Some people never want to leave Pac Heights.—and some people really never do, lingering on even after death.
Christian Cagigal, a professional magician, has been leading walking tours of Pac Heights’ allegedly haunted houses since 1997. Naturally, this is his busiest season.
A ghost walk in San Francisco is an inevitable idea, but why Pac Heights of all places?
“It’s where rich folks spend their money, and that creates stories,” says Cagigal. “In 80 years or so, Mark Zuckerberg’s houses are going to be amazing for ghost stories.”
Gossip about the rich and famous of Pac Heights included allegations of murder, blackmail, voodoo, seances, family feuds, hidden treasure, and a scion of one wealthy family whose corpse ended up stowed in a rum barrel in the family abode.
Consequently, the neighborhood is dense with supposed hauntings. And the 1906 earthquake did relatively little damage i’n the tony neighborhood, leaving plenty of old, dark homes with classic architecture to tickle the imagination.
“Much of California’s history is hidden from us,” adds Cagigal. “The west is where people came to get away from the past. Also, when we talk about our history we have to acknowledge things about Spain, Mexico, and the Indians that we aren’t really comfortable with.”
Take one of Cagigal’s favorite Pac Heights ghosts: 19th century entrepreneur and abolitionist Mary Ellen Pleasant.
“She’s been called the Mother of Civil Rights in California,” he says. “She’s also been called the Voodoo Queen of San Francisco.”
It’s a little hard to chart the course of Pleasant’s life, since her three autobiographies tend to contradict themselves, and slander dogged her for years. She probably wasn’t really a murderer, for example, as some speculated after her lover fell to his death from the second story of their Octavia Street house.
On the other hand, she could have blackmailed some of the richest men in San Francisco. Whether she practiced voodoo isn’t clear, but she certainly encouraged the story, going so far as to walk city streets with a crystal ball in hand.
Pleasant died in 1904. Residents and neighbors reported seeing her spirit in the 30-room Italianate mansion on Octavia where she previously lived (dubbed the “House of Mystery” by local wags).
The house burned down in 1925, but that didn’t evict the ghost. Her spirit, we’re told, now frequents nearby Mary Ellen Pleasant Memorial Park, the smallest park in San Francisco.
They say that if you make a wish there—provided that Mary likes you—she’ll grant it. But Cagigal’s now-retired partner Jim Fassbinder says she also sometimes throws tree ephemera down at people she doesn’t like.
Most neighborhood ghosts are a little less turbulent. Take the Queen Anne Hotel on Sutter Street, perhaps the most ghost-friendly-looking place in the entire city. Originally a girl’s boarding school, longstanding San Francisco myth holds that former headmistress Mary Lake still walks the halls at night.
Guests in room 410—once Lake’s office—even report waking up to find that someone mysteriously tucked them in while asleep. You won’t find service like that at the Hilton.
There are so many alleged hauntings in Pac Heights that you can’t properly fit them all in one tour. A Cagigal favorite that’s not included is the Whittier Mansion on Jackson Street, an enormous sandstone structure once home to power magnate William Franklin Whittier, whose company eventually became troubled utility outfit PG&E.
Today strange sounds and shadowy figures can allegedly be found inside the mansion. The ghost of Whittier’s son, Billy, has reportedly been seen sneaking around the home’s wine cellars.
Cagigal says a few Pac Heights residents don’t like being locales on the tour, but most of them are good sports.
As for the multimillion-dollar question—whether or not he has ever seen a ghost—he says no. Although there was an oddball incident where the lights in one house kept going haywire whenever a little girl on the tour walked by.
“I’m a healthy skeptic,” he says. “But I want to believe.”
Roughly 17,000 San Franciscans live in Pacific Heights today. But how many from its past are still waiting in the wings?