Alcatraz, Chinatown tunnels, and Gold Rush ghosts. San Francisco's 22 haunted stops. 3 free, self-guided.
Alcatraz gets all the attention, but San Francisco hides its darkest hauntings in plain sight. In 1933, box office clerk Hewlett Tarr was shot dead at the Curran Theatre by a man who walked in off the street. The Queen Anne Hotel still carries the presence of headmistress Mary Lake, whose finishing school failed by 1896. At the Atherton House, Dominga de Goñi Atherton lived for decades above the spot where her husband's body arrived packed in a barrel of rum in 1882. This self-guided walking tour covers 13 free stops across Nob Hill, Chinatown, and the Presidio — from the tunnels beneath Chinatown's tong war battlegrounds to the unmarked graves under the San Francisco Art Institute.
Nob Hill was where the Big Four railroad barons built their mansions in the 1870s — Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, and Collis Hunting...
You stand before the Queen Anne Hotel at 1590 Sutter Street, built in 1890 as Miss Mary Lakes School for Girls. The school failed within a decade — en...
The Atherton House at 1990 California Street was built in 1881 for Dominga de Goñi Atherton and her husband Faxon Dean Atherton. Faxon died at his cou...
San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest in North America, established in the 1840s. Beneath the tourist-friendly streets lies a history of tunnels, op...
No place in San Francisco carries more concentrated human suffering than Alcatraz. From 1934 to 1963, the federal penitentiary housed America's most d...
You stand in D-Block, the solitary confinement wing they called "the Hole." Cell 14D generates a cold so intense that thermal cameras register a 20-de...
The Curran Theatre opened in 1922, a jewel of the Theater District designed by Alfred Henry Jacobs in a French Renaissance style. For over a century, ...
You walk past the box office where Hewlett Tarr died on November 28, 1933. He was 24 years old, working the night shift, selling tickets to a Tuesday ...
The Presidio has been a military garrison since 1776, when Spanish soldiers established a fortification on the wind-swept headlands overlooking the Go...
You stand on Russian Hill, on ground that held a cemetery until the school was built in 1926. The graves were supposed to be relocated. Most were. But...
San Francisco City Hall is one of the most beautiful government buildings in America, its dome rising higher than the United States Capitol. It is als...
You walk the path around Stow Lake on a foggy night — the kind of night when the fog presses so thick you cant see ten feet ahead. This is when she ap...
You stand in the ruins at dusk, when the Pacific fog rolls in through the broken foundations and fills the empty pools like water made of smoke. The S...
The Whittier Mansion rises from Pacific Heights like a fortress, its red sandstone facade unlike anything else in a city of painted Victorians. Built ...
You stand in front of Haskell House in the Presidio, built in 1856 as officers quarters. The house carries the weight of a murder disguised as honor. ...
Tucked at the end of a quiet residential cul-de-sac in the Richmond District stands a building that houses the remains of over eight thousand San Fran...
Of all the grand mansions that once crowned Nob Hill, only one survived the catastrophic earthquake and fire of 1906: the James C. Flood Mansion, buil...
You stand before the Whittier Mansion on Jackson Street, one of the few Pacific Heights mansions to survive the 1906 earthquake intact. Built in 1896 ...
You walk into the Columbarium, and the beauty strikes you first — three floors of ornate niches, stained glass, marble, and quiet. Over 8,500 urns res...
At the western edge of San Francisco, where the land drops into the Pacific, lie the ruins of Adolph Sutro's greatest dream. Opened in 1896, the Sutro...
You stand before the Officers Club, the oldest building in San Francisco still standing, built by the Spanish in 1776 as part of the Presidio fortific...
Golden Gate Park covers over a thousand acres of what was once nothing but sand dunes, transformed in the 1870s into one of America's great urban park...
The San Francisco ghost tour includes 22 documented haunted locations covering 158 years of documented history.
The first 3 stops are completely free — no account required. To unlock all 22 stops, a History Nearby premium subscription is $4.99/month or $49.99/year.
No. This is a self-guided walking tour. Each stop includes the address, a map pin, and the full haunting story. Walk at your own pace, start anytime, and take any route you like.
Plan for approximately 4.5 hours. This accounts for walking between stops and reading each haunting story. You can also split it across multiple evenings.
The most visited stop on our San Francisco tour is Nob Hill at Nob Hill, San Francisco, California.
3 stops free in San Francisco. No guide, no schedule — walk at your own pace after dark.
Last updated February 22, 2026. Researched by the History Nearby editorial team.