Ghosts in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury?

Tommy Netzband knows there are ghosts in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury neighborhood. The eleven-year resident feels an affinity for other longtime residents.

Including the dead.

"After that wonderful Summer in 1967," says the president of the San Francisco Ghost Society, "this neighborhood began to house dark and sinister secrets. For years ‘The Haight’ became known as ‘The Hate,’ because of the endless tragedies that took place here. It was this violence and murder on its streets which make me believe it’s haunted today."

The 38 year old Chicago transplant is founder and tour guide of "Haunted Haight," a two-hour walking tour of Haight Ashbury. On a recent Sunday evening I took Tommy’s tour, which began at sunset. My friend and I were the only civilians on the tour, as the other guests were all Tommy's fellow ghost-hunters from the Sacramento Ghost Society attending the San Francisco group’s weekend lecture series.

We met at Coffee to the People at Masonic and Haight, at the east end of the famous street. Although one’s view down Haight is contemporary (retro ‘60s head shops, faux hippie clothing stores), Tommy’s tour often emphasizes a historical view. "Well," he says, "I feel ghosts and history go hand in hand."

This is the part I came to hear, because I live up the hill in an area called Ashbury Heights - I can look down into Golden Gate Park and the old Kezar Stadium located at the west end of Haight Street where it dead ends at the Park. I want to know more about the history of my home.

Long before the freaks came to party, this neighborhood was home to working class families. They rode the now-defunct Haight Street trolley to jobs in the commercial downtown or the waterfront, and lived in Italianate and San Francisco Stick-style houses dotting the area, including ones designed by architect Robert Dickie Cranston whose personal home we visited at 1777 Page Street. The carved decoration under his eaves is quite elaborate.

These working-class families had nearby (then new) Golden Gate Park as their weekend paradise, and a waterslide amusement in their neighborhood called The Chutes. Located improbably in the center of often cold and dreary San Francisco, the waterslide sat at Cole and Haight from 1895 to 1901. Tommy pointed out that he believes a child died at The Chutes, before it closed and moved across the Panhandle to the Inner Richmond.

The child’s ghost now haunts a house on the site and behaves like a poltergeist moving or hiding objects, especially things that might indicate competition from other children like toys and photographs. CDs even turn up in the freezer. The current residents believe the ghost to be harmless, and even give it a doll for Christmas every year. A collection of dolls can be seen through the front window on the mantle of the drawing room.

Ghosts have an affinity for water sources, and Cole Street is located on the low spot of Cole Valley where nearby Mount Sutro sheds rain runoff. Interestingly, despite the size of the mountain and its watershed, the sand in central San Francisco sucked up the water and it couldn’t run as a surface creek. According to the Oakland Museum’s guide to Bay Area creeks, "The Richmond, Sunset, Western Addition, and Financial Districts of San Francisco were lacking in creeks. These areas were covered with sand dunes. Because of the permeable soils, rainwater soaked-in immediately. Yes, these areas are watersheds, but the water flows away in underground aquifers. Much of the western area feeds Lake Merced; other areas flow towards the Ocean, or SF Bay. Today, when heavy storms raise the water levels of these aquifers, they flood into many people’s basements."

We stopped at a stretch of Golden Gate Park’s Panhandle that is completely free of pigeons. Tommy has collected stories of its haunting by the ghost of 1970’s rock musician Buck Naked of the band The Bare Bottom Boys. The killer cared obsessively about feeding "his" pigeons; thousands of pounds of bird feed were found later by the police in his storage locker. The pigeon man shot the musician after his dog bothered the beloved flock. "Residents speak about hearing the sounds of a man calling his dog late at night in the Panhandle," said Tommy. The path where Buck Naked fled is the old carriage road from downtown to the weekend mansions of the rich, which were built along the north edge of the Panhandle on Fulton Street.

Tommy talked of gravestones lining the gutters and sidewalks edging Buena Vista Park, at the top of the hill behind the Haight. Several years after the Great Earthquake of 1906 the City Council outlawed cemeteries within city limits. Families were given 14 months to move their loved ones, and the City took thousands of leftover gravestones and used them as construction material, including this park. Most of the stones are turned downwards today so their legends aren’t visible but Tommy showed pictures of few that were placed facing upwards, showing the names of the dead.

Buena Vista Park has a history as a crash pad, a tradition that continues today to the annoyance of cops who cruise it with their searchlights after dark to annoy the freaks. I always thought it was silly that anyone would try to sleep in Buena Vista Park, as there isn’t an inch of level ground anywhere. Perhaps someday I’ll profile the visiting young people in a separate article, with photos of their unique styling to tell the story of kids who even to this day leave Middle America to hitch hike to Haight Ashbury…

We passed the home of the notorious People’s Temple leader Jim Jones, who led over 900 people (mostly San Francisco poor) to a mass suicide in the late 1970s at their commune in Guyana. Jones’ room is the tower window with the light on, pictured above.

Other historical sites on the tour included the homes of Charles Manson, Janis Joplin, and the Hell’s Angels Social Club across the street 710 Ashbury, the home of the Grateful Dead. The cover photograph gracing the back of their first album was posed on the steep front steps. The current owners have painted the building in purple tones, a sly wink to those who remember Purple Microdot, a popular version of LSD.

None of these buildings are known to be haunted, although the sidewalk in front of Joplin’s home was the site of a murder several years after her death. According to Tommy, that spot is the one on the tour that most often yields a frightened reaction from his patrons. Some report being tapped, nausea, the sound of running feet, or feeling pebbles hit them in the head (the victim was shot in the head while running away).

It’s not that Tommy uncritically believes every ghost story folks bring him – the founder of the San Francisco Ghost Society does background research to check out tips. "I do seek to document ghost phenom by using research and scientific equipment to validate them," he says. He credits the San Francisco library for helping chase down documentation that can tie a historical event to a ghost story. For one with a rich involvement with the paranormal, Tommy keeps to his own standards of evidence and corroboration.

Perhaps even ghost hunters have to watch their backs?

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For further information about the Haunted Haight tour, call (415) 863-1416 or visit www.hauntedhaight.com. For information about the San Francisco Ghost Society call (415) 336-6945 or visit www.sfghostsociety.org. If you have questions or feedback for the author of this article, contact William Murphy at wcmurphy19@gmail.com or (650)793-0770.