The ghost of the White Lady
Naturally, San Francisco has its urban legends. Underneath the Palace of the Legion of Honor, for example, a cemetery established during the Gold Rush gave rise to a story that when it came time to move the graveyard in order to make room for the palace, grave diggers quickly tired of the task and simply carried away the headstones, leaving some 11,000 bodies in the ground. The spirits, it is said, have never departed.
And then there’s the ghost of 18-year-old Flora Sommerton, sometimes seen on Nob Hill, along California Street between Jones and Powell. In 1876, her parents arranged her marriage to a much older man, which prompted Flora to run away to Butte, Montana, where her body was found years later in a flophouse—still clad in the ball gown she’d been wearing when she disappeared. She appeared to have been living in terrible poverty at the time of her death. If you see her, she’s still trying to get home; don’t get in her way.
Info
Address 50 Stow Lake Drive, San Francisco, CA, 94118, www.stowlakeboathouse.com | Public Transport Bus: 28, 29 (19th Ave & Lincoln Way stop) | Tip Strawberry Hill is the naturally formed island in the middle of Stow Lake and affords great views of the surrounding park, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Mount Tamalpais. Access the island from one of two bridges and enjoy a nice hike through lush foliage and past an artificial waterfall.
Of all the city’s legends, the most heartbreaking is the White Lady of Stow Lake, where lovers and families row boats in the midst of Golden Gate Park, just west of the Japanese Tea Garden. The story goes that more than a century ago, a mother sat down next to the lake on a park bench, with her child in a stroller. The mother fell into a conversation with a stranger and didn’t notice the stroller slowly rolling into the water. When the conversation ended the lady realized her child was missing and ran screaming through the park asking people, “Have you seen my baby?” She searched all day and night and finally thought of the lake. She was last seen wading into the water near the bench.
That bereft mother is still occasionally seen coming out of the lake, always at dusk, dressed in white, her hair sopping wet, desperately asking people, “Have you seen my baby?” If you say yes, she will haunt you; if you say no, she will kill you.
Back
To the online map