Haunted California: Ghostly Hotels, Cursed Landmarks And Places With Dark Pasts – Patch

Haunted California: Ghostly Hotels, Cursed Landmarks And Places With Dark Pasts  Patch

Just in time for Halloween, explore the ghost stories and eerie legends surrounding some of California's best-known landmarks. Some places have a history so haunting that, according to local legend, the spirits of the past never truly leave. From a former island prison in San Francisco Bay to a beachfront hotel in San Diego County, California is filled with landmarks where ghost stories, mysterious deaths and unexplained encounters have become part of local lore. For Halloween, Patch is revisiting some of the Golden State's most notoriously haunted places and the chilling tales that continue to surround them. Arguably one of the most famous haunts in the San Francisco Bay Area, Alcatraz Island and its eerily abandoned prison cells hold history that apparently lingers still today.

Inmates and guards died on The Rock, and many visitors have reported rattling chains, cell doors swinging open and a ghostly draft. Haunted houses and paranormal spaces abound in the Tri-Valley cities of Dublin, Livermore and Pleasanton, according to local lore and history. Many residents claim old buildings and streets hum with paranormal activity, either captured on camera or witnessed on ghost tours. One of the area's spooky places is the Arroyo del Valle Sanitarium, which has served as a haunt in Livermore for decades. The foundations of the buildings one-time tuberculosis sanitarium, now leveled,