidio:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VCM7z6AKKo&feature=related

Haunted hospital:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEyY_WDl_LM&feature=related

More sites: http://www.yourghoststories.com/ http://www.ghostvillage.com/

Tags: Add new tag, Alcatraz haunted, Bay Area, Ghost, ghost hunt, Golden Gate Bridge suicides, halloween, paranormal, Pier 39 ghost, san francisco, SDNN, spirits, Sutro Baths

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 11th, 2009 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Quick Escapes . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.