San Francisco’s cacophony of rowdy crowds, bright lights, unique characters, shops, and restaurants typically populate the city’s nightlife. But look closer into the dark, and further past the clock, to see that all things aren’t as cheery as they seem. The city has a long history of glamour and elegance, so people don’t usually associate San Francisco with blood and gore. Sure, these stories may be superfluous urban legends, but they may also spark your curiosity. Stories about ghost cops giving citations and haunted hospitals are as integral to the city as the landmarks. Here are just a few of San Francisco’s urban legends to give you a rattle. Test them out if you dare.

Wandering Mother at Stow Lake:
These days, most people visit Stow Lake to take a simple stroll in the park or just to rent a rowboat to paddle around. However, the waters of this lake inside Golden Gate Park aren’t as calm and gentle as they may seem.
At Stow Lake in the late 1800s, a young woman was boating on the lake with her infant child. Playing inside the rowboat, the toddler accidentally fell overboard and the panicked mother quickly jumped into the lake to rescue her baby.
It is said that the baby drowned immediately, and that the mother died because she spent too much time under water looking for her child and never came up for air.
Within the last hundred years, many people have claimed to see a woman walking around Stow Lake at night, looking around the edges of the lake or even wandering atop Strawberry Hill. She has been described as weeping and panicked, wearing a long, white dress that’s drenched
in water, as if she had just come out of the lake. The lonely ghost-mother has even been said to approach passersby to ask if they’ve seen her baby anywhere.

Abandoned Presidio Hospital:
On Fourteenth and Lake Streets sits an old, abandoned, military hospital. Built in 1931 where the old United States Marine Hospital used to stand, this four-hundred-and-eighty bed hospital nursed many merchant seamen who visited from afar.
The hospital closed down in 1981 and was taken over by the Army who used it for various purposes. Due to limited government funding, the Army eventually had to vacate the building, and by 1988 the hospital was completely abandoned.
Since then, many people have trespassed, leaving behind walls full of graffiti and shattered glass from broken windows. However, these delinquents aren’t alone in the old, scarred building.
Supposedly, the injured seamen who passed away in the hospital were buried in a remote cemetery behind a building north of the hospital instead of being given a proper burial in a respectful cemetery, because they didn’t have any family in the city to take care of the burial rights.
People who have been inside the hospital have reported seeing
shadows of people walking, heard cries for help to get back home,
and smelt foul odors.
Now, the police will probably get to you before any of the ghosts can. The hospital has been fenced and guarded by the SFPD since 2006, and any trespasser is arrested on site.

Ghost Cop of Golden Gate Park:
Driving around Golden Gate Park at night can be very confusing,
especially with the copious amounts of winding roads and turns and dim, if any, lighting.
Some of us have accidentally driven at night without our headlights on because we’ve either forgetten to turn them on or because we wanted to give ourselves a rush. But do this in Golden Gate Park and there’s someone who won’t hesitate to remind you of the consequences.
A police officer roams the park and will pull drivers over and issue a citation to those who drive with their headlights off. But when these people try to pay the fine, police records will show that the officer who issued the citation passed away roughly ten years ago.
Some say that there’s a solution to this: if you think that the ghost cop is attempting to pull you over, drive out of Golden Gate Park and the officer (if he’s really a ghost) will stay behind in the dark and disappear.

Sutro Baths Tunnel:
Located in the Outer Richmond District, adjacent to Ocean Beach, what lies at the site of this once prominent public pool is now nothing but ruins and filthy water.
Built at the start of the 1900s and funded by wealthy businessman as well as former mayor of San Francisco, Adolph Sutro, the Sutro Baths were revered as the largest indoor swimming pool complex in the world. It offered several swimming pools and facilities able to hold upwards of twenty-five thousand people. However, in the mid-1900s, the facility struggled to make a profit because of high operating costs and was shut down for good in 1966 due to a major fire.
Today there isn’t much activity going on in the area, and all that remains of this relic are roofless buildings filled with water from nearby tides and crumbling structures. But soon after the fire, a group started holding meetings within the tunnel to the right of the sunken ruins. It has been said that these people sacrificed themselves at the end of the tunnel to show their devotion to the group.
Enter the tunnel at night and light a candle once you get to the end. A spirit will grab the candle and throw it into the water. So much for benign activity.

Mary Ellen Pleasant’s Mansion:
On the corner of Bush and Octavia, surrounded by several eucalyptus trees, sits the mansion of Mary Ellen Pleasant—“The Voodoo Queen of San Francisco”— who was known for helping free slaves within the city.
Mary was born in Georgia in 1814 to slave parents. She was soon freed and lived in New Orleans for several years where she not only helped free slaves herself but also met Marie Laveau, who is revered as the original Voodoo Queen.
In the mid-1800s, Mary moved to San Francisco and continued her work helping free slaves, all the while swindling businessmen to gain a multi-million dollar fortune. Several years later, after a messy lawsuit, she lost the vast majority of her wealth and social power, and she soon died penniless. She was buried in nearby Napa County.
It has been said that Mary haunts the mansion she once lived in at night and hangs around the eucalyptus trees that she planted. Passersby have claimed that as they walk by the mansion, they have been pelted by gumnuts, a woody fruit found in eucalyptus trees. Is her spirit to blame?

Flora Sommerton:
In San Francisco in 1876, Flora’s parents held a formal dance in honor of their eighteen-year-old daughter’s engagement to a man she had no intentions of marrying.
Feeling heartbroken and betrayed, Flora quickly fled the party and was never seen again. Her parents offered a large sum of money to anyone who knew of her whereabouts, but no one ever came forward.
Roughly fifty years later, Flora’s body was found in a hotel room in Butte, Montana, where she had been working as a maid under the moniker “Mrs. Butler.” Along with her body, there were several newspaper articles all over the room that spoke of her disappearance. Oddly enough, she was found dead wearing the same 19th century white ball gown that she had worn when she had fled her own dance in San Francisco fifty years earlier. The family brought her body back to San Francisco and buried her on the family’s plot of land.
Between Jones and Powell on California Street, Flora has been seen walking up and down, paying attention to neither cars nor people,
wearing her long, white ball gown.

Curran Theater Ghost:
Hewlett Tarr loved film and movie theaters so much that he decided to take up a job at the Curran Theater in the early 1930s, working at the box office. With a dream job and a wedding on the way, things couldn’t get any better. But, unfortunately, he was wrong, and things soon took a drastic turn.
A few weeks later, Eddie Anderson, a small-time crook who was trying to impress a girl, stuck his gun through the box office bars and aimed it at Hewlett. As he was pulling the gun away, Anderson accidentally applied pressure to the trigger and shot Hewlett to death.
Located on Geary Boulevard between Taylor and Mason Streets, it has been said that Hewlett’s ghost haunts the theater on occasion. People have reported seeing the reflection of a young man wearing clothes from the 1930s in the large mirror opposite the entrance