October 25, 1999 - November 7, 1999
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Urban Legends of S.F.

By Charles Tanner
Guardsman Staff Writer
Published Oct. 25, 1999

Ever walk down the streets at night and feel those tingly sensations behind your body or the hairs that stand up on end?  Well it just may be the presence of spirits and ghosts trying to get your attention. Rumors have it, San Francisco has its own bunch of its ghostly urban stories.

Lady of Stow Lake
Once upon a time at Stow Lake, in Golden Gate Park, there was a lady who was walking her baby in a stroller.  After a while, this lady got tired and rested on the bench right next to the lake, with the stroller right next to her.  While she was sitting, another lady came to sit down next to her and they started talking.  While they were conversing, the stroller rolled away without notice.  The stroller with the baby fell in the lake.  After the two women finished talking, the lady noticed her baby was gone and panicked right away.  She then walked around Stow Lake and asked people, “Have you seen my baby?”  She spent all day and all night asking everyone.  When the night was over, the last place she checked was the lake.  She went into the lake looking for her baby and ever since she went in there, she hasn’t been seen again.

It is rumored that if someone goes to Stow Lake at night, weird occurrences will take place.  People tell me stories that the lady comes up from the lake, the statue that is 

there comes to life, or a lady will come up to you and ask you, have you seen my baby.  

People have reported if they drive there with their friends in a lot of cars, all their cars will stall at the same time.  Some people say they saw the lady coming up from the lake and going towards them.  Another rumor is said that, if someone says “White lady, white lady, I have your baby” three times, the lady will appear right in front of them.  She’ll ask you, “Have you seen my baby?”  If you say yes, she’ll haunt you and if you say no, she’ll kill you.  It’s a lose-lose situation.  It is believed that this lady is dressed in white with her hair and clothes wet.  If anyone walks around Stow Lake at night, beware of the White Lady.

Palace of Legion of Honor
During the Gold Rush era, before the Palace of Legion of Honor was ever built, it use to be an old graveyard.  According to a Los Angeles Times story entitled, “Forgotten Graves Yield Glimpse of Past” by Roy Rivenburg, there are still an estimated 11,000 bodies that remain buried under the site.  Unfortunately, many of the burial records were lost in the fire following the 1906 earthquake..

A long time ago, the Palace use to be a pauper’s cemetery.  The workers at that time supposedly got tired of digging up the dead so they just kicked the tombstones down and probably left the bodies there to decompose.  It is believed that bodies still lie underneath around some unknown area around the Palace.  Watch your step, you may be standing on someone’s final resting place.

Ghost of Nob Hill
It has been reported, according to Dennis William Hauck, a member of the American society for Physical Research, the California coordinator for the Ghost Research 

Society and Science Advisor to the Mutual UFO Network, who published a book in 1996 

entitled, Haunted Places the National Directory, that a lost spirit of a teenage girl roams California street between Jones and Powell, not far from the Fairmont Hotel.  It is believed to be the spirit of Flora Sommerton.  In 1876 her parents had arranged for her to marry an older man.  She was only 18-years old.  Out of fright she ran away and was found years later in flophouse in Butte Montana.  It was reported that she was found in a nineteenth century ball gown, supposedly the same one she was wearing the day she ran away If anyone ever sees this girl, it is Flora Sommerton trying to find her way home.  Don’t block her way because she will probably hurt anyone that gets in her path.

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This page last updated 11/08/99.

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