SF Ghost Hunt: A Tour of the City's most notorious haunted locations

SAN FRANCISCO -- On October nights, with a top hat, trench coat and lantern in hand, Christian Cagigal parades through the streets of San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood hunting its lingering ghosts.

Owner and Operator of the San Francisco Ghost Hunt Walking Tour, Cagigal, has led the historic walking tour since 2016, unveiling notorious haunted spots to locals and tourists alike.

His tour is a mixture of fact and fiction.

"You hear about real names of historic San Francisco," he said. "How they lived. How they died. And the reports of their hauntings after that. So, I don't make it up, I just report it. I let you decide what to do with the information."

The SF Ghost Hunt is the longest-running ghost walking tour in San Francisco. The tour was born in 1998 as a passion project from Cagigal's friend and fellow magician, Jim Fassbinder.

At the time, Cagigal acted as a co-director, creative consultant and researcher in the tour's planning process. After Fassbinder's 17 years of leading the tour, he retired, and Cagigal took over. Now it's his baby.

Not only is Cagigal a Bay Area native and tour guide, he doubles as a magician and incorporates his skills in these tours.

"I've been an actor and a magician most of my adult life. Before taking over the tour, I was doing fringe festivals all over the country and in Canada, he said. "I got to develop my style and my craft that way and be able to bring it to this which I think made me a richer tour guide."

One story from the tour follows Flora Sommerton, a wealthy resident of California Street.

On a night in 1876 the Sommerton family threw an elaborate party and paraded Flora around in a white dress. That night, at 18-years-old, Flora learned of her marriage arrangement to an older man she did not love. She fled down California Street and never returned.

She was eventually found in 1926 dead in a cheap Montana hotel, wearing a wedding dress from the late 1800's with a stack of newspaper clippings about a missing girl from San Francisco. The woman who had been living under the guise of another name was identified as Flora.

Stories claiming to see a young girl in a white dress walking down California Street spread.

"A retired cable car operator told us one night, 'Yeah I used to run the cable car from California to Jones,'" Cagigal said. '"One night, me and a whole car full of tourists saw a girl in a white dress walking through the tourists on the street.' Through the tourists on the street."

While on the tour, there have been odd encounters that even Cagigal cannot explain.

A moment ingrained in his memory is about a young woman who began looking at Cagigal in disbelief randomly. She asked around if anyone else had seen what she witnessed.

"She said what she was a flash of light come from the top two windows, which obviously could be anything, but whatever that was for her, she started to freak out and then she began to cry," he said. "And her friend looked at me and said, 'She never does this. She doesn't believe in this stuff.'"

The neighborhood is home to rich history and a "clustering of stories" because the 1906 fire stopped nearby and some buildings survived the earthquake.

"There's just lots more stories hidden away in the halls of these homes than lots of other parts of San Francisco," Cagigal said.

SF Ghost Hunt attendee, Meghan Desimpliciis, came on the tour with her partner to experience new date night activities.

"The part that I really like is the history. I'm a fourth-grade teacher and I teach California history, so that's really the part that drew me to it," she said. "The ghost part is fun -- a fun little extra thing."

The tour exceeded her expectations and she said she would recommend it.

"It was wonderful," Desimpliciis said. "He was a great storyteller."

Cagigal thinks continuing this tour is him doing is part "to keep San Francisco weird. Cagigal said he has always loved unsolved mysteries, ghost hunting shows, the idea there is "something else after this. People do ask me if I do believe. I'm much more of a skeptic now, but I'm the skeptic who wants to believe in ghosts."

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