[Music] [Applause] [Music] no it can't be it's the San Francisco Bay area is full of mystery all year round but every spooky season we like to take a closer look into the dark corners of the place we call home welcome to creepy Bay Area I'm your host Reggie AI this year we're kicking off our Tales of Terror by highlighting some of the oddest museums you could ever hope to visit so come with us as we examine exhibits full of fascinating and sometimes frightening figures hiding in a quiet San Francisco neighborhood is a house full of surprises I seen many many guests come in here and they cry they laugh they smile when people hear the term Museum immediately what comes to mind is typically a large marble or brick building where you you walk inside you pay your admission and then you you self-guide that's not what we do at all I'm never sure quite how to quantify everything I know last time I counted there's 27 installations some of them might be the size of a phone booth but they're fullon World on top of the all inspiring rooms of the house the museum is offering new shows for the Halloween season our experiences are very interactive they're engaging they're participatory when people come here it's an active experience oh ailia wants you to come to the haunted DH house Autumn is really when we're lifting the veil on everything so we're sort of lifting the veil I think it's not why we all love Halloween because of all the the marketing around it but it's because we know there is something changing and that we're closer to the source and that's what all these shows are about something beautiful something that is your essence the gregangelo museum is unique San Francisco creation all coming from gregangelo himself my personal background is I grew up in San Francisco during the 60s and 70s is when I was really growing up and the city was just this Kaleidoscope of culture color I've been in this house since 1979 it was a dump it was a complete rescue property and I just kind of started working on it and I was I was very young I was already developing shows and acts so I would kind of use the house as a lab for it well then the AIDS epidemic came I lost my partner to AIDS I was 19 years old I think I was purging my grief I was celebrating being alive I think I probably locked myself in here and I this very room we're working on remember it took me 3 years to do this and I just went crazy on it and talk about a passion project and there's meaning in all of this art it's it's not not just decorative it's all meaning and and like I said I might not have known it at the time but that's really where it started so it was a very San Francisco um incident that happened that kind of pushed uh the threshold like definitely cross new threshold the best thing is for you to come without knowing anything because if I will try to explain to you what this place is about you're not going to you're not going to get it it's it's it's impossible to describe this place so you have to come you have to experience and then after that you tell me what you thought about [Music] it the museum echanique has been housed in a huge Warehouse near Fisherman's Warf for the last 23 years but the huge collection of machines are Family Affair going back to 1933 when Dan zelinsky's father Ed got his first machine there was a store by his home that sold Penny Arcade machines and he bought a little one for 50 and he took it home his mom and dad put pennies in it his friends put pennies in it he soon had another 50 cents and went out and bought another one and that's how this entire collection started one penny at a time well my mission is to make as many people as happy as possible with what this collection has to offer just as with modern horror movies people have always turned to the darker side to find Amusement not every machine in the museum is a happy one and of course then there's the haunted graveyard there's uh a couple of executions with Guillotines and of course a hanging the English execution and then there's also just the some aab which I've got several that really creep people out it's so fun to watch people get creeped out the star of the museum is laugh and S but despite her jovial look some guests may find her a little scary and like it says in the sign that I put in there been making a smile and or terrorizing children's for over 50 years now over 100 years the sign's really old these machines are like artwork the're mechanical artwork so some people like some art it's all in the eyes of the beholder there's a story behind every machine here that's for sure the acuan Egyptian museum has been in San Jose since 1932 with their current facility opening in 1966 it claims to house the largest collection of authentic ancient Egyptian artifacts on display in Western North America one of the museums Mysteries is why San Jose San Jose was chosen as the headquarters of the rosac crucian order which is the philosophical organization that sponsors the museum so it was natural that our Museum would be here our mission here is to show that people who may have lived at different times in different parts of the world that we still have a lot to understand about them and we may have a lot in common with them the Museum's collections include artifacts from all parts of ancient Egyptian life from the beginning to the end well first of all we're very respectful of the mummified people who are here in the museum these were people who had lives and families and we treat them with the greatest respect movies made mummies into something that's very different from the reality in ancient Egypt we also have an underground tomb here which is authentic to what people would have experienced in ancient Egypt and again it has been made into something scary because of um stories that were created later some people do think that the ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death and that wasn't the case at all they believed that they lived on in the afterlife actively participating more in what they enjoyed in this life the museum has also enveil an AI powered animatronic version of the ancient Egyptian god tho that can answer any question you ask ah it would indeed be a spectacle to see such Consciousness reign in your modern times you could easily spend a whole day at rosac crusan Park we have the Egyptian Museum we have our research Library a labyrinth a Peace Garden there's plenty to see here at rosac crucian Park our next unusual Museum was just something that caught our eye in San Francisco near giradelli Square the trilon marmer Museum of the eye was founded in 1980 and since since then uh the museum has been this private collection and repository just for those who were interested in the history of Opthalmology and today we have a collection of over 38,000 artifacts and archives and a small library and some film I mean it just grew and grew so we decided to go and build this public space and since then we've been having fun right programs and events and Exhibits and it's been a great journey actually we spend a lot of time in our galleries talking about anatomy and how the eye works how does it all function um and then we quickly get into the history of medicine and the history of eye medicine in particular which is ancient but do you ever feel like you're being watched so the wall behind me does not creep me out actually at all um I find it gorgeous and actually these are prosthetic eyes so each one is really a tiny work of art eyes have a really special place actually in culture the idea is that eye symbolism is ancient back from to the Eye of Horus in Egypt to Modern graffiti right you don't see ears and nose murals out there in graffiti in the city what you see are eyes why would that be well eyes have have an you know a lot of meaning for people they're usually focused on health protection and Enlightenment and the symbol of the eye is I think what keeps drawing people in some spine tingling Tales from around the Bay Area have entered into the realm of Legend some contain a kernel of Truth some don't but many have the elements of a cautionary tale intended to keep us on our toes from Haunted graveyards to disappearing hitchhikers to Seaside ruins here are three of the bay area's favorite scary stories to tell in the dark our first ghostly Legend takes place in the community of new Almaden in South San Jose in the hasienda cemetery most residents rest in peace but one rests in pieces here we are at at Bert's grave the grave contains Bert's arm in 1898 a 13-year-old Richard Bertram Barrett had an unfortunate accident he was using a shotgun he took the gun uh down and he held it and when he held it he pulled the shotgun down and he hit the trigger and it blew off his arm and this rule of the day was is you couldn't just burn any body parts you had to bury it in in the grave so he walked across the gek carrying it and then they dug a hole and buried it here the tragedy it separated eventually when he died and his his whole body was buried in down in Downtown San Jose so during Halloween it's been known that some of the kids in the neighborhood see his arm crawling down the street Street or coming out of the Grave trying to get back to his whole body and that's the story we've never figured out how BT's arm gets back into the grave in order to keep the stories of the cemetery alive a group of volunteers is giving it New Life by cleaning up and restoring the grave sites it's two we are celebrating our 200th year of being a a village this is one of the most historic sites in California if not the United States we are a group of volunteers restoring the cemetery as you can see a lot of the headstones here weathered away some you can't even read the names the birth the death dates so as the artist of the crew my job is really to come in and redo all the signs and give them new life and we got little baby Jenny since her death family members have Faithfully brought out flowers to this single grave on special days many of the Crips as weall them just as a shorthand name have fallen in disrepair over many many years some of them had collapsed completely then we were restoring and doing basically forensic carpentry in this case cuz it was just nothing left to really know we had to piece the pieces back together to figure out how to get it into a a good State one of the reasons I got involved was um how to respect for the the living not the dead you know we're approaching Halloween and people think of that as scary time and it is but my tradition is there those weren those is on there and that's when we honor the people that lived before Niles Canyon Road AKA Route 84 winds its way through the canyon that connects solol and Fremont it's a gorgeous Drive during the day but at night some drivers have reported seeing a ghostly Apparition you go through Niles Canyon rather than 680 because it's it's pretty it's nice to look at when they started building the railroad from Sacramento to to Utah they knew they were going to have to come in this direction cuz they needed to get to the Pacific Ocean the path through Niles Canyon over the alamont was picked because it was the only natural pass it was a horse and buggy Trail through the canyon until about the 20s and 30s and that's about where the stories start to come around the White Witch is what I've always heard it you know some people say white woman but it was always the White Witch right you know it's a well-known Tale the legend the story revolves around late at night on February 28th uh somebody is driving through the canyon and spots a hitchhiker always all dressed in white a young beautiful girl you stop pick up The Hitchhiker she gets into the back seat and you ask her where she's going going she's going to San Francisco so you say you'll take her as far as as you can but then you know the person who picked up this uh hitchhiker reports that when they're crossing the Dum Barton Bridge she vanishes and the driver would go to that address and knock on the door and say you know is your daughter here no she died 8 years ago in a car crash in Niles Canyon it's mainly a cautionary tail you know you shouldn't pick up hitchhikers don't drive through the canyon at 900 M an hour you know these These tals are that other people have died right we want you to to be safe and as it turns out some of the other ghosts in the canyon aren't even human we have a section on the railroad we refer to as dead cow curve because the the hillside There is almost vertical and there is a ranch that that runs through the canyon and their cows are up on the top of that hill and every now and then one gets a little too close to the edge and uh slips you know so you're just as likely to see a a a cow ghost you know it's a good [Music] story The Sutro Baths were opened by former San Francisco mayor Adolf Sutro in 1896 built holding the public attraction for the health and Recreation of the people of San Francisco by 1966 the baths were under new ownership and their popularity waned the land was slated for redevelopment as condos before it could be built the Bath's fate took a turn and the building was empty and it was in the process of being demolished when in June of 1966 uh a fire broke out uh and it was later determined to be arson and the whole building disappeared in one long windy afternoon it was everybody in the Bay Area could see the huge Bloom of smoke while the ruins of the baths remained a popular attraction rumors began to swirl about a man-made Quarry tunnel on the North side the tunnel it just it attracts people there aren't a lot of rock tunnels and it's right out of Hollywood some Legends involve Devils supposedly folks say that old Anon Le the founder of the Church of Satan here in San Francisco may have crept down here in the dead of night to perform some deadish rights and I guess it kind of makes sense because he lived on California Street not that far from here and he was uh noted for his love of the Sutro Baths and for his claim to have put a curse on the Redevelopment plans that kashed them and indeed they did burn down now I don't think anybody has a record of been claiming to have set that curse before the fire started but that is a convenient time to curse somebody after the work's already been done so if folks ask me did anybody ever really perform any devilish rituals here at the Sutro bats obviously I can't say for sure it's really not very practical you get in there the wind is blowing everything is wet it's damp I would not recommend it as a great site for it but I can't say nobody's ever done it other Legends involve ghosts if you light a candle and place it down at the tunnel mouth and you walk away it'll go out well of course it will there's a breeze that flows to the thing continually it's lore it's San Francisco lore and people love the lore and they keep repeating it so this certainly became a favorite haunt of mine never did see any ghosts never did see any cave mutant but you know there there's nothing you hold out hope right in the heart of San Francisco lies A wilderness that is full of secrets Golden Gate Park now over 150 years old still hides Treasures that remain undiscovered by most until now let's take a tour that bypasses the regular tourist destinations and instead seeks out what lurks in the shadows some of Golden Gate Park secrets are carved in stone we begin with two Stone circles both with unusual Origins they are from an ancient 12th century Monastery in Spain and William Randolph Hurst wanted to relocate and rebuild that structure Brick by Brick on his estate so he started having them shipped over it was at a cost of a million dollars which was during the Great Depression but eventually he ran out of money as well so all of the stones were abandoned in Golden Gate Park most are still in the Botanical Garden the Spanish Monastery Stones can be found throughout the park including a few in Monarch bear Grove however a different group of stones in that Grove make up what are called the Druid Stones so named because they were placed there in the early 1900s by a secretive group of nature lovers who cared for them and they conjure up images of secret rituals en chanting and in recent years a modern group of Druids have been taking care of them as well so for a lot of people there're it's kind of a spiritual site for others it's a curiosity next to Lloyd Lake White marble columns seem to rise up out of the water they stand as is a beautiful entry to a terrible disaster It's All That Remains of a mansion once owned by railroad baron Alban Town Town died only 4 years after the Mansion was completed in 1891 the home did not last long the great quake of 1906 destroyed the rest of the building leaving just the marble Portico later on they were moved to Golden Gate Park if you're an optimist they were put there as a reminder of the brazili of San franciscans if your mind goes to darker places they are there to commemorate all the souls of those lost in 06 it's not the only place to hear a ghost story in the park the most well-known is about a mother who haunts Blue Heron Lake formerly known as Stow Lake and by far the most famous ghost in Golden Gate Park is the white lady of Stow lake or the white ghost of Stow Lake and she is a woman from Victoria torian or Edwardian times who Legend has it was walking her baby in a pram around Stow Lake and something else caught her attention for a moment and the pram rolled away from her into the lake and disappeared under the murky water she was frantic started running around saying my baby my baby somebody saved my baby finally jumped into the water herself slipped under the water and also drowned nobody has been able to substain iate the claim and there's no historical records of anyone woman with a baby drowning in Stow Lake around that time so I think it's more folklore like our an expression of our Collective anxieties around watching children near water it's kind of a cautionary tail thank you for joining me on another bone chilling trip around the Bay Area it seems I've really gotten to the spirit of things this year until next spooky season I'm Reggie AI
2024-10-31 01:11