Haunted California

598 haunted destinations cataloged across California, spanning 82 counties. The collection features haunted hotel, museum, and outdoor — every listing verified with family ratings, accessibility info, and practical visit logistics.

598 locations 82 counties 13 classifications 373 wheelchair accessible
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Featured in California

Top 6
Street-level facade of The Mission Inn Hotel and Spa on Mission Inn Avenue in downtown Riverside, California, showing the Spanish Colonial Revival architecture
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa

Riverside, CA

The Mission Inn in Riverside, California traces its origins to a twelve-room cottage built by C.C. Miller. Frank Miller, who inherited the property in 1900 after his father's death, oversaw the construction of the existing structure beginning around 1902, which was completed in a phased expansion ending approximately 1947. The hotel is a National Historic Landmark, featuring Spanish Mission Revival and Romanesque architecture designed by architect Arthur Benton.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Black Star Canyon Road winding through the Santa Ana Mountains near Silverado in Orange County, California, with native sycamore trees flanking the dirt road
Outdoor / Natural Site

Black Star Canyon

Silverado, CA

Black Star Canyon occupies remote terrain within the Santa Ana Mountains of eastern Orange County. Historical significance derives from archaeological evidence of Tongva-Gabrieliño occupation and the reported 1831 armed conflict between American fur trappers led by William Wolfskill and indigenous residents. The canyon was historically used as a seasonal gathering site for acorn harvesting.

$ All Ages Family: Low
California Theatre of the Performing Arts Churrigueresque facade in San Bernardino California
Theater / Performance Venue

California Theatre of the Performing Arts

San Bernardino, CA

The California Theatre opened August 15, 1928, as a Fox West Coast vaudeville and movie palace designed by architect John Paxton Perrine in California Churrigueresque style. Home to the Mighty Wurlitzer organ, it screened classics like King Kong and The Wizard of Oz in the 1930s. Most notably, Will Rogers gave his final public performance here on June 28, 1935, just weeks before his fatal plane crash in Alaska.

$$ All Ages Family: High
El Campo Santo Cemetery 1849 historic Catholic burial ground (California Historical Landmark 68) in Old Town San Diego
Cemetery / Burial Ground

El Campo Santo Cemetery

San Diego, CA

El Campo Santo was established in 1849 as the Catholic cemetery for San Diego's Mexican-California community in Old Town, with approximately 477 burials through its 1880 closure. In 1889 a horse-drawn streetcar line was cut through part of the cemetery, and in 1942 that path was paved as San Diego Avenue, entombing more than 20 graves under the modern street. The San Diego Historical Society restored the visible cemetery in 1933, and in 1993 ground-penetrating radar located the buried graves — their positions are now marked by small bronze discs in the sidewalk and pavement.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the Oberon Building at 516 2nd Street in Old Town Eureka, California, an 1860s commercial structure associated with Madame Ruby's Victorian-era brothel and the 1910 Jack London fight
Haunted Dining / Bar

Oberon Grill (Oberon Building / Madame Ruby's)

Eureka, CA

Originally built by C.S. Ricks in the 1860s, the Oberon Building at 516 2nd Street is a contributing structure to the Eureka Old Town Historic District. Through its lifetime it has housed a hardware store, saloon, speakeasy, YMCA, antique store, the Oberon Grill restaurant (closed December 31, 2022), and most recently The Greene Lily restaurant (since April 2023). The upstairs space operated as Madame Ruby's brothel from roughly the 1880s through the 1930s.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Museum / Historical Site

Vernon-Brannan House

Sacramento, CA

The Vernon-Brannan House at 112-114 J Street in Old Sacramento is a three-story brick building constructed in 1853-54 as the Jones Hotel on the site of Sacramento's first post office (which burned in the 1852 fire). It later operated as the Vernon House boarding house and then as Sam Brannan's hotel, and was physically lifted approximately nine feet in 1865 during the city-raising project. California Historical Landmark No. 604.

$ All Ages Family: High

More in California

Los Angeles — 60

True Crime Site

1871 Chinese Massacre Memorial Site (Old Chinatown / El Pueblo)

Los Angeles, CA

On the night of October 24, 1871, a mob of approximately 500 people descended on Calle de los Negros — a narrow lane near the present 400 block of North Los Angeles Street — and killed 19 Chinese immigrants, including a 15-year-old boy. Courts convicted eight men in the aftermath but all were released within a year. It remains the largest mass lynching in U.S. history.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Fourth Street Elementary School
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Fourth Street Elementary School

Los Angeles, CA

Fourth Street Elementary School was established in 1926 in the East Los Angeles community. The school serves grades 2-5 and is operated by the Los Angeles Unified School District, currently enrolling approximately 287 students with a 17:1 student-teacher ratio.

$ All Ages Family: Not Recommended
Photo of Alexandria Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Alexandria Hotel

Los Angeles, CA

The Alexandria Hotel opened in 1906 as the most luxurious hotel in Los Angeles, drawing a celebrity roster that included Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, and Jack Dempsey. Two workers fell to their deaths during construction. After decades as a premier address, the hotel declined through the mid-20th century and was converted largely to residential use; it remains a mixed-use property on Spring Street as of 2026.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Ambassador Hotel Site (RFK Community Schools)
True Crime Site

Ambassador Hotel Site (RFK Community Schools)

Los Angeles, CA

The Ambassador Hotel operated from 1921 to 1989 on Wilshire Boulevard and served as the site of six Academy Awards ceremonies, multiple presidential stays, and the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968. Kennedy was shot in the service pantry off the Embassy Ballroom minutes after winning the California Democratic primary and died 25 hours later at Good Samaritan Hospital. The hotel was demolished in 2005–2006; LAUSD preserved the original pantry and Cocoanut Grove ballroom within the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools campus.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery

Los Angeles, CA

Founded in 1884, Angelus-Rosedale was the first cemetery in Los Angeles to accept burials regardless of race — a distinction that brought Hattie McDaniel here in 1952 when Hollywood Forever Cemetery refused her burial due to its then-segregation policy. The cemetery also installed the first crematorium west of the Mississippi River in 1887, and it contains the graves of director Tod Browning and actress Anna May Wong.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Avila Adobe
Haunted House / Historic Home

Avila Adobe

Los Angeles, CA

Francisco Avila built this adobe in 1818 while serving as alcalde (mayor) of the pueblo of Los Angeles. It is the oldest surviving residential structure in the city. After falling into disrepair in the early 20th century, the adobe was rescued in 1929 through the efforts of Christine Sterling, a civic preservationist who also created the Olvera Street marketplace surrounding it. Sterling spent much of the rest of her life in the adobe and died there in 1963.

$ All Ages Family: High
Hotel Barclay Los Angeles exterior at the corner of 4th Street and Main Street, showing the Beaux-Arts facade
True Crime Site

Barclay Hotel

Los Angeles, CA

Opened in 1897 as the Van Nuys Hotel — Los Angeles's first with electricity and telephones in every room — the Beaux-Arts building at 4th and Main has operated continuously for more than 125 years, transitioning from city showcase to Skid Row-adjacent residential hotel. It is the site of two distinct serial-killer crimes: a 1944 double murder by Otto Stephen Wilson and a 1975 slaying attributed to Vaughn Greenwood, the Skid Row Slasher.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The Victory Boulevard entrance of Birmingham High School in the Lake Balboa neighborhood of Los Angeles, on the former WWII Birmingham General Hospital site.
Other Dark Tourism Site

Birmingham High School

Los Angeles, CA

Birmingham High School is built on the site of a World War II military hospital that served injured and amputee servicemen. Named after General Birmingham, the facility treated wounded soldiers throughout the war. After WWII, the building was renovated and converted to educational use as a public high school.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Museum / Historical Site

Bradbury Building

Los Angeles, CA

The Bradbury Building was completed in 1893 from a design by draftsman George Wyman, who reportedly agreed to take the commission after receiving encouragement via planchette from his deceased brother Mark. In 1908, building janitor Carl King was found dead at the base of the freight elevator shaft, his skull crushed. The building is a National Historic Landmark and the most architecturally prominent address in downtown Los Angeles.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Cecil Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Cecil Hotel

Los Angeles, CA

The Cecil Hotel opened on December 20, 1924 at 640 S Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. Designed by Loy Lester Smith in Beaux-Arts style at a cost of $1.5 million, it originally catered to business travelers but declined over decades as the surrounding neighborhood deteriorated. The hotel recorded numerous violent deaths and suicides across its history and became internationally known for attracting criminal notoriety.

$ All Ages Family: Low
Chateau Marmont French chateau-style hotel facade on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Chateau Marmont

Los Angeles, CA

The Chateau Marmont was built in 1929 as a Norman castle-styled apartment building on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California. It became a hotel and quickly established its reputation as Hollywood's most discreet celebrity refuge. John Belushi died in Bungalow 3 on March 5, 1982, from a cocaine and heroin overdose administered by Cathy Smith, who later pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

$$$$ All Ages (adult atmosphere) Family: Low
Photo of Clifton's Republic (Former Clifton's Cafeteria)
Haunted Dining / Bar

Clifton's Republic (Former Clifton's Cafeteria)

Los Angeles, CA

Clifford Clinton opened Clifton's Cafeteria at 648 S Broadway in Los Angeles in 1935 during the Depression, famously offering meals at whatever price customers could pay. Clinton was a civic activist who organized resistance to Los Angeles's politically connected gambling and vice networks through the 1930s and 1940s. The original cafeteria was restored and relaunched in 2015 as Clifton's Republic, a multi-floor bar and restaurant.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Cypress Park Branch Library on Cypress Avenue, a branch of the Los Angeles Public Library system in Los Angeles, California.
Museum / Historical Site

Cypress Park Branch Library

Los Angeles, CA

The Cypress Park neighborhood of Los Angeles has been served by a public library branch since 1920. The original branch building — a Georgian Revival structure designed by architect Harry S. Bent — opened in 1927 at the corner of Cypress Avenue and Pepper Street. The current branch at 1150 Cypress Avenue opened in 2003. The 1927 building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987 and now operates as the Cypress Park Clubhouse.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Dodger Stadium (Chavez Ravine Displacement Site)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Dodger Stadium (Chavez Ravine Displacement Site)

Los Angeles, CA

Dodger Stadium opened in 1962 on land cleared through the forced eviction of approximately 1,800 Mexican-American families from the Chavez Ravine neighborhoods of La Loma, Palo Verde, and Bishop between the late 1940s and 1959. The most nationally visible moment came on May 9, 1959, when sheriff's deputies removed 66-year-old Aurora Arechiga and her family from their home in an action broadcast on local television. A church, a school, and a cemetery from the Bishop community were demolished to clear the site.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted Dining / Bar

El Cid Restaurant

Los Angeles, CA

El Cid has operated as a flamenco and dinner venue at 4212 W Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake since 1963, earlier operating as the 'Jail Café.' The building has a claimed connection to D.W. Griffith's early film production period, though the precise nature of that connection as documented in primary sources varies across accounts. Italian craftsmen are said to have been employed in the building's construction or set-building work.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Open Graph image from www.elcompadrerestaurant.com
Haunted Dining / Bar

El Compadre Restaurant

Los Angeles, CA

El Compadre Restaurant has operated on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood since 1975, founded by lifelong friends and designed to evoke an old-world hacienda aesthetic. The interior features traditional Mexican decorative elements including clay tiles, wrought iron, and stained glass. The restaurant has maintained a continuous presence on Sunset Boulevard for five decades.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of El Pueblo de Los Angeles (Olvera Street Historic District)
Other Dark Tourism Site

El Pueblo de Los Angeles (Olvera Street Historic District)

Los Angeles, CA

El Pueblo de Los Angeles was founded September 4, 1781, on a flood plain near the Los Angeles River, making it the city's oldest surviving urban core. The original plaza served as the town center through the Spanish colonial, Mexican, and early American periods, and the district's gallows made public executions a regular feature of 19th-century civic life.

$ All Ages Family: High
Montecillo de Leo Politi hilltop view inside Elysian Park, the wooded 600-acre park north of downtown Los Angeles
Outdoor / Natural Site

Elysian Park

Los Angeles, CA

Elysian Park is Los Angeles's oldest public park, established in 1886 on approximately 600 acres of hillside north of downtown. The Chavez Ravine neighborhoods within the park's broader footprint were displaced beginning in the late 1940s and 1950s for public housing that was never built, and ultimately for Dodger Stadium. Cathedral High School occupies a former cemetery site.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Evergreen Cemetery (Boyle Heights)
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Evergreen Cemetery (Boyle Heights)

Los Angeles, CA

Evergreen Cemetery was founded in 1877 and is recognized as the oldest continuously operating cemetery in Los Angeles. Located in the Boyle Heights neighborhood east of downtown, it has served the area's successive immigrant communities — Jewish, Japanese, Mexican-American, and others — across nearly 150 years of Los Angeles growth.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the historic Hotel Figueroa in downtown Los Angeles
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Figueroa

Los Angeles, CA

Hotel Figueroa opened in 1926 in downtown Los Angeles as a YWCA-financed residence and hostelry for women, the largest of its kind operated by women in the United States at the time. After decades as a budget hotel and an early-2000s overhaul, the property was restored in 2018 and now operates as a Hyatt Unbound Collection boutique hotel.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Forest Lawn Memorial Park Hollywood Hills seen from Griffith Park with Burbank in the background
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)

Los Angeles, CA

Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills, opened on March 4, 1952, on land owned by Hubert Eaton, founder of the larger Forest Lawn cemetery group. The cemetery contains burials of many Hollywood entertainment figures and features the largest historical glass-tile mural in the United States, depicting twenty-five scenes from early American history.

$ All Ages Family: High
Panoramic view of Griffith Park toward Mount Lee and the Hollywood Sign, Los Angeles, California
Outdoor / Natural Site

Griffith Park

Los Angeles, CA

Griffith Park covers 4,310 acres in the eastern Santa Monica Mountains and is one of the largest municipal parks in North America. The land was originally part of the Spanish-era Rancho Los Feliz, granted in 1795, and was donated to the City of Los Angeles in 1896 by Griffith J. Griffith.

$ All Ages Family: High
Hale House at Heritage Square Museum, Los Angeles — 1887 Queen Anne-Eastlake Victorian home relocated from Highland Park in 1970
Museum / Historical Site

Heritage Square Museum

Los Angeles, CA

Heritage Square Museum was established in 1969 in Montecito Heights by the Cultural Heritage Foundation of Southern California to rescue Victorian-era homes from demolition across Los Angeles. The open-air museum assembles eight structures built between 1875 and 1920, relocated from their original sites across LA, including the 1887 Hale House — described as the most photographed Victorian home in the city.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted Dining / Bar

H.M.S. Bounty

Los Angeles, CA

The H.M.S. Bounty occupies the ground floor of the Gaylord Apartments, a large 1920s residential complex on Wilshire Boulevard at the edge of Koreatown. The land beneath the complex was formerly the site of a Los Angeles city dump that, according to local accounts, was used to dispose of murder victims during the city's rougher decades.

$ 21+ Family: Low
Aerial survey view of Hollenbeck Park (Elizabeth Hollenbeck Estate)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Hollenbeck Park (Elizabeth Hollenbeck Estate)

Los Angeles, CA

John Edward Hollenbeck and his wife Elizabeth developed a 21-acre estate in the Boyle Heights area in the 1880s. After both John and their son died in quick succession, Elizabeth donated the property to the City of Los Angeles in 1892, specifying it should remain a public park in perpetuity. It opened as Hollenbeck Park and has operated continuously since, with the Hollenbeck Palms retirement facility occupying the adjacent former grounds.

$ All Ages Family: High
Entrance gates to Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, California
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Los Angeles, CA

Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a 62-acre cemetery at 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, California, founded in 1899 as Hollywood Cemetery on a 100-acre tract of former farmland. Paramount Pictures' studios occupy 40 acres of the original cemetery property. The cemetery was renamed Hollywood Memorial Park in 1939 and Hollywood Forever in 1998 after a 1990s bankruptcy and revival. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel

Los Angeles, CA

The Hollywood Knickerbocker opened in 1929 at 1714 Ivar Avenue as a luxury hotel catering to the film industry's elite. Over the following three decades it hosted or witnessed some of Hollywood's most dramatic episodes: Bess Houdini's 1936 Halloween séance on the roof, the 1948 death of director D.W. Griffith in his room, Frances Farmer's violent 1943 arrest in the lobby, and the 1962 death of costume designer Irene Lentz Gibbons.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Hollywood Pacific Theatre (Warner Pacific Theater)
Theater / Performance Venue

Hollywood Pacific Theatre (Warner Pacific Theater)

Los Angeles, CA

Warner Bros. built this theater at 6433 Hollywood Boulevard in 1928, partly as a monument to Sam Warner — the brother most responsible for the studio's pioneering work on synchronized sound. Sam died on October 5, 1927, of a brain hemorrhage, one day before The Jazz Singer premiered and demonstrated that talking pictures were commercially viable. His brothers opened the theater in his memory the following year.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Hollywood Pantages Theatre
Theater / Performance Venue

Hollywood Pantages Theatre

Los Angeles, CA

The Hollywood Pantages opened in 1930 as the flagship of the Pantages theater chain, built in the Art Deco style on Hollywood Boulevard. Howard Hughes purchased the building in 1949 and used the second-floor offices as his personal headquarters for nearly a decade, overseeing RKO Pictures operations from there and hosting two Academy Awards ceremonies in 1950 and 1951. The theater was sold to Pacific Theatres in 1967 and later acquired by Nederlander, which operates it today as a Broadway touring house.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Open Graph image from griffithobservatory.org
Outdoor / Natural Site

Hollywood Sign and Griffith Observatory

Los Angeles, CA

The Hollywoodland sign was erected in 1923 as a real estate advertisement for a hillside development. The word 'LAND' was removed in 1949 when the city took ownership. On September 16, 1932, actress Peg Entwistle climbed to the top of the 'H' and jumped, dying from multiple pelvic fractures. She was 24 years old. The Griffith Observatory opened in 1935 on the ridge below, offering direct views of the sign from its observation deck.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Hotel Normandie
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Normandie

Los Angeles, CA

The Hotel Normandie opened in 1926 in the Wilshire/Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles. Over nearly a century it has housed literary figures, film productions, and a long roster of long-term residents, cycling through periods of elegance and decline. It is an active hotel as of 2026 after restoration work in the 2010s.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Sunlit courtyard of the Houdini Estate in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, with peacocks crossing the mosaic patio beneath cascading bougainvillea and the mansion facade
Haunted House / Historic Home

Houdini's Mansion

Los Angeles, CA

The five-acre property at 2400 Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Hollywood Hills West was built in 1915 for Ralph M. Walker, not Harry Houdini. The connection to Houdini is real but indirect: while filming for Lasky Pictures in 1919, Houdini and his wife Bess rented the guest cottage across the street. That cottage burned in the late 1950s. The Walker Estate — which survived — became known as the Houdini Estate through decades of conflation. The main mansion burned in the 1959 Laurel Canyon fire; the surviving gardens, caves, and terraced grounds were later developed into a special events venue.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Houdini Estate Ruins (Laurel Canyon)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Houdini Estate Ruins (Laurel Canyon)

Los Angeles, CA

A four-story mansion on this Laurel Canyon hillside was built in 1915 for wealthy Chicagoan Ralf Walker and burned in the 1959 Laurel Canyon fire, leaving behind stone stairs, underground tunnels connecting the two halves of the property, and garden grottoes. The estate is widely known as the 'Houdini Estate,' though research by Houdini specialists has found no deed record placing the magician in ownership of this property — the association likely grew from Houdini's widow Bess holding séances in the area around 1936.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Bullocks Wilshire 1929 Art Deco landmark building on Wilshire Boulevard Los Angeles
Museum / Historical Site

Bullocks Wilshire Building

Los Angeles, CA

Bullocks Wilshire opened September 26, 1929, designed by architect Donald Parkinson as one of the first Art Deco department stores in the United States. Business partners John G. Bullock and P.G. Winnett built the structure after visiting the 1925 Paris Exposition of Decorative Arts, using the new aesthetic as their architectural model. The five-story building, topped by a 241-foot tower lit at night with violet beacons, attracted celebrity clientele from Hollywood's golden era for more than sixty years. Southwestern Law School purchased the building in 1994 and completed a $29 million restoration over a decade.

$ All Ages Family: High
Museum / Historical Site

John F. Kennedy Memorial Library — Cal State LA

Los Angeles, CA

The John F. Kennedy Memorial Library at Cal State LA combines the 1958 Palmer Wing (85,000 sq ft) and the 1969 JFK Memorial North Wing (~250,000 sq ft), the latter dedicated after President Kennedy's assassination, serving the university's 27,000+ students as the primary research library.

$ All Ages Family: High
John Sowden House exterior on Franklin Avenue in Los Feliz, showing the Mayan Revival concrete textile-block facade
True Crime Site

John Sowden House (Hodel House)

Los Angeles, CA

Designed in 1926 by Lloyd Wright (son of Frank Lloyd Wright) in his signature textile-block Mayan Revival style, the Sowden House became nationally infamous after retired LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel published evidence in 2003 arguing that his father, Dr. George Hodel — who owned the property from 1945 to 1950 — tortured and murdered Elizabeth Short, the 'Black Dahlia,' in the house's basement in January 1947.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted Dining / Bar

King Eddy Saloon (King Edward Hotel)

Los Angeles, CA

The King Edward Hotel opened in 1906 in the Skid Row-adjacent Historic Core, and its ground-floor saloon became one of the city's most persistent neighborhood bars. During Prohibition, the operation continued via underground tunnels connecting the building to the surrounding block — a documented feature of several downtown LA hotel basements from that era. The bar survived the 20th century's cycles of downtown decline and tentative revival.

$ 21+ Family: Low
True Crime Site

LaBianca Murder House

Los Angeles, CA

On August 10, 1969, Manson Family members Charles Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten entered the Los Feliz home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca and killed them. Leno LaBianca, 44, was a grocery chain executive; Rosemary LaBianca, 38, was a dress shop co-owner. The murders occurred the night after the Tate killings and formed the second phase of Charles Manson's planned 'Helter Skelter' race-war provocation.

$ 18+ Family: Low
Photo of Last Bookstore (Former Citizens National Bank)
Other Dark Tourism Site

Last Bookstore (Former Citizens National Bank)

Los Angeles, CA

The Last Bookstore occupies a 1914 Beaux-Arts bank building at 453 S Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles that was originally the home of Citizens National Bank. The building's history includes a documented workplace death: on July 16, 1927, night watchman Al Breitenbecker fell from the third floor into the cargo elevator shaft and bled to death while, according to contemporary accounts, his groans were heard but ignored by bank employees.

$ All Ages Family: High
Lincoln Heights Jail exterior, 421 N Ave 19, Los Angeles — 1931 Art Deco detention facility and site of the 1951 Bloody Christmas incident
True Crime Site

Lincoln Heights Jail (Bilingual Foundation of the Arts)

Los Angeles, CA

Lincoln Heights Jail opened in 1931 as an Art Deco detention facility on the site of the former East Side Police station. In December 1951 it became the site of the 'Bloody Christmas' incident: approximately 50 LAPD officers beat seven civilian prisoners over Christmas weekend, leaving five Mexican American and two white men with broken bones and ruptured organs. The subsequent prosecutions produced the first criminal convictions of LAPD officers for excessive force. The jail closed in 1965 and later housed the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts until 2014.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the 1938 Linda Vista Community Hospital building in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, now Buena Vista Senior Lofts
Asylum / Hospital

Linda Vista Community Hospital

Los Angeles, CA

Linda Vista Community Hospital in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles operated from 1905 to 1991, originally as the Santa Fe Coast Lines Hospital for railroad workers. The current 1938 Mission Revival building replaced the 1905 Moorish-style structure. The building was added to the National Register in 2006 and renovated as Hollenbeck Terrace senior housing in 2015.

$ All Ages (drive-by only) Family: High
Exterior of Linda Vista Community Hospital, the 1904 Mission Revival former Santa Fe Coast Lines Hospital at 610 South St. Louis Street, Boyle Heights, Los Angeles
Asylum / Hospital

Linda Vista Community Hospital

Los Angeles, CA

The Linda Vista Community Hospital opened in 1904 in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, originally as the Santa Fe Coast Lines Hospital serving railroad employees. The Mission Revival building operated as a community hospital through the late twentieth century, sat vacant from 1991 to 2011 while serving as a frequent horror-film location, and was converted to senior affordable housing in 2012.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Open Graph image from www.laconservancy.org
Museum / Historical Site

Los Angeles City Hall

Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles City Hall was dedicated on April 26, 1928. Designed by architects John Parkinson, Albert C. Martin Sr., and John C. Austin in a hybrid Art Deco style, the 32-floor, 454-foot tower dominated the LA skyline until 1966. Its tower, modeled on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, was mixed from sand drawn from each of California's 58 counties.

$ All Ages Family: High
View from my room.
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Los Angeles Airport Marriott

Los Angeles, CA

The Los Angeles Airport Marriott opened in 1972 at 5855 West Century Boulevard, two blocks from LAX. The 18-story, 1,004-room property has operated continuously as a major airport hotel for more than 50 years, hosting business travel and convention audiences.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Asylum / Hospital

Los Angeles Sanatorium (Jewish Orphans' Home)

Los Angeles, CA

Opened in 1906 by Dr. H. Russell Burner, the Los Angeles Sanatorium at 2033 E 4th St in Boyle Heights promoted a controversial radium-laced milk cure for tuberculosis. Burner was found dead inside the neoclassical building — a chloroform bottle in his hand — while the State Board of Medical Examiners was building a criminal case against him. The building later became the Jewish Orphans' Home.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior of the Edward T. Foley Building at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California — home of the Strub Theatre and Theatre Arts Department
Theater / Performance Venue

Loyola Marymount University — Strub Theatre

Los Angeles, CA

The Strub Theatre occupies the Foley Building at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, a Jesuit institution founded in 1911. The original theater space was decommissioned in December 2022 for a significant renovation; the redesigned flexible theater reopened in 2025 with a capacity of 170 and the ability to configure in proscenium, thrust, or in-the-round formats.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of MacArthur Park / Westlake Park
Outdoor / Natural Site

MacArthur Park / Westlake Park

Los Angeles, CA

Opened in 1890 as Westlake Park, MacArthur Park's artificial lake became the site of at least seven suicides within its first decade. When the lake was drained in 1973 and again in 1975, workers recovered hundreds of handguns and other weapons from the lake bed. The park also served as the backdrop for one of Harry Houdini's publicity stunts, during which he was shackled and submerged in the lake before escaping.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Eileen Wearne training at Manual Arts High School, Los Angeles, 1932. Black and white photoprint, State Library of New South Wales. PXA 998, R 941.
Museum / Historical Site

Manual Arts High School

Los Angeles, CA

Manual Arts High School opened in 1910 as Los Angeles's third high school, built on 10 acres of farmland near Vermont Avenue and 42nd Street. The 1933 Long Beach earthquake prompted a full campus rebuild, and architects John and Donald Parkinson redesigned it in streamline moderne style. It remains the oldest Los Angeles high school still operating on its original site.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Millennium Biltmore Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Millennium Biltmore Hotel

Los Angeles, CA

The Millennium Biltmore Hotel opened on October 1, 1923, at 506 S Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. Designed by the firm Schultze and Weaver, the 11-story, 683-room building hosted the Academy Awards from 1931 to 1942 and served as military headquarters during World War II. The FBI operated out of the eighth floor during the investigation into the 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Murphy Ranch (Nazi Compound Ruins)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Murphy Ranch (Nazi Compound Ruins)

Los Angeles, CA

Between 1933 and 1941, wealthy Nazi sympathizers Winona and Norman Stephens secretly financed construction of a self-sustaining 55-acre compound in Rustic Canyon, intended to serve as a Third Reich stronghold following an anticipated German victory over the United States. The FBI raided the property on December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, and the compound was seized.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Philippe The Original
Haunted Dining / Bar

Philippe The Original

Los Angeles, CA

Philippe Mathieu opened his restaurant in 1908 on Alameda Street, next to what was then the edge of LA's Chinatown district. The building's upper floors reportedly served a more discreet clientele before the restaurant expanded into them. Ownership transferred through several hands, most recently to the Quon family, who ran it for decades before selling in 2001.

$ All Ages Family: High
Pico House Hotel exterior at 430 N Main St, Los Angeles — built 1869-1870 by Pio Pico as Southern California's first luxury hotel
Museum / Historical Site

Pico House Hotel

Los Angeles, CA

Pio de Jesus Pico, the last governor of Mexican Alta California, built Southern California's first three-story luxury hotel at this location in 1869–1870 at a cost of $80,000. With 80 rooms around a central courtyard, gas lighting, and bathtubs on upper floors, it was the finest hotel south of San Francisco. The October 1871 Chinese Massacre occurred one block away, killing 19 Chinese immigrants. The building declined through the early 20th century and is now part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, a 1926 Spanish Colonial Revival landmark on Hollywood Boulevard
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Hollywood Roosevelt

Los Angeles, CA

The Hollywood Roosevelt opened on Hollywood Boulevard in 1927, financed by a syndicate that reportedly included Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Louis B. Mayer. The Blossom Ballroom hosted the first Academy Awards ceremony on May 16, 1929. The property has operated continuously as a hotel for nearly a century and is among the most recognized historic hotels in Los Angeles.

$$$$ All ages welcome as a hotel guest; the property is a working luxury hotel. Family: Moderate
Haunted House / Historic Home

Rosenheim Mansion (AHS Murder House)

Los Angeles, CA

Alfred Rosenheim, the German-American architect who designed several of Los Angeles's most prominent early Craftsman and Neoclassical buildings, built this mansion in 1902 in what was then a fashionable stretch of West Adams. He sold it in 1906; it later served as a Catholic convent for the Sisters of the Holy Cross before returning to private ownership. Los Angeles designated it Historic-Cultural Landmark No. 751 in 1999.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of Brain Dead Studios (formerly Silent Movie Theatre) at 611 N Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles
Theater / Performance Venue

Silent Movie Theatre

Los Angeles, CA

Oklahoma-born silent film collector John Hampton opened this theater on N Fairfax in 1942, operating it as the only silent-film-only cinema in the country for nearly four decades. After Hampton's death in 1990, Lawrence Austin — a friend of the Hamptons — reopened it in 1991 with a live organist. On January 17, 1997, Austin was shot and killed in the lobby in a murder-for-hire arranged by his business partner and lover, James Van Sickle.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Union Station (Old Chinatown Massacre Site)
True Crime Site

Union Station (Old Chinatown Massacre Site)

Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles Union Station opened in May 1939 on land cleared from Old Chinatown, a neighborhood that had stood since the 1850s. The clearance itself erased the block where, on the night of October 24, 1871, a mob of approximately 500 Angelenos killed 18 Chinese immigrants — the largest mass lynching by numbers in American history.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Panoramic view of the Venice Beach boardwalk and shoreline in Los Angeles, California, longtime film and street-culture landmark
Outdoor / Natural Site

Venice Beach (Westminster Avenue)

Los Angeles, CA

Venice Beach is a coastal neighborhood of Los Angeles developed in 1905 by tobacco millionaire Abbot Kinney as a planned canal community modeled on Venice, Italy. The Venice Boardwalk and adjacent buildings served as a frequent shooting location for silent comedies in the 1910s, including Charlie Chaplin's 1915 Keystone short By the Sea, which was filmed along the Venice Beach piers and boardwalk.

$ All Ages Family: High
The 1935 Vogue Theatre facade at 6675 Hollywood Boulevard, S. Charles Lee's Streamline Moderne movie palace in Los Angeles, California
Theater / Performance Venue

Vogue Theatre

Los Angeles, CA

Built 1935 by movie-palace architect S. Charles Lee on Hollywood Boulevard as an 897-seat Streamline Moderne theater. Closed as a first-run cinema in 1995 under Mann Theatres. Reopened intermittently as a music venue and event space; currently houses a church congregation.

$ All Ages Family: High
True Crime Site

Wonderland House (Wonderland Murders Site)

Los Angeles, CA

In the early morning hours of July 1, 1981, four members of a drug-dealing gang known as the Wonderland Gang were beaten to death at this Laurel Canyon address in an attack that LAPD investigators compared in brutality to the Tate-LaBianca murders twelve years earlier. The killings were connected to a robbery of organized crime figure Eddie Nash two days prior, and adult film actor John Holmes was implicated as a participant — but no one was ever convicted of the murders.

$ 18+ Family: Low
Yamashiro Restaurant exterior in the Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, photographed in 2019
Haunted Dining / Bar

Yamashiro Hollywood

Los Angeles, CA

German-born brothers Charles and Adolph Bernheimer completed this Japanese-inspired hilltop palace in 1914 to house their extensive Asian art collection. They sold the property in the mid-1920s; it passed through use as an exclusive club, a military school, and a brothel before Thomas O. Glover purchased it in 1948 and discovered ornate woodwork hidden under layers of paint. Glover developed it into Yamashiro Restaurant, which has operated since the early 1960s.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

San Francisco — 40

True Crime Site

1000 Lombard Street (Montandon Cursed Apartment)

San Francisco, CA

In April 1967, San Francisco socialite and author Pat Montandon hosted an astrology party at her apartment at 1000 Lombard Street. Accounts of the evening describe a tarot reader who was offended by the conduct of another guest and, on departing, pronounced a curse on the home. Montandon documented the events in her 1975 memoir 'The Intruders.' A series of misfortunes followed, culminating in a 1969 fire in the apartment that killed her former secretary Mary Lou Ward. Subsequent occupants of the property continued to experience uncommonly concentrated personal tragedies through at least the early 2020s, according to KQED and The Real Deal.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior of 450 Sutter Street, a 26-story Art Deco / Neo-Mayan office tower in downtown San Francisco
Other Dark Tourism Site

450 Sutter Street

San Francisco, CA

450 Sutter Street is a 26-floor, 344-foot Art Deco office tower in downtown San Francisco, designed by Timothy L. Pflueger and completed on October 15, 1929 — nine days before the Black Thursday stock market crash. The building is distinguished by its 'Neo-Mayan' terracotta-clad exterior and elaborate Mayan-motif lobby. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Today the building primarily houses medical and dental offices.

$ Lobby visit only — building is private offices Family: High
Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary main cellhouse exterior on Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Bay
Prison / Reformatory

Alcatraz Island

San Francisco, CA

Alcatraz Island served as a U.S. Army military fortification and prison from 1850 through 1933, then as a federal penitentiary housing the country's most dangerous and incorrigible inmates from 1934 until its closure in 1963. During its 29 years as a federal prison, 1,576 men served time on the island, including Al Capone and Robert Stroud, the so-called Birdman of Alcatraz.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Argonaut Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Argonaut Hotel

San Francisco, CA

The Argonaut Hotel occupies the 1907 Haslett Warehouse at San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, originally built as a fruit-and-vegetable canning and cold-storage facility for the Del Monte brand. The building survived the 1906 earthquake (construction began just after) and operated as industrial and commercial space before its conversion to a hotel.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High
Atherton House Queen Anne Victorian at 1990 California Street, Pacific Heights, San Francisco
Haunted House / Historic Home

Atherton House

San Francisco, CA

Built 1881-1882 for Dominga de Goni Atherton after the death of her husband Faxon Atherton, the Queen Anne/Stick-Eastlake mansion stands at 1990 California Street and was San Francisco Landmark designation #70. Architect Charles J. Rousseau subdivided it into 13 apartments in 1923, and his widow Carrie Rousseau famously lived there with fifty cats until her death in 1974.

$ All Ages Family: High
Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Barbary Coast Trail / Jackson Square Historic District

San Francisco, CA

The Barbary Coast Trail traces the 3.8-mile footprint of San Francisco's 19th-century vice district, anchored at the Jackson Square Historic District — the only downtown commercial blocks to survive the 1906 earthquake and fire, where buildings associated with the shanghaiing trade still stand.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Buena Vista Park
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Buena Vista Park

San Francisco, CA

Buena Vista Park, established in 1867, is San Francisco's oldest designated park. In the late 1930s, WPA crews clearing the nearby Lone Mountain (Laurel Hill) Cemetery to make way for residential development removed most of the grave markers and used approximately 1,500 tombstones as raw material for the park's drainage channels, gutters, and retaining walls. The unclaimed dead from the same cemetery were buried in a mass grave on site.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of California Palace of the Legion of Honor
Museum / Historical Site

California Palace of the Legion of Honor

San Francisco, CA

The California Palace of the Legion of Honor opened in 1924 on the site of San Francisco's City Cemetery, which operated from 1870 until the city relocated its dead in the 1910s. When the original building was constructed in 1921, workers cut through approximately 1,500 graves and left bones exposed on site. During a 1993 seismic retrofit and expansion, construction crews uncovered roughly 700 coffin burials in the museum's central courtyard, with archaeologists estimating that as many as 11,000 additional remains may lie beneath the building.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Chambers Mansion Queen Anne Victorian at 2220 Sacramento Street, Pacific Heights, San Francisco
Haunted House / Historic Home

Chambers Mansion

San Francisco, CA

Designed by J. C. Mathews & Son and completed in 1887 for Comstock-era Utah mining tycoon Robert Craig Chambers (1832-1901), the Queen Anne Victorian became San Francisco Landmark #119 in 1980. Bob Pritikin operated it as the Mansion Hotel B&B from 1977 until its sale in 2000, after which the property was converted into two private townhouses.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Chancellor Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Chancellor Hotel

San Francisco, CA

The Chancellor Hotel opened in 1914, purpose-built for visitors arriving for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition and designed with fireproof construction as a direct response to the 1906 earthquake and fire that devastated much of San Francisco.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Comstock Saloon
Haunted Dining / Bar

Comstock Saloon

San Francisco, CA

The Comstock Saloon opened in 1907 as the Andromeda Saloon, making it the last surviving bar from San Francisco's Barbary Coast district — the waterfront vice zone where sailors were drugged and kidnapped into involuntary maritime service from the 1850s through the early 1900s.

$$ 21+ Family: Low
Marquee and Renaissance Revival facade of the 1922 Curran Theatre at 445 Geary Street in San Francisco's Theater District
Theater / Performance Venue

Curran Theatre

San Francisco, CA

The Curran Theatre opened in 1922 on Geary Street in San Francisco's Theater District. The 1,667-seat venue has served as a touring Broadway house for over a century. In November 1933, treasurer Hewlett G. Tarr was shot and killed during a box-office robbery before a performance of Show Boat.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Fairmont Hotel San Francisco exterior at 950 Mason Street on Nob Hill, viewed from California Street
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Fairmont Hotel San Francisco

San Francisco, CA

The Fairmont San Francisco was built by heiresses Theresa Fair Oelrichs and Virginia Fair Vanderbilt to honor their father, Nevada silver magnate Senator James Graham Fair. The structure was nearly complete when the April 18, 1906 earthquake struck at 5:12 AM; the building survived but its lavish interiors burned within 24 hours. Architect Julia Morgan rebuilt the interior using reinforced concrete, and the hotel opened exactly one year later on April 18, 1907.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High
True Crime Site

Golden Dragon Restaurant Site (1977 Massacre)

San Francisco, CA

At 2:40 a.m. on September 4, 1977, three Joe Boys gang members entered the Golden Dragon Restaurant at 822 Washington Street intending to assassinate Wah Ching leaders. They killed five bystanders and wounded eleven others. None of the victims were gang members. The massacre prompted creation of the SFPD's Asian Gang Task Force.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Haas-Lilienthal House
Haunted House / Historic Home

Haas-Lilienthal House

San Francisco, CA

Built in 1886 for wholesale grocer William Haas and his family, the Haas-Lilienthal House is a Queen Anne Victorian residence in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood. It survived the 1906 earthquake and fire and was donated to San Francisco Heritage in 1973, making it the only intact Victorian-era private residence in the city open as a public museum.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Museum / Historical Site

Haskell House (Fort Mason Quarters Three)

San Francisco, CA

Built circa 1855 for Boston native and Broderick ally Leonidas Haskell, this two-story frame house at Black Point (today's Fort Mason) was the residence to which mortally wounded U.S. Senator David Broderick was carried after his September 13, 1859 duel with California Supreme Court Justice David S. Terry. Broderick died there three days later. The Union Army seized the property in 1863 and it has been Quarters 3 in the federal Fort Mason complex ever since.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Emblem

San Francisco, CA

Hotel Emblem (formerly Hotel Rex) at 562 Sutter Street in San Francisco's Union Square area is a 96-room boutique hotel in a building with roots in the early 20th century. The Sutter Street corridor was part of the Chinatown periphery during the Gold Rush era and housed Chinese immigrants in boarding arrangements before the neighborhood shifted with successive waves of development.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Hotel Majestic at 1500 Sutter Street, San Francisco — four-story Edwardian boutique hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Majestic

San Francisco, CA

Architect Malcolm Cressy designed the four-story Edwardian as a private residence for the Schmitt family, completed 1902 and converted to hotel use 1904. The building survived the 1906 earthquake fire — which stopped two blocks east at Van Ness Avenue — and has operated continuously since. A 2002 proclamation by Senator Dianne Feinstein recognized it as the longest continuously-operating hotel in San Francisco.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Union Square

San Francisco, CA

The building at 114 Powell Street was constructed in 1908 as the Golden West Hotel, one of many lodging houses rebuilt in the years immediately following the 1906 earthquake and fire. The building contained a large basement space that reportedly operated as a speakeasy called 'The Golden Bubble' during Prohibition. In later decades the property was rebranded and eventually became the current Hotel Union Square.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Letterman Digital Arts Center (former Letterman Army Hospital site)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Letterman Digital Arts Center (former Letterman Army Hospital site)

San Francisco, CA

Letterman General Hospital was established at the Presidio of San Francisco in 1899 and served as the Army's primary West Coast medical facility through five conflicts — from the Spanish-American War through Vietnam — before the Army closed it in 1994 and demolished it in 2002. Lucasfilm built its digital arts campus on the footprint, reportedly incorporating 50% of the original hospital's concrete in the new construction.

$ All Ages Family: High
McElroy Octagon House at 2645 Gough Street in Cow Hollow, San Francisco — eight-sided 1861 historic landmark
Museum / Historical Site

McElroy Octagon House

San Francisco, CA

The McElroy Octagon House is an 1861 residence built by wood-miller William C. McElroy and his wife Harriet Shober in San Francisco's Cow Hollow neighborhood. The eight-sided form follows the popular plan of phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler. The house has served since 1953 as a free museum operated by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in California.

$ All Ages Family: High
Adobe Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores), the oldest building in San Francisco, beside the 1918 Mission Dolores Basilica
Other Dark Tourism Site

Mission Dolores (Mission San Francisco de Asis)

San Francisco, CA

Misión San Francisco de Asís was founded on October 9, 1776 by Spanish Franciscan friars under the direction of Father Junípero Serra. The surviving adobe mission church is the oldest building in San Francisco, and the only intact original mission chapel of California's 21 missions. The adjoining basilica was built in 1918. The mission cemetery contains the remains of approximately 5,000 Ohlone, Miwok, and other First Californian people who built the mission and died — overwhelmingly of European diseases — during the mission period.

$ All Ages Family: High
Neptune Society Columbarium 1898 neoclassical domed mausoleum exterior in San Francisco's Inner Richmond district
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Neptune Society Columbarium

San Francisco, CA

The Neptune Society Columbarium at 1 Loraine Court in San Francisco was designed by architect Bernard J.S. Cahill and built in 1898 as part of the Odd Fellows Cemetery complex. When San Francisco banned new burials within city limits in 1901, the surrounding cemetery was exhumed and relocated to Colma. The Columbarium was abandoned from 1934 to 1979, during which it was looted and vandalized. It is now owned and operated by Dignity Memorial and is the only non-denominational interment facility still accepting new burials within San Francisco's city limits.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Nob Hill Inn

San Francisco, CA

The Nob Hill Inn was constructed in 1907, the year after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire that destroyed the original structure on the site. Built as an Edwardian townhouse hotel, it has operated continuously as lodging for more than a century, accumulating 21 guest rooms and, according to the building's paranormal reputation, one extra occupant.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Old Ship Saloon
Haunted Dining / Bar

Old Ship Saloon

San Francisco, CA

The Old Ship Saloon has occupied 298 Pacific Avenue since 1851, originally operating inside the hull of the Arkansas, a wooden three-masted schooner built in 1833 and run aground at Yerba Buena Cove on December 20, 1849. Its first bartender, 19-year-old Jimmy Laflin, became one of San Francisco's most prolific Barbary Coast shanghaiers.

$ 21+ Family: Low
Brownstone exterior of the James C. Flood Mansion (Pacific-Union Club) at 1000 California Street atop Nob Hill, San Francisco
Haunted House / Historic Home

Pacific-Union Club (James C. Flood Mansion)

San Francisco, CA

The James C. Flood Mansion at 1000 California Street was built in 1886 for Comstock Lode silver baron James C. Flood, who had made his fortune in the Big Bonanza strike of the Comstock mines. Designed by architect Augustus Laver of Connecticut brownstone, it was the first brownstone west of the Mississippi River. The only Nob Hill mansion whose structure survived the 1906 earthquake and fire (its interior was gutted but the brownstone walls stood), it was acquired by the Pacific-Union Club, remodeled by Willis Polk, and has been the Club's home since 1912.

$ View from public sidewalk only Family: High
Palace Hotel exterior at 2 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco — Beaux-Arts hotel with the Garden Court glass dome visible
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Palace Hotel

San Francisco, CA

The original Palace opened in 1875 as one of the largest luxury hotels in the world. It survived the 1906 earthquake itself but was destroyed in the subsequent fire; the present building reopened on the same site on December 19, 1909. Operated today by Marriott as a Luxury Collection property, the Palace is best known historically as the place where President Warren G. Harding died in office on August 2, 1923.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High
True Crime Site

Peoples Temple San Francisco Headquarters Site

San Francisco, CA

The Peoples Temple under Jim Jones occupied the building at 1859 Geary Boulevard from 1971 until the organization's 1977 exodus to Jonestown, Guyana. On November 18, 1978, 918 Temple members died there in a mass murder-suicide — at the time the largest single loss of American civilian life in history.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Portals of the Past (Lloyd Lake)
Outdoor / Natural Site

Portals of the Past (Lloyd Lake)

San Francisco, CA

The Portals of the Past are the remaining marble entry columns of the Alban N. Towne mansion, destroyed in the April 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. Photographed extensively in the ruins and relocated to Lloyd Lake in Golden Gate Park in 1909, they became the city's most reproduced symbol of both destruction and survival.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the Presidio Officers' Club, the oldest adobe building in San Francisco, at 50 Moraga Avenue in the Presidio
Museum / Historical Site

Presidio Officers' Club

San Francisco, CA

The Presidio Officers' Club stands at the center of the Presidio of San Francisco and incorporates the adobe core of the original Spanish garrison headquarters, constructed in 1776 by an expedition under Juan Bautista de Anza. The structure served successively under Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. flags before transitioning to the National Park Service when the Army decommissioned the Presidio in 1994. A major renovation from 2011 to 2014 restored the building and opened it as a public museum.

$ All Ages Family: High
The Queen Anne Hotel, a Victorian painted-lady mansion at 1590 Sutter Street in San Francisco's Pacific Heights
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Queen Anne Hotel

San Francisco, CA

The Queen Anne Hotel is a historic 1890 Victorian mansion in San Francisco, built in the Queen Anne architectural style. It originally served as Miss Mary Lake's School for Girls, a finishing school for young women, before later conversion to a boutique hotel.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Beaux-Arts dome and rotunda of San Francisco City Hall, completed 1915 by Arthur Brown Jr.
Museum / Historical Site

San Francisco City Hall

San Francisco, CA

San Francisco City Hall is a Beaux-Arts municipal building designed by Arthur Brown Jr. and Bakewell & Brown, completed in 1915 to replace the earlier 1899 City Hall that was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire. Its dome is 42 feet taller than the dome of the United States Capitol. The building was the site of the November 27, 1978 assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by former Supervisor Dan White.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of San Francisco National Cemetery (Presidio)
Cemetery / Burial Ground

San Francisco National Cemetery (Presidio)

San Francisco, CA

Established on December 12, 1884, San Francisco National Cemetery was the first national cemetery on the West Coast. Occupying 28.34 acres inside the Presidio, it holds more than 32,000 interments representing every major American military conflict from the Civil War through the 20th century.

$ All Ages Family: High
The 1906 Italianate San Remo Hotel on Mason Street in San Francisco's North Beach
Haunted Hotel / Inn

San Remo Hotel

San Francisco, CA

The San Remo Hotel at 2237 Mason Street in San Francisco was built in 1906 by A.P. Giannini, founder of the Bank of Italy (later Bank of America), to house workers rebuilding the city after the Great Earthquake and Fire. Originally the New California Hotel, it was renamed the San Remo in 1922. It remains a small boutique hotel in the city's North Beach neighborhood.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Stow Lake boathouse and calm water surface, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, November 2013
Outdoor / Natural Site

Stow Lake (White Lady of Stow Lake)

San Francisco, CA

Stow Lake is a 12-acre artificial lake constructed in 1893 within Golden Gate Park, designed as a recreation reservoir and carriage promenade surrounding Strawberry Hill Island. The lake was named for Irving Murray Stow, a San Francisco Park Commissioner. In 2023 the city officially renamed it Blue Heron Lake, though Stow Lake remains in common use.

$ All Ages Family: High
Concrete foundation ruins of the Sutro Baths at Lands End, San Francisco, with the Pacific Ocean beyond
Outdoor / Natural Site

Sutro Baths and Cliff House Ruins

San Francisco, CA

Adolph Sutro — Comstock-mining magnate and one-term mayor of San Francisco — opened the Sutro Baths on March 14, 1896 as the world's largest indoor swimming-pool establishment, with seven pools and capacity for approximately 10,000 bathers. The building burned to its concrete foundation in June 1966 and was never rebuilt. The adjoining Cliff House, originally built 1863, burned in 1894 and 1907 and was rebuilt several times. The ruins have been part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area since 1973.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of The Chapel
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Chapel

San Francisco, CA

The building at 777 Valencia Street opened in 1914 as the Gantner-Maison-Domergue Funeral Home, part of what was then San Francisco's mortuary row along Valencia Street in the Mission District. Bodies were stored in the basement below a ground-floor embalming room; the building included a mechanical body crank for transporting coffins between levels. The property operated as a funeral home through much of the 20th century before conversion to its current use as a music venue and bar.

$ 21+ Family: Low
Ornate Victorian Painted Lady William Westerfeld House at 1198 Fulton Street San Francisco
Haunted House / Historic Home

Westerfeld House

San Francisco, CA

The Westerfeld House is an 1889 Stick-style Victorian at 1198 Fulton Street, built by German-born confectioner William Westerfeld. The 28-room mansion served as the Russian consulate in the 1920s, was occupied by underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger and Bobby Beausoleil in 1966-67, and is a designated San Francisco Landmark and National Register property.

$ All Ages Family: High
Westin St. Francis Hotel exterior at 335 Powell Street, facing Union Square, San Francisco
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Westin St. Francis Hotel

San Francisco, CA

The St. Francis opened on Union Square in 1904, expanded with a new wing after the 1906 earthquake, and grew again with a 1972 tower addition. The flagship Westin property has been the site of two of San Francisco's most-discussed celebrity-death events: actress Virginia Rappe's collapse during Fatty Arbuckle's September 1921 Labor Day party in suite 1219-1221, and entertainer Al Jolson's fatal heart attack in the same suite during a card game on October 23, 1950.

$$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Whittier Mansion exterior at 2090 Jackson Street, Pacific Heights, San Francisco — red sandstone facade with corner cupola
Haunted House / Historic Home

Whittier Mansion

San Francisco, CA

Built 1894-1896 for paint and white-lead magnate William Franklin Whittier and designed by Edward Robinson Swain, the 30-room mansion is one of the few Pacific Heights mansions to survive the 1906 earthquake. It became San Francisco Landmark #75 in 1975 and was added to the National Register the following year.

$ All Ages Family: High

San Diego — 22

The 1924 Balboa Theatre's twin tiled domes and Spanish Colonial Revival facade at Fourth Avenue and E Street in San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter
Theater / Performance Venue

Balboa Theatre

San Diego, CA

The Balboa Theatre is a 1924 Spanish Colonial Revival vaudeville and cinema palace at the corner of Fourth Avenue and E Street in downtown San Diego, designed by architect William H. Wheeler. Office space above the theater was used as a U.S. Navy barracks during World War II. The theater went dark in 1972 and stood largely vacant until a $26.5 million restoration funded by the City of San Diego's Redevelopment Agency reopened it in 2008. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

$$ All Ages Family: High
The 1898 steam ferryboat Berkeley docked at the Maritime Museum of San Diego, with the USS Dolphin submarine alongside
Museum / Historical Site

Berkeley Steam Ferry

San Diego, CA

Built in 1898 by Union Iron Works in San Francisco, the steam ferryboat Berkeley served San Francisco Bay for 60 years and ferried survivors during the 1906 earthquake. Retired in 1958, it was acquired by the Maritime Museum of San Diego in 1973 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Cosmopolitan Hotel (Casa de Bandini) — restored 1820s Bandini-family adobe and 1869 Seeley stagecoach hotel in Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, photographed in 2019
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Cosmopolitan Hotel (Casa de Bandini)

San Diego, CA

Originally built 1827-1829 by Juan Bandini as his family's adobe residence in Old Town San Diego, the structure passed to Albert Seeley in the 1850s. Seeley converted and expanded it into the two-story Cosmopolitan Hotel in 1869 as a Greek Revival-style stagecoach stop on the San Diego-Los Angeles line. After decades of decline, California State Parks led a major restoration, and the hotel reopened to guests in July 2010.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Davis-Horton House (William Heath Davis House) — 1850 prefabricated saltbox-frame museum at 410 Island Avenue in San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter Historic District
Museum / Historical Site

Davis-Horton House (William Heath Davis House)

San Diego, CA

The Davis-Horton House is the oldest standing structure in downtown San Diego, a saltbox-frame prefabricated home shipped from Portland, Maine, in 1850 by speculator William Heath Davis. It served variously as an officer's quarters, a private residence, and the unofficial San Diego County Hospital in the 1870s under owner Anna Scheper. Today it operates as the Gaslamp Museum at the Davis-Horton House under the Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation.

$ All Ages Family: High
Rows of white headstones at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery on Point Loma, San Diego
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery

San Diego, CA

Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery occupies 77.5 acres on the Point Loma peninsula at the mouth of San Diego Bay, with over 120,000 interments. The burial ground predates the formal national cemetery designation of 1882, having served as an Army post cemetery from the 1860s. Its most significant mass burial event was the 1905 USS Bennington boiler explosion, which killed 66 sailors.

$ All Ages Family: High
Victorian homes at Heritage County Park in Old Town San Diego, preserved 1880s architecture
Museum / Historical Site

Heritage Park Victorian Village

San Diego, CA

Heritage County Park is an 8-acre San Diego County park preserving seven Victorian structures relocated from demolition threats across the city between 1971 and 1981. The collection includes six 1880s residential homes and Temple Beth Israel (1889), San Diego's first Jewish congregation building.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the Horton Grand Hotel, an 1886 Victorian hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego, California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Horton Grand Hotel

San Diego, CA

The Horton Grand Hotel in San Diego is a reconstructed Victorian property combining two 1886 buildings — the original Horton Grand and the Brooklyn-Kahle Saddlery Hotel — that were dismantled in the 1980s and rebuilt brick by brick at 311 Island Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter. The site itself once held a brothel operated by madam Ida Bailey.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Tiles from the original Presidio floor displayed at the Junipero Serra Museum in Presidio Park, San Diego
Museum / Historical Site

Junipero Serra Museum / Presidio Park

San Diego, CA

On May 14, 1769, Father Junipero Serra and Spanish soldiers established El Presidio Real de San Diego on this hilltop — the first permanent European settlement on the Pacific Coast. More than 60 soldiers are buried on the hill. Businessman George Marston purchased the site in 1907 and donated the land and museum to San Diego; the current museum building was designed by William Templeton Johnson and opened in 1929.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
True Crime Site

La Punta de los Muertos (Dead Man's Point)

San Diego, CA

La Punta de los Muertos — Dead Man's Point — is California Historical Landmark No. 57, designated in 1932 and marked with a plaque in 1954. The site beneath modern Seaport Village and Ruocco Park is traditionally identified as the burial ground for Spanish sailors who died during an 1782 survey expedition. It also served as a triage staging area in July 1905 when the USS Bennington boiler explosion killed 66 sailors in San Diego harbor.

$ All Ages Family: High
McConaughy House 1887 Stick Eastlake Victorian historic home at Heritage Park, Old Town San Diego
Haunted House / Historic Home

McConaughy House

San Diego, CA

The McConaughy House is an 1887 Stick Eastlake Victorian originally built in Old Town San Diego for John McConaughy, a pioneer San Diego freight and passenger operator. After standing on its original lot for nearly a century, the house was moved to the newly established Heritage County Park in January 1981 as part of a county-funded effort to save endangered Victorian buildings. A group of attorneys restored and occupied the building for roughly fifteen years afterward, and it later became home to the Coral Tree Tea House and Old Town Gift Emporium.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Church of Mission San Diego de Alcalá exterior showing the historic white adobe facade and bell tower
Museum / Historical Site

Mission San Diego de Alcalá

San Diego, CA

Father Junipero Serra founded Mission San Diego de Alcalá on July 16, 1769 — California's first mission — on land occupied by the Kumeyaay people for thousands of years. The mission system imposed forced labor, relocation, and religious conversion on the Kumeyaay with documented violence. On November 4–5, 1775, more than 600 Kumeyaay warriors attacked and burned the mission, killing Father Luis Jayme, a blacksmith, and a carpenter in a documented uprising against the mission's conditions.

$ All Ages Family: High
Old Globe Theatre exterior in Balboa Park, San Diego, California
Theater / Performance Venue

Old Globe Theatre

San Diego, CA

The Old Globe was built in 1935 as a Shakespeare's Globe replica for the California Pacific International Exposition in Balboa Park, designed by architect Richard Requa. After the exposition, the San Diego Community Theatre nonprofit preserved the building; it officially reopened in December 1937. The theater was burned in an arson in March 1978, rebuilt and reopened in 1981, then suffered a second arson attack in 1984. It won the Regional Theatre Tony Award the same year.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Old Point Loma Lighthouse (1855) — Cape Cod-style light station on the Point Loma peninsula at the mouth of San Diego Bay, part of Cabrillo National Monument
Outdoor / Natural Site

Old Point Loma Lighthouse

San Diego, CA

Construction of the Old Point Loma Lighthouse began in 1854 and the light was first lit on November 15, 1855 — the eighth lighthouse built on the U.S. West Coast. At 462 feet above sea level, the light was visible for nearly 40 miles in clear weather but was frequently obscured by fog and low clouds. It was decommissioned on March 23, 1891, when the new Point Loma Lighthouse opened at a lower elevation closer to the shore. The Old Point Loma Lighthouse is preserved within Cabrillo National Monument and operated by the National Park Service as a historic-house museum.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Pioneer Park (Calvary Cemetery)
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Pioneer Park (Calvary Cemetery)

San Diego, CA

Established in 1876 as Calvary Cemetery by Father Antonio Ubach, the Catholic burial ground served San Diego from 1880 through 1960. In 1968, the city of San Diego declared the cemetery abandoned under a municipal resolution and removed all but a single row of grave markers; the headstones were transported to Mount Hope Cemetery and deposited in a ravine. The bodies — estimated at 800 to 5,000, depending on the source — were never relocated. The site was converted to a public park.

$ All Ages Family: High
The reconstructed Robinson-Rose House serving as the visitor center of Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, photographed in 2019
Museum / Historical Site

Robinson-Rose House

San Diego, CA

The Robinson-Rose House was originally built in 1853 as the San Diego home and law office of Judge James W. Robinson, an attorney from Texas who became a leading figure in early American-era San Diego. After Robinson's 1857 death the house was sold to Louis Rose and later served as a newspaper office, railroad headquarters, schoolroom, and apartments before falling into ruin. The current structure is a state-park reconstruction now operating as the Old Town San Diego State Historic Park visitor center.

$ All Ages Family: High
Star of India (Euterpe) — 1863 iron-hulled full-rigged sailing ship at the Maritime Museum of San Diego Embarcadero
Museum / Historical Site

Star of India (Maritime Museum of San Diego)

San Diego, CA

The Star of India was launched on November 14, 1863, at Ramsey, Isle of Man, as the full-rigged iron-hulled merchant ship Euterpe. She circumnavigated the globe 21 times, primarily carrying cargo and emigrants between Britain, India, New Zealand, and the Pacific Northwest. Renamed Star of India in 1906, she was retired from active commerce in 1923 and acquired by San Diego in 1927. After decades of restoration, she became the centerpiece of the Maritime Museum of San Diego and is the world's oldest active sailing ship.

$$ All Ages Family: High
The Whaley House Museum exterior in Old Town San Diego, two-story brick Greek Revival home built 1856
Haunted House / Historic Home

The Whaley House

San Diego, CA

The Whaley House was built in 1857 by Thomas Whaley on land where public hangings had taken place — including the 1852 execution of horse thief James 'Yankee Jim' Robinson, which Whaley witnessed. The structure served at various times as a general store, the county's second courthouse, and San Diego's first commercial theater. It opened as a museum in 1960.

$$ All ages welcome; all minors under 18 must be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian Family: Moderate
The U.S. Grant Hotel historic facade with main entrance fountain, downtown San Diego, California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The U.S. Grant Hotel

San Diego, CA

The U.S. Grant Hotel opened in 1910 in downtown San Diego, financed by Ulysses S. Grant, Jr., son of the eighteenth president. The 270-room hotel anchors the Gaslamp Quarter and now operates as part of Marriott's Luxury Collection. Multiple restorations have preserved its Beaux-Arts character.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High
USS Midway aircraft carrier museum (CV-41) moored at Navy Pier in San Diego Bay
Museum / Historical Site

USS Midway Museum (CV-41)

San Diego, CA

USS Midway (CV-41) was commissioned September 10, 1945, as the lead ship of her aircraft-carrier class and was at the time the largest ship in the world. She served continuously for 47 years — the longest twentieth-century carrier service of the U.S. Navy — including deployments in the Vietnam War and as the Persian Gulf War flagship in 1991. Decommissioned in 1992, she was moved to San Diego's Navy Pier in 2004 to open as the USS Midway Museum.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Queen Anne facade of Villa Montezuma, the 1887 Sherman Heights residence of Spiritualist Jesse Shepard in San Diego, California
Museum / Historical Site

Villa Montezuma

San Diego, CA

Villa Montezuma is the 1887 Queen Anne residence built in San Diego's Sherman Heights for pianist, author, and Spiritualist Benjamin Henry Jesse Francis Shepard, later known by the pen name Francis Grierson. The home is owned by the City of San Diego, operated as a museum by the Friends of the Villa Montezuma, and was saved from demolition in the 1960s by Save Our Heritage Organisation.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Greek Revival brick Whaley House Museum exterior in Old Town San Diego California
Haunted House / Historic Home

Whaley House

San Diego, CA

Thomas Whaley built the Whaley House at 2476 San Diego Avenue in 1857, the oldest brick building in Southern California. The site previously held the city's public gallows, where horse thief Yankee Jim Robinson was hanged in 1852. The house served as a residence, store, courthouse, and theater before becoming a museum in 1960.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The 1882 Yuma Building's Victorian Italianate brick facade at 631 Fifth Avenue in San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter Historic District
Museum / Historical Site

Yuma Building

San Diego, CA

The Yuma Building is an 1882 brick Italianate commercial building at 631 Fifth Avenue in San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter, built by Captain Alfred Henry Wilcox and named for the Colorado River port of Yuma, Arizona, where Wilcox ran a steamboat operation. The original single-story brick edifice was among the first all-brick buildings downtown; after Wilcox's 1883 death his widow oversaw the addition of upper floors completed in 1888. It was one of the first establishments closed during the 1912 Stingaree District raids that targeted Gaslamp brothels.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Sacramento — 14

Exterior of the B.F. Hastings Building at 2nd and J Streets in Old Sacramento State Historic Park, California
Museum / Historical Site

B.F. Hastings Building

Sacramento, CA

The B.F. Hastings Building is a brick building at the corner of 2nd and J Streets in Old Sacramento, built in 1852-53 during the early Gold Rush. It served as the western terminus of the Pony Express in 1860-61, housed B.F. Hastings Bank, Wells Fargo & Co., the Sacramento Valley Railroad headquarters, and the California Supreme Court at various times. Now operating as the Wells Fargo History Museum within Old Sacramento State Historic Park.

$ All Ages Family: High
The 1877 California Governor's Mansion, a Second Empire Italianate Victorian house at 1526 H Street in Sacramento
Haunted House / Historic Home

California Governor's Mansion State Historic Park

Sacramento, CA

The California Governor's Mansion is a 30-room, three-story Second Empire Italianate Victorian house built in 1877 in Sacramento. Designed by Nathaniel Goodell for Sacramento hardware merchant Albert Gallatin, the State of California purchased the property in 1903 to serve as the official residence of the governor. Thirteen governors and their families lived in the mansion through 1967, when it was retired from gubernatorial use and opened as a State Historic Park.

$ All Ages Family: High
Full front facade of the California State Capitol, an 1874 neoclassical domed statehouse at 1315 10th Street in Sacramento, California
Museum / Historical Site

California State Capitol

Sacramento, CA

The California State Capitol is a neoclassical statehouse begun in 1860 and completed in 1874, designed by Reuben Clark and M. F. Butler. It houses the State Senate and Assembly chambers, the offices of the governor and constitutional officers, and a free public museum on its lower floors interpreting California's political history.

$ All Ages Family: High
Neoclassical facade of the Library and Courts Building, home of the California State Library, at 914 Capitol Mall in Sacramento
Museum / Historical Site

California State Library (Library and Courts Building)

Sacramento, CA

The California State Library's Library and Courts Building was authorized in 1914 and completed in 1928, designed by San Francisco architects Weeks & Day in a neoclassical style to match the State Capitol across Capitol Mall. The building houses the California Section's research collections and originally also housed the California Third Court of Appeal chambers on its upper floors.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the California State Railroad Museum in Old Sacramento, 2008
Museum / Historical Site

California State Railroad Museum

Sacramento, CA

The California State Railroad Museum opened in Old Sacramento in 1981 and displays 21 restored locomotives and rail cars, some dating to 1862. Its Chinese Workers' Experience exhibit documents the estimated 10,000 to 20,000 Chinese laborers employed by the Central Pacific Railroad, as many as 1,200 of whom died during the construction of the transcontinental railroad through the Sierra Nevada.

$ All Ages Family: High
Historic 1925 facade of The Citizen Hotel (Autograph Collection) in downtown Sacramento, a 14-story former California Western States Life Insurance building
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Citizen Hotel

Sacramento, CA

The Citizen Hotel occupies the 1926 California-Western States Life Insurance Building at 926 J Street, designed by Sacramento architect George C. Sellon. At 216 feet and 14 stories, it was among Sacramento's first skyscrapers. Cal West Partners restored the building in 2008 into a 198-room boutique hotel with five penthouses; the Sacramento Art Deco Society awarded the project a preservation award in 2011. The Citizen now operates as part of the Marriott Autograph Collection.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Crocker Art Museum historic and modern buildings entrance in Sacramento California
Museum / Historical Site

Crocker Art Museum

Sacramento, CA

Judge Edwin B. Crocker purchased the corner property on O and Third Streets in Sacramento in 1868 and completed the gallery building in 1872, constructing a private museum to house his collection of more than 700 European paintings and thousands of drawings. After his death in 1875, his wife Margaret Eleanor Crocker donated the gallery and its entire collection to the City of Sacramento in 1885 — making it the first public art museum west of the Mississippi River.

$$ All Ages Family: High
The Delta King sternwheel riverboat with its red paddlewheel and white superstructure permanently moored along the Sacramento River in Old Sacramento, California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Delta King Riverboat Hotel

Sacramento, CA

The Delta King is a 285-foot sternwheel riverboat christened May 20, 1927, that ran between San Francisco and Sacramento until 1940. Drafted into the U.S. Navy in World War II, then used as worker housing in Kitimat, British Columbia, it was restored 1984-1989 and permanently moored at 1000 Front Street as a 44-room hotel, restaurant, and theater. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
The Eagle Theatre reconstruction at 925 Front Street in Old Sacramento State Historic Park, California, first built as California's earliest purpose-built theater in 1849
Theater / Performance Venue

Eagle Theatre

Sacramento, CA

The original Eagle Theatre was built in 1849 as the first purpose-built theater in California — a wood-framed, canvas-covered structure with a tin roof and packed-earth floor. It opened during the Gold Rush, charging $2-$3 for admission, but was destroyed by flooding on January 4, 1850. The current building on Front Street is a reconstruction administered by the California State Railroad Museum as part of Old Sacramento State Historic Park; the site is California Historical Landmark No. 595.

$ All Ages Family: High
Leland Stanford Mansion Second Empire mansard-roofed exterior at 800 N Street in Sacramento, California State Historic Park
Haunted House / Historic Home

Leland Stanford Mansion State Historic Park

Sacramento, CA

Built in 1856 for Sacramento merchant Shelton C. Fogus, the mansion was purchased by Leland Stanford in 1861 just before his election as California governor. The Stanfords raised the structure twelve feet and expanded it from 4,000 to 19,000 square feet in 1871-1872. After Stanford's widow donated the property in 1900, it operated as a Catholic orphanage for nearly eight decades. California acquired the building in 1978 and reopened it as a state park in 2005 after a $22 million restoration.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Old Sacramento Underground Tunnels
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Old Sacramento Underground Tunnels

Sacramento, CA

Sacramento sat in a flood plain, and after the catastrophic January 1862 floods inundated the city four times in a single winter, leaders raised the downtown streets and required property owners to either raise their buildings or convert their ground floors into basements. The resulting buried street level and sidewalk passages — preserved beneath modern Old Sacramento — are accessed today through Sacramento History Museum guided tours.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Victorian garden-style terraces and monuments at the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery, the city's oldest extant cemetery (est. 1849).
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Sacramento Historic City Cemetery

Sacramento, CA

Established in 1849 when Sacramento founder John A. Sutter Jr. donated 10 acres for a public cemetery, this is the oldest public cemetery west of the Mississippi. Margaret Crocker expanded it by 23 acres in 1880; the site now covers 44 acres with over 25,000 burials, including a mass grave from the 1850 cholera epidemic. It is a California Historical Landmark (1957) and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted House / Historic Home

The Hart Mansion (Martinez House)

Sacramento, CA

The mansion at 22nd and H Streets in Sacramento was built in 1907 for Dr. Aden C. Hart, founder of Sutter Hospital. The popular 'Martinez murder' story is unsupported by archival records — no Martinez family ever owned the home, and Sacramento researchers found no evidence of any death, murder, or violent incident at the property.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted House / Historic Home

Vizcaya Mansion (Driver Mansion)

Sacramento, CA

Vizcaya Sacramento occupies the former Driver mansion, a Queen Anne-period white colonial-revival house with Victorian tower and columned entrance built circa 1899 in Midtown Sacramento for attorney Philip Driver. The property operates today as a full-service wedding and event venue with an eight-room bed and breakfast, with the mansion and adjoining pavilion.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Oakland — 13

Photo of 16th Street Train Station
Other Dark Tourism Site

16th Street Train Station

Oakland, CA

The 16th Street Station opened in 1912 as the Transcontinental Railway's western terminus, designed by Jarvis Hunt in the Beaux-Arts style. It served as the West Coast headquarters of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first Black-led union in the United States. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake severely damaged the structure and it closed in 1994, sitting vacant for decades before a restoration effort began.

$ All Ages Family: High
Camron-Stanford House Victorian mansion on the shore of Lake Merritt in Oakland, California
Haunted House / Historic Home

Camron-Stanford House

Oakland, CA

The Camron-Stanford House was built in 1876 and is the last surviving Victorian-era mansion on the shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland. It was home to multiple prominent families and witnessed the deaths of a two-year-old daughter in 1877, family patriarch Josiah Stanford in 1890, and a daughter-in-law in 1891. It now operates as a house museum.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Chapel of the Chimes
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Chapel of the Chimes

Oakland, CA

Designed by architect Julia Morgan in 1928, the Chapel of the Chimes is an active columbarium on the edge of Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland. Its interior functions as a labyrinthine 'Library of the Dead,' with cremation urns arranged on floor-to-ceiling shelves in architectural alcoves inspired by Spanish Gothic cathedrals.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Cohen Bray House
Haunted House / Historic Home

Cohen Bray House

Oakland, CA

The Cohen Bray House at 1440 29th Avenue in Oakland was built between 1882 and 1884 for Alfred A. Cohen, an attorney and railroad executive. It has remained in the hands of the Cohen and Bray families for over 140 years, making it one of the longest single-family-occupied historic homes in California.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Dunsmuir Hellman Historic Estate
Haunted House / Historic Home

Dunsmuir Hellman Historic Estate

Oakland, CA

Alexander Dunsmuir, heir to a British Columbia coal fortune, had the 37-room Neoclassical mansion built in 1899 as a wedding gift for Josephine Wallace, his companion of 17 years whom he married only after his mother's death. He died of illness in January 1900, ten days into their honeymoon; Josephine died in October of the same year. The estate passed through several owners before becoming Oakland city property in 1961.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Evergreen Cemetery — Jonestown Memorial
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Evergreen Cemetery — Jonestown Memorial

Oakland, CA

Evergreen Cemetery, founded in 1902, became the final resting place for hundreds of Jonestown massacre victims when federal authorities, unable to identify or locate families for approximately 409 of the dead, arranged for their burial in a mass grave in Oakland. A memorial listing all 918 names was unveiled at the site in 2011.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon
Haunted Dining / Bar

Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon

Oakland, CA

Johnny Heinold built the saloon in 1880 using lumber salvaged from a whaling ship, and it has operated continuously since 1883 — making it one of the oldest continually operating bars in California. The 1906 earthquake shifted the foundation and left the floor at a permanent tilt. Jack London was a regular customer as a teenager and young man, and the bar is credited by some accounts as the place where London borrowed money from Heinold to attend the University of California.

$ 21+ Family: Low
Photo of Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center
Theater / Performance Venue

Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center

Oakland, CA

The Oakland Auditorium opened in 1915 as a Beaux-Arts civic venue on the Lake Merritt waterfront. Over its first century it served as a makeshift hospital during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, hosted an 800-person Ku Klux Klan rally in 1924, and on November 23, 1969, saw Western swing star Spade Cooley die of a heart attack onstage — his first performance since his 1961 conviction for murdering his wife.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
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Outdoor / Natural Site

Joaquin Miller Park

Oakland, CA

Joaquin Miller Park honors Cincinnatus Hiner Miller (1837–1913), a poet, lawyer, and frontiersman from Indiana who adopted the name Joaquin after California outlaw Joaquin Murieta. In 1886, Miller purchased roughly 70 acres of Oakland hillside and planted 75,000 trees, developing an artists' retreat he called 'The Hights.' The City of Oakland eventually acquired the land as a public park.

$ All Ages Family: High
Mills Hall, the 1871 centerpiece of the Mills College campus in Oakland, California, a California Historical Landmark (HABS CA-2401, HALS CA-22)
Haunted House / Historic Home

Mills College at Northeastern University

Oakland, CA

Mills College was founded as a women's institution in Oakland, California, and for over a century occupied a wooded Victorian campus at 5000 MacArthur Boulevard. Facing significant financial difficulties that had persisted since 2017, Mills finalized a merger with Northeastern University in June 2022, becoming Mills College at Northeastern University. The campus remains in use with Northeastern students attending from across the university's network.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Mountain View Cemetery
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Mountain View Cemetery

Oakland, CA

Mountain View Cemetery was founded in 1863 and designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect behind New York's Central Park. Its 226 acres in the Oakland hills hold over 24,000 burials, including some of California's most prominent industrial and civic figures of the 19th century.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Pardee Home Museum
Haunted House / Historic Home

Pardee Home Museum

Oakland, CA

California State Senator Enoch Pardee built the Italianate villa at 672 11th Street in 1868. His son George C. Pardee, who served as Governor of California from 1903 to 1907 and was Oakland's mayor during the 1906 earthquake, was born in the house. Four generations of women in the Pardee family maintained the home with nearly all original furnishings intact until it became a museum.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Bordello

Oakland, CA

The building at the corner of East 12th Street and 13th Avenue in Oakland was constructed in 1887 as a saloon and brothel serving the working-class waterfront district. Early 20th century accounts document fatal stabbings in bar fights on the premises, and sailors were reportedly shanghaied — drugged and sold into involuntary ship service — from the establishment.

$ 21+ Family: Low

Bakersfield — 12

Aerial survey view of Bakersfield Central Park (Kern Island Canal)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Bakersfield Central Park (Kern Island Canal)

Bakersfield, CA

Bakersfield Central Park was established in 1921 along the Kern Island Canal, one of the irrigation canals that shaped the city's agricultural development. The park has served as an urban green space at the downtown core for over a century. A persistent local legend connects the canal to an unidentified female body reportedly found in the water, though documentary records of the specific incident are not publicly available.

$ All Ages Family: High
The Fox Theater in downtown Bakersfield, showing its neon marquee and Spanish Colonial Revival clock tower
Theater / Performance Venue

Bakersfield Fox Theater

Bakersfield, CA

The Fox Theater opened on Christmas Day 1930 at 2001 H Street in downtown Bakersfield, a Spanish Colonial Revival movie palace designed by architect S. Charles Lee. After decades of decline it was restored and reopened as a performing-arts and community-events venue.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Bakersfield High School — Harvey Auditorium
Theater / Performance Venue

Bakersfield High School — Harvey Auditorium

Bakersfield, CA

Harvey Memorial Auditorium at Bakersfield High School broke ground in 1941 but faced construction delays due to World War II materials shortages. The campus, which predates the auditorium by several decades, sits on what local lore claims was the location of a 19th-century hospital, contributing to its reputation. The auditorium has been the school's main performance venue since its completion.

$ All Ages Family: High
The former F.W. Woolworth building in downtown Bakersfield, California
Other Dark Tourism Site

Bakersfield Woolworth Building

Bakersfield, CA

The downtown Bakersfield Woolworth's building housed an F.W. Woolworth five-and-dime for decades. After the chain closed the store in 1994, it reopened as an antique mall that preserves the original soda-fountain counter, and its basement served as a designated shelter during World War II.

$ All Ages Family: High
A Dunkin' sign in Bakersfield, California
Outdoor / Natural Site

Garces Memorial Circle

Bakersfield, CA

Garces Memorial Circle in Bakersfield commemorates Father Francisco Garces (1738–1781), a Franciscan missionary who crossed the Kern River in 1776 as the first European explorer recorded in the territory. The circle was built by the Division of Highways in 1935, and the 22-foot limestone statue was sculpted by New Deal artist John Palo-Kangas in 1939 under the Federal Art Project. The site is California State Historical Landmark No. 277.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Haberfelde Building
Other Dark Tourism Site

Haberfelde Building

Bakersfield, CA

The Haberfelde Building rose five stories above Chester Avenue in 1927, making it one of the tallest structures in the southern San Joaquin Valley at completion. Designed in the Sullivanesque ornamental style, it has served as professional office space for physicians, attorneys, and commercial tenants across nearly a century — and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Historic Union Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Historic Union Cemetery

Bakersfield, CA

Historic Union Cemetery is the oldest cemetery in Bakersfield, established in 1872 with the burial of Col. Thomas Baker, the city's founder and namesake. The 27-acre grounds hold many of the people who built early Kern County.

$ All Ages Family: High
Museum / Historical Site

Kern County Museum & Pioneer Village

Bakersfield, CA

Established in 1945, the Kern County Museum assembled more than 70 original 19th-century buildings from across Kern County into a 16-acre open-air campus, including the circa-1882 Norris Schoolhouse, a working print shop, and the Weill House. The collection represents one of the largest concentrations of relocated historic structures on a single California site.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior of the Gaslight Melodrama Theatre and Music Hall building on Jomani Drive in Bakersfield, California
Theater / Performance Venue

Gaslight Melodrama Theatre & Music Hall

Bakersfield, CA

The building at the heart of Bakersfield's Gaslight Melodrama Theatre was constructed in the early 1970s in Oildale — a community that grew from the oil industry north of Bakersfield — originally as a toy store. The owner went bankrupt around 1975. The current Gaslight Melodrama Theatre opened at a new Jomani Drive location in August 2005 as Bakersfield's first privately built performing arts venue, producing eight different shows per year.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Old Downtown Post Office (Bakersfield)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Old Downtown Post Office (Bakersfield)

Bakersfield, CA

Bakersfield's first federal post office opened at 1730 18th Street in early 1925, several years into Prohibition. Its basement housed the local office of the U.S. Bureau of Prohibition, where agents stored confiscated liquor and questioned suspected bootleggers.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Padre Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Padre Hotel

Bakersfield, CA

Built in 1928 as Bakersfield's tallest building, the eight-story Spanish Colonial Revival Padre Hotel stood at the center of downtown commercial life for decades. A fire damaged the seventh floor in the 1950s during the 45-year ownership of Milton Miller (1954–1999). The hotel closed for eleven years before reopening in 2010 after a full renovation, and now actively markets the seventh floor's haunted reputation.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Eight-story Spanish Revival Padre Hotel landmark in downtown Bakersfield, California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Padre Hotel

Bakersfield, CA

The Padre Hotel opened April 12, 1928 as an eight-story Spanish Revival landmark designed by Los Angeles architect John M. Cooper. It was Bakersfield's tallest building and social hub for decades. Restored and reopened in 2010, it remains an operating boutique hotel and has appeared on Travel Channel's Portals to Hell.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Fresno — 10

Photo of Fresno Central Library
Other Dark Tourism Site

Fresno Central Library

Fresno, CA

The Fresno County Central Library at 2420 Mariposa Street serves as the main branch of the Fresno County Public Library system. Staff at the library have reported unexplained phenomena across multiple floors, accounts documented by local paranormal researcher Michael Banti of Weird Fresno and noted in FresYes coverage of Fresno's haunted sites.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Fresno Chandler Executive Airport
Other Dark Tourism Site

Fresno Chandler Executive Airport

Fresno, CA

Fresno Chandler Executive Airport was dedicated in 1929 on land donated by State Senator Wilbur Chandler and built a Streamline Moderne terminal in 1936. Charles Lindbergh visited in 1930. The airport served military training functions until Hammer Field opened in 1942, after which it returned to general aviation use.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Hotel Californian (Fresno)
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Californian (Fresno)

Fresno, CA

The Hotel Californian opened in December 1923 at 851 Van Ness Avenue in downtown Fresno, designed by architect H. Rafael Lake for the R. F. Felchlin construction company in the Italian Renaissance/Beaux-Arts style. At nine stories and 138 feet, it was the largest hotel in Fresno at the time and was described as the best hotel between San Francisco and Los Angeles for more than thirty years.

$ All Ages Family: High
Kearney Mansion Queen Anne style historic home in Kearney Park west of Fresno California
Haunted House / Historic Home

Kearney Mansion

Fresno, CA

M. Theo Kearney was one of California's most ambitious agricultural developers of the late 19th century. He assembled a 225-acre raisin-growing estate seven miles west of Fresno, envisioning a grand mansion as the centerpiece. He died in 1906 before completing his plans, leaving behind only the caretaker's quarters — now preserved as the Kearney Mansion Museum — surrounded by the trees and eucalyptus groves he planted.

$ All Ages Family: High
M. Theo Kearney Park and Mansion
Outdoor / Natural Site

Kearney Park

Fresno, CA

Kearney Park occupies 225 acres of the former M. Theo Kearney agricultural estate seven miles west of downtown Fresno. After Kearney's death in 1906, Fresno County acquired the land and developed it as a public recreational area surrounding the preserved Kearney Mansion Museum. The eucalyptus windbreaks Kearney planted for his raisin operation in the 1880s and 1890s still define the park's visual character.

$ All Ages Family: High
Victorian Queen Anne Meux Home Museum exterior at 1007 R Street, Fresno, California
Haunted House / Historic Home

Meux Home Museum

Fresno, CA

Dr. Thomas Richard Meux, a Confederate Army captain turned California physician, built this 16-room Queen Anne mansion in 1889 at the corner of Tulare and R Streets in Fresno. The family occupied it continuously until 1970, when Dr. Meux's daughter Anne died. The city of Fresno acquired the property in 1973 and opened it as a museum in 1975; it was added to the National Register of Historic Places that same year.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Santa Fe Hotel (Basque Hotel)

Fresno, CA

Built in 1926 by Telesfuro Jance, the Santa Fe Hotel served Fresno's Basque immigrant community for decades as a boarding house, employment hub, maternity facility, and social center. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991 for its significance to Basque-American ethnic heritage.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Saint John the Baptist Cathedral
Museum / Historical Site

Saint John the Baptist Cathedral

Fresno, CA

Saint John the Baptist parish was established in Fresno in 1882. The current Romanesque-Gothic cathedral on Mariposa Street was dedicated in 1903 and designated a cathedral of the Diocese of Fresno in 1922. It stood near St. Augustine's Academy, a Catholic boarding school staffed by the Sisters of the Holy Cross.

$ All Ages Family: High
Art Deco exterior of Veterans Memorial Auditorium at 2425 Fresno Street, Fresno, California
Theater / Performance Venue

Veterans Memorial Auditorium (Fresno)

Fresno, CA

Fresno voters approved a $400,000 bond in 1933 to build a veterans memorial that would double as a civic auditorium. Construction ran 1935–36 using Public Works Administration funds; the building was dedicated December 31, 1936. Designed in Art Deco and Moderne style by the Allied Architects of Fresno, the auditorium has a 3,500-person capacity and features foyer murals by noted theater decorator Anthony Heinsbergen.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Warnors Theatre
Theater / Performance Venue

Warnors Theatre

Fresno, CA

Warnors Theatre opened October 20, 1928, as the Pantages Theatre, a 2,100-seat vaudeville and movie palace designed by B. Marcus Priteca. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, it operates as the Warnors Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Fresno.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Long Beach — 10

Photo of Bembridge House
Haunted House / Historic Home

Bembridge House

Long Beach, CA

Built in 1906 as the most ornate Queen Anne Victorian residence in Long Beach, the 18-room house passed through two families before Dorothy Bembridge — a music teacher — moved in with her parents in 1918 and lived there for 81 years. On November 4, 1999, Bembridge, then 89, was found strangled in her backyard. Daniel William Borunda, a former handyman who had previously burglarized the house, was convicted of the murder-for-hire and sentenced to 60 years to life.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of DeForest Park Nature Trail
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

DeForest Park Nature Trail

Long Beach, CA

DeForest Park is a 50-acre Long Beach city park along the Los Angeles River with a 34-acre restored wetlands and riparian forest. The restoration project began in 2001 and the restored wetlands opened to the public on June 30, 2018, connecting to the LA River Bikeway.

$ All Ages Family: High
Open Graph image from www.rancholoscerritos.org
Museum / Historical Site

Rancho Los Cerritos Historic Site

Long Beach, CA

The Rancho Los Cerritos adobe was built in 1844 by Massachusetts-born merchant John Temple on 27,000 acres of land acquired from the heirs of Manuel Nieto's Spanish land grant. The Tongva people had inhabited the site for centuries before Spanish colonization. Temple sold the ranch in 1866 following devastating droughts; subsequent Bixby family sheep operations reduced the property until the City of Long Beach acquired the remaining five acres in 1955.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Long Beach Marriott

Long Beach, CA

The Long Beach Marriott is a 309-room hotel located at 4700 Airport Plaza Drive, near Long Beach Airport. It is a modern Marriott property with extensive meeting facilities, two pools, and standard full-service amenities. There is no published deep historical or pre-Marriott provenance for the building.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Puvungna Sacred Site at Cal State Long Beach
Outdoor / Natural Site

Puvungna Sacred Site at Cal State Long Beach

Long Beach, CA

Puvungna is a pre-contact Tongva (Gabrielino) village and burial site on the west edge of the California State University Long Beach campus. It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1994 and has been the subject of repeated legal disputes over university development plans.

$ All Ages Family: High
RMS Queen Mary ocean liner permanently moored at Long Beach California waterfront
Haunted Hotel / Inn

RMS Queen Mary

Long Beach, CA

RMS Queen Mary is a 1,019-foot Cunard ocean liner launched in 1934 and in transatlantic service from 1936 to 1967, with a wartime troopship service from 1939 to 1946 under the name Gray Ghost. Permanently moored at Long Beach, California since December 1967, the Queen Mary operates as a hotel, museum, and event venue.

$$$ All Ages for tours; 21+ in bar areas Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Sunnyside Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Sunnyside Cemetery

Long Beach, CA

Sunnyside Cemetery opened in September 1906 and is the oldest operating cemetery in Long Beach, with more than 16,000 burials. The grounds include a section for Civil War Union veterans, including Medal of Honor recipient Nelson W. Ward. In the 1990s, the cemetery's operator was convicted of embezzling half the endowment fund, leading to city takeover.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of The Pike Outlets (former Pike Amusement Park)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

The Pike Outlets (former Pike Amusement Park)

Long Beach, CA

The Pike opened in 1902 as one of America's earliest permanent amusement zones along the Long Beach waterfront, running midway attractions, a roller coaster, and funhouses until 1979. In December 1976, a production crew shooting The Six Million Dollar Man discovered that a figure hanging in the Laff in the Dark funhouse was not a mannequin but the actual mummified body of Elmer McCurdy, an Oklahoma outlaw killed in 1911 and displayed in carnivals and sideshows for 65 years without anyone making the identification.

$ All Ages Family: High
The RMS Queen Mary ocean liner permanently moored at Long Beach, California, its three red funnels and black hull visible from the harbor
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Queen Mary

Long Beach, CA

The RMS Queen Mary was constructed at John Brown & Company's Clydebank shipyard beginning in 1930, launched September 26, 1934, and sailed her maiden voyage on May 27, 1936. Requisitioned as a troopship in 1939, she carried 810,000 soldiers under the nickname 'The Grey Ghost.' The ship has been permanently moored in Long Beach, California since December 1967.

$$ All Ages (Paranormal Ship Walk 13+; Graveyard Tour 16+) Family: Moderate
Photo of Villa Riviera
Haunted House / Historic Home

Villa Riviera

Long Beach, CA

The Villa Riviera opened in 1928 as a luxury residential tower and was at the time the second-tallest building in Southern California. During World War II, the U.S. Navy commandeered its upper floors and tower as an observation post for enemy submarine and aircraft activity along the Pacific coast — the building's position overlooking Long Beach Harbor made it strategically useful. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Riverside — 8

Aerial survey view of At the Villa
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

At the Villa

Riverside, CA

At the Villa occupied a historic building dating to circa 1890 at 3563 Main Street in Riverside, one block north of the Mission Inn. The building originally served as a bath house before being converted to an antiques store. The antiques business has since closed, though the building remains.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
California Baptist University W.E. James Building exterior
Museum / Historical Site

California Baptist University

Riverside, CA

California Baptist University occupies the site of former institutional buildings. The W.E. James Building was originally The New Homes of Woodcraft—a retirement and care home for elderly members of a fraternal organization, purchased by California Baptist University in 1954. Underground tunnel systems exist beneath the campus, historically used for storage.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Castle Park (Riverside)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Castle Park (Riverside)

Riverside, CA

Castle Park opened in 1976 in Riverside, California, as a 25-acre family entertainment center centered on a castle-themed building housing a two-level arcade and an outdoor miniature golf course. The park later added rides and a seasonal Halloween event known as Castle Dark.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Evergreen Memorial Historic Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Evergreen Memorial Historic Cemetery

Riverside, CA

Founded in 1872 at the foot of Mount Rubidoux, Evergreen Memorial Historic Cemetery is the oldest cemetery in Riverside and contains more than 27,000 burials. Notable interments include city founder John Wesley North, Eliza Tibbets (who planted the first California navel orange trees), and a Civil War Soldiers' Lot listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of March Field Air Museum
Museum / Historical Site

March Field Air Museum

Riverside, CA

March Air Reserve Base is one of the oldest military airfields in the United States, founded in 1918 as Alessandro Field during World War I. The March Field Air Museum opened in 1979 and relocated to a 19,200-square-foot hangar in 1993. It now houses more than 120 aircraft, including a Vietnam-era C-141 Starlifter used to repatriate casualties from Southeast Asia.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Southeast landscape view of Mount Rubidoux and the city of Riverside, California from Indian Hills, with the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance
Outdoor / Natural Site

Mount Rubidoux

Riverside, CA

Mount Rubidoux in Riverside, California, takes its name from Louis Rubidoux, who purchased the 1,337-foot granite hill in 1852. The Luiseno people knew it as Pachappa. Frank Miller, owner of the Mission Inn, acquired the mountain in 1906 and built a road to the summit, establishing it as a public park. The oldest outdoor non-denominational Easter Sunrise service in the United States has been held here annually since 1909.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Riverside Municipal Auditorium
Theater / Performance Venue

Riverside Municipal Auditorium

Riverside, CA

Riverside Municipal Auditorium opened November 12, 1928, built as a memorial to the 87 Riverside County servicemembers who died in World War I. Designed in Mission Revival style by architects Arthur Benton and G. Stanley Wilson — who also designed portions of the adjacent Mission Inn — the building was constructed on land donated by Mission Inn proprietor Frank Miller and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the Tomás Rivera Library on the University of California, Riverside campus, one of the five original 1954 campus buildings
Museum / Historical Site

Tomás Rivera Library, UC Riverside

Riverside, CA

Completed in 1954 as one of the original five buildings of UC Riverside; designed by Graham Latta and Carl Denny. Renamed in 1985 in honor of Mexican-American author and UCR Chancellor Tomás Rivera. Subsequent renovations in 1963, 1968, and 1998.

$ All Ages Family: High

Berkeley — 7

Gothic-Moorish Berkeley City Club (1930) at 2315 Durant Avenue, designed by California architect Julia Morgan.
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Berkeley City Club

Berkeley, CA

The Berkeley City Club was completed in 1930 to a design by Julia Morgan, commissioned by the Berkeley Women's City Club as a clubhouse, hotel, and social center for the city's professional women. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is a California Historical Landmark, and is the rare Julia Morgan building that retains its original program as both private club and small hotel.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Tudor Revival 'castle' Bowles Hall (1929), the first state-supported residence hall in California, UC Berkeley.
Other Dark Tourism Site

Bowles Hall

Berkeley, CA

Bowles Hall opened in 1929 as the first state-supported residence hall in California, funded by a bequest from Mary McNear Bowles in memory of her husband Philip E. Bowles. Designed by George W. Kelham in a Tudor Revival 'castle' style, it housed an all-male residence community until 2005 when it was converted to co-educational use. After a major restoration completed in 2016 it reopened as Bowles Hall Residential College.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Claremont Hotel Club and Spa
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Claremont Hotel Club and Spa

Berkeley, CA

The Claremont Hotel opened in 1915 on the site of a Thornburg family estate that had burned in 1901. William B. Thornburg, a Gold Rush-era settler, had built an English-style manor on the Berkeley Hills property before selling to the Ballard family; after the 1901 fire destroyed the estate, a group of investors built the current hotel over the following decade.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Tudor Revival Claremont Hotel (1915) with 160-foot central tower in the Berkeley Hills above Oakland, California.
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Claremont Resort & Club

Berkeley, CA

The Claremont Hotel opened on May 3, 1915 in time for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Designed by architect Charles W. Dickey for the Realty Syndicate of 'Borax' Smith and Frank Havens, it was built in Tudor Revival style with a 160-foot central tower that is among the world's tallest wooden buildings. The site previously held a castle-like estate built by Bill Thornburg that burned in 1901.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High
The historic Bernard Maybeck-designed Faculty Club building at UC Berkeley
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Faculty Club at UC Berkeley

Berkeley, CA

The Faculty Club at UC Berkeley was established in 1902 as a gathering space for university faculty. Henry Morse Stephens, chair of the History Department, lived in the west wing of the Club for over two decades, using Room 219 as his residence until his death on April 16, 1919. At the time of his death, Stephens had been compiling over 800 personal accounts of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake — a project that remained unfinished.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Beaux-Arts Hearst Memorial Mining Building (1907) by John Galen Howard at UC Berkeley, funded by Phoebe Hearst.
Other Dark Tourism Site

Hearst Memorial Mining Building

Berkeley, CA

The Hearst Memorial Mining Building was completed in 1907 to a design by university architect John Galen Howard. It was funded by Phoebe Apperson Hearst as a memorial to her husband, Senator George Hearst, who made his fortune in mining. The Beaux-Arts building remains the central facility for UC Berkeley's Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

$ All Ages Family: High
307-foot Sather Tower (the Campanile, 1914) by John Galen Howard at the University of California, Berkeley.
Other Dark Tourism Site

Sather Tower (The Campanile)

Berkeley, CA

Sather Tower, commonly called the Campanile, was completed in 1914 to a design by John Galen Howard and modeled loosely on the bell tower of St. Mark's Square in Venice. At 307 feet, it is the third-tallest bell-and-clock tower in the world and houses a 61-bell carillon. It was funded by Jane K. Sather in memory of her husband Peder.

$ All Ages Family: High

Eureka — 7

Eighteen-room Victorian Carson Mansion (1886), Queen Anne / Eastlake / Stick redwood lumber-baron home in Eureka, California.
Haunted House / Historic Home

Carson Mansion (Ingomar Club)

Eureka, CA

Built 1884-1886 for redwood-lumber baron William Carson, the 18-room Victorian combines Queen Anne, Eastlake, Stick, and Italianate elements with a four-story tower overlooking Humboldt Bay. Since 1950 it has been the private clubhouse of the Ingomar Club. It is widely cited as a visual inspiration for Disney's Haunted Mansion and the silhouette image of the American haunted house.

$ All Ages Family: High
Classical Revival facade of the Clarke Historical Museum at 240 E Street in Old Town Eureka, California — a 1911 former bank on the National Register
Museum / Historical Site

Clarke Historical Museum

Eureka, CA

Constructed in 1911 as the joint home of the Bank of Eureka and the Savings Bank of Humboldt, the Classical Revival building was designed by prominent San Francisco architect Albert Pissis. Since 1960 it has housed the Clarke Historical Museum, founded by Cecile Clarke. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

$ All Ages Family: High
Four-story Elizabethan Tudor Revival Eureka Inn (1922) covering a full city block of downtown Eureka, California.
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Eureka Inn

Eureka, CA

The Eureka Inn opened in 1922 as a four-story, 104-room Elizabethan Tudor Revival hotel covering a full city block of downtown Eureka. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in February 1982 and now operates as Eureka Inn, Trademark Collection by Wyndham.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Victorian exterior of the Historic Eagle House on the corner of 2nd and C Streets in Old Town Eureka, California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Historic Eagle House (The Inn at 2nd & C)

Eureka, CA

The Eagle House was built in 1888 by Finnish immigrants Henry and Elvira Tornroth as a hotel and restaurant on the corner of 2nd and C Streets in Eureka's Old Town, serving sailors, loggers, and merchants arriving at Humboldt Bay. The building is an intact example of commercial Victorian architecture on the Northern California coast, now operating as a 23-room boutique hotel and restaurant.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Falk Historic Logging Ghost Town (Falk Archaeological District)
Outdoor / Natural Site

Falk Historic Logging Ghost Town (Falk Archaeological District)

Eureka, CA

Noah and Elijah Falk founded this redwood lumber company town in 1884 in what is now Humboldt County's Headwaters Forest Reserve. At its peak the settlement housed some 400 workers and their families — many Scandinavian immigrants — with a cookhouse, dance hall, general store, post office, and school. The Great Depression forced the mill to close in 1937, the town was abandoned, and most buildings were demolished in 1979. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Falk Archaeological District in November 2023.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Surviving 1853 buildings at Fort Humboldt State Historic Park on a bluff above Humboldt Bay in Eureka, California (HABS CA-1643)
Battlefield / Military Site

Fort Humboldt State Historic Park

Eureka, CA

Fort Humboldt was established in 1853 by the U.S. 4th Infantry on a bluff overlooking Humboldt Bay in Eureka, California. The post served as a base for federal troops during the conflicts between settlers and the region's Indigenous tribes, and was briefly the assignment of Captain Ulysses S. Grant. The fort closed in 1870; the surviving hospital building anchors today's California State Historic Park.

$ All Ages Family: High
Front facade of the Morris Graves Museum of Art, the former Carnegie Free Library in Eureka, California, a Classical Revival brick building
Museum / Historical Site

Morris Graves Museum of Art (former Carnegie Library)

Eureka, CA

Eureka's Carnegie Free Library opened in 1902 in a Classical Revival building at Seventh and F Streets, the product of a $20,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie. It served as the town's public library for 70 years before facing demolition in the 1990s, when the Humboldt Arts Council purchased it for $1 and undertook a $1.5 million restoration.

$ All Ages Family: High

Monterey — 7

White adobe building with a porch at the corner of Pacific and Scott Streets in Monterey, California
Theater / Performance Venue

California's First Theatre

Monterey, CA

Built about 1844 by English sailor Jack Swan as a lodging house and saloon for sailors, this Monterey adobe became the site of California's first paid theatrical performances in 1847-48, when soldiers from Colonel Stevenson's regiment staged plays there. It is a California Historical Landmark within Monterey State Historic Park.

$ All Ages Family: High
Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Cannery Row Ghost Tour

Monterey, CA

Cannery Row is the Monterey waterfront district that grew up around the sardine-canning industry in the early 20th century and was made famous by John Steinbeck's 1945 novel. After the sardine fishery collapsed mid-century, the row was redeveloped into a tourist and restaurant district. A local operator runs walking tours of its haunted lore.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior view of Colton Hall and the attached Old Monterey Jail on Pacific Street, Monterey, California
Museum / Historical Site

Colton Hall Museum and Jail

Monterey, CA

Built in 1847 as Monterey's public school and town hall, Colton Hall hosted the 48-delegate California Constitutional Convention in 1849. The city jail, added in 1854, held criminals through 1956. Its most notorious episode came in 1873 when outlaw Anastacio Garcia was found hanged inside his cell — killed by unknown parties before he could stand trial.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior view of Larkin House at 464 Calle Principal, Monterey — California's first two-story house, built 1835 in Monterey Colonial style
Museum / Historical Site

Larkin House

Monterey, CA

Thomas Oliver Larkin completed this two-story adobe at 464 Calle Principal in 1835, blending his New England framing instincts with the local adobe building tradition. The result established what became known as the Monterey Colonial style. Larkin served as the only American Consul to the Mexican government in California and played a direct role in the 1846 American takeover of the territory. Rachel Holmes Larkin, the first Anglo-American woman to settle in Alta California, lived here until Thomas sold the property in 1849.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the Robert Louis Stevenson House, a two-story Spanish Colonial adobe at 530 Houston Street in Monterey, California
Museum / Historical Site

Stevenson House (Robert Louis Stevenson House)

Monterey, CA

Built circa 1836 by customs administrator Rafael González, this Spanish Colonial adobe operated as the French Hotel under merchant Juan Girardin from the 1850s onward. In autumn 1879, Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson — already ill and short of funds — rented a room on the upper floor while waiting for his future wife Fanny Osbourne to finalize her divorce. In July and December of that same year, two members of the Girardin household died of typhoid fever.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Dining / Bar

Stokes Adobe (Restaurant 1833)

Monterey, CA

Built in 1833 for fur trapper Ambrose Tomlinson, this two-story downtown adobe became the home and pharmacy of James Stokes, a British sailor who reinvented himself as a physician without credentials. Stokes served as personal doctor to Governor José Figueroa, who died under his care in 1835. Stokes died by self-poisoning in 1864.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Monterey Hotel

Monterey, CA

The Monterey Hotel was built in 1904 at 406 Alvarado Street in downtown Monterey. A three-story Victorian frame building with 69 guest rooms, it has operated as a hotel continuously since its opening and is designated a historic landmark by the City of Monterey.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Pasadena — 7

Aerial survey view of The Bunker Experience (Union Savings Bank Vault)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

The Bunker Experience (Union Savings Bank Vault)

Pasadena, CA

The building at 20 N Raymond Avenue in Old Pasadena is considered one of the city's oldest surviving structures, dating to the late 1880s as the home of Union Savings Bank. In 1901, a robbery attempt reportedly breached the vault using explosives and is said to have opened passages connecting to underground catacombs beneath Old Pasadena. When escape room operators Bea Egeto and Charlotte Bjornbak purchased the basement in the early 2020s, they found a functioning vault system with a local ghost story already attached.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena viewed from the Arroyo Seco below, showing the nine concrete arches spanning 148 feet above the canyon
Outdoor / Natural Site

Colorado Street Bridge

Pasadena, CA

Completed December 13, 1913, the Colorado Street Bridge was designed by Waddell and Harrington and built by contractor J.D. Mercereau using 11,000 cubic yards of concrete. At 148.5 feet above the Arroyo Seco, it was among the highest concrete bridges in the world at its opening. Closed by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and reopened in 1993 after a $27 million restoration that added safety barriers.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
True Crime Site

Mills Place Alley (1885 Yuen Kee Laundry Massacre Site)

Pasadena, CA

On November 6, 1885, a white mob of roughly 100 people attacked the Yuen Kee Chinese laundry in Mills Place Alley off West Green Street, setting fire to the building and driving the laundry's workers out. Over the following 24 hours, every Chinese resident of Pasadena — an estimated 60 to 100 people — was expelled from the city. The next morning, witnesses reported a lynching effigy erected near the scene.

$ All Ages Family: High
Pasadena Playhouse exterior facade on El Molino Avenue, showing the Spanish Colonial Revival architecture
Theater / Performance Venue

Pasadena Playhouse

Pasadena, CA

Gilmor Brown founded the Pasadena Playhouse in 1916 with a traveling acting troupe and built the current 686-seat Spanish Colonial Revival theater at 39 South El Molino in 1924–1925. The California legislature designated the Playhouse the official State Theatre of California in 1937. Brown ran the theater until his death in 1960, producing more than 2,000 plays and training actors who went on to Hollywood careers.

$$ All Ages Family: High
The 1929 Cravens Estate at 430 Madeline Drive in Pasadena, California, designed by Lewis P. Hobart
Haunted House / Historic Home

Cravens Estate (Former Red Cross Mansion)

Pasadena, CA

The Cravens Estate at 430 Madeline Drive in Pasadena was completed in 1929 for industrialist John S. Cravens and his wife, Mildred Myers Cravens. Designed by San Francisco architect Lewis P. Hobart, the 20,000-square-foot mansion was the most expensive home built in Pasadena at the time. It served as the American Red Cross local chapter headquarters from 1962 until its sale in 2017.

$ All Ages Family: High
Museum / Historical Site

Scottish Rite Cathedral (Sphinx Murder Site)

Pasadena, CA

Pasadena's Scottish Rite Cathedral was completed in 1925 in the Moderne style, its entrance flanked by a pair of stone sphinxes. On December 13, 1933, prominent local dentist Dr. Leonard Siever was found shot twice in the cathedral's adjacent parking lot — once in the head, once through the heart. No suspect was ever charged, and the case remains unsolved.

$ All Ages Family: High
Castle Green in Pasadena California, 1898 Moorish Colonial building at 99 S Raymond Avenue
Haunted House / Historic Home

The Castle Green

Pasadena, CA

The Castle Green at 99 South Raymond Avenue in Pasadena was completed in November 1898 and opened on January 16, 1899 as the Central Annex to Colonel G.G. Green's Hotel Green. Designed by architect Frederick Roehrig in a blend of Moorish Colonial, Spanish Revival, and Victorian elements, the building was converted in 1924 into 50 individually-owned residential units. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

$ All Ages Family: High

Redlands — 7

Photo of Barton Villa (Barton Mansion)
Haunted House / Historic Home

Barton Villa (Barton Mansion)

Redlands, CA

Barton Villa, at 11245 Nevada St in Redlands, was built in stages beginning in 1866–67 by Dr. Benjamin Barton, an early Anglo settler and large landowner in the area. The first fired-brick house in Redlands, it is the oldest surviving residence in the city. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 24, 1996. Dr. Barton purchased his initial 640-acre parcel in 1859 and retired from medicine in 1866 to build the estate.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Theater / Performance Venue

Glenn Wallichs Theatre, University of Redlands

Redlands, CA

Glenn Wallichs Theatre at the University of Redlands was named after Glenn Wallichs, co-founder of Capitol Records in 1942, following a donation to the university. It serves as the Department of Theatre and Dance's primary production space on the Redlands campus.

$ All Ages Family: High
East edge of Hillside Memorial Park cemetery, Redlands, California
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Hillside Memorial Park

Redlands, CA

Hillside Memorial Park was established in 1886 by Redlands co-founders Frank Brown and Edward Judson — two years before Redlands incorporated as a city — making it the oldest continually operating business in Redlands. The City of Redlands has owned and operated the 53-acre cemetery since 1918.

$ All Ages Family: High
Burrage Mansion exterior on West Crescent Avenue, Redlands — 1901 Mission Revival 28-room estate with twin bell towers and arcaded facade
Haunted House / Historic Home

Burrage Mansion (House of 1,000 Stairs)

Redlands, CA

The Burrage Mansion was built in 1901 by industrialist Albert C. Burrage in Redlands, California. It served as a convent for the Victory Noll Sisters from 1934 to 1974 and is now owned by the Rochford Foundation.

$ All Ages (exterior viewing only) Family: High
Kimberly Crest House and Gardens French chateau-style mansion in Redlands California
Haunted House / Historic Home

Kimberly Crest

Redlands, CA

Kimberly Crest was built in 1897 for Cornelia A. Hill, a wealthy New York widow, in the French chateau style by architects Oliver Perry Dennis and Lyman Farwell. In 1905, John Alfred Kimberly — co-founder of the Kimberly-Clark Corporation — purchased the 7,000-square-foot, three-story residence as a winter home. His youngest daughter, Mary Kimberly Shirk, inherited the estate and lived there until her death in 1979 at age 99, bequeathing it to the people of Redlands.

$ All Ages Family: High
Morey Mansion 1890 Queen Anne Victorian exterior in Redlands, California, often called 'America's Favorite Victorian'
Haunted House / Historic Home

Morey Mansion

Redlands, CA

Morey Mansion is an 1890 Queen Anne house in Redlands, California, built by retired shipbuilder David Morey and his wife Sarah from profits of their citrus nursery. The 4,800-square-foot, twenty-room residence was designed by Jerome Seymour and incorporates carved nautical motifs. Returned to private ownership in 2010, it operates today as a single-family residence.

$ All Ages Family: High
Theater / Performance Venue

The Fox Event Center (Fox Theatre Redlands)

Redlands, CA

The Redlands Fox Theatre was built in 1927 and opened December 28, 1928, as a 1,505-seat Mission Revival picture house designed by Lewis A. Smith for the West Coast Theatres chain. After West Coast merged with Fox Theatres in 1929 it became the Fox West Coast Redlands. The building reopened in 2009 as the Fox Event Center.

$$ All Ages (event-dependent) Family: High

San Jose — 7

Aerial survey view of Almaden Quicksilver County Park (Hacienda Cemetery)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Almaden Quicksilver County Park (Hacienda Cemetery)

San Jose, CA

The New Almaden quicksilver mine, which operated commercially from 1845 through the late 19th century, was the most productive mercury mine in North America and provided mercury essential to California gold mining operations. At its height, the operation employed over 1,800 workers from Mexico, Chile, England, Wales, Finland, and China — one of the most ethnically diverse industrial workforces in pre-statehood California. The Hacienda Cemetery holds miners and family members who died during this period; the Hidalgo Cemetery's bodies were relocated to Oak Hill in the 1930s. Santa Clara County operates the former mine lands as a public park.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted Dining / Bar

The GrandView Restaurant

San Jose, CA

The GrandView Restaurant occupies a building opened in 1884 as a stagecoach hotel serving travelers on the road to the James Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton. The observatory, funded by James Lick and completed in 1888, generated significant early traffic up the mountain, and roadside accommodation was an immediate commercial opportunity. The building has operated in hospitality for its entire history and has been a restaurant for several decades.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Open Graph image from happyhollow.org
Outdoor / Natural Site

Happy Hollow Park & Zoo

San Jose, CA

Happy Hollow Park & Zoo opened in 1961 in San Jose's Kelley Park, operated by the City of San Jose. The 16-acre facility includes a small amusement park and a zoo with an emphasis on endangered species native to North and South America. A creek running behind the baby animal zoo section is associated with the figure of a woman in a short red dress, believed in local lore to have been murdered there in the 1970s.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Hicks Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Hicks Road

San Jose, CA

Hicks Road is a rural corridor in the Santa Cruz Mountains foothills southwest of San Jose that has accumulated a persistent urban legend since the late 1960s or early 1970s. The legend centers on a community of pale, reclusive inhabitants — called 'Blood Albinos' in some versions — said to pursue vehicles that venture too far up the road. USC's Folklore Archive has documented the legend as one of the region's most stable and widespread pieces of contemporary folklore.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of La Forêt Restaurant (New Almaden Miners' Boarding House)
Haunted Dining / Bar

La Forêt Restaurant (New Almaden Miners' Boarding House)

San Jose, CA

The building at 21747 Bertram Road was constructed in 1848 as a two-story boarding house for workers at the New Almaden quicksilver mine — the first mercury mine in North America and the most productive in the hemisphere for much of the 19th century. La Forêt's own historical documentation identifies it as the first two-story hotel built in California. It sat along Guadalupe Creek, serving the boomtown that grew up around the mine. After operating as the Café del Rio in the 1930s, it became La Forêt in the 1970s and has been an upscale French restaurant since.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
East view of the sprawling Winchester Mystery House Victorian mansion in San Jose California
Haunted House / Historic Home

Winchester Mystery House

San Jose, CA

Sarah Lockwood Pardee Winchester, widow of William Wirt Winchester of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, purchased an unfinished farmhouse in San Jose in 1886 and oversaw 36 years of continuous expansion until her death in 1922. The 160-room mansion opened to the public in 1923 and has operated as a tour attraction ever since. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is California Historical Landmark No. 868.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Museum / Historical Site

Yoshihiro Uchida Hall (SJSU WWII Assembly Center)

San Jose, CA

San Jose State University's men's gymnasium, now Yoshihiro Uchida Hall, served in early 1942 as a federal assembly center for Japanese Americans ordered from their homes under Executive Order 9066. In the months following the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the Army used the campus facility as a processing point, where families were logged and temporarily held before being transported to internment camps. The building was renamed in 2000 to honor Yoshihiro Uchida, the legendary SJSU judo coach who was himself interned.

$ All Ages Family: High

Santa Cruz — 7

Haunted Dining / Bar

Adolph's Restaurant

Santa Cruz, CA

Adolph's Restaurant operated as a Santa Cruz institution from 1939 onward, serving as a gathering place for judges, lawyers, and the local community. Located proximate to the Santa Cruz County Courthouse, the restaurant became a judicial landmark. The building itself dates to the 1800s and is steeped in the city's legal and commercial history.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Hiking trail through Arana Gulch open space, Santa Cruz, California
Outdoor / Natural Site

Arana Gulch

Santa Cruz, CA

On the evening of February 11, 1865, Andrew Jackson Sloan — a prominent early Santa Cruz resident riding back from dinner downtown — was shot and killed near the old Arana Bridge by two assailants, Jose Rodriguez and Faustino Lorenzana. The Santa Cruz Daily Sentinel reported his funeral as one of the largest in the city's history. Sloan's death at what was then a remote crossing became the foundation for a persistent ghost sighting that began within a generation of the murder.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Evergreen Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Evergreen Cemetery

Santa Cruz, CA

Evergreen Cemetery on Evergreen Street was established in the 1850s, with the first recorded burial commonly dated to 1858. It holds Santa Cruz pioneers, a Grand Army of the Republic section honoring Civil War veterans, and a Chinese section where roughly 100 early Chinese immigrants were buried, most in graves whose original wooden markers have long since decayed. Since 2008 the cemetery has been managed by the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Golden Gate Villa
Haunted House / Historic Home

Golden Gate Villa

Santa Cruz, CA

Major Frank W. McLaughlin, a mining engineer who had made a fortune in Sierra Nevada hydraulic gold operations, completed this Queen Anne mansion on Beach Hill in 1891. Designed by architect Thomas J. Welch, its main tower was the highest point in Santa Cruz at the time. On November 16, 1907, after years of financial failure following his disastrous Feather River 'Chinese Wall' mining project, McLaughlin walked to stepdaughter Agnes's room while she slept and shot her in the head, then drank a cyanide cocktail.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Giant Dipper wooden roller coaster at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, July 2023
Other Dark Tourism Site

Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk — Giant Dipper

Santa Cruz, CA

The Giant Dipper opened May 17, 1924, as the centerpiece of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, built in 47 days using 327,000 feet of lumber. It is a National Historic Landmark. Three people have died on the ride, the first being 15-year-old Walter Fernald Byrne on September 21, 1924. The boardwalk's Plunge pool recorded five drownings between 1935 and 1959.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Santa Cruz Memorial Park
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Santa Cruz Memorial Park

Santa Cruz, CA

Santa Cruz Memorial Park, also known historically as the Odd Fellows or IOOF Cemetery, was founded in 1862 by Santa Cruz Lodge No. 96 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Burials accelerated during the 1876-1877 California diphtheria epidemic and after the 1898 California Powder Works explosions. The cemetery is the resting place of several Santa Cruz founders and remains an active memorial park on Ocean Street Extension.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Sunshine Villa (former McCray Hotel)

Santa Cruz, CA

The building at 80 Front Street on Beach Hill began as the McCray Hotel, a Victorian whose 1910 facade is one of several Santa Cruz structures pointed to as a possible model for the Bates Mansion in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho. After years of decline and a stretch of abandonment, the property was renovated in 1991 and reopened as Sunshine Villa, an assisted-living community.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Stockton — 7

Aerial survey view of B&M Building
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

B&M Building

Stockton, CA

Built in 1865 as the Philadelphia House hotel, the B&M Building is the second-oldest surviving brick building in downtown Stockton. Originally a three-story hotel facing Channel Street, it was expanded in 1870, renovated in 1909, and operated under several names — Breidenbach Hotel (1912), Bridge & Mason House (1925) — before taking its current name in 1935 from previous owners Joseph Breidenbach and Alexander McDonald. The building housed the Downtown Stockton Alliance and Visit Stockton offices for many years.

$ All Ages Family: High
Bob Hope (Fox) Theatre Spanish Colonial Revival facade at 242 East Main Street, Stockton, California
Theater / Performance Venue

Bob Hope (Fox) Theatre

Stockton, CA

The Fox California Theatre opened October 14, 1930, designed by Clifford Balch and Floyd Stanberry in Spanish Colonial Revival style with a seating capacity of 2,500. It was one of only two movie palaces built in California's Central Valley. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, the theatre underwent an $8.5 million restoration and reopened September 2004 as the Bob Hope Theatre, renamed in honor of entertainer Bob Hope at the request of lead donor Alex G. Spanos.

$$ All Ages Family: High
True Crime Site

California Hotel (Emma LeDoux Trunk Murder Site)

Stockton, CA

On March 24, 1906, Emma LeDoux poisoned her third husband, Albert McVicar, in a downtown Stockton hotel and concealed his body in a steamer trunk that was left at the Southern Pacific depot. She became the first woman in California sentenced to death.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of San Joaquin County Courthouse (Stockton)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

San Joaquin County Courthouse (Stockton)

Stockton, CA

The San Joaquin County Courthouse in Stockton is the third on its downtown site. The building visitors see today is a 13-story, 301,000-square-foot facility that opened in 2017, replacing a mid-century modernist courthouse from 1964 that itself replaced an 1890 domed courthouse designed by Elijah E. Myers.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
1866 albumen photograph of the State Insane Asylum at Stockton, California, showing the front facade of the original building
Asylum / Hospital

CSU Stanislaus Stockton Center (former Stockton State Hospital)

Stockton, CA

Opened in 1851 as the Insane Asylum of California at Stockton — California's first public psychiatric institution — the facility operated for 144 years before closing in 1995-96. Its early decades included documented superintendent misconduct, forced patient labor, and under-reported deaths. The facility's grounds yielded a mass grave discovered in 2005 containing remains of more than 4,000 unidentified patients.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of East Eight Mile Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

East Eight Mile Road

Stockton, CA

East 8 Mile Road is a paved rural road that runs along the northern boundary of Stockton, California, between Stockton and the city of Lodi in San Joaquin County. The stretch near Elkhorn Golf Club and Shumway Oak Grove Regional Park has been documented by Visit Stockton, the city's official tourism board, as one of the area's most notable haunted sites.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Mission Revival Hotel Stockton building exterior at 133 E. Weber Avenue, Stockton, California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Stockton

Stockton, CA

Edgar B. Brown designed the Hotel Stockton in Mission Revival style; construction began in 1907 and the hotel opened May 26, 1910 with 252 rooms. The city of Stockton moved its City Hall into the building in 1912, where it remained until 1926. After the hotel closed in November 1960, the building served as the county courthouse (1960–1964) and county office space; it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1981 and converted to low-income apartments in 2005.

$ All Ages Family: High

Nevada City — 6

Photo of Firehouse No. 1 Museum
Museum / Historical Site

Firehouse No. 1 Museum

Nevada City, CA

Completed in May 1861 by the Nevada Hose Company, Firehouse No. 1 was Nevada City's second firehouse. It operated until 1938 and reopened in 1947 as a museum run by the Nevada County Historical Society.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Hotel / Inn

National Exchange Hotel

Nevada City, CA

The National Exchange Hotel opened August 20, 1856, when Nevada City was the largest and richest gold-mining town in California. Built as a three-story brick masonry structure in the Classical Revival style, it served simultaneously as hotel, telegraph office, stagecoach hub, and U.S. Post Office annex.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Nevada City Haunted History Tour (Mark Lyon)

Nevada City, CA

The Nevada City Haunted History Tour is a long-running historical ghost walk led by actor, writer, and storyteller Mark Lyon, author of 'Haunted Nevada City and Grass Valley.' For more than fifteen years it has explored the downtown of a town that, when the National Exchange Hotel opened in 1856, was the largest and richest gold-mining town in California.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Nevada Theatre
Theater / Performance Venue

Nevada Theatre

Nevada City, CA

The Nevada Theatre opened September 9, 1865, on a site cleared after the 1863 Bailey House Hotel fire. It is California's oldest existing theater building and California Historical Landmark No. 863.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Front facade of the Nevada Brewery (Stonehouse) building at 107 Sacramento Street, Nevada City, California — locally quarried granite construction
Haunted Dining / Bar

Stonehouse Brewery (The Stone House)

Nevada City, CA

The Stonehouse Brewery was built in 1882 by businessman George Gehrig on the site of a former temperance hall in downtown Nevada City. Italian stonemasons and Chinese laborers quarried local granite to construct both the building and a system of underground tunnels that ran beneath the facility.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The National Exchange Hotel in Nevada City California, historic 1856 Gold Rush hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The National Exchange Hotel

Nevada City, CA

The National Exchange Hotel opened in 1856 in Nevada City when the surrounding town was the largest and richest mining settlement in California. The classical-revival brick hotel hosted miners, businessmen, and President Herbert Hoover, and is widely regarded as the oldest continuously operating hotel in California. A full restoration completed in 2021 returned the building to active service.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Pleasanton — 6

Haunted Dining / Bar

Blue Agave Club

Pleasanton, CA

The Blue Agave Club has operated since 1997 in a Victorian commercial building on Pleasanton's Main Street dating to the 1880s. The restaurant is a fixture in Pleasanton's historic downtown district and a documented stop on the annual Museum on Main Ghost Walk.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Shadows in the late afternoon.
Haunted Dining / Bar

Gay Nineties Pizza

Pleasanton, CA

Gay Nineties Pizza occupies an 1864 building on Main Street in Pleasanton, one of the oldest commercial structures in the city. Originally a general store, bar, and Wells Fargo stagecoach stop with 10 rooms for travelers, the upper floor later housed a brothel. Chinese railroad laborers excavated underground tunnels connecting the building to the nearby Pleasanton Hotel. The restaurant has operated at this location for over 65 years.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Dining / Bar

Gay Nineties Pizza (Pleasanton)

Pleasanton, CA

The building at 288 Main Street in Pleasanton was constructed in 1864, making it one of the oldest surviving commercial structures in the city. It operated as a general store and unofficial Wells Fargo stagecoach banking stop, with the upper floor serving as lodging and later a brothel. In 1959 it became Gay 90's Pizza, which continues operating today.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Dining / Bar

Handles Gastropub

Pleasanton, CA

The current Handles Gastropub stands on the site of the Pleasanton Hotel, a 19th-century establishment in a town that local accounts from the era described as one of the roughest in Contra Costa Valley. A violent death in the hotel's upstairs hallway in the 1870s became the anchor story for the downtown area's ghost walk tradition, which has operated through the Museum on Main for over fifteen years.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
True Crime Site

Kottinger's Barn (Historic Jail)

Pleasanton, CA

John Wilhelm Kottinger built the adobe structure at Ray Street in 1852. Kottinger served as Alameda County's first Justice of the Peace and used the structure as a holding facility for the county's earliest prisoners. A reported 500-foot tunnel connected the jail to his main residence, intended to prevent escapes. The building is the only adobe structure that has survived in Pleasanton and is documented by an HMDB historical marker.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Museum on Main / Pleasanton Downtown Ghost Walk
Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Museum on Main / Pleasanton Downtown Ghost Walk

Pleasanton, CA

The Museum on Main is Pleasanton's local history museum, operating from the historic downtown district at 603 Main Street. Its annual Downtown Ghost Walk, running for over 15 years, draws on Pleasanton's documented 1850s history as one of the Bay Area's roughest inland towns during the Gold Rush era.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Hollywood — 5

Photo of Egyptian Theatre (Grauman's Egyptian)
Theater / Performance Venue

Egyptian Theatre (Grauman's Egyptian)

Hollywood, CA

Designed by architect Meyer & Holler for showman Sid Grauman, the Egyptian Theatre opened on October 18, 1922 with a premiere of Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood — the first Hollywood movie premiere of the kind that would define the industry's relationship with its own spectacle. Built in Egyptian Revival style at a moment when Egyptomania was at its peak following the Tutankhamun excavation coverage, the theater operated as a first-run cinema for decades before a 1994 earthquake left it damaged. The American Cinematheque undertook a major restoration, reopening the theater in 1998.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Hillview / Hudson Apartments (Black Rabbit Rose)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Hillview / Hudson Apartments (Black Rabbit Rose)

Hollywood, CA

The Hillview Apartments at 6533 Hollywood Blvd were built in 1917 by Paramount co-founders Jesse Lasky and Samuel Goldwyn to house aspiring actors arriving in Hollywood. Silent film stars Clara Bow, Viola Dana, and Stan Laurel lived here; Rudolph Valentino is reported to have operated a speakeasy in the building's basement during Prohibition. The building remained a residential property into the 21st century; in 2011, a resident murdered his fiancée in the hallway. It now operates as the Black Rabbit Rose magic theater on the ground floor.

$$ 21+ Family: Low
Forecourt entrance of Grauman's (TCL) Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California
Theater / Performance Venue

Hollywood Mann's Chinese Theatre

Hollywood, CA

Sid Grauman opened the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard on May 18, 1927, with the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings. Built at a cost of approximately $2 million, the theatre features Chinese pagoda architecture, imported temple bells, and the famous forecourt where over 300 celebrities have pressed their hands and feet into wet concrete. Now operating as TCL Chinese Theatre under current ownership, it remains one of the most visited film venues in the United States.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Scenic view across Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, the wooded enclave linked by Lookout Mountain Drive and steeped in 1960s music and crime lore
Outdoor / Natural Site

Laurel Canyon & Lookout Mountain Drive

Hollywood, CA

Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Lookout Mountain Avenue in the Hollywood Hills have intersected horse-drawn traffic and automobile traffic since the road was cut through the hills in the early 20th century. The winding canyon corridor became a primary route from the Hollywood flatlands to the ridge communities above.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Musso & Frank Grill
Haunted Dining / Bar

Musso & Frank Grill

Hollywood, CA

French immigrant Firmin Toulet opened Frank's François Café at 6669 Hollywood Boulevard in 1919. In 1923, Joseph Musso joined as partner, the name changed, and the restaurant expanded to 6667 Hollywood in 1936. The Mosso family acquired full ownership and has operated the restaurant continuously since. In 2019, it became the first restaurant to receive a Hollywood Walk of Fame star.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Placerville — 5

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Cary House Hotel

Placerville, CA

The Cary House Hotel opened in 1857 in Placerville — then known informally as Hangtown for the vigilante executions conducted in its early years — and quickly earned a reputation as the finest hotel in the California gold country. The current building on Main Street has operated continuously since, drawing guests with its antique-furnished rooms and well-documented ghost stories. Featured on Travel Channel's 'Portals to Hell' in 2020.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Ghost Tours of Placerville

Placerville, CA

Placerville grew from the Gold Rush camp Old Dry Diggings into the town nicknamed 'Hangtown' after early-1849 vigilante hangings on Main Street. The walking tour uses that downtown core to recount the town's executions and Gold Rush history.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Historic Beer Tower
Haunted Dining / Bar

Hangman's Tree Ice Cream Saloon

Placerville, CA

Placerville, California, earned the name Hangtown during the California Gold Rush after a large white oak in the town center served as a vigilante execution site from 1849 to 1853. The tree was cut down in 1853, but the stump remained beneath a two-story building constructed in 1895 over the same lot. The site is California Historical Landmark No. 141. The Hangman's Tree Ice Cream Saloon opened at this address in 2017.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Haunted Hangtown Ghost Tours
Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Haunted Hangtown Ghost Tours

Placerville, CA

Haunted Hangtown Ghost Tours runs paranormal-investigation walking tours through Placerville, the Gold Rush town nicknamed 'Hangtown' for its 1849 vigilante hangings. The tour ties its equipment-based investigation to the town's documented violent founding.

$$ Minimum 16 Family: Moderate
Haunted House / Historic Home

Sequoia Mansion (Bee-Bennett House)

Placerville, CA

The Sequoia Mansion was built in 1853 by Colonel Frederick A. Bee, a Gold Rush merchant who would later help establish the Pony Express in California. Judge Marcus P. Bennett purchased and expanded the house into a 16-room estate in 1889. The Placerville Elks Club owned it from 1958 until 2001, when it became a wedding and events venue.

$ All Ages Family: High

Santa Barbara — 5

Photo of Casa de la Guerra
Museum / Historical Site

Casa de la Guerra

Santa Barbara, CA

Built between 1818 and 1828 for José de la Guerra y Noriega, the fifth commandant of the Presidio de Santa Bárbara, Casa de la Guerra served as the political and social center of Mexican-era Santa Barbara. The de la Guerra family occupied the property until 1943; it is now a historic house museum operated by the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of El Presidio de Santa Bárbara State Historic Park
Museum / Historical Site

El Presidio de Santa Bárbara State Historic Park

Santa Barbara, CA

Construction began April 21, 1782, when Father Junípero Serra blessed the site selected by Governor Felipe de Neve. José Francisco Ortega served as the first comandante. Local Chumash people — organized under Chief Yanonalit — provided the labor to build the presidio's adobe structures. The original quadrangle was largely destroyed by 19th-century earthquakes. Today, only two original structures survive: El Cuartel (the second-oldest building in California) and the Cañedo Adobe, now the visitor center. The Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation manages the site under an operating agreement with California State Parks.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Lobero Theatre
Theater / Performance Venue

Lobero Theatre

Santa Barbara, CA

Italian immigrant José Lobero opened the first legitimate theatre in Santa Barbara on this site on February 22, 1873, repurposing an adobe schoolhouse as an opera house. A rebuilt Spanish Colonial Revival structure designed by George Washington Smith and Lutah Maria Riggs opened in 1924 and holds 604 seats. California Historical Landmark No. 361, it is California's oldest continuously operating theatre and the fourth-oldest performing arts theater in the country.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Old Mission Santa Barbara
Museum / Historical Site

Old Mission Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara, CA

Mission Santa Barbara was founded December 4, 1786 — the feast day of Saint Barbara — as the tenth of California's twenty-one Franciscan missions. It is the only California mission to have maintained an unbroken Franciscan presence since its founding, earning the informal title 'Queen of the Missions.'

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Santa Barbara County Courthouse
Museum / Historical Site

Santa Barbara County Courthouse

Santa Barbara, CA

The Santa Barbara County Courthouse was built in 1929 following the 1925 earthquake that destroyed much of downtown. Designed in Spanish Colonial Revival style across a full city block, it is a National Historic Landmark and one of the most photographed courthouses in the United States.

$ All Ages Family: High

Truckee — 5

Photo of Donner Memorial State Park (Emigrant Trail Museum)
Museum / Historical Site

Donner Memorial State Park (Emigrant Trail Museum)

Truckee, CA

In the fall of 1846, a wagon train of 88 westbound emigrants took the Hastings Cutoff shortcut through the Sierra Nevada and became snowbound at what is now Donner Lake in late October. Approximately 41 members of the party died over the following five months, and surviving members resorted to consuming the flesh of the dead. California State Parks operates the site with a museum interpreting the disaster, the Washoe people's history, and railroad construction through the pass.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Donner Memorial State Park
True Crime Site

Donner Memorial State Park

Truckee, CA

In the fall of 1846, a wagon party of 87 emigrants took the Hastings Cutoff and arrived at the Sierra Nevada too late to cross before winter. Snowbound at approximately 6,000 feet elevation near present-day Truckee from late October 1846 through April 1847, 41 of the 87 died of starvation and exposure. Surviving members consumed the flesh of the dead. The site is a National Historic Landmark. California State Parks operates it with a museum, the preserved Murphy cabin foundation, and the 22-foot Pioneer Monument.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Old Truckee Jail Museum
Museum / Historical Site

Old Truckee Jail Museum

Truckee, CA

The Old Truckee Jail was built in 1875 with 32-inch-thick granite walls and riveted steel doors, serving Nevada County's mountain community until it was decommissioned in May 1964. It is one of the few original buildings surviving in downtown Truckee and is now operated as a museum by the Truckee-Donner Historical Society.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Richardson House

Truckee, CA

Warren Richardson, a Maine-born lumber operator who spent nearly 25 years in Truckee's timber and mining industries, built this Victorian home in 1887 for his wife Maggie Morrison Richardson. Richardson was among Truckee's wealthiest citizens; the couple had four sons. After Maggie's death he remarried, and the property eventually passed out of family hands in 1940. It subsequently served as a boarding house before being restored as a vacation rental.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Truckee Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Truckee Hotel

Truckee, CA

The Truckee Hotel was built in 1873 as the American House, serving travelers on the newly completed transcontinental railroad. It was later called the Whitney House before taking the town's name in 1976. A major exterior renovation in 1992 preserved its downtown Truckee facade while modernizing its 36 rooms.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Whittier — 5

Aerial survey view of Founders Memorial Park (Dead Man's Park)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Founders Memorial Park (Dead Man's Park)

Whittier, CA

Founders Memorial Park in Whittier, California, occupies the site of two former cemeteries — the Quaker-founded Broadway Cemetery and the Jewish Mount Sinai Cemetery. After both fell into disrepair through the mid-twentieth century, Whittier converted the property into a public park in 1968, removing headstones while leaving most burials in place.

$ All Ages Family: High
The historic 1902 citrus packinghouse on Whittier Boulevard now operating as King Richard's Antique Center
Other Dark Tourism Site

King Richard's Antique Center

Whittier, CA

The Whittier Citrus Association built the packinghouse at Penn Street and Whittier Boulevard in 1902, expanding it in 1904. It was one of California's largest citrus operations at its peak, shipping 650 carloads of oranges and 250 of lemons per year by 1906. King Richard's Antique Center has occupied the four-story main structure as a 57,000-square-foot antique mall since 1979.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Turnbull Canyon
Outdoor / Natural Site

Turnbull Canyon

Whittier, CA

At 3:34 a.m. on April 18, 1952, a North Continent Airlines Curtiss C-46 charter flight (operating as Robin Airlines, Flight 416W) struck a fog-shrouded ridge at 1,046 feet in the Puente Hills near Turnbull Canyon while on approach to Los Angeles International Airport. All 29 people aboard were killed. The wreckage was not located for nearly seven hours.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Museum / Historical Site

Whittier Historical Society Museum

Whittier, CA

The Whittier Historical Society Museum has operated since 1983 in the Bailey House, a structure built for Frank and Lula Bailey in the late 19th century in Uptown Whittier. The museum collects and preserves artifacts documenting Whittier's Quaker-founded history and frontier era. For years, staff and local residents discussed unexplained incidents at the building before the museum formalized a ghost tour partnership in the 2010s.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Whittier Village Cinemas (Wardman Theater)
Theater / Performance Venue

Whittier Village Cinemas (Wardman Theater)

Whittier, CA

The Wardman Theater was built in 1932 by businessman Aubrey Wardman and designed by architect David S. Bushnell, anchoring the commercial strip of Uptown Whittier. It survived the October 1, 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake — a 5.9-magnitude event that killed 8 people and caused significant damage across the region — and continues to operate as a multiplex cinema under the Starlight Cinemas brand.

$ All Ages Family: High

Coloma — 4

Aerial survey view of Coloma Pioneer Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Coloma Pioneer Cemetery

Coloma, CA

Coloma Pioneer Cemetery was established in 1848 at the site of John Sutter's mill, where gold was discovered in January of that year. The cemetery holds over 600 known burials in approximately 400–500 graves — miners, farmers, tradespeople, and their families who formed the first wave of California's Gold Rush.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park
Museum / Historical Site

Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park

Coloma, CA

On January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, triggering the California Gold Rush. Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park preserves most of the original Coloma townsite and is a National Historic Landmark.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Pioneer Cemetery (Coloma)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Pioneer Cemetery (Coloma)

Coloma, CA

Pioneer Cemetery in Coloma, California, was established in 1848 as the Sutter's Mill Cemetery and is one of the oldest surviving burial grounds in the state. Located within Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, it holds the remains of more than 600 miners, merchants, tradespeople, and their families who came west during the California Gold Rush. The cemetery passed into California state ownership in 1981.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted House / Historic Home

The Vineyard House

Coloma, CA

The Vineyard House at 530 Cold Springs Road in Coloma, California was built between 1878 and 1879 by Robert Chalmers, a Gold Rush-era Scotsman, on land that had belonged to his predecessor and now-wife Louisa, widow of Martin Allhoff. The 19-bedroom Victorian served as a jail, inn, restaurant, and winery. The house was featured on That's Incredible! and Ripley's Believe It Or Not, and has been closed to the public for years.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Gilroy — 4

Open Graph image from www.gilroygardens.org
Other Dark Tourism Site

Gilroy Gardens

Gilroy, CA

Gilroy Gardens opened to the public on June 15, 2001, founded by Michael and Claudia Bonfante following their sale of the Nob Hill Foods supermarket chain. The park was built over 25 years on property originally developed as Tree Haven, a commercial nursery. The name changed to Gilroy Gardens in February 2007.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Mt. Madonna County Park (Henry Miller Estate Ruins)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Mt. Madonna County Park (Henry Miller Estate Ruins)

Gilroy, CA

Henry Miller, who at his peak controlled more land in California than any private individual in state history, built a summer home on the ridge now occupied by Mt. Madonna County Park in the late 19th century. The estate grounds included working horse facilities. Miller's daughter Sarah died after being thrown from a horse on the property, and the ruins of the stone main house remain under the redwood canopy of the county park.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted House / Historic Home

Old Gilroy Hotel

Gilroy, CA

The Old Gilroy Hotel building sits at 7365 Monterey Road in downtown Gilroy, California. Historical-building documentation places the structure among the oldest commercial buildings remaining on Monterey Road, the original El Camino Real corridor through the south Santa Clara Valley. The hotel ceased operation in the 20th century; the building has since served various retail and commercial tenants.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Pacheco Pass (Highway 152)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Pacheco Pass (Highway 152)

Gilroy, CA

Pacheco Pass has functioned as a transit corridor since the Spanish colonial era. Juan Bautista de Anza traversed the Diablo Range in this area in 1776 on his overland expedition from Sonora to San Francisco. By the mid-19th century the pass carried a stagecoach route connecting Santa Clara Valley to the San Joaquin Valley, and the road through it was among the most-traveled trans-Coast-Range routes in California.

$ All Ages Family: High

Hanford — 4

Two-story stone Carnegie library building in Romanesque Revival style
Museum / Historical Site

Carnegie Museum of Kings County

Hanford, CA

The museum occupies Hanford's 1905 Carnegie library, built with a $12,500 grant from Andrew Carnegie. It served as the city library until 1968, was saved from demolition by local fundraising, and reopened as the Kings County history museum in 1974.

$$ All Ages for daytime visits; investigation events may set a minimum age Family: Moderate
Photo of Hanford Civic Auditorium
Theater / Performance Venue

Hanford Civic Auditorium

Hanford, CA

Construction of the Hanford Civic Auditorium began in 1923, and the building was dedicated in 1924 as a public acknowledgment of appreciation to the young Americans who served in World War I, and as a memorial to those who did not return. It has served as the center of civic life in Hanford for a century, hosting council sessions, school events, performances, and community gatherings.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Irwin Street Inn

Hanford, CA

The Irwin Street Inn & Restaurant at 522 N. Irwin Street in Hanford, California was built in 1886 as part of the Victorian-era development of Hanford, the Kings County seat. The property comprises four Victorian houses arranged around a courtyard, with antique furnishings and period stained glass windows. It was converted to its current use as a restaurant and inn around 1980 and has operated under multiple owners since.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Prison / Reformatory

The Bastille (former Kings County Jail)

Hanford, CA

The Bastille served as Kings County's jail and sheriff's headquarters from 1897 to 1964. Built by the Exeter Granite Works at a final cost of roughly $14,000, it was designed to hold 60 inmates but held more than 260 by the time it closed. Its crenellated octagonal tower and heavy granite construction gave the building its enduring nickname.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Jackson — 4

Photo of Argonaut Mine Disaster Site
Other Dark Tourism Site

Argonaut Mine Disaster Site

Jackson, CA

The Argonaut Mine, in operation from the 1850s until 1942, was the site of the deadliest gold-mining disaster in California history. On August 27, 1922, a fire broke out at a depth of approximately 4,650 feet and killed all 47 trapped miners — most of them Italian, Spanish, and Serbian immigrants — before rescuers could reach them.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Jackson Ghost Tour (US Ghost Adventures)

Jackson, CA

Jackson is the seat of Amador County, a Gold Rush town in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Its Main Street retains 19th-century commercial buildings, including the National Hotel, whose site has hosted a hotel since the 1850s. The walking tour uses this downtown as its route.

$$ All Ages; content geared toward older children and adults Family: Moderate
Photo of Kennedy Gold Mine
Museum / Historical Site

Kennedy Gold Mine

Jackson, CA

The Kennedy Gold Mine operated from 1860 to 1942 in Jackson, California, reaching a depth of 5,912 feet — the deepest in North America at its closure. It was forced shut by the War Production Board in 1942. Kennedy and Argonaut mines together are California Historical Landmark No. 786.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Main Street in historic downtown Jackson, California looking toward the National Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

National Hotel Jackson

Jackson, CA

The site at 2 Water Street in Jackson was first occupied by the Louisiana House in 1852, a general store and hotel serving the California gold rush. A fire in 1862 destroyed the original structure and much of Jackson's business district; the current National Hotel was built on the ruins. The hotel hosted three future U.S. presidents — Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon — and in 1918 converted its upper two floors to an emergency ward during the Spanish influenza epidemic.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

San Luis Obispo — 4

Aerial survey view of Central Coast Surfboards
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Central Coast Surfboards

San Luis Obispo, CA

Central Coast Surfboards occupies a Marsh Street storefront in downtown San Luis Obispo that previously housed the Law's Hobby store. The local tourism guide notes the location's ground was earlier associated with a Masonic temple site, on the same block as the standing Masonic building at 859 Marsh.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Dorn Pyramid
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Dorn Pyramid

San Luis Obispo, CA

The Dorn Pyramid is a 25-foot granite mausoleum in San Luis Obispo's San Luis (Odd Fellows) Cemetery, built in 1905 by attorney Fred Adolphus Dorn after his wife Cora and their infant son both died within days of the boy's birth. Dorn left the tomb's last stones unfinished for his own eventual burial, but he died in San Francisco in 1940 and was buried there instead.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa
Museum / Historical Site

Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa

San Luis Obispo, CA

Father Junípero Serra founded Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa on September 1, 1772, making it the fifth of California's 21 missions. The Chumash people — who called the area Tilhini — were compelled to provide labor for construction and, once baptized, were not permitted to leave. Mission records document 2,644 baptisms, 763 marriages, and 2,268 burials through December 31, 1832. The mission functions today as both an active Catholic parish under the Diocese of Monterey and a public museum.

$ All Ages Family: High
Asylum / Hospital

Sunny Acres Orphanage (Bishop Street Studios)

San Luis Obispo, CA

Sunny Acres opened April 16, 1931, built on county grounds above Johnson Avenue as a home for orphans and children who were wards of the state. It later served as a TB clinic and juvenile detention facility before the Fire Marshal closed it in 1974 after decades of deteriorating conditions. The building sat abandoned for roughly 40 years before Transitions Mental Health Association renovated it as Bishop Street Studios, an affordable housing complex for residents with mental illness.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Sonora — 4

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Gunn House Hotel

Sonora, CA

The Gunn House is the oldest building in Sonora, a two-story adobe begun in 1850 by Dr. Lewis C. Gunn, a Philadelphia physician who came west for the Gold Rush. From this building Gunn published the Mother Lode's first newspaper, the Sonora Herald. The adobe was later sold and used as a hospital until roughly 1899-1900, then served other uses before being restored as the Gunn House Hotel.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Sonora Inn (Hotel Victoria)

Sonora, CA

The Sonora Inn opened in the 1890s as the Hotel Victoria, built for Captain William Nevills, owner of the Rawhide Mine near Jamestown, to capitalize on the Sierra Railway's 1899 arrival in Sonora. Listed by the California Office of Historic Preservation as Hotel Victoria / Sonora Inn, the downtown landmark has hosted notable guests over its long run and today operates as the restored Sonora Inn.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Theater / Performance Venue

Sonora Opera Hall

Sonora, CA

The Sonora Opera Hall was built in 1885 on the site of a flour mill that had burned earlier that year, financed with revenue from Sonora's Bonanza Gold Mine. For about a decade it was the town's premier venue for balls, concerts, plays, and political rallies before being converted to a carpenter shop in 1896. The City of Sonora acquired the deteriorated building in 1986 and restored it.

$ All Ages Family: High
Asylum / Hospital

Tuolumne General Hospital (former)

Sonora, CA

Tuolumne County's hospital traces its origins to 1849, when care for Gold Rush miners — including those struck by a deadly scurvy epidemic — began in a tent. The county hospital operated for over a century and a half, ending acute and emergency care on July 1, 2007, and closing its Acute Psychiatric Center on December 26, 2008. The campus at 101 Hospital Road is now partly used by the county's Behavioral Health Department.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

West Hollywood — 4

Haunted Dining / Bar

Comedy Store (former Ciro's nightclub)

West Hollywood, CA

The building opened on New Year's Eve 1935 as Club Seville, a Hollywood nightclub with a crystal dance floor. By 1940 it had become Ciro's, operated by William Wilkerson, which ran until 1957 as one of the Sunset Strip's premier celebrity venues. Gangster Mickey Cohen was among its most notorious regulars, conducting business from the building. Mitzi Shore purchased the property in 1976 and built the Comedy Store into its current form.

$$ 21+ Family: Low
Photo of Sunset Tower Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Sunset Tower Hotel

West Hollywood, CA

The Sunset Tower was completed in 1931 as one of the first Art Deco high-rises on the Sunset Strip. Its tenant list reads as a compressed history of mid-20th century Hollywood: Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Errol Flynn, and Truman Capote all lived here at various points. Bugsy Siegel occupied an apartment with a view of the Strip and is reported to have operated gambling activities from the building before his 1947 murder in Beverly Hills.

$$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of The Formosa Cafe
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Formosa Cafe

West Hollywood, CA

The Formosa Cafe opened in 1939 in West Hollywood across from the Samuel Goldwyn Studios lot, built around a recycled trolley car and quickly establishing itself as the industry's preferred informal gathering place. Bugsy Siegel was a regular; owner Lem Quon, a Chinese immigrant, ran the restaurant for decades and is credited with its survival through multiple redevelopment threats. The Formosa was restored and reopened in 2019 after an extensive rehabilitation.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of The Viper Room
True Crime Site

The Viper Room

West Hollywood, CA

The building at 8852 Sunset Blvd has operated as a music venue since at least the 1950s, when it was known as The Melody Room and had reported ties to organized crime. By the early 1990s it had become the Viper Room, co-owned by actor Johnny Depp. In the early hours of October 31, 1993, actor River Phoenix — 23 years old — collapsed on the sidewalk outside the club and was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. His cause of death was acute combined drug and alcohol toxicity.

$ 21+ Family: Low

Altadena — 3

Aerial survey view of Cobb Estate (Altadena Haunted Forest)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Cobb Estate (Altadena Haunted Forest)

Altadena, CA

Retired Oregon lumber magnate Charles Cobb built a mansion on 107 Altadena acres in 1918, formerly the site of an unsuccessful gold mine. He died in 1939. The property subsequently passed to the Pasadena Freemasons as a retirement home, then to the Sisters of St. Joseph as a retreat, and in 1957 to the Marx Brothers, who had the mansion demolished in 1959 and proposed rezoning the land as a cemetery. That plan failed, and the Angeles National Forest eventually absorbed the upper acres.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Altadena Gravity Hill (Loma Alta Drive)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Altadena Gravity Hill (Loma Alta Drive)

Altadena, CA

East Loma Alta Drive in Altadena is home to a well-documented gravity hill — an optical illusion that causes stopped vehicles to appear to roll uphill when placed in neutral. The phenomenon results from the road's curvature conflicting with the perceived horizontal baseline set by nearby trees and structures.

$ All Ages Family: High
Historic driveway view of the Mediterranean Revival Zane Grey Estate in Altadena, California from Mariposa Avenue (photographed 2012, pre-Eaton Fire)
Haunted House / Historic Home

Zane Grey Estate

Altadena, CA

The Zane Grey Estate is a 1907 Mediterranean Revival residence in Altadena, California, originally constructed as the first reinforced-concrete fireproof home in the area for Arthur Herbert Woodward and his wife Edith Norton Woodward. Western novelist Zane Grey purchased the property in 1920 and lived there until his death in 1939. The home's roof and interior were destroyed in the January 2025 Eaton Fire; the concrete walls survived.

$ All Ages Family: High

Anaheim — 3

It's a Small World iconic white facade at Disneyland in Anaheim California
Theater / Performance Venue

It's a Small World

Anaheim, CA

It's a Small World was created by Walt Disney and designer Mary Blair for the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair, where it operated in support of UNICEF. The attraction was transferred to Disneyland and opened in Fantasyland on May 28, 1966, as part of a $23 million expansion. Blair's bold color palette and stylized international doll figures defined the ride's visual identity. The attraction has operated continuously for nearly sixty years and remains one of Disneyland's most-ridden experiences.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Kmart on Euclid (Anaheim)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Kmart on Euclid (Anaheim)

Anaheim, CA

The Kmart at Katella Avenue and Euclid Street in Anaheim operated until early 2016, when it closed as part of Kmart's California store contraction. KTLA reported the closure alongside three other California Kmart stores. The property was subsequently acquired for redevelopment and now operates as a multi-tenant retail center.

$ All Ages Family: High
The Woelke-Stoffel House (Red Cross House), an 1896 Queen Anne mansion in Anaheim's Founders Park
Museum / Historical Site

Woelke-Stoffel House (The Red Cross House)

Anaheim, CA

The Woelke-Stoffel House is an 1894 Queen Anne Victorian in Anaheim, California, named for two of its owners, John Gottlieb Woelke and Peter Stoffel. The building is part of Anaheim's Founders Park preservation complex, located beside the 1857 Mother Colony House. Stoffel was a successful Anaheim citrus farmer in the early 20th century.

$ All Ages Family: High

Auburn — 3

Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Gold Country Ghost Tours of Auburn

Auburn, CA

Gold Country Ghost Tours has operated in Old Town Auburn since 2016, leading walking tours of ten historic sites and, more recently, staging a theatrical performance inside the 1894 Odd Fellows Hall. The tour material draws on Auburn's documented Gold Rush history.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Placer County Courthouse Museum
Museum / Historical Site

Placer County Courthouse Museum

Auburn, CA

The Placer County Courthouse was built in 1898 in Auburn, California, on the site of the town's first cemetery — bodies were relocated twice to accommodate the 1854 wooden courthouse and then the current stone building. The first public hangings in Auburn were carried out on this block.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Power's Mansion Inn

Auburn, CA

Power's Mansion Inn occupies a Victorian mansion built in the early 1880s by Harold T. Power, who struck a late fortune on his family's Hidden Treasure mine. The mansion later became a bed-and-breakfast and event venue in Auburn.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Benicia — 3

Exterior of the Benicia State Capitol building, a Greek Revival brick structure in Benicia, California
Museum / Historical Site

Benicia Capitol State Historic Park (Fischer-Hanlon House)

Benicia, CA

The Benicia Capitol served as California's third state capital from February 3, 1853 to February 24, 1854 — the only surviving capitol building from before Sacramento. The adjacent Fischer-Hanlon House dates to 1858, when Swiss immigrant Joseph Fischer acquired and relocated a fire-damaged Gold Rush hotel to serve as his family residence.

$ All Ages Family: High
Historic 1885 mill building converted to theater
Theater / Performance Venue

Benicia Old Town Theater / Portuguese Hall

Benicia, CA

The building at 140 W J Street in downtown Benicia was constructed in 1885 as a working mill. The structure was later converted to cultural and community use, becoming the Portuguese Cultural Center and home to the Benicia Theatre Group, established in 1964. The venue serves as both an active performing arts center and a documented paranormal hotspot.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Image depicts Zodiac Lake Herman Road victims David Arthur Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen. First published in US media December 1968.
Other Dark Tourism Site

Lake Herman Road

Benicia, CA

On December 20, 1968, high school students Betty Lou Jensen (16) and David Arthur Faraday (17) were shot and killed at a lover's lane turnout on Lake Herman Road, just inside the Benicia city limits. The attack was retroactively attributed to the Zodiac Killer following letters received by Bay Area newspapers in August 1969 in which the writer claimed responsibility.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Beverly Hills — 3

True Crime Site

Bugsy Siegel Murder House

Beverly Hills, CA

On June 20, 1947, organized crime figure Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel was shot nine times through the living room window of 810 N Linden Drive in Beverly Hills, a Spanish Colonial home leased by his girlfriend Virginia Hill while she was abroad. The killing was almost certainly ordered by the mob partners whose $6 million Flamingo Hotel investment in Las Vegas had gone severely over budget under Siegel's management. The murder was never solved.

$ All Ages Family: High
Greystone Mansion Tudor Revival limestone facade in Beverly Hills, California, the 1928 Doheny estate and public park
Haunted House / Historic Home

Greystone Mansion (Doheny Estate)

Beverly Hills, CA

Greystone Mansion, also known as the Doheny Estate, is a 55-room Tudor Revival home completed in 1928 in Beverly Hills, designed by Gordon Kaufmann for oil heir Edward 'Ned' Doheny Jr. Ned Doheny died in the house in a February 1929 murder-suicide alongside his secretary Hugh Plunkett. The City of Beverly Hills purchased the estate in 1965, and it has been a public park since 1971.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of The Beverly Hills Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Beverly Hills Hotel

Beverly Hills, CA

The Beverly Hills Hotel opened in 1912 — three years before the city it anchors was fully incorporated — and quickly became the social hub of the emerging film industry. Known as the Pink Palace for its flamingo-pink exterior and bougainvillea grounds, the hotel's bungalows have housed a roster spanning Marilyn Monroe, Howard Hughes, and the Beatles. In January 1977, British actor Peter Finch suffered a fatal heart attack in the hotel lobby hours after the Golden Globe nominations were announced, citing his role in Network.

$$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Chico — 3

Photo of Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park
Haunted House / Historic Home

Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park

Chico, CA

Bidwell Mansion was completed in 1868 as the home of John Bidwell, the pioneer and founder of Chico, and his wife Annie Kennedy Bidwell. The three-story brick Italianate villa was designed by architect Henry W. Cleaveland. After Annie Bidwell's death in 1918 the property passed through institutional hands and became a California State Historic Park, operating as a house museum until an arson fire on December 11, 2024 gutted the interior.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Goodman House Bed & Breakfast

Chico, CA

The Goodman House was built in 1906 on Chico's Esplanade for Horace Goodman, who deeded the property in 1905. George Vogelsang, a subsequent long-term resident, occupied the Colonial Revival home for nearly five decades until his death in 1958 at age 90 following a fall on the steep interior staircase. The property later served as law offices before Tom and Margo Graham purchased it in 2003 and converted it to a bed and breakfast.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Theater / Performance Venue

Laxson Auditorium (Chico State)

Chico, CA

Laxson Auditorium is the principal performing-arts hall on the campus of California State University, Chico. It hosts the university's Chico Performances series and a range of concerts, lectures, and theatrical productions for the campus and surrounding community.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Culver City — 3

Exterior of the Culver Hotel in Culver City, California, a six-story Art Deco flatiron building
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Culver Hotel

Culver City, CA

Built in 1924 by Culver City founder Harry C. Culver, the six-story flatiron hotel opened September 4, 1924, and served as the social hub of the early film industry. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Culver Studios
Theater / Performance Venue

Culver Studios

Culver City, CA

Thomas H. Ince established the studio at 9336 W. Washington Boulevard in 1918, designing the iconic Colonial Revival 'Mansion' administration building and developing a self-contained production facility. Ince died in November 1924 under contested circumstances following a party aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht; his widow sold the property to Cecil B. DeMille. The studio passed through RKO, Selznick International, and Desilu before becoming The Culver Studios under Hackman Capital Partners in 2014.

$ All Ages Family: High
True Crime Site

The Entity House (Doris Bither House)

Culver City, CA

In 1974, parapsychology researchers Barry Taff and Kerry Gaynor responded to a report from Culver City resident Doris Bither, who described being physically assaulted by invisible entities in her home at 11547 Braddock Drive. Over a ten-week investigation, Taff and Gaynor — working through UCLA's former parapsychology laboratory — documented unusual light phenomena and poltergeist-type activity. The case was later fictionalized in Frank De Felitta's 1978 novel and the 1982 film starring Barbara Hershey.

$ 18+ Family: Low

Death Valley National Park — 3

Photo of Barker Ranch
True Crime Site

Barker Ranch

Death Valley National Park, CA

Barker Ranch sits in the Panamint Valley near the southern end of Death Valley National Park. Originally a cattle ranch, it became the final base of operations for Charles Manson and members of his group in the weeks following the August 1969 Tate and LaBianca killings in Los Angeles. On October 12, 1969, Inyo County Sheriff's deputies and National Park Service rangers raided the property. Manson was discovered hiding under a bathroom vanity cabinet. A second raid on October 15 resulted in further arrests. The wooden structure burned in 2009; the remaining stone shell and a fenced perimeter with an NPS interpretive marker occupy the site today.

$ All Ages Family: Low
Photo of Scotty's Castle (Death Valley Ranch)
Museum / Historical Site

Scotty's Castle (Death Valley Ranch)

Death Valley National Park, CA

Scotty's Castle was built between 1922 and 1931 in Grapevine Canyon by Chicago millionaire Albert Mussey Johnson, who bankrolled construction at the urging of his friend Walter 'Death Valley Scotty' Scott — a former Buffalo Bill Wild West performer who had convinced Johnson to invest in a fraudulent gold mine. Despite the con, the two men became close; Johnson built the villa as a winter retreat and Scott lived on the property until his death in 1954.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Skidoo Ghost Town
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Skidoo Ghost Town

Death Valley National Park, CA

Skidoo was founded in 1906 when prospectors John Ramsey and 'One-Eye' Thompson found gold near Emigrant Spring. The town reached 700 residents by 1907 with a mill, bank, newspaper, and an 18-mile gravity-fed pipeline from Birch Spring. It is the site of the only documented lynching in Death Valley history: in April 1908, saloon keeper Joseph 'Hootch' Simpson murdered Jim Arnold, was lynched by a mob the same night, buried, then reportedly exhumed and hanged again to accommodate news photographers who arrived late.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Escondido — 3

View of Escondido Creek within the Elfin Forest Recreational Reserve, San Diego County, California
Outdoor / Natural Site

Elfin Forest Recreational Reserve

Escondido, CA

The Elfin Forest Recreational Reserve encompasses more than 700 acres of San Diego County chaparral managed by the Olivenhain Municipal Water District. The Harmony Grove area at its southern edge has been inhabited since antiquity by Northern Diegueño (Kumeyaay) peoples and, in the 19th century, by a documented spiritualist community.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Harmony Grove Spiritualist Association
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Harmony Grove Spiritualist Association

Escondido, CA

Harmony Grove Spiritualist Association was founded in 1896 by early settlers Foster, Harding, and Molette as a gathering ground for spiritualists in the San Diego County foothills near Escondido. The 13-acre oak-grove property has operated continuously as a spiritualist religious community for over 130 years, surviving including significant damage from the 2014 Cocos wildfire and subsequent rebuilding.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Entrance sign at San Pasqual Battlefield State Historic Park, California Historical Landmark No. 533
Battlefield / Military Site

San Pasqual Battlefield State Historic Park

Escondido, CA

The Battle of San Pasqual on December 6, 1846, pitted General Stephen Kearny's Army of the West against Californio lancers led by General Andrés Pico. The American forces, whose firearms had become unusable in overnight rain, were driven back with severe casualties in close-quarters lance fighting. It remains the bloodiest battle fought in California during the Mexican-American War. California Historical Landmark #533.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Fallbrook — 3

Aerial survey view of Santa Margarita River Bridge at De Luz
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Santa Margarita River Bridge at De Luz

Fallbrook, CA

The Santa Margarita River at De Luz Road in northern San Diego County sits within territory crossed during the California Gold Rush. The river corridor carries documented local history of multiple unexplained incidents, and the De Luz Road bridge has accumulated folklore spanning from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Live Oak County Park
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Live Oak County Park

Fallbrook, CA

Live Oak County Park in Fallbrook, San Diego County, was dedicated in 1920 and has grown to 27 acres. The park contains an unmapped but publicly accessible Luiseno bedrock milling site where generations of Payomkawichum women ground acorns into flour. The site has been accessible to the public since the park's founding and was never formally excavated.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Masonic Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Masonic Cemetery

Fallbrook, CA

The Masonic Cemetery in Fallbrook, California was established in 1917 after the Masonic Lodge authorized Horatio Smelser to locate suitable land the prior year. The first interments occurred that same year, and by 1921 the Masonic Cemetery Association held the deed to ten acres. Today approximately 3,000 individuals are interred across roughly two-thirds of the site.

$ All Ages Family: High

Ferndale — 3

Photo of Ferndale Historic Cemetery
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Ferndale Historic Cemetery

Ferndale, CA

Established in 1868 on a steep hillside above Ferndale's Eel River Valley, the cemetery served the Victorian dairy-farming and lumber community through its founding generations. Its moss-covered stonework and rhododendron canopy drew the production crew for Stephen King's 1979 Salem's Lot miniseries, which used the site as the fictional Harmony Hill Cemetery.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Theater / Performance Venue

Ferndale Repertory Theatre (Hart Theatre)

Ferndale, CA

The building operated as the Hart Theatre — Ferndale's venue for silent films, talkies, and touring vaudeville acts — before the Ferndale Repertory Theatre took it over as a nonprofit community playhouse. Bertha Russ Lytel, a Ferndale matriarch who died in 1972 at age 98, is the theater's most frequently cited ghost.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Gingerbread Mansion Inn at corner of Brown and Berding Streets, Ferndale California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Gingerbread Mansion Inn

Ferndale, CA

Carpenter John Kerri built the mansion in 1899 for Dr. Hogan J. Ring, a Norwegian-American physician who had settled in Ferndale. In 1920 Dr. Ring converted a 50-foot addition into a public hospital, which opened March 25, 1921. The hospital closed around 1926; the building was foreclosed in 1928 and has since served as an American Legion post, rest home, apartments, and since the 1980s, a bed-and-breakfast.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Grass Valley — 3

Empire Mine State Historic Park grounds showing historic mining structures and buildings in Grass Valley, California
Museum / Historical Site

Empire Mine State Historic Park

Grass Valley, CA

The Empire Mine in Grass Valley ran from 1850 to 1956 — 106 years of continuous operation — and produced 5.8 million ounces of gold from 367 miles of underground passages that reached 11,007 feet deep. The mine employed workers under conditions that produced many documented injuries and deaths across a century of operation. William Bowers Bourn II commissioned architect Willis Polk to design the estate's 'Cottage' in 1897. California State Parks acquired the property in 1975.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The Holbrooke Hotel in Grass Valley California, historic 1862 Gold Rush brick hotel exterior
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Holbrooke Hotel

Grass Valley, CA

The Holbrooke Hotel began as the 1852 Golden Gate Saloon, built in Grass Valley, California by Stephen and Clara Smith during the Gold Rush. A neighboring single-story Exchange Hotel was added in 1853. Fires in 1855 and 1862 led to the current two-story stone-and-brick structure. The hotel was renamed for owner D.P. Holbrooke in 1879 and was designated California Historical Landmark No. 914 in 1974.

$$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Owl Tavern (Owl Grill & Saloon)

Grass Valley, CA

The Owl occupies an 1857 brick building on Mill Street in downtown Grass Valley, built two years after the 1855 fire that leveled the town's business district. It began as Montgomery's Bank and was later the Bank Exchange Saloon before taking the Owl name from its round-the-clock service to Gold Rush miners.

$$ All Ages in dining area; 21+ at the bar Family: High

Livermore — 3

Asylum / Hospital

Arroyo del Valle Sanitarium (Camp Arroyo site)

Livermore, CA

The Arroyo del Valle Sanitarium opened in 1918 as Alameda County's tuberculosis treatment facility on 160 acres in the Livermore hills. Over 42 years it treated more than 10,000 patients before medical advances and declining case counts made it obsolete. It closed in August 1960; buildings were demolished in the 1990s for the current Camp Arroyo.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Gravity Hill (Patterson Pass Road)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Gravity Hill (Patterson Pass Road)

Livermore, CA

Patterson Pass Road runs through the Altamont hills east of Livermore, crossing a topographic saddle that creates one of the Bay Area's most reliably cited gravity hill effects. The optical illusion — vehicles in neutral appearing to roll uphill on what is actually a slight downgrade — has been documented by regional weird-California sources since at least the 1990s.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Morgan Territory Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Morgan Territory Road

Livermore, CA

Morgan Territory Road traces a 19th-century logging route connecting Santa Cruz timber operations to Eastern Contra Costa County. The surrounding land takes its name from Jeremiah Morgan, an Alabama-born pioneer who crossed the plains by ox-wagon in 1849 and established a ranch on Mount Diablo's eastern flank in 1857. The East Bay Regional Park District began acquiring the surrounding preserve in 1975; it now encompasses 5,230 acres.

$ All Ages Family: High

Los Gatos — 3

Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad
Other Dark Tourism Site

Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad & Bill Mason Carousel

Los Gatos, CA

Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad and Bill Mason Carousel are historic amusement park attractions in Los Gatos, California. The carousel and miniature railroad represent classic American amusement park heritage.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Lexington Reservoir (Submerged Towns of Alma and Lexington)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Lexington Reservoir (Submerged Towns of Alma and Lexington)

Los Gatos, CA

Lexington (established 1850s) and Alma (established 1871) were two separate communities in the Los Gatos Creek valley that were deliberately flooded when the Santa Clara Valley Water District completed the James J. Lenihan Dam in 1952. Both towns were relocated rather than preserved; their physical remnants—bridge piers, paving, foundations—emerge from the water during severe droughts.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Old Santa Cruz Highway Summit (Folklore Stop)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Old Santa Cruz Highway Summit (Folklore Stop)

Los Gatos, CA

The Old Santa Cruz Highway crosses the Santa Cruz Mountains from Los Gatos toward Santa Cruz. The summit area appears in Bay Area road-folklore writing as a stop on the broader vanishing-hitchhiker tradition, alongside nearby Hicks Road and other South Bay back roads.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Mendocino — 3

Photo of Kelley House Museum
Museum / Historical Site

Kelley House Museum

Mendocino, CA

Kelley House was built in 1861 for William and Eliza Kelley, a pioneer lumber merchant family who raised four children here during the height of Mendocino's redwood logging era. After decades as a rental property it fell into disrepair before a community-led restoration effort saved it in the 1970s.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of MacCallum House Inn
Haunted Hotel / Inn

MacCallum House Inn

Mendocino, CA

The MacCallum House was built in 1882 by lumber magnate William Kelley as a wedding gift for his daughter, Daisy MacCallum. Daisy's first child, Donald, was born in 1880 and grew up in the house. The property converted to an inn in the 1970s and today operates as a boutique hotel with 19 accommodations and an on-site restaurant. It is listed in the Library of Congress HABS survey and is part of the Mendocino and Headlands Historic District.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Mendocino Hotel and Garden Suites
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Mendocino Hotel and Garden Suites

Mendocino, CA

The Mendocino Hotel opened in 1878 as the Temperance House, a deliberate contrast to the logging town's many saloons. The building has operated as a hotel almost continuously since then, serving as a commercial hub in one of Northern California's most historically intact Victorian villages. The property was purchased by Castle Peak Holdings in 2022 and closed in September 2024 for comprehensive renovation, with reopening anticipated by end of 2026.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Merced — 3

Concrete bowls and ramps at Applegate Park Skate Park in Merced, California, photographed in 2006
Outdoor / Natural Site

Applegate Skate Park

Merced, CA

Applegate Skate Park is a public recreational skateboarding facility located in Merced, California. The concrete park serves the local skating community and casual park visitors with various ramps, obstacles, and skating surfaces.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Scout Island, Lake Yosemite
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Scout Island, Lake Yosemite

Merced, CA

Scout Island is a small island in Lake Yosemite, a reservoir operated by Merced County in the San Joaquin Valley. The lake has a documented history of drowning deaths, including a 2023 fatality during a Fourth of July celebration. Scout Island serves as an overnight outdoor education facility for youth and scouting groups.

$ All Ages Family: High
The 1931 Merced Theatre on Main Street in Merced, California, showing the Spanish Colonial Revival facade and iconic 100-foot Art Deco tower
Theater / Performance Venue

Merced Theatre (Tower Theatre)

Merced, CA

The Merced Theatre opened on October 31, 1931 with the world premiere of Local Boy Makes Good starring Joe E. Brown. The 1,645-seat venue was designed by San Francisco's Reid Brothers for the Golden State Theatre Corporation, featured the first air conditioning in Merced County, and is topped by an iconic 100-foot tower. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in May 2009 and now operates as the Art Kamangar Center.

$ All Ages Family: High

Modesto — 3

Historic cemetery grounds with mature trees and manicured lawn
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Acacia Memorial Park

Modesto, CA

Acacia Memorial Park was established in 1872 as the Masonic Cemetery by Stanislaus Lodge #206 Free and Accepted Masons. The cemetery expanded in the 1920s through land acquisition from the Odd Fellows Cemetery, and was officially incorporated in 1917. It remains an endowment-funded burial property.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Daydreams & Nightmares Costume Shop (former Evans Funeral Home)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Daydreams & Nightmares Costume Shop (former Evans Funeral Home)

Modesto, CA

The building at 1219 7th Street in Modesto operated as the Evans Funeral Home and crematorium for decades before the current owners converted it into a costume shop. When they purchased the property, they discovered human cremation ash residue on-site and were told by a previous owner that remains were still present in the structure.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior of the McHenry Mansion in Modesto, California, showing the High Victorian Italianate facade with ornamental woodwork and bay windows
Haunted House / Historic Home

McHenry Mansion

Modesto, CA

Robert McHenry, a rancher and banker who shaped early Modesto, commissioned architect Jeremiah Robinson to build this High Victorian Italianate residence at the corner of Fifteenth and I Streets in 1883. Three generations of McHenrys occupied it until 1919; after a period as apartments, the Julio R. Gallo Foundation purchased and restored it, reopening the house as a free museum in 1983.

$ All Ages Family: High

Napa — 3

Haunted House / Historic Home

Greenwood Mansion

Napa, CA

Built in the 1880s by Maine-born sea captain John Quincy Greenwood on 500 acres in Jameson Canyon, the farmhouse became the site of a brutal 1891 home invasion. Billy Roe and William Schmidt tied and drugged the captain, then murdered his wife Lucina. Roe was hanged on January 15, 1897 — the last official public hanging in California.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Historic marker at the Napa River Inn entrance, brick wall with signage in downtown Napa, California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Napa River Inn (Hatt Mill Building)

Napa, CA

Captain Albert Hatt, a German sailor turned Napa merchant, built the warehouse and feed store at 500 Main Street in 1884 using bricks fired from clay dredged out of the Napa River. In 1912, the Keig family converted the complex into the Napa Mill, a regional granary. The building complex — the last surviving industrial structures from 19th-century Napa — was restored starting in 1995 and opened as the Napa River Inn in 1999.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Napa State Hospital campus in Napa, California.
Asylum / Hospital

Napa State Hospital Cemetery & Memorial

Napa, CA

Napa State Hospital opened in 1875 as the Napa Insane Asylum on land that was formerly part of a Mexican land grant. Patients who died at the facility from 1875 to 1924 — approximately 4,368 people — were buried in a field on the grounds without markers. An outbuilding and unused calf barn now sit atop part of the burial area. The California Memorial Project maintains a monument on the grounds, and visits require an appointment through the hospital executive office.

$ All Ages Family: High

Pacific Grove — 3

Aerial survey view of Carmel Doll Shop
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Carmel Doll Shop

Pacific Grove, CA

The Carmel Doll Shop occupies the Angwin Building at 213 Forest Avenue in Pacific Grove, a structure significant since 1902 and one of the oldest buildings in the city. Antiques dealers Michael Canadas and David Robinson founded the shop in Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1989, acquired the Angwin Building in 2009, and spent two years restoring it before relocating there.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Point Pinos Lighthouse
Museum / Historical Site

Point Pinos Lighthouse

Pacific Grove, CA

Point Pinos Lighthouse was first illuminated on February 1, 1855, making it the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the West Coast. Its first head keeper, Charles Layton, was killed in 1855 while riding with a sheriff's posse pursuing outlaw Anastacio Garcia. Keeper Emily Fish served 1893–1914, earning the nickname 'Socialite Keeper' for her cultivated domestic life at the station. The original fourth-order Fresnel lens remains in operation.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Seven Gables Inn

Pacific Grove, CA

The Seven Gables Inn is an oceanfront Victorian on Ocean View Boulevard in Pacific Grove, built in 1886. It now operates as a boutique hotel with roughly two dozen rooms along the Monterey Bay shoreline.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Paso Robles — 3

Aerial survey view of Adelaida Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Adelaida Cemetery

Paso Robles, CA

Adelaida Cemetery sits in the Santa Lucia foothills west of Paso Robles, California. The Adelaida district was settled in 1859 by sheep rancher James Lynch and grew into a community of mercury miners, farmers, and ranchers; the cemetery was established by Wesley Burnett in the late nineteenth century.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Paso Robles Inn historic hotel exterior, Paso Robles California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Paso Robles Inn

Paso Robles, CA

The Paso Robles Inn traces its founding to 1864, when the 14-room Hot Springs Hotel opened to serve visitors drawn by the area's mineral springs. A grander, three-story El Paso de Robles Hotel — designed by architect Jacob Leuzen and marketed as 'absolutely fireproof' — replaced the original in 1891. That building burned to the ground on December 19, 1940, after a cigarette ignited a wastebasket on the second floor; night clerk J.H. Emsley sounded the alarm in time to evacuate every guest, then died of a heart attack. The current Inn, built with bricks salvaged from the ruins, opened in February 1942 and operates today as a 98-room downtown Paso Robles hotel.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted Dining / Bar

Pine Street Saloon

Paso Robles, CA

The Pine Street Saloon occupies what is widely cited as the oldest building in downtown Paso Robles, dating to around 1857. The block was historically the rougher end of town — known locally as skid row — and the building served over the years as a saloon, stagecoach stop, and bordello.

$ 21+ Family: Moderate

Porterville — 3

Theater / Performance Venue

Barn Theater

Porterville, CA

The Barn Theater is a long-running community theater in Porterville, founded in 1948 in a barn owned by local arts patron Annie Smith and now housed in a purpose-built theater at the corner of Olive and Plano.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Porterville Historical Museum (former Southern Pacific Depot)
Museum / Historical Site

Porterville Historical Museum (former Southern Pacific Depot)

Porterville, CA

The Porterville Historical Museum occupies a 1913 Southern Pacific passenger station in Porterville. Converted to a museum in the 1960s, it preserves Tulare County history and now hosts ghost-hunting tours of the old depot.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Zalud House Museum
Haunted House / Historic Home

Zalud House Museum

Porterville, CA

Bohemian immigrant John Zalud built the house at 393 N Hockett Street in 1891. The family experienced a series of tragedies: daughter Mary Jane died of tuberculosis in 1912, and son-in-law William Brooke was shot and killed in a hotel courtyard in 1917. The surviving Zalud family members kept the home nearly unchanged for decades before donating it to the City of Porterville, which has operated it as a museum since 1970.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

San Dimas — 3

Haunted Dining / Bar

Pinnacle Peak Steakhouse

San Dimas, CA

Pinnacle Peak Steakhouse opened in San Dimas in 1967, operating continuously at 269 W Foothill Blvd as a Western-themed mesquite steakhouse. The restaurant is most widely known for its 'no ties allowed' policy — enforced since opening — which has resulted in thousands of cut neckties hanging from the ceiling as decoration. The Pinnacle Peak brand is associated with multiple locations in Arizona and California.

$$ All Ages Family: High
The water-slide complex at Raging Waters Los Angeles in San Dimas, California
Other Dark Tourism Site

Raging Waters Los Angeles

San Dimas, CA

Raging Waters Los Angeles is a 60-acre water park in San Dimas, California, that opened June 18, 1983. The park is the largest water park in California and operates today under the Palace Entertainment family of properties.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
1887 Newsom-designed San Dimas Hotel (Walker House) at 121 N San Dimas Avenue in San Dimas, California
Museum / Historical Site

San Dimas Hotel (Walker House)

San Dimas, CA

The San Dimas Hotel (also known as Walker House, the Carruthers Home, and the San Dimas Mansion) was built in 1887 by the San Jose Ranch Company as a railroad hotel, designed by California architects Joseph Cather Newsom and Samuel Newsom. A late-1880s economic downturn meant it never had a paying hotel guest; merchant James W. Walker purchased it as a family home in 1889. The City of San Dimas acquired the property in 2000 and funded a $6.5 million restoration.

$ All Ages Family: High

San Pedro — 3

Photo of Fort MacArthur Museum
Museum / Historical Site

Fort MacArthur Museum

San Pedro, CA

Fort MacArthur was established in 1914 as the primary coastal artillery defense installation for Los Angeles Harbor. During World War II it was the headquarters for the Southern California sector of coastal defense, and on the night of February 24–25, 1942, its anti-aircraft batteries participated in the 'Battle of Los Angeles' — firing an estimated 1,430 rounds of ammunition at an unidentified aerial target that has never been definitively explained.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
True Crime Site

San Pedro Haunting House (593 W 11th St)

San Pedro, CA

In 1988 and 1989, Jackie Hernandez, a single mother living at 593 W 11th Street in San Pedro, reported severe poltergeist activity inside her rented bungalow. The case drew the attention of Emmy-winning cinematographer Barry Conrad and parapsychologist Dr. Barry Taff, both of whom documented the events on film over multiple visits. Their investigation produced footage that became the basis for Conrad's 2010 book 'An Unknown Encounter.'

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
USS Iowa battleship museum moored at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, California
Museum / Historical Site

USS Iowa Battleship Museum

San Pedro, CA

USS Iowa (BB-61) was commissioned February 22, 1943, as the lead ship of the Iowa-class battleships, and served in World War II, the Korean War, intermittent Cold War deployments, and the Persian Gulf. On April 19, 1989, an explosion inside Turret No. 2 during a Caribbean fleet exercise killed 47 sailors — one of the deadliest peacetime naval accidents in U.S. history. The cause of the explosion was never definitively established after a protracted and contested Navy investigation. Iowa was decommissioned in 1990 and permanently berthed at San Pedro as the Pacific Battleship Center in 2012.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Santa Monica — 3

Photo of Georgian Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Georgian Hotel

Santa Monica, CA

Opened in 1933, the Georgian is one of Santa Monica's earliest oceanfront hotels, an eight-story Art Deco structure built at the end of Prohibition that operated a basement speakeasy during its early years and drew a clientele that included Hollywood celebrities and figures from organized crime.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Santa Monica Looff Hippodrome (Pier Carousel)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Santa Monica Looff Hippodrome (Pier Carousel)

Santa Monica, CA

Charles Looff — the Danish-American carousel builder who created Coney Island's first carousel — built the Santa Monica Hippodrome in 1916 as a centerpiece for the pleasure pier he was developing. The building, with its distinctive domed roof and hand-carved wooden horses, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987. It has operated as a carousel venue for more than a century, surviving fires, ocean weather, and changes in pier ownership.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Victorian (Basement Tavern)

Santa Monica, CA

The Victorian at 2640 Main St in Santa Monica is an 1892 mansion originally constructed at Ocean Boulevard as the home of Dr. George Kyte. In 1973, the building was relocated to Heritage Square on Main Street to preserve it from demolition — a move that complicated the fate of Delia, an elderly caretaker who lived in the house at the time of the move and was reportedly never located after the relocation.

$$ 21+ Family: Low

Sonoma — 3

Interior hallway of the former Bartholomew Park Winery museum and tasting room in Sonoma, California
Museum / Historical Site

Bartholomew Park Winery (former State Industrial Farm for Delinquent Women)

Sonoma, CA

The Bartholomew Park estate passed through Count Agoston Haraszthy's 1857 wine operation, Kate Johnson's eccentric decades, and finally California's two-year experiment with a women's reform farm before becoming the winery it is today. The main winery building dates to 1922, constructed as an inmate hospital under the State Industrial Farm for Delinquent Women. The reform farm's castle burned on March 12, 1923, and the program folded shortly after.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Mountain Cemetery in Sonoma, California — 1841 burying ground holding the graves of General Mariano Vallejo and other early Sonoma figures.
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Mountain Cemetery

Sonoma, CA

Mountain Cemetery in Sonoma was founded in 1841 and is among the oldest continuously operating burial grounds in California. The 80-acre site contains the graves of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo and his wife, William Smith — the only confirmed Revolutionary War veteran buried in California — the founder of Sebastiani Vineyards, and two members of the Donner Party. It sits within the Sonoma Plaza Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

$ All Ages Family: High
Sebastiani Theatre exterior on Sonoma Plaza with Christmas decorations, showing the original 1934 marquee and Italian Renaissance facade
Theater / Performance Venue

Sebastiani Theatre

Sonoma, CA

Samuele Sebastiani, patriarch of the Sebastiani wine dynasty, commissioned San Francisco architect James W. Reid (with his brother Merritt Reid) to design a Depression-era movie house on Sonoma's historic plaza. Construction required a minimum of 30 workers; the theatre opened April 7, 1934, with Robert Montgomery's Fugitive Lovers at a 30-cent admission. It is the only surviving Bay Area theatre with its original Reid-designed marquee.

$ All Ages Family: High

Tracy — 3

Haunted Dining / Bar

Banta Inn

Tracy, CA

Banta Inn opened in 1879 as a two-story saloon serving the small farming community of Banta, just east of Tracy, California. A 1937 fire destroyed the upper floor, after which the building was rebuilt as a single-story bar and restaurant that has operated continuously since.

$$ All Ages in dining area; 21+ in bar Family: High
The California Aqueduct as it emerges Bethany Reservoir in eastern Alameda County, California. A part of the California State Water Project system infrastructure.
Outdoor / Natural Site

Bethany Reservoir

Tracy, CA

Bethany Reservoir is a public recreation area operated by California State Parks near Tracy in San Joaquin County. The reservoir provides water recreation facilities including fishing, boating, and hiking opportunities for the public.

$ All Ages Family: Low
Haunted Dining / Bar

Tracy Moose Lodge (former Odd Fellows Hall)

Tracy, CA

The three-story brick building at 35 East Sixth Street is the oldest commercial building in Tracy. It was constructed in 1899 by the Sumner Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows to replace an earlier hall lost in the city's 1898 fire, and has housed the Tracy Moose Lodge since the 1970s.

$ Members and guests; bar service 21+ Family: High

Turlock — 3

Aerial survey view of Berg Building
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Berg Building

Turlock, CA

The Berg Building is one of downtown Turlock's early merchant blocks. The Swedish-born merchant M. M. Berg ran a general store there in the early 1900s, lived in quarters above the shop, and the building remains a downtown commercial property today.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Main Street Antiques
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Main Street Antiques

Turlock, CA

Main Street Antiques occupies a storefront at 208 East Main Street in downtown Turlock and is one of the stops on the Turlock Historical Society's Ghost Walk. The shop also serves as a ticket-sales point for the seasonal walk.

$ All Ages Family: High
Asylum / Hospital

Sierra Building (former Lillian Collins Hospital)

Turlock, CA

The upper floor of the Sierra Building at 331 East Main Street in downtown Turlock once housed the Lillian Collins Hospital, a small 17-bed hospital. The building is now in commercial use, with offices that have included a realty firm, and is a stop on the Turlock Historical Society Ghost Walk.

$ All Ages Family: High

Alhambra — 2

Nighttime storefront of Phoenix Inn Chinese Cuisine at 208 East Valley Boulevard in Alhambra, California
Haunted Dining / Bar

Phoenix Inn Chinese Cuisine

Alhambra, CA

The original Phoenix Inn opened in 1965 in Los Angeles's Chinatown under founders Kai Tai and May Chang, who had immigrated from Hong Kong. The Alhambra location at 208 East Valley Boulevard opened in 1997 and is operated by the second generation of the founding family. Phoenix Inn is part of the broader Phoenix Food & Dessert family of San Gabriel Valley Chinese restaurants.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Ramona Convent Secondary School
Other Dark Tourism Site

Ramona Convent Secondary School

Alhambra, CA

Ramona Convent Secondary School was founded in 1889 by the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, making it one of the oldest continuously operating Catholic girls' schools in the Los Angeles area. The school has operated on its Alhambra campus for over 135 years.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Avalon — 2

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Catalina Boat House Hotel

Avalon, CA

Captain Joseph McAfee relocated his houseboat from Venice Beach to Avalon in 1912 and expanded the structure with hillside rooms to create what became the Catalina Boat House Hotel. McAfee died on the upper deck of the houseboat section he had captained and loved. The building continues to operate as a hotel on Avalon's Front Street.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Theater / Performance Venue

Catalina Casino

Avalon, CA

The Catalina Casino opened in 1929 on the northern tip of Avalon harbor, built by chewing-gum heir William Wrigley Jr. as an entertainment complex. It was never a gambling hall — the word 'casino' derives from the Italian for gathering place. The 12-story Art Deco building housed the world's largest circular ballroom, a 1,200-seat theater below it, and a radio broadcast studio that sent Big Band performances to national audiences throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Bodie — 2

Bodie Cemetery weathered wooden grave markers and headstones in the Sierra Nevada ghost town, Bodie State Historic Park, California
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Bodie Cemetery

Bodie, CA

Bodie Cemetery serves the ghost town of Bodie, California, a Gold Rush boomtown that peaked at 10,000 residents in 1879-1880 before collapsing within a decade. The burial ground holds miners, families, and children lost to disease, accident, and frontier violence at 8,375 feet in the Sierra Nevada.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Weathered wooden county barn at Bodie State Historic Park, a preserved 1880s Gold Rush ghost town in Mono County, California
Outdoor / Natural Site

Bodie State Historic Park

Bodie, CA

Bodie was a Gold Rush boomtown that grew from a small camp to over 10,000 residents between 1876 and 1880, then collapsed within a decade as the ore played out. California State Parks now preserves approximately 110 surviving buildings in a condition called arrested decay — stabilized but not restored.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Calabasas — 2

Photo of Leonis Adobe Museum
Haunted House / Historic Home

Leonis Adobe Museum

Calabasas, CA

The Leonis Adobe was built around 1844 and is designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #1. Basque immigrant Miguel Leonis expanded the structure in 1879 and ran one of the largest ranches in the San Fernando Valley, acquiring land aggressively through litigation and intimidation. He died on September 20, 1889, when he fell under wagon wheels on his way home from Los Angeles — a death his wife, Chumash woman Espiritu, contested as possible murder.

$ All Ages Family: High
Open Graph image from lapetcemetery.com
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park

Calabasas, CA

The Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas was founded in 1928 by Hollywood veterinarian Dr. Eugene C. Jones. Established because Los Angeles city ordinances prohibited backyard pet burials at residential properties, the 10-acre cemetery became the resting place for the animals of the film industry's most prominent figures. In 1986, the site received the same legal protections as a human cemetery, making development permanently illegal.

$ All Ages Family: High

City of Industry — 2

The former Sears anchor store at Puente Hills Mall in City of Industry, California, site featured in the Back to the Future Twin Pines Mall scenes
Theater / Performance Venue

AMC Puente Hills 20 (Former Broadway Department Store Site)

City of Industry, CA

The AMC Puente Hills 20 opened April 18, 1997 in the shell of the former Broadway Department Store at Puente Hills Mall in City of Industry, California. The Broadway store had been demolished by 1996 to make way for the multi-screen complex. The mall is also a recognizable filming location from the 1985 film Back to the Future.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Pacific Palms Resort outdoor firepit and lounge area in City of Industry — former Sheraton Industry Hills, 650-acre golf and conference resort
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Sheraton Hotel (now Pacific Palms Resort)

City of Industry, CA

The hilltop resort in the City of Industry opened as the Industry Hills Sheraton, anchoring the larger Industry Hills development. Its Eisenhower Course was designed by William F. Bell and Casey O'Callaghan and opened in 1979, alongside a sister Zaharias Course. The Sheraton operation transitioned in 2001 to Pacific Palms Resort, which continues to operate the property as a full-service golf and conference resort.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Clayton — 2

Clayton Club Saloon exterior at 6096 Main Street, Clayton, California — 1873 wood-frame saloon and town's oldest continuously operated business
Haunted Dining / Bar

Clayton Club Saloon

Clayton, CA

The Clayton Club Saloon at 6096 Main Street in Clayton, California occupies a building first put up by Jacob Rhine around 1873 and later expanded by Carl Berendsen in 1905, who renamed it the Clayton Club and incorporated a structure shipped from San Francisco to Martinez and onward to Clayton.

$$ 21+ in bar areas Family: Low
Moresi's Chophouse at 6115 Main Street in historic downtown Clayton, California
Haunted Dining / Bar

Moresi's Chophouse (Former La Croquett Restaurant)

Clayton, CA

The building housing Moresi's Chophouse at 6115 Main Street in Clayton was constructed in 1870 as a residence before serving as a store, post office, and saloon — a sequence typical of structures in California's post-Gold Rush mining towns. Clayton was founded in 1857 and grew as a commercial hub for miners working the Black Diamond coal region in nearby Somersville.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Colton — 2

Photo of Agua Mansa Pioneer Cemetery
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Agua Mansa Pioneer Cemetery

Colton, CA

Agua Mansa Pioneer Cemetery, established in 1852, is the oldest cemetery in San Bernardino County. It is all that remains of the twin settlements of Agua Mansa and La Placita — the first non-native communities in the San Bernardino Valley — which were obliterated by a January 1862 flood that filled the Santa Ana River from bluff to bluff. Subsequent ground-penetrating radar surveys have revealed hundreds of unmarked graves beneath the surface.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Montecito Memorial Park
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Montecito Memorial Park

Colton, CA

Montecito Memorial Park was founded in 1925 on former orange grove land in the Inland Empire, spanning the city limits of Colton and Loma Linda — a geographic distinction that makes it the only cemetery in the United States crossing two municipal boundaries. The Hinze family established the park and operated it for generations.

$ All Ages Family: High

Corona — 2

Aerial survey view of Horse Thieves Canyon Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Horse Thieves Canyon Road

Corona, CA

Horsethief Canyon takes its name from a band of horse thieves who reportedly used the canyon as a hideout in the 1800s. The rugged terrain of the Santa Ana Mountains foothills south of Corona provided natural concealment for outlaws running stolen horses from California ranches. No specific documented events tied to the paranormal claims have been located in historical archives.

$ All Ages Family: Low
Haunted Dining / Bar

J.J. Live Oak Steakhouse

Corona, CA

The Live Oak Inn on Temescal Canyon Road in Corona was built in the 1930s around a large live oak tree — later confirmed to be planted as a sapling in the late 1930s. In 1988, a young woman was strangled to death in the parking area behind the back patio; a dishwasher associated with the inn was convicted of the crime. The property subsequently operated as El Cerrito, then J.J. Live Oak Steakhouse, and now functions as Rockefellas Bar, a rock music venue.

$$ 21+ for bar; check venue for events Family: Low

Dublin — 2

Photo of Dublin Pioneer Cemetery and Old St. Raymond's Church
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Dublin Pioneer Cemetery and Old St. Raymond's Church

Dublin, CA

Dublin Pioneer Cemetery was established in 1859 around the original St. Raymond's Church, built on land donated by the Donlon family. Pioneer Tom Donlon's death — a fall from the church roof during construction — preceded the cemetery's first interments. The site holds over 600 graves from the 19th-century pioneer period and remains one of the oldest preserved historic sites in Alameda County.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Outback Steakhouse exterior storefront at 6505 Regional Street, Dublin, California — chain restaurant facade with signature signage
Haunted Dining / Bar

Outback Steakhouse — Dublin

Dublin, CA

The Outback Steakhouse at 6505 Regional Street in Dublin, California, is the documented site of a police officer's murder during an armed robbery on December 11, 1998. Three armed robbers carried out the crime; the officer died at the scene. The Dublin area additionally has ties to Camp Parks, a World War II-era military installation that remains active as a Reserve Forces Training Area.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Dunsmuir — 2

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Dunsmuir

Dunsmuir, CA

Originally constructed in the 1800s as the Mt. Shasta Hotel, the building burned to the ground in 1903 when a large fire destroyed most of Dunsmuir. It was rebuilt in 1904 by Abner Weed and renamed the Weed Hotel, later receiving its current Art Deco form during a 1940s renovation. A 2022 thriller film was shot on location.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Old Mortuary Inn (Julia Morgan Mansion)

Dunsmuir, CA

Built in the 1920s by the Young family, who operated a mortuary in the basement, this Siskiyou County home is believed by its owners to carry a design contribution from Julia Morgan, architect of Hearst Castle, who was working at the nearby Wyntoon estate at the time. The building later inspired a fiction novel set on the premises.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Georgetown — 2

Two-story Victorian bed and breakfast with white siding and wraparound veranda in Georgetown, California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Historic American River Inn

Georgetown, CA

The Historic American River Inn opened in 1853 in Georgetown, California, originally built as a private residence on the site of the Round Tent gambling establishment and directly above the Woodside Mine. The structure has served as a private home, a hotel, a miners' boarding house, and a tuberculosis sanitarium before becoming a bed and breakfast in 1984.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
The two-story wood-frame facade of the Georgetown Hotel & Saloon on Main Street in Gold Country California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Georgetown Hotel & Saloon

Georgetown, CA

The Georgetown Hotel & Saloon was built in 1852 in the El Dorado County Gold Rush town of Georgetown, California, and has operated as a hotel and bar continuously since. Eleven historic guest rooms remain in service above a working saloon and restaurant on Main Street.

$$$ 21+ in saloon; rooms welcome all ages Family: Moderate

Glendale — 2

El Miradero, the 1904 Indo-Islamic mansion of Leslie C. Brand, now Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, California, with the Verdugo Mountains in the background
Museum / Historical Site

Brand Park & Library (El Miradero)

Glendale, CA

Brand Park surrounds El Miradero, the 1904 Indo-Islamic-style mansion of Glendale pioneer Leslie Coombs Brand (1859–1925), often called the 'father of Glendale.' Brand willed the estate to the city as a public library and park; the mansion opened as Brand Library in 1956. A fenced family cemetery in the hills behind it holds Brand's distinctive pyramid-shaped tomb.

$ All Ages Family: High
Rockhaven Sanitarium historic grounds at 2713 Honolulu Ave, Glendale, California
Asylum / Hospital

Rockhaven Sanitarium

Glendale, CA

Psychiatric nurse Agnes Richards founded Rockhaven in 1923 after witnessing abuse at state-run facilities, creating a humane, home-like institution for women on 3.4 acres in Glendale's Crescenta Valley. The sanitarium operated until the early 2000s, housing notable patients including Gladys Baker (Marilyn Monroe's mother), Billie Burke, and others. Glendale purchased the property in 2008; in 2021 the state allocated funds to convert it into a mental health history museum.

$ All Ages Family: High

Hayward — 2

Photo of Hayward Plunge
Outdoor / Natural Site

Hayward Plunge

Hayward, CA

The Hayward Plunge opened in 1936 as a public works project, providing a community swimming facility along Mission Boulevard. A 1945 newspaper account in the Hayward Journal documented the drowning of an 8-year-old boy at the location, a fact that became part of the site's long-running association with tragedy near the adjacent creek.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The original lone tree at Lone Tree Cemetery in Fairview, Hayward, California — namesake of the historic pioneer burial ground established around 1868
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Lone Tree Cemetery

Hayward, CA

Lone Tree Cemetery in Hayward was established around 1868–1870 and is among the oldest cemeteries in southern Alameda County. It is the resting place of many area pioneers, including city founder William Hayward, and has hosted the area's longest-running continuous Memorial Day observance since 1903. Its name comes from the 'Legend of Lone Tree,' a tragic folk tale predating the city.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Jamestown — 2

Haunted Hotel / Inn

1859 Historic National Hotel & Restaurant

Jamestown, CA

The National Hotel opened in 1859 on Main Street in Jamestown, a Gold Rush town in Tuolumne County. It survived fires in 1901 and 1927, briefly operated as a speakeasy during Prohibition, and was comprehensively restored beginning in 1974. It is one of the oldest continuously operating hotels in California.

$$$ All Ages for lodging and dining Family: High
Haunted Dining / Bar

Willow Hotel / Willow Steakhouse

Jamestown, CA

The Willow opened in 1862 in Jamestown, a Tuolumne County town known during the Gold Rush as the Gateway to the Mother Lode. Founded by Portuguese immigrant John Pereira, it became one of the county's leading hotels and over the years has operated as a hotel, telegraph office, stage stop, and steakhouse.

$$ All Ages in dining area; 21+ in bar Family: High

Joshua Tree National Park — 2

Photo of Lost Horse Mine
Outdoor / Natural Site

Lost Horse Mine

Joshua Tree National Park, CA

Johnny Lang discovered gold in Lost Horse Valley around 1890 and, with partners, established the Lost Horse Mine. J.D. Ryan, a Montana rancher, purchased the operation in 1895 and expanded it with a ten-stamp mill. Between 1894 and 1931, the mine produced more than 10,000 ounces of gold and 16,000 ounces of silver — worth approximately $5 million in modern terms. Lang was forced out after Ryan discovered him stealing amalgam; he died of exposure near Keys View Road in winter 1925, and his body was not found for two months.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Wall Street Mill and Wonderland Ranch Ruins
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Wall Street Mill and Wonderland Ranch Ruins

Joshua Tree National Park, CA

Bill Keys built the Wall Street Mill in 1933 to process gold ore in Joshua Tree's Queen Valley, relocating two-stamp machinery from Pinon Wells to the site. On May 11, 1943, Keys shot and killed his neighbor Worth Bagley during a dispute over road access to the mill. Keys was convicted of manslaughter and served five years at San Quentin before attorney Earle Stanley Gardner helped secure his release and eventual pardon.

$ All Ages Family: High

Julian — 2

Historic plaque for the Julian Hotel (originally Hotel Robinson, 1897) at Main and B Streets in Julian, California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Julian Gold Rush Hotel (Hotel Robinson)

Julian, CA

Albert Robinson — a man who arrived in Julian after emancipation — and his wife Margaret opened a restaurant and bakery on this site in the late 1880s and built the current hotel structure around 1897. The property became one of the first businesses in San Diego County owned and operated by African Americans. Albert died in 1915; Margaret sold the hotel in 1921 for $1,500.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
The reconstructed adobe Vallecito Stage Station in San Diego County, California, a California Historical Landmark
Museum / Historical Site

Vallecito Stage Station

Julian, CA

Vallecito Stage Station was a relay station on the Butterfield Overland Mail route from 1858 to 1861, providing fresh horses, food, and lodging at a key desert waypoint on the southern transcontinental road. The current adobe structure is a 1930s reconstruction of the original station on the original footprint, within Vallecito County Park.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Keeler — 2

Main street of the silver-mining ghost town of Cerro Gordo, Looking E to mine dumps and Cerro Gordo Peak, Inyo County, CA, USA
Haunted House / Historic Home

Belshaw House

Keeler, CA

The Belshaw House was constructed in 1868 by Mortimer Belshaw, one of California's most prominent silver barons. Located within the Cerro Gordo ghost town, the structure represents the apex of 19th-century mining prosperity. Belshaw pioneered silver transportation from the mines, operating the Yellow Road toll road that connected mining operations to Los Angeles.

$ All Ages Family: Low
Aerial survey view of Cerro Gordo Ghost Town
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Cerro Gordo Ghost Town

Keeler, CA

Pablo Flores discovered rich silver veins at Cerro Gordo in 1865, and by the early 1870s the town had become California's largest silver and lead producer. The population peaked near 4,800 during the bonanza years; with no law enforcement and wages paid in cash at the saloon, the town averaged roughly one murder per week. Zinc mining briefly revived the site in 1905-1912 before the town was permanently abandoned.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Keene — 2

Main entrance of Villa La Paz at the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Keene, California — the former Stony Brook Sanatorium and later UFW headquarters
Museum / Historical Site

Stony Brook Sanatorium (Cesar Chavez National Monument)

Keene, CA

The 116-acre site in Keene, California - now operated by the National Park Service as the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument - was developed in 1918 as the Stony Brook Retreat tuberculosis sanatorium. It treated TB patients for nearly fifty years before closing after streptomycin made long-term sanatorium care obsolete. The United Farm Workers acquired the property in 1971 and renamed it La Paz; it became a national monument in 2012.

$ All Ages Family: High
2013, Cesar Chavez Grave, 2013, Cesar E Chavez National Monument
Museum / Historical Site

César E. Chávez National Monument (La Paz)

Keene, CA

The 116-acre campus in the Tehachapi Mountains of Kern County began as Stony Brook Retreat in 1918, a tuberculosis sanitarium built by the county after a quarry closed on the property. The compound treated TB patients for nearly five decades before closing in 1967. César Chávez and the United Farm Workers established their national headquarters here in 1970, naming it Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz. President Obama designated it a National Monument in 2012.

$ All Ages Family: High

Mountain View — 2

Aerial photograph of Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View, California, showing the iconic immense historic naval airship hangars on the runway complex
Museum / Historical Site

Moffett Federal Airfield

Mountain View, CA

Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View, California was commissioned in 1933 as a naval airship station, designed to house the massive USS Macon dirigible. Its landmark Hangar One, built between 1931 and 1933, covers 8 acres and remains one of the largest freestanding structures in the United States. The airfield became NASA Ames Research Center's home in 1994.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior view of the 1867 Rengstorff House, an Italianate Victorian home in Shoreline Park, Mountain View, California
Haunted House / Historic Home

Rengstorff House

Mountain View, CA

Henry Rengstorff, a German immigrant who arrived in California during the Gold Rush era, built this Italianate Victorian home around 1867 near the grain-shipping hub he operated at Rengstorff Landing. The house remained in the family until 1959 and spent decades in private hands before the City of Mountain View purchased it for one dollar in 1979, moved it to Shoreline Park, and restored it. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

$ All Ages Family: High

Oceanside — 2

Hunter Steakhouse exterior at 1221 Vista Way, Oceanside — restaurant built atop the former Buena Vista Cemetery active 1888-1916
Haunted Dining / Bar

Hunter Steakhouse

Oceanside, CA

Hunter Steakhouse opened in 1967 at 1221 Vista Way in Oceanside, on land that previously served as the Buena Vista Cemetery. When the cemetery was cleared for development, not all the dead followed — at least according to the restaurant's accumulated reputation over six decades of operation. The chain operated as Hungry Hunter until 2008, when the Oceanside location became independently owned.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Oceanside Fire Station No. 1
Other Dark Tourism Site

Oceanside Fire Station No. 1

Oceanside, CA

Oceanside Fire Station No. 1 was built in 1929 to a design by Irving J. Gill, one of the architects most associated with Southern California Modernism. The two-story building at 704 Pier View Way served simultaneously as a fire station and police station, with three jail cells — a drunk tank and a women's holding cell among them — located within the fire station building. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

$ All Ages Family: High

Petaluma — 2

Phoenix Theater marquee and storefront at 201 Washington Street in downtown Petaluma, California
Theater / Performance Venue

Phoenix Theater

Petaluma, CA

The Phoenix Theater first opened in 1904 as the Hill Opera House, built by William Hill, and hosted performers including Harry Houdini and Enrico Caruso. After fires in the 1920s and 1957 the building was rebuilt and renamed multiple times, finally becoming the Phoenix in 1983. It now operates as an all-ages music venue and youth community center.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior or interior of the Washoe House roadhouse in Petaluma, California
Haunted Dining / Bar

Washoe House

Petaluma, CA

Robert Ayres built the roadhouse in 1859 at the junction of Stony Point Road and Roblar Road as a stop on stagecoach routes between Petaluma, Santa Rosa, and Bodega. Over 165 years, the structure has served as a hotel, post office, butcher shop, community hall, and restaurant. Sonoma County designated it a Historic Landmark. It was a minor incident site during the Civil War period.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Salinas — 2

Exterior view of the John Steinbeck birthplace, a two-story Queen Anne Victorian at 132 Central Avenue in Salinas, California
Museum / Historical Site

John Steinbeck House (Steinbeck Birthplace)

Salinas, CA

This 1897 Queen Anne Victorian at 132 Central Avenue was purchased by the Steinbeck family in 1900 and remained the family home through John Steinbeck's childhood and early adulthood. Steinbeck was born in the front bedroom in February 1902. He returned in the early 1930s to care for his parents as they declined, later writing to a friend that the house had become 'pretty haunted.' The Valley Guild acquired the property in 1973 and has operated it as a luncheon restaurant since 1974.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Old Stage Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Old Stage Road

Salinas, CA

Old Stage Road in Monterey County was historically part of the stagecoach route between San Francisco and Los Angeles, passing through Salinas and continuing toward Hollister and San Juan Bautista. The road is documented in regional histories and in the USC Digital Folklore Archives as the setting for several California ghost legends.

$ All Ages (use general road safety) Family: Moderate

San Juan Capistrano — 2

The ruined Great Stone Church at Mission San Juan Capistrano, destroyed in the 1812 earthquake
Other Dark Tourism Site

Mission San Juan Capistrano

San Juan Capistrano, CA

Mission San Juan Capistrano was permanently founded on November 1, 1776, by Father Junipero Serra as the seventh of California's 21 Franciscan missions. Its Great Stone Church, constructed from 1797–1806, was destroyed in the December 8, 1812, earthquake, killing approximately 40 Native American worshippers. The mission complex, including Serra's Chapel (the oldest standing building in California where Mass is still celebrated), is a National Historic Landmark.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Old Town San Juan Capistrano Historic District
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Old Town San Juan Capistrano Historic District

San Juan Capistrano, CA

San Juan Capistrano is one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in California, founded in 1776 around the Spanish mission. Rios Street, running through the historic district, is recognized as the oldest street in California. The area retains numerous 18th- and 19th-century adobe structures.

$ All Ages Family: High

Santa Clara — 2

Asylum / Hospital

Agnews Historic Cemetery & Museum

Santa Clara, CA

Established in 1888 as the Great Asylum for the Insane, Agnews State Hospital became the site of California's largest single-event loss of life in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, when the collapse of the main Kirkbride building killed 117 patients and staff. The institution operated in various forms until 2009; today a small museum and historic cemetery occupy a corner of what is now Oracle Corporation's Santa Clara campus.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Santa Clara University Mission Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Santa Clara University Mission Cemetery

Santa Clara, CA

Santa Clara University sits atop more than six decades of Franciscan mission operations, during which an estimated 7,000 Ohlone people died. Approximately 1,000 documented 19th-century burials lie between Mission Church and O'Connor Hall; construction workers have repeatedly unearthed remains dating to 400 BC–800 AD across the broader campus footprint.

$ All Ages Family: High

Saratoga — 2

The 1895 Samuel Cloud House and Cloud-Smith General Store Victorian building at 14503 Big Basin Way in Saratoga, California, now home to Bella Saratoga restaurant
Haunted Dining / Bar

Bella Saratoga

Saratoga, CA

Bella Saratoga occupies a two-story Victorian home built in 1895 in the heart of Saratoga Village. The building previously served as the home of the Saratoga News, and before Bella Saratoga opened in 1993, housed another Italian restaurant. The 1895 structure is one of the older commercial buildings in the village.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Madronia Cemetery
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Madronia Cemetery

Saratoga, CA

Madronia Cemetery was established in 1854 following the drowning of a young boy while crossing Saratoga Creek — the tragedy prompted the local community to formalize a burial ground. The 10.5-acre site under redwood and magnolia canopy has grown to hold more than 5,400 burials and is among the oldest continuously operating pioneer cemeteries in Santa Clara County.

$ All Ages Family: High

Ventura — 2

Mission Revival exterior of the 1901 Elizabeth Bard Memorial Hospital at 121 N Fir Street in downtown Ventura, California, with three-story corner bell tower.
Other Dark Tourism Site

Elizabeth Bard Memorial Building

Ventura, CA

The Elizabeth Bard Memorial Building, originally Elizabeth Bard Memorial Hospital, was built in 1901 in downtown Ventura, California. Cephas L. Bard and his brother Thomas R. Bard funded its construction in memory of their mother, Elizabeth. The Mission Revival hospital opened in January 1902; Cephas Bard died there in April 1902 at age 56. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.

$ All Ages Family: High
The white facade and bell tower of Mission Basilica San Buenaventura on East Main Street in Ventura, California (HABS CA-22)
Museum / Historical Site

Mission Basilica San Buenaventura

Ventura, CA

Mission San Buenaventura was founded on Easter Sunday, March 31, 1782, by Junipero Serra — the ninth Spanish mission in Alta California and the last he personally established. The current church was completed between 1793 and 1812 after the original was destroyed by fire. Mission records show 3,875 baptisms and 3,150 burials of Ventureño Chumash people during the mission period. In 2020, Pope Francis elevated the mission to minor basilica status.

$ All Ages Family: High

Vista — 2

Museum / Historical Site

Rancho Buena Vista Adobe

Vista, CA

The Rancho Buena Vista land grant was awarded by Mexican Governor Pio Pico to Felipe Subria in 1845. The existing Monterey-style adobe was built in the 1850s during the ownership of Cave Johnson Couts, a Mexican War veteran who acquired the property in 1866 for ranching. The City of Vista purchased the adobe in 1989 for $1 million and operates it as a historical museum.

$ All Ages Family: High
Rancho Guajome Adobe hacienda exterior in Vista, California, a National Historic Landmark
Museum / Historical Site

Rancho Guajome Adobe

Vista, CA

Rancho Guajome Adobe was built in 1852–53 on land Abel Stearns gave as a wedding gift to his sister-in-law Ysidora Bandini when she married Cave Johnson Couts in 1851. The 28-room hacienda is one of the most intact Spanish-Mexican colonial adobe complexes in California and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970. San Diego County purchased the property in 1973.

$ All Ages Family: High

Watsonville — 2

Aerial survey view of Mt. Madonna County Park
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Mt. Madonna County Park

Watsonville, CA

Mt. Madonna County Park encompasses land that was once part of the holdings of Henry Miller, the German immigrant who became the largest private landowner in California through the cattle business and was known as the Cattle King. Miller owned over 1.25 million acres at his peak. The park, administered by Santa Clara County, preserves the ruins of Miller's mountain estate and occupies the ridgeline on Highway 152 west of Gilroy.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted House / Historic Home

Tuttle Mansion

Watsonville, CA

Morris B. Tuttle, an orchardist who had relocated from Iowa, hired architect William Weeks to design this Victorian mansion in 1899. The property sat at the center of the Tuttle family's Pajaro Valley apple orchards and accumulated a series of violent deaths among family members over the following two decades.

$ All Ages Family: High

Yermo — 2

Overview of Calico Ghost Town, an open-air silver mining museum in the Mojave Desert near Barstow, California, founded 1881
Outdoor / Natural Site

Calico Ghost Town

Yermo, CA

Calico was founded in 1881 as a silver mining boomtown in the Mojave Desert. The Silver King Mine became California's largest silver producer, generating 70% of the state's silver output during the mid-1880s. The town achieved peak prosperity before declining as silver prices collapsed.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Main street of Calico Ghost Town in the Mojave Desert near Yermo California
Outdoor / Natural Site

Calico Ghost Town

Yermo, CA

Calico is an 1881 silver-mining town in the Calico Mountains of San Bernardino County, California, that produced roughly $86 million in silver and $45 million in borax before its 1896 collapse. Walter Knott restored the town in the 1950s, donated it to San Bernardino County in 1966, and it now operates as Calico Ghost Town Regional Park and California Historical Landmark 782.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Yosemite National Park — 2

Aerial survey view of Camp 6
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Camp 6

Yosemite National Park, CA

Camp 6, formerly known as Camp Tresidder, operated as employee housing for Yosemite National Park staff and concessionaire workers. Located south of Yosemite Village along the Merced River, it consisted of tent cabin structures housing approximately 80 employees. The camp was destroyed in the catastrophic 1997 Yosemite Valley flood and has since been converted to a day-use parking facility.

$ All Ages Family: High
Small alpine lake surrounded by granite and conifer forest in the Yosemite high country
Outdoor / Natural Site

Grouse Lake — Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park, CA

Grouse Lake sits in the high country of Yosemite National Park, accessible by a long backcountry hike from the Bridalveil Creek Campground area. The earliest written record of a paranormal account at the lake comes from Galen Clark, Yosemite's first official park ranger, who described hearing a child's cries at the lake shore in 1857 and being told by Ahwahnechee people that the sound came from a drowned child.

$$ All Ages Family: Low

Adelanto — 1

Aerial view of George Air Force Base, California — USGS digital orthophoto 2006
Battlefield / Military Site

George Air Force Base (Southern California Logistics Airport)

Adelanto, CA

Activated in June 1941 as Victorville Army Air Field, the base trained bomber crews and fighter pilots through World War II, Korea, and Vietnam before Congress ordered its closure under BRAC in 1988. It formally decommissioned in December 1992. The site is now the Southern California Logistics Airport, though hundreds of abandoned structures remain on the property.

$ 18+ Family: Moderate

Agoura Hills — 1

Aerial survey view of Malibu Lake Island
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Malibu Lake Island

Agoura Hills, CA

Malibu Lake — properly spelled Malibou Lake — is a private mountain lake community in the Santa Monica Mountains of Los Angeles County, established as the Malibou Lake Mountain Club in 1922. The 350-acre property encompasses approximately 250 homes, a private lake, and a small island. It has operated as a members-only residential community for over a century.

$ All Ages Family: High

Alameda — 1

USS Hornet (CV-12) Essex-class aircraft carrier moored as a museum ship at Alameda, California
Museum / Historical Site

USS Hornet (CV-12)

Alameda, CA

USS Hornet (CV-12) is an Essex-class aircraft carrier commissioned in November 1943 and decommissioned in 1970. The carrier earned seven battle stars and the Presidential Unit Citation during World War II and recovered the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 crews in 1969. The Hornet has operated as a museum ship at the former Naval Air Station Alameda since 1998.

$$ All Ages (overnight programs age-restricted) Family: Moderate

Amargosa — 1

Amargosa Opera House and Hotel — 1925 Spanish Colonial Revival complex at Death Valley Junction, California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Amargosa Opera House and Hotel

Amargosa, CA

Built 1923-25 by the Pacific Coast Borax Company as a company town hub featuring a 23-room hotel and theater. The U-shaped Spanish Colonial Revival complex served miners and company officials during the borax mining era. Since 1967, it has operated as a cultural venue and hotel.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Antioch — 1

Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve entrance off Somersville Road, Antioch, California, photographed September 2008
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve and Rose Hill Cemetery

Antioch, CA

William C. Israel discovered coal at Mount Diablo's northern slope in 1859, triggering development of California's largest 19th-century coal field. Five towns — Nortonville, Somersville, Stewartville, West Hartley, and Judsonville — housed miners and their families at the district's peak, producing more than 4 million tons of coal before better-quality imported fuel made the operation uneconomical. Mining ceased around 1906; sandstone extraction continued through the 1940s. The East Bay Regional Park District acquired the 6,000-acre property in 1973.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Arcadia — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

The Derby Restaurant

Arcadia, CA

The Derby has operated as a steakhouse near Santa Anita Park since 1922. Jockey George 'The Iceman' Woolf, who rode Seabiscuit to victory in the 1938 Pimlico Special, co-owned the restaurant and lived in the upstairs quarters. On January 3, 1946, Woolf lost consciousness mid-race at Santa Anita Park and died the following day at age 35, likely due to complications from diabetes.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Arroyo Grande — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Victorian Estate (Former Rose Victorian Inn / Crystal Rose Inn)

Arroyo Grande, CA

The Pitkin-Conrow House was built in 1890 in Arroyo Grande, California by Charles Pitkin and remains one of the most prominent Victorian residences on the Central Coast. The property operated as the Rose Victorian Inn and later the Crystal Rose Inn, and now functions as The Victorian Estate, a private wedding and event venue.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High

Atwater — 1

The Castle Air Museum entrance sign at the former Castle Air Force Base in Atwater, California, gateway to the outdoor aviation collection.
Museum / Historical Site

Castle Air Museum

Atwater, CA

Castle Air Museum opened in 1981 on the grounds of the former Castle Air Force Base in Atwater, California. Its collection includes more than 80 military aircraft, with the centerpiece being the B-29 Superfortress 'Raz'n Hell,' assembled from three separate airframes and bearing the same model designation as the Enola Gay and Bockscar.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Beaumont — 1

Aerial survey view of Stewart Sunnyslope Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Stewart Sunnyslope Cemetery

Beaumont, CA

Stewart Sunnyslope Cemetery began as the Stewart family's private burying ground on a knoll at Pennsylvania and 1st Street in Beaumont, California. The Stewart family donated the original six acres to the City of Beaumont in 1888, and the site was renamed Stewart Sunnyslope Cemetery in 1962.

$ All Ages Family: High

Big Sur — 1

Point Sur Lightstation atop its volcanic rock on the Big Sur coast of California
Museum / Historical Site

Point Sur Lightstation

Big Sur, CA

Point Sur Lightstation, first lit on August 1, 1889, sits atop a 361-foot volcanic rock 19 miles south of Monterey, California. It is the only complete turn-of-the-century light station open to the public in California and the heart of Point Sur State Historic Park.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Boulder Creek — 1

Open Graph image from www.brookdalelodge.com
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Brookdale Lodge

Boulder Creek, CA

Brookdale Lodge opened in the early 1900s as a creek-side resort under James Harvey Logan, creator of the loganberry and Santa Cruz County judge. By the Prohibition era, the property hosted organized crime figures and operated as a speakeasy. The resort achieved peak popularity in the 1950s-60s, hosting Hollywood celebrities and international dignitaries before financial decline.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Burbank — 1

Photo of Woodbury University (Villa Cabrini Academy site)
Other Dark Tourism Site

Woodbury University (Villa Cabrini Academy site)

Burbank, CA

In 1907, Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini — later the first American canonized as a Catholic saint — established a preventorium for children with tuberculosis on the Burbank hillside. The Sisters of the Sacred Heart built Villa Cabrini Academy here in 1944, which operated as a girls' school until 1970. Woodbury University acquired the 22-acre campus in 1985.

$ All Ages Family: High

Burlingame — 1

Photo of Kohl Mansion (Mercy High School)
Haunted House / Historic Home

Kohl Mansion (Mercy High School)

Burlingame, CA

Charles Frederick Kohl, son of a San Francisco shipping magnate, built the 53-room Tudor Revival mansion at 2750 Adeline Drive in Burlingame in 1914. Seven years later, in 1921, he shot himself inside the mansion while in the grip of an obsessive fear of his former French maid, Adele Verges, who had shot him through the chest in 1912. The Sisters of Mercy purchased the estate in 1924 and converted it into a Catholic girls' school.

$ All Ages Family: High

Burney — 1

Aerial survey view of Black Ranch Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Black Ranch Road

Burney, CA

Black Ranch Road is an isolated mountain road in the Burney area of Shasta County, California, located in the forested Cascade foothills approximately 50 miles northeast of Redding. The road passes through rural terrain with historical significance to the region's settlement patterns and transportation routes.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Calexico — 1

Calexico High School exterior building in Calexico California
Museum / Historical Site

Calexico High School

Calexico, CA

Calexico High School operates as a secondary educational institution in the border community of Calexico, California. The school lost a student—a cheerleader—in an automobile accident while returning from an away football game.

$ Restricted - Active School Family: Moderate

Camarillo — 1

Mission Revival bell tower of the former Camarillo State Hospital, now CSU Channel Islands in Camarillo, California
Asylum / Hospital

Former Camarillo State Hospital (CSU Channel Islands)

Camarillo, CA

Camarillo State Mental Hospital opened in 1936 on 1,500 acres in Ventura County, California, designed in Mission Revival style by architect Edward Schmidt. At its peak it housed roughly 7,000 patients and was among the largest state mental hospitals in the world. The hospital partnered with the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and closed in 1997. The campus became California State University Channel Islands in 2002.

$ All Ages for campus visit; active university with security Family: Moderate

Cambria — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Bluebird Inn

Cambria, CA

The Bluebird Inn centers on a cottage built in 1880 by George W. Lull for his second wife, Mary Inman Lull — born Mary Leah Barnhardt — who had previously been married in Illinois. The 1880 structure became the anchor of an inn complex that has operated continuously on Cambria's Main Street.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Campo — 1

Lake Morena County Park
Outdoor / Natural Site

Lake Morena County Park

Campo, CA

Lake Morena is a reservoir in the Laguna Mountains of eastern San Diego County, constructed by the Otay Water District and completed in 1912. The lake sits in a remote valley at roughly 3,000 feet elevation and is managed today by San Diego County Parks. The 1916 Hatfield flood — a rainmaking attempt that resulted in catastrophic flooding across San Diego County — affected waterways in the region.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Canoga Park — 1

Bell Creek in channelized eastern section, looking upstream (west) from Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Canoga Park within the western San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles. Location is a long block west of the official start of the Los Angeles River, at Bell's confluence with Calabasas Creek.
Haunted Dining / Bar

Jack in the Box - Topanga Canyon

Canoga Park, CA

Jack in the Box operates as a fast food franchise location at 7264 Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Canoga Park, California. It functions as a standard quick-service restaurant with no documented historical significance beyond normal commercial operations.

$ All Ages Family: Not Recommended

Capitola — 1

Photo of Rispin Mansion
Haunted House / Historic Home

Rispin Mansion

Capitola, CA

Henry Allen Rispin, considered a founding father of Capitola, built this 22-room, 7,100-square-foot Mission/Spanish Revival mansion in 1921 not as a residence but as a real estate showpiece designed to attract investors to his Capitola development. Rispin lost his fortune in the Depression by 1931; the property passed to the Oblates of St. Joseph, who used it as a convent until 1959, followed by decades of vandalism and abandonment. A 2009 fire destroyed approximately 75 percent of the interior. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1991, the mansion now sits sealed inside The Park at Rispin Mansion, opened by the City of Capitola in 2024.

$ All Ages Family: High

Carmel Valley — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

Blue Sky Lodge

Carmel Valley, CA

Blue Sky Lodge was established in 1952 as a family-owned inn in Carmel Valley, California. The lodge operated continuously for over seven decades as a small, independently-run hospitality business. The property has closed as of 2026, though it remains historically significant as a mid-century lodging establishment.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Carmel-by-the-Sea — 1

Hawk Tower at Tor House, a 40-foot stone tower built by hand by poet Robinson Jeffers at Carmel Point, California
Museum / Historical Site

Tor House and Hawk Tower

Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA

In 1914, poet Robinson Jeffers and his wife Una arrived in Carmel-by-the-Sea after abandoning plans to relocate to England. An inheritance from Jeffers's father provided enough income to pursue poetry full-time. In spring 1919, the couple purchased a headland property at Carmel Point and Jeffers began constructing their home himself, serving as an apprentice to a stonemason. He went on to single-handedly haul granite boulders from the beach below — some weighing 400 pounds — and built the 40-foot Hawk Tower between 1920 and 1924. Jeffers lived and wrote here until his death in 1962.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Chatsworth — 1

True Crime Site

Spahn Movie Ranch Site (Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park)

Chatsworth, CA

Spahn Movie Ranch was a working Western movie set in Chatsworth that had appeared in dozens of films and television productions. In late 1968, Charles Manson and the group later known as the Manson Family moved in and made it their primary base with the permission of elderly owner George Spahn. They remained until the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department arrested 26 members of the group on auto theft charges in August 1969; the Family returned until a second raid in October 1969. The Tate-LaBianca murders were committed in August 1969 while the Family was based at the ranch. The buildings burned in a September 1970 wildfire. The land is now part of Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Cholame — 1

True Crime Site

James Dean Memorial (Highways 41 & 46 Crash Site)

Cholame, CA

At approximately 5:45 p.m. on September 30, 1955, 24-year-old actor James Dean was killed when his Porsche 550 Spyder, nicknamed 'Little Bastard,' collided near head-on with a 1950 Ford Tudor driven by 23-year-old California Polytechnic student Donald Turnupseed at the junction of then-Highway 466 and Highway 41. Dean's passenger, German mechanic Rolf Wütherich, survived with serious injuries. Turnupseed was largely uninjured. Dean was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m. In 1977, Japanese fan Seita Ohnishi commissioned and transported a stainless steel memorial sculpture to Cholame, where it remains.

$ All Ages Family: High

Chowchilla — 1

Aerial survey view of The Old Chowchilla Save Mart ('America's Most Haunted Grocery Store')
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

The Old Chowchilla Save Mart ('America's Most Haunted Grocery Store')

Chowchilla, CA

The Save Mart on Robertson Boulevard in Chowchilla, California, became known in Central Valley folklore as one of the most haunted grocery stores in America. After the original store closed in the 2000s and Save Mart relocated to a newer building, the haunted location was taken over by a Dollar General Market, which operates there today.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Chula Vista — 1

Aerial survey view of Proctor Valley Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Proctor Valley Road

Chula Vista, CA

Proctor Valley is a low-lying agricultural corridor in the foothills between Chula Vista and the backcountry town of Jamul. The valley supported dairy operations through the mid-twentieth century, and the dirt road traversing it served primarily as a farm-to-market shortcut.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Clovis — 1

Asylum / Hospital

Wolfe Manor (Clovis Avenue Sanitarium / 'Andleberry Estate')

Clovis, CA

The Clovis mansion best known as Wolfe Manor was built in 1922 by Anthony Andriotti as an 8,000-square-foot private residence. It became the Hazelwood Sanitarium in 1935, the Clovis Avenue Sanitarium in 1942, and later a nursing home that closed in 1992. After years as a haunted attraction it was demolished on November 8, 2014.

$ All Ages Family: Not Recommended

Colma — 1

Photo of Colma Cemeteries (City of Souls)
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Colma Cemeteries (City of Souls)

Colma, CA

In 1901, San Francisco prohibited new burials within city limits and subsequently ordered the eviction of existing cemeteries. Roughly 130,000 bodies from the 'Big Four' San Francisco cemeteries plus tens of thousands from other sites were relocated to Colma, which had been organized specifically to receive them after Cypress Lawn Cemetery was established in 1892.

$ All Ages Family: High

Columbia — 1

Open Graph image from www.parks.ca.gov
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Fallon House Theatre & Hotel

Columbia, CA

The Fallon House Hotel was built in 1859 by Irish stone cutter Owen Fallon in Columbia, California, at the heart of the Mother Lode's most prosperous placer mining district. Fallon expanded the property in 1863, and the associated theater became a social hub for miners and merchants. The original structure burned and was rebuilt; the current building is an authentically restored replica within Columbia State Historic Park, administered by California State Parks.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Coronado — 1

Hotel del Coronado Victorian beachfront resort with red turrets in Coronado California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Del Coronado

Coronado, CA

Hotel del Coronado opened on February 19, 1888, designed by James and Merritt Reid as a wood-frame Victorian resort on the Coronado Peninsula. Financed by Elisha Babcock Jr. and H.L. Story, the building was constructed in just eleven months. It hosted President Benjamin Harrison in 1891 and has received countless heads of state and Hollywood celebrities since. The hotel is a National Historic Landmark and remains a fully operating luxury resort under Hilton's Curio Collection.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Coulterville — 1

Photo of Hotel Jeffery & Magnolia Saloon
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Jeffery & Magnolia Saloon

Coulterville, CA

The Hotel Jeffery in Coulterville traces its origins to 1851, when the building began as a saloon and fandango hall with thick rock-and-adobe walls during the Gold Rush. Rebuilt several times after fires, it took its present three-story form by 1903 as Coulterville served as a stage stop on the road to Yosemite. Notable guests included John Muir, Mark Twain, and President Theodore Roosevelt. The attached Magnolia Saloon is one of California's oldest watering holes.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Crescent City — 1

1856 Battery Point Lighthouse on its rocky tidal island off Crescent City, California, with cylindrical tower atop the keeper's house
Museum / Historical Site

Battery Point Lighthouse

Crescent City, CA

Battery Point Lighthouse is one of the oldest lighthouses on the California coast, first illuminated on December 10, 1856. The light station occupies a small tidal island accessible only at low tide via a rocky causeway from Crescent City. The lighthouse survived the catastrophic 1964 Alaska earthquake tsunami that destroyed much of the surrounding coastline.

$ All Ages — tide-dependent access Family: High

Davenport — 1

Aerial survey view of Waddell Beach and Valley
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Waddell Beach and Valley

Davenport, CA

William White Waddell (1818–1875) was a Kentucky-born businessman who built lumber mills in the Santa Cruz Mountains. On October 1, 1875, he was mauled by a grizzly bear while deer hunting near Waddell Creek, protecting his dog. His arm was amputated to try to save his life, but he died six days later on October 7. Waddell's death was the last recorded fatal grizzly encounter in California. Waddell Creek, Waddell Beach, and Waddell Valley are named after him.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Davis — 1

Aerial survey view of Old Davis City Hall
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Old Davis City Hall

Davis, CA

Built in 1938 as the Davis City Hall, this Spanish Colonial Revival building was a New Deal-era civic structure that housed city administrative offices and the fire department. The fire department moved out in 1966, and the police department occupied the space until relocating to a new facility in 2001. The building was later renovated into a restaurant.

$ All Ages Family: High

Del Mar — 1

Photo of Del Mar Racetrack
Other Dark Tourism Site

Del Mar Racetrack

Del Mar, CA

Del Mar Thoroughbred Club was founded on May 6, 1936, by a partnership that included Bing Crosby, actors Pat O'Brien and Gary Cooper, and businessman Charles S. Howard. The track opened July 3, 1937, and became a signature California summer racing destination. The original grandstand was demolished and rebuilt in the 1990s.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Del Rey — 1

Aerial survey view of Del Rey Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Del Rey Cemetery

Del Rey, CA

Del Rey Cemetery in Fresno County is part of the Sanger/Del Rey Cemetery District, which administers burial grounds in the southern San Joaquin Valley. The district originated with the Sanger Cemetery established near the town of Centerville in the mid-1850s. The Del Rey Cemetery District was annexed into the Sanger district in 1991.

$ All Ages Family: High

Diamond Springs — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

Diamond Springs Hotel

Diamond Springs, CA

The Diamond Springs Hotel was built in 1916 by Antone Meyer, making it the last surviving hotel building from a town that once supported multiple boarding houses and hotels along the Carson Emigrant Trail in El Dorado County. The building has operated as a restaurant for most of its existence and is currently run by owners Moon and Amy Shim.

$ All Ages Family: High

Dorrington — 1

Exterior of the historic 1852 Dorrington Hotel along Highway 4 in California's Sierra Nevada
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Dorrington Hotel

Dorrington, CA

The Dorrington Hotel was built in 1852 by John and Rebecca Dorrington Gardner as a stage stop on the Big Trees Carson Valley Road in California's Sierra Nevada. The town surrounding the hotel was named after Rebecca's maiden name when its post office opened in 1902, and the hotel and restaurant continue to operate today.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Downieville — 1

Downieville River Inn & Resort along the North Yuba River
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Downieville River Inn & Resort

Downieville, CA

The Downieville River Inn & Resort sits at 121 River Street on the banks of the North Yuba River in the Sierra Nevada town of Downieville, an 1850s Gold Rush settlement now within the Tahoe National Forest. The property previously operated as a boarding house before its conversion to a riverside inn with rooms, cottages, gardens, and a pool.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Duarte — 1

The Old Spaghetti Factory exterior at 1431 Buena Vista Street, Duarte — 1909 former schoolhouse converted to restaurant in 1993
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Old Spaghetti Factory

Duarte, CA

The building at 1431 Buena Vista Street was constructed in 1909 as a five-room schoolhouse — Duarte's only school until 1925. The second schoolhouse on the site burned in 1908; the surviving 1909 structure educated local children until the early 1950s, then served as the Duarte Unified School District administration building until the early 1990s. The Old Spaghetti Factory moved into the vacated building in 1997.

$ All Ages Family: High

Dunlap — 1

Aerial survey view of Dunlap Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Dunlap Cemetery

Dunlap, CA

Dunlap Cemetery sits in the Sierra Nevada foothills of eastern Fresno County. Pioneer Sands Baker, who arrived in Fresno County around 1870, set aside a few acres of his land for the cemetery before 1900. Baker died on April 13, 1918, and is buried there. The Dunlap Cemetery District was formally established as a public cemetery district by the Fresno County Board of Supervisors in 1941.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

El Monte — 1

Lambert Park gymnasium building in El Monte, California
Other Dark Tourism Site

Lambert Park-Gymnasium

El Monte, CA

Lambert Park is a City of El Monte public park that includes a gymnasium building. El Monte, California, developed as an agricultural community in the San Gabriel Valley before becoming a suburban city in Los Angeles County. The park and gymnasium serve the local community; no specific construction date for the gym has been verified through web research.

$ All Ages Family: High

Elizabeth Lake — 1

Elizabeth Lake
Outdoor / Natural Site

Lake Elizabeth

Elizabeth Lake, CA

Elizabeth Lake is a natural perennial sag pond that sits directly on the San Andreas Fault in the Sierra Pelona Mountains of northwestern Los Angeles County at 3,228 feet elevation. The lake was known to Spanish settlers as Laguna del Diablo. Beginning in the 1830s, ranchers established properties on its shores but repeatedly abandoned them, attributing their losses to a creature living in the lake.

$ All Ages Family: High

Fairfax — 1

Asylum / Hospital

Camp Bothin (Bothin Youth Center / former Arequipa Sanatorium)

Fairfax, CA

Camp Bothin in Fairfax occupies the grounds of the former Arequipa Sanatorium, a tuberculosis treatment home for working-class women opened in 1911 by Dr. Philip King Brown. The property had earlier served as Henry E. Bothin's Hill Farm convalescent home for women and children. After Arequipa closed in the 1950s, the Girl Scouts took over the buildings, which they still use today.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Fort Bragg — 1

Exterior of The Grey Whale Inn in Fort Bragg CA, a historic redwood building with a hand-painted whale-themed sign.
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Grey Whale Inn

Fort Bragg, CA

The Grey Whale Inn occupies the building constructed in 1915 by the Union Lumber Company as the Grey Whale Hospital. After 1923 it operated as the Redwood Hospital, treating coastal Mendocino patients until 1971. Subsequent owners converted it into a bed and breakfast; as of 2025 it was closed and undergoing restoration by a local family.

$ All Ages Family: High

Fremont — 1

Scenic view of Niles Canyon and Alameda Creek from the Mission Boulevard bridge in Fremont, California, the canyon traversed by the haunted Niles Canyon Road (Route 84)
Outdoor / Natural Site

Niles Canyon Road

Fremont, CA

Niles Canyon Road is a seven-mile stretch of California State Route 84 running through the Coast Range between Fremont's Niles District and Sunol. The winding two-lane highway has been the subject of a well-documented vanishing-hitchhiker urban legend since at least the 1930s, identified variously as Miss Lowerey or the White Witch of Niles Canyon.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Fullerton — 1

Groveland — 1

The two-story 1849 Groveland Hotel with wraparound porch on Main Street, Groveland, California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Groveland Hotel

Groveland, CA

The Groveland Hotel, opened in 1849 along the Sierra foothills route to Yosemite, is the oldest hotel in the Yosemite area and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. The eighteen-room inn has operated continuously through the Gold Rush, the highway era, and a 1990s restoration.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High

Guerneville — 1

Exterior of the historic brick Korbel Champagne Cellars winery building in Guerneville, California
Other Dark Tourism Site

Korbel Champagne Cellars

Guerneville, CA

Korbel Champagne Cellars was founded in 1882 by Czech immigrant brothers Francis, Anton, and Joseph Korbel in the Russian River redwoods near Guerneville, Sonoma County. The winery pioneered domestic sparkling wine production using the méthode champenoise and survived Prohibition by producing wine for religious use. Adolf Heck purchased the operation in 1954; his son Gary has run it since 1982.

$ All Ages Family: High

Half Moon Bay — 1

Aerial survey view of Purissima Cemetery (Ghost Town)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Purissima Cemetery (Ghost Town)

Half Moon Bay, CA

Purissima was a Protestant farming settlement established around 1868 on the San Mateo Coast, founded by Henry Dobbel. The community declined after repeated crop failures and Dobbel's bankruptcy; by the late 1930s it was fully abandoned. The cemetery on Verde Road is the only structure remaining from the settlement, preserving 19th-century gravestones in an agricultural landscape little changed since the town disappeared.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Harbor City — 1

The duck pond and wetland of Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park near the Los Angeles Harbor
Outdoor / Natural Site

Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park

Harbor City, CA

Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park — known locally as Harbor Park — sits at the junction of Wilmington, San Pedro, and Harbor City, half a mile from the Los Angeles Harbor. The park is the third-largest in the City of Los Angeles and preserves one of the only remaining coastal-Los Angeles wetland environments. The land was historically a meeting point of Dominguez, Sepulveda, and Machado holdings and included Gabrielino-Tongva village sites.

$ All Ages Family: High

Highland — 1

Asylum / Hospital

Patton State Hospital Museum & Memorial

Highland, CA

Patton State Hospital was established in 1890 and opened in 1893 as the Southern California Asylum for the Insane and Inebriates — California's first state psychiatric institution. Between 1893 and 1934, more than 2,024 patients were buried on the grounds in a mass grave. In 2015, California opened its first state psychiatric hospital museum on the campus, housed in a 1920s staff cottage and accessible by email appointment.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Hopland — 1

Photo of Thatcher Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Thatcher Hotel

Hopland, CA

William Wallace Thatcher built this 44-room inn in 1890 to serve rail travelers along the San Francisco line through southern Mendocino County. The third floor operated as a bordello during part of its history. After decades of closure, the hotel underwent a $5 million renovation and reopened in October 2019.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Imperial — 1

Aerial survey view of Imperial Historic Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Imperial Historic Cemetery

Imperial, CA

Imperial Historic Cemetery operated from 1903 to 1949, holding 205 recorded burials on land donated by Anthony Heber, who originally deeded 80 acres to the City of Imperial. Located on Clark Road in the Imperial Valley desert, the cemetery's highly alkaline soil destroyed most concrete markers and eliminated all wooden ones. Only 30 markers remain of the original 205. The site is no longer in service and is surrounded by chain-link fencing.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Independence — 1

Replica guard tower at Manzanar National Historic Site, Owens Valley, California
Museum / Historical Site

Manzanar National Historic Site

Independence, CA

Manzanar operated from March 1942 to November 1945 as one of ten American concentration camps established by Executive Order 9066. At its peak, 10,046 men, women, and children — the majority U.S. citizens — were held behind barbed wire in the Owens Valley desert. The site is the best-preserved of the ten former camp locations and became a National Historic Site in 1992.

$ All Ages Family: High

Inglewood — 1

The white granite chapel and tree-lined grounds of Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Inglewood Park Cemetery

Inglewood, CA

Inglewood Park Cemetery was established in 1905 by a group of Centinela Valley businessmen and received its first interment on July 20, 1906. In 1913 it built the first community mausoleum in California. Today it encompasses 295 acres and has interred over 100,000 individuals, including more than three dozen Civil War veterans, alongside entertainment and sports figures.

$ All Ages Family: High

Ione — 1

Romanesque Revival Preston Castle built in 1894 rising above the foothills of Ione, California, former Preston School of Industry
Prison / Reformatory

Preston Castle

Ione, CA

The Preston School of Industry in Ione, California was established by the State Legislature as a reform institution for juvenile offenders — emphasizing rehabilitation over imprisonment. The cornerstone was laid in December 1890, and the Romanesque Revival building, designed in the Richardsonian style, opened in June 1894. The school operated until 1960, when new facilities were completed on the same property. Notable alumni include Merle Haggard, Rory Calhoun, and author Eddie Bunker.

$$ All ages for public and guided tours; 13+ for flashlight tours; 18+ for paranormal investigations Family: Moderate

Joshua Tree — 1

Photo of Joshua Tree Inn
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Joshua Tree Inn

Joshua Tree, CA

Joshua Tree Inn was built in 1949 as a Spanish Colonial-style motel situated roughly five miles from Joshua Tree National Park. On September 19, 1973, country rock musician Gram Parsons — founder of the Flying Burrito Brothers and a key figure in the development of country rock — died of a morphine and alcohol overdose in Room 8 at age 26.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

La Jolla — 1

Photo of Grande Colonial Hotel La Jolla
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Grande Colonial Hotel La Jolla

La Jolla, CA

The Grande Colonial opened in 1913 as The Colonial Apartments and Hotel on La Jolla's Prospect Street. The current four-story main building was completed in 1928, equipped with the first sprinkler system west of the Mississippi. The hotel operated through two World Wars, serving as a billet for military officers from nearby Camp Callan during World War II, and has remained in continuous operation as La Jolla's oldest surviving hotel.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

La Quinta — 1

Photo of La Quinta Resort & Club
Haunted Hotel / Inn

La Quinta Resort & Club

La Quinta, CA

La Quinta Resort opened December 29, 1926, built by San Francisco businessman Walter H. Morgan as a Spanish Colonial Revival retreat in the Coachella Valley. Morgan hired architect Gordon Kaufmann to design 20 casitas from over 165,000 handmade adobe bricks and tiles. Morgan died by suicide in April 1931 after financial difficulties following the 1929 market crash; his ashes were scattered over the resort's date groves and gardens.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High

Lafayette — 1

Photo of Lafayette Park Hotel and Spa
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Lafayette Park Hotel and Spa

Lafayette, CA

The Lafayette Park Hotel and Spa operates as a family-owned, chateau-inspired hotel in Lafayette, California, adjacent to an old cemetery on Mount Diablo Boulevard. The property is part of the Woodside Collection of independent California hotels.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Lancaster — 1

Western Hotel Museum (former Lancaster Hotel) in Lancaster California, historic wood-frame hotel
Museum / Historical Site

Western Hotel Museum (formerly Lancaster Hotel)

Lancaster, CA

The Western Hotel Museum at 557 West Lancaster Boulevard occupies the oldest standing building in Lancaster, California, constructed in 1888. The two-story Victorian served travelers under multiple names, was longest associated with owners George and Myrtie Webber, and was designated California Historical Landmark No. 658 in 1958.

$ All Ages Family: High

Lathrop — 1

Mossdale steel lift bridge over the San Joaquin River near Lathrop, California, successor to the 1869 first transcontinental-railroad crossing
Outdoor / Natural Site

Mossdale Bridge

Lathrop, CA

The Mossdale Bridge over the San Joaquin River near Lathrop completed the first transcontinental railroad on September 6, 1869 — the final link from the Missouri River to the Pacific. The original wooden Howe truss swing bridge was rebuilt in steel in 1895 and replaced entirely in 1942 with the current vertical-lift Warren through-truss design. It is registered as California Historical Landmark 780-7.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Lemoore — 1

Aerial survey view of Kings River on Elgin
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Kings River on Elgin

Lemoore, CA

The Kings River flows through Kings County in California's Central Valley, passing through agricultural communities including Lemoore. The stretch near Elgin Road has been associated with drowning incidents — the hazards of irrigation canals and seasonal river flows have been a documented concern in the Central Valley for more than a century.

$ All Ages Family: High

Lompoc — 1

Adobe colonnade and bell tower at La Purisima Mission State Historic Park in Lompoc, California, the most fully restored of the 21 Spanish missions
Museum / Historical Site

La Purisima Mission State Historic Park

Lompoc, CA

La Purisima Concepcion de Maria Santisima was founded on December 8, 1787, by Father Fermín de Lasuén as the 11th of California's 21 Franciscan missions. A devastating earthquake in 1812 destroyed the original complex; the rebuilt mission at its current location opened in 1821. In 1824, the mission was the epicenter of the Chumash Revolt — the largest Native American uprising against Spanish colonial authority in California history — which ended in the deaths of indigenous people and soldiers alike.

$ All Ages Family: High

Los Olivos — 1

Photo of Mattei's Tavern (The Inn at Mattei's Tavern)
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Mattei's Tavern (The Inn at Mattei's Tavern)

Los Olivos, CA

Felix Mattei, a Swiss immigrant, built the Central Hotel in Los Olivos in 1886 as a stagecoach stop timed to coincide with the arrival of the Pacific Coast Railway. The tavern operated under several names and served as bar, dining room, inn, and reportedly a brothel. It is now the Auberge Resorts Collection's 67-room Inn at Mattei's Tavern.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High

Lynwood — 1

Aerial survey view of Lyngwood Park
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Lyngwood Park

Lynwood, CA

Lynwood City Park at 11301 Bullis Road in Lynwood, California is a 23-acre municipal park operated by the City of Lynwood's Recreation Department. The Shadowlands account documents a 2003 fatal incident involving a young man riding a bicycle at this location during daylight hours.

$ All Ages Family: High

Magalia — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

The Depot Restaurant & Cafe (Magalia Depot)

Magalia, CA

The Depot Restaurant & Cafe in Magalia, California, occupied a building that began life as a railroad depot before being converted into an eatery in 1977. For decades it was a fixture of the Paradise–Magalia Ridge community until the building was destroyed in the November 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California history.

$ All Ages Family: Not Recommended

Manteca — 1

Theater / Performance Venue

El Rey Theatre (former Kelley Brothers Brewing Company)

Manteca, CA

The El Rey Theatre opened April 15, 1937 on East Yosemite Avenue in downtown Manteca, a 900-seat movie palace built for about $110,000. It was gutted by fire on August 6, 1975, the night it had screened 'The Towering Inferno,' and after years vacant was later reused as Kelley Brothers Brewing Company and a restaurant.

$ All Ages Family: High

Menlo Park — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

Coleman Mansion (Peninsula School)

Menlo Park, CA

The Coleman Mansion was completed in 1882 in Menlo Park, California, designed by architect Augustus Laver as a wedding gift commissioned by Maria O'Brien Coleman for her son James and his bride Carmelita. The mansion has housed Peninsula School since 1929.

$ All Ages Family: High

Milpitas — 1

True Crime Site

Marsh Road (Marcy Conrad Murder Site)

Milpitas, CA

On November 3, 1981, 14-year-old Marcy Renee Conrad was raped and killed by 16-year-old Anthony Jacques Broussard. Her body was left in the hills above Milpitas along Marsh Road and lay there for two days while classmates who knew its location told no adults. The case drew national attention and directly inspired the 1986 film River's Edge.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Mokelumne Hill — 1

Hotel Léger 1934 historic photograph in Mokelumne Hill California Gold Country
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Léger

Mokelumne Hill, CA

George William Léger, born in 1815, established his hotel in Mokelumne Hill around 1851, during the height of the California Gold Rush. The building has burned and been rebuilt twice, with the stone portion of the current structure surviving the 1874 fire. In 1866, Léger purchased the adjacent Calaveras County Courthouse after the county seat relocated to San Andreas and incorporated it into the hotel. Hotel Léger is among the oldest continuously operating hotels in California.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Monrovia — 1

Photo of Aztec Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Aztec Hotel

Monrovia, CA

The Aztec Hotel opened in 1925, designed by Robert Stacy-Judd in an ornate Mayan Revival style that made it one of the most distinctive buildings on the original Route 66. Through Prohibition and beyond, the hotel operated simultaneously as a respectable travelers' lodge and as a gambling den, speakeasy, mob-connected operation, and later a brothel and halfway house. The building accumulated what historians have called a 'long list of deaths' across its operational decades.

$ All Ages Family: High

Montebello — 1

California Historical Landmark #385 marker with twin cannons at Washington Boulevard and Bluff Road, Montebello — Battle of Rio San Gabriel battlefield site
Battlefield / Military Site

Bluff Road

Montebello, CA

The site of Bluff Road and Washington Boulevard in Montebello marks the location of the Battle of Río San Gabriel (January 8, 1847), a key engagement during the Mexican-American War. Approximately 500 Mexican forces under General José María Flores were positioned on bluffs overlooking the San Gabriel River when American forces under Captain Robert F. Stockton and General Stephen W. Kearney attacked. The battle ended in a Mexican defeat and was strategically significant in the American military campaign for California.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Moreno Valley — 1

Aerial survey view of Nason Street Overpass
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Nason Street Overpass

Moreno Valley, CA

The Nason Street bridge over Interstate 215 in Moreno Valley was constructed in the 1950s and has long been the center of a local gravity hill legend. A 1996 UC Riverside study on gravity hills determined that the perceived uphill roll of a vehicle placed in neutral on the approach is an optical illusion produced by the relative positions of trees and surrounding terrain. No bus accident involving children at this location has been verified in historical records.

$ All Ages Family: High

Moss Beach — 1

Exterior of Moss Beach Distillery atop the Pacific coastal cliffs at sunset, with pampas grass and ocean below.
Haunted Dining / Bar

Moss Beach Distillery

Moss Beach, CA

Frank Torres built the Moss Beach Distillery in 1927 as a speakeasy called Frank's Place, positioned on ocean cliffs above a secluded Half Moon Bay beach to facilitate rum-running operations during Prohibition. The location attracted San Francisco politicians and silent film stars; mystery writer Dashiell Hammett was a regular and used the setting in his fiction. Torres's political connections kept the establishment free from raids. After Prohibition ended in 1933, the operation transitioned to a legitimate restaurant that has operated continuously since.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Murphys — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Murphys Historic Hotel

Murphys, CA

The Murphys Historic Hotel was opened as the Sperry and Perry Hotel on August 20, 1856, by James L. Sperry and John Perry as a stagecoach stop on the route from Milton to Calaveras Big Trees. Notable guests have included Mark Twain, Ulysses S. Grant, J.P. Morgan, and John Jacob Astor. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places (1971) and as California Historical Landmark No. 267, the hotel has operated continuously for over 160 years.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Newark — 1

Aerial survey view of Drawbridge Ghost Town
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Drawbridge Ghost Town

Newark, CA

The South Pacific Coast Railroad established a depot on Station Island in San Francisco Bay in 1876, and the settlement that grew around it—Drawbridge—reached 90 buildings by the 1920s, sustained by duck hunting, fishing, and Prohibition-era speakeasies and brothels. Vandalism triggered by an erroneous Mercury News story declaring it abandoned accelerated its depopulation, and the last resident left in 1979. It is now the only ghost town located inside a National Wildlife Refuge.

$ All Ages Family: High

Newbury Park — 1

The reconstructed Victorian Grand Union Hotel that houses the Stagecoach Inn Museum on Ventu Park Road in Newbury Park, California.
Museum / Historical Site

Stagecoach Inn Museum

Newbury Park, CA

The Stagecoach Inn Museum in Newbury Park began as the Grand Union Hotel, constructed in 1876 as a rest stop on the Los Angeles to Santa Barbara stagecoach route. The building served as a stagecoach stop, post office, church, restaurant, and military school before being moved to its current site in the 1960s when the original location was threatened by highway development. The original Inn burned in 1970; the present building is a meticulous reconstruction.

$ All Ages Family: High

Nice — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Featherbed Railroad Bed and Breakfast

Nice, CA

Established in 1989 by a father-son team who converted antique railroad cabooses into lakeside suites, the Featherbed Railroad sits on the shores of Clear Lake in Lake County, California. It has received TripAdvisor Certificates of Excellence and been featured on the Travel Channel. Its mailing address is Nice, CA, though mapping software often lists it as Upper Lake.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

North Hollywood — 1

Photo of El Portal Theater
Theater / Performance Venue

El Portal Theater

North Hollywood, CA

West Coast Theatres opened the El Portal on October 5, 1926, as a combined vaudeville and silent film house in North Hollywood. Designed by Lewis A. Smith in the Spanish Renaissance Revival style, the 1,346-seat venue survived the Jazz Age, the Depression, and the 1994 Northridge earthquake before being rebuilt as a live theater with two stages.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Oakhurst — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Sierra Sky Ranch

Oakhurst, CA

The Sierra Sky Ranch property operated as a working cattle ranch from the 1870s before being converted to a tuberculosis sanatorium in the 1930s. During World War II it served as a rehabilitation facility for servicemen. A small plane crashed on the grounds around 1920, killing a pilot who died in what is now called Moore Cottage. The property has operated as a resort hotel since the mid-20th century.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Oceano — 1

Asylum / Hospital

Coffee Rice House (Halcyon Hotel & Sanatorium)

Oceano, CA

Coffee Adam Rice built the Queen Anne Victorian house at 2531 Cienaga Street in Oceano in 1885 — the same year the family suffered multiple tragedies, including the death of a son in a riding accident and the deterioration of his wife's health. In 1905, the Temple of the People, a Theosophical intentional community based in the adjacent Halcyon settlement, purchased the property and operated it as the Halcyon Hotel and Sanatorium until 1925.

$ All Ages Family: High

Ojai — 1

Spanish Colonial resort with red tile roofs and palm trees set against the Topatopa Mountains
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Ojai Valley Inn

Ojai, CA

The Ojai Valley Inn opened in 1923 as a private golf club, designed in Spanish Colonial Revival style on land in the foothills above the small town of Ojai, California. The resort is a member of Historic Hotels of America and has hosted figures from Hollywood's classical era including Clark Gable and Judy Garland.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High

Orange — 1

Aerial survey view of Holy Sepulcher Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Holy Sepulcher Cemetery

Orange, CA

Holy Sepulcher Cemetery is a Catholic burial ground established in 1930 in the Santiago Canyon hills near Orange, California. It is the largest of the cemeteries operated by the Diocese of Orange and serves as the resting place for many diocesan priests, along with Catholic families across Orange County. It has served the community for nearly a century.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Palm Springs — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Korakia Pensione

Palm Springs, CA

Scottish painter Gordon Coutts built Dar Marroc in 1924 as a private desert retreat modeled on his years living in Tangier, Morocco. The Moorish-style villa attracted artists and Hollywood celebrities through the late 1930s, then passed through multiple owners and uses before a late-1990s renovation converted it into the Korakia Pensione.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Palmdale — 1

Aerial survey view of Lake Una
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Lake Una

Palmdale, CA

Una Lake is a small sag pond in the San Andreas Rift Zone of the Antelope Valley, immediately east of Lake Palmdale along Sierra Highway in Los Angeles County. The lake was separated from the larger original water body in the 1870s when Southern Pacific constructed a raised causeway across the lake bed. The South Antelope Valley Irrigation Company stabilized the pond as a year-round water source in 1897. The property is fenced and patrolled by private security.

$ All Ages Family: High

Palo Alto — 1

True Crime Site

Stanford Memorial Church (Arlis Perry Murder Site)

Palo Alto, CA

Stanford Memorial Church, completed in 1903, became the site of a brutal unsolved murder on October 12, 1974, when 19-year-old Arlis Perry was found dead near the altar. The case remained open for 44 years until 2018, when DNA evidence identified campus security guard Stephen Crawford—who had claimed to discover the body—as the perpetrator.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Pebble Beach — 1

Aerial survey view of Ghost Tree (Pescadero Point)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Ghost Tree (Pescadero Point)

Pebble Beach, CA

The Ghost Tree is a bleached, wind-stunted Monterey cypress at Pescadero Point on Pebble Beach's 17-Mile Drive, one of the most-photographed stops on the privately operated scenic route through the Del Monte Forest.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Pescadero — 1

Pigeon Point Lighthouse on the San Mateo coast near Pescadero, California, showing the 115-foot white brick tower against the sky
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Pigeon Point Lighthouse

Pescadero, CA

Pigeon Point Lighthouse was built in 1872 on a headland along the San Mateo coast, named for the clipper ship Carrier Pigeon that wrecked on these rocks in 1853 — the first of multiple major shipwrecks on the point. At 115 feet, it is one of the tallest lighthouses on the West Coast. The keeper's residence has operated as a youth hostel since the mid-1960s, offering overnight stays on the grounds.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Placentia — 1

The central lake at Tri-City Park in Placentia, California, with walking paths visible along the shoreline
Outdoor / Natural Site

Tri-City Park

Placentia, CA

Tri-City Park is a public recreational space straddling the boundaries of Placentia, Yorba Linda, and Anaheim in Orange County. It offers lakeside walking paths, sports facilities, and picnic areas. No formal historical events are documented at the site.

$ All Ages Family: High

Pomona — 1

Spadra Cemetery, an 1868 pioneer burial ground in Pomona, California, maintained by the Historical Society of Pomona Valley
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Spadra Cemetery

Pomona, CA

Spadra Cemetery is a 2.5-acre pioneer burial ground established in 1868 on land donated by rancher Louis Phillips. It is nearly all that survives of Spadra, a stagecoach-era town founded in 1866 on the former Rancho San Jose. The last burial took place in 1971, and the site is now owned and maintained by the Historical Society of Pomona Valley.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Port Hueneme — 1

Bard Mansion (Berylwood) — Thomas R. Bard's estate house in Port Hueneme, California
Haunted House / Historic Home

Bard Mansion

Port Hueneme, CA

Bard Mansion, also known as Berylwood, was constructed in 1912 by California Senator Thomas Bard as a family residence in Port Hueneme. The Spanish Colonial Revival structure remains a significant architectural landmark, now located within Naval Construction Battalion Center Port Hueneme. The mansion serves as the historical centerpiece of Port Hueneme's cultural heritage.

$$ Restricted Family: Moderate

Ramona — 1

Aerial survey view of Mt. Woodson Castle
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Mt. Woodson Castle

Ramona, CA

Mt. Woodson Castle is a 27-room, 12,000-square-foot Craftsman-style adobe completed in 1921 for San Diego dressmaker and entrepreneur Irene Amy Strong. Strong acquired the Woodson Ranch property in 1909 and worked with architects Emmor Brooke Weaver and John Terrell Vawter to design a castle using materials — eucalyptus, oak, redwood, and stone — sourced directly from the property. The castle is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Rancho Cucamonga — 1

The Sycamore Inn's 1920 wood-and-stone exterior on Historic Route 66 in Rancho Cucamonga, California, surrounded by mature sycamore trees with mountains visible in the background
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Sycamore Inn

Rancho Cucamonga, CA

The Sycamore Inn occupies a site on what is now Historic Route 66 in Rancho Cucamonga that has housed travelers since the 1850s. The original Mountain View inn, built by William Rubottom in 1856, was the scene of a murder in 1862 and a vigilante conspiracy shortly after. The current building dates to 1920; Danish immigrant Irl Hinrichsen renamed it The Sycamore Inn in 1939.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Rancho Dominguez — 1

The 1826 adobe ranch house at Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum, Rancho Dominguez area, Los Angeles County, California
Museum / Historical Site

Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum

Rancho Dominguez, CA

The Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum occupies the 1826 adobe ranch house of Manuel Dominguez, on land first granted to his uncle Juan Jose Dominguez by King Carlos III of Spain in 1784. The 75,000-acre Rancho San Pedro was the earliest Spanish land grant in California. The site was the location of the 1846 Battle of Dominguez Rancho.

$ All Ages Family: High

Rancho Palos Verdes — 1

Point Vicente Lighthouse 67-foot white tower on the Palos Verdes cliffs in Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Museum / Historical Site

Point Vicente Lighthouse

Rancho Palos Verdes, CA

Point Vicente Lighthouse, operational since April 14, 1926, was built to guide vessels entering San Pedro and Long Beach harbors. Its 67-foot tower houses a third-order Fresnel lens manufactured in Paris. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, the lighthouse was operated by civilian keepers until the U.S. Coast Guard assumed responsibility and the light was automated in 1973.

$ All Ages Family: High

Redwood City — 1

Photo of Fox Theatre (Redwood City)
Theater / Performance Venue

Fox Theatre (Redwood City)

Redwood City, CA

The Fox Theatre at 2215 Broadway in Redwood City opened in 1929 as The New Sequoia. It operated as a neighborhood movie house through the mid-20th century, closed, was restored, and reopened as a concert and events venue. The 2022 renovation brought contractors into the building's attic, where they discovered an urn containing human ashes — a find that the theatre's management confirmed publicly.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Reedley — 1

Reedley Opera House historic complex exterior, Reedley California
Theater / Performance Venue

Reedley Opera House

Reedley, CA

The Reedley Opera House, also known as the Jansen Opera House, was built in 1903 by Danish immigrant Jesse Jansen following a 1902 fire that destroyed most of downtown Reedley. The brick building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and is now home to the River City Theatre Company.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Represa — 1

Prison / Reformatory

Folsom Prison Museum (Big House Museum)

Represa, CA

Folsom State Prison opened in 1880 in the granite foothills east of Sacramento, California's second-oldest prison. Between 1895 and 1937, 93 prisoners were executed by hanging here before executions moved to San Quentin. On September 17, 1937, seven inmates attacked Warden Clarence Larkin during a parole meeting, stabbing him and Officer Harry Martin to death. Johnny Cash performed at Folsom on January 13, 1968; the resulting live album became a defining record of American music.

$ All Ages for museum; ghost tours may have age restrictions — verify with event organizers Family: Low

Rosemead — 1

Photo of Savannah Memorial Park Pioneer Cemetery
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Savannah Memorial Park Pioneer Cemetery

Rosemead, CA

Savannah Memorial Park Pioneer Cemetery was founded in 1850, making it the oldest non-sectarian (non-denominational) cemetery in Southern California. Located in Rosemead on land that was part of Henry Dalton's historic Rancho Azusa grant, the 4-acre site contains over 3,700 burials and spans the border into El Monte.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

San Bernardino — 1

Asylum / Hospital

St. Bernardine Medical Center

San Bernardino, CA

St. Bernardine Medical Center opened on a foundation laid October 10, 1931 in San Bernardino, California, founded by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word at the request of local surgeon Dr. Philip Savage. Today it is a 342-bed nonprofit hospital operated by Dignity Health at 2101 N Waterman Avenue.

$ All Ages Family: High

San Gabriel — 1

Mission Revival facade of the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse on Mission Drive in San Gabriel, California
Theater / Performance Venue

San Gabriel Mission Playhouse

San Gabriel, CA

The San Gabriel Mission Playhouse is a 1,387-seat historic theater in San Gabriel, California, constructed between 1923 and 1927 to house John Steven McGroarty's Mission Play. Architect Arthur Burnett Benton designed the building in Mission Revival style with a facade modeled on Mission San Antonio de Padua. The theater was renamed San Gabriel Civic Auditorium in 1945 and reverted to its original name in 2007.

$$ All Ages Family: High

San Miguel — 1

Mission San Miguel Arcángel, an 1797 Franciscan mission and National Historic Landmark in San Miguel, California
Museum / Historical Site

Mission San Miguel Arcángel

San Miguel, CA

Mission San Miguel Arcángel was founded by the Franciscan order on July 25, 1797, the sixteenth of California's missions, on Salinan land. After secularization it briefly passed into private hands, and in December 1848 it was the scene of one of early California's most notorious crimes — the murder of eleven people in the Reed household. It is a National Historic Landmark and remains an active parish of the Diocese of Monterey.

$ All Ages Family: High

San Quentin — 1

Prison / Reformatory

San Quentin Rehabilitation Center Museum

San Quentin, CA

California's oldest prison, San Quentin opened in 1854 on a Marin County peninsula on San Francisco Bay. It became the state's sole execution facility in 1937, when Folsom's last hanging occurred. Between 1938 and 2006, 194 prisoners were executed by gas chamber and later by lethal injection. Charles Manson spent his final years here. A museum inside the gates, curated by a retired associate warden, preserves artifacts spanning 1852 to the 1940s, including a collection of execution nooses.

$ All Ages; museum inside active prison gates — visitors must comply with corrections department entry requirements Family: Low

Santa Ana — 1

Aerial survey view of Fairhaven Memorial Park & Mausoleum
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Fairhaven Memorial Park & Mausoleum

Santa Ana, CA

Fairhaven Memorial Park was founded on August 28, 1911, by Oliver L. Halsell and local businessmen who envisioned a park-like memorial landscape rather than a traditional upright-monument cemetery. The historic mausoleum, built between 1916 and 1920, is one of Orange County's first mausoleums and crematories. The 73-acre park is the final resting place of many of Orange County's founding families.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Santa Maria — 1

Exterior of the Historic Santa Maria Inn, an early 20th century hotel with Spanish-influenced architecture
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Historic Santa Maria Inn

Santa Maria, CA

The Historic Santa Maria Inn opened in 1917 as a 24-room hotel built by Frank J. McCoy to serve travelers along El Camino Real. Today the property has expanded to roughly 164 rooms while retaining its original wing. Its early guest book included Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, Bette Davis, Bing Crosby, and President Herbert Hoover.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Santa Paula — 1

The Glen Tavern Inn in Santa Paula California, historic Tudor Revival hotel exterior
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Glen Tavern Inn

Santa Paula, CA

The Glen Tavern Inn opened in 1911 in Santa Paula, California, designed in the Tudor-Craftsman style by architects Burns and Hunt during the Ventura County oil boom. The inn hosted Hollywood guests including John Wayne, Harry Houdini, and Clark Gable, and its third floor served as a Prohibition-era speakeasy, gambling parlor, and brothel.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Scotia — 1

Exterior view of the historic Scotia Inn (Scotia Lodge) in the Pacific Lumber Company town of Scotia, California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Scotia Inn (now Scotia Lodge)

Scotia, CA

The Scotia Inn, now rebranded as Scotia Lodge, operates in the historic company town of Scotia, California, founded in 1863 as Forestville by the Pacific Lumber Company. The first unit of the new Mowatoc Hotel, later renamed Scotia Inn, was constructed in 1923 to house company guests visiting what was then the world's largest redwood sawmill.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Seaside — 1

The Monterey sky lights up as the sun sets of the CSUMB campus.
Other Dark Tourism Site

Cal State Monterey Bay

Seaside, CA

California State University, Monterey Bay is a public university in Seaside, California with reported paranormal activity on campus.

$ All Ages (College campus) Family: High

Shasta — 1

Historic brick building at Shasta State Historic Park, preserved from the Gold Rush era in the ghost town of Shasta City, California
Museum / Historical Site

Shasta State Historic Park

Shasta, CA

Shasta City was Northern California's commercial center for the 1850s gold rush — a supply depot serving mines across the Klamath and Trinity mountains, with 20,000 residents at its peak. The county seat moved to Redding in 1888 and the town collapsed almost overnight. The 1861 brick courthouse, the surrounding commercial ruins, a cemetery, and a church are preserved as a California State Historic Park.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Signal Hill — 1

Photo of Long Beach Municipal Cemetery
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Long Beach Municipal Cemetery

Signal Hill, CA

Established around 1901 as the municipal cemetery for Long Beach, this Signal Hill burial ground holds the grave of city founder William E. Willmore and more than 50 uncovered Native American graves. The 1920s oil boom on Signal Hill brought disaster when slant drilling beneath the cemetery caused headstones to sink, graves to be penetrated, and families to barricade the entrance in what journalists of the era called the Cemetery Wars.

$ All Ages Family: High

Simi Valley — 1

Aerial survey view of Sycamore Park
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Sycamore Park

Simi Valley, CA

Sycamore Park is a Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District property in Simi Valley, California, featuring trails through native oaks and sycamores and a landmark known as Elephant Rock. Historical photographs document use of the park as early as the 1940s.

$ All Ages Family: High

Soledad — 1

Los Coches Adobe in Soledad, California — surviving 1843 stagecoach inn and California Historical Landmark with thick earthen walls and hipped roof
Museum / Historical Site

Los Coches Adobe

Soledad, CA

Los Coches Adobe in Soledad, California began as a two-room adobe completed in 1843 by William and Maria Richardson. By 1854 it served as a stop on the Butterfield Overland Stage and the San Juan Bautista-Soledad line. Donated to the state in 1958, it is a designated California Historical Landmark.

$ All Ages Family: High

Springville — 1

The Springville Inn, a 1912 historic inn in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Springville Inn

Springville, CA

The Springville Inn has stood at the entrance to the Giant Sequoia National Monument since 1912, in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Tulare County, California. It serves as both a historic lodging property and a restaurant with banquet space for up to 250 guests, anchoring the small town of Springville at the gateway to the giant sequoia groves.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Stevenson Ranch — 1

C.A. Mentry House at Mentryville, the 1876 oil-boom ghost town in Pico Canyon near Stevenson Ranch, California
Outdoor / Natural Site

Mentryville

Stevenson Ranch, CA

Mentryville was founded in the Santa Susana Mountains by Charles Alexander Mentry, a French-born oil field superintendent, following the first commercially successful oil strike in California on September 26, 1876. The town supported over 100 families at its peak before declining after Mentry's death in 1900 and becoming a ghost town by the early 1930s. The property is now managed as a public historic park by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Summerland — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

Big Yellow House Restaurant

Summerland, CA

The Big Yellow House was constructed in the late 1800s by H.L. Williams, founder of Summerland. Originally built as a private residence, the structure was converted to an upscale restaurant by John and June Young in the early 1970s. The building remains a visible landmark from Highway 101, though the restaurant has closed.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Sunnyvale — 1

Aerial survey view of Sunnyvale Toys R Us Site (former Murphy Ranch)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Sunnyvale Toys R Us Site (former Murphy Ranch)

Sunnyvale, CA

The Sunnyvale Toys R Us at 130 E El Camino Real occupied land once belonging to Martin Murphy Jr.'s 19th-century ranch. Murphy was a prominent Irish-American pioneer who received a Mexican land grant and settled the area that would become Sunnyvale. The store opened in the 1970s on this former ranch land and became one of the chain's highest-volume California locations before closing in 2018 during the company's bankruptcy.

$ All Ages Family: High

Sutter Creek — 1

Two-story New England-style main house of the Sutter Creek Inn on Main Street in Sutter Creek, California's Gold Country
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Sutter Creek Inn

Sutter Creek, CA

The Sutter Creek Inn occupies the former residence of Edward Voorheis, a California state senator and mining executive, in Sutter Creek's historic Gold Country main street. In 1966, Burlingame mother of five Jane Way purchased the property and converted it into what is widely cited as the first bed-and-breakfast in the western United States.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Sylmar — 1

Photo of San Fernando Pioneer Memorial Cemetery
Cemetery / Burial Ground

San Fernando Pioneer Memorial Cemetery

Sylmar, CA

Established in 1874 as Sylmar's community burial ground, San Fernando Pioneer Memorial Cemetery was designated a California Historical Landmark but fell into severe neglect after active burials stopped. By 1969 only 13 grave markers were still standing. Ground-penetrating radar later confirmed over 214 burials on the site, including a large unexplained ditch that researchers believe may contain mass-disaster victims.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Talmage — 1

Asylum / Hospital

Mendocino State Hospital (City of Ten Thousand Buddhas)

Talmage, CA

Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane opened in 1893 on a 488-acre campus outside Ukiah. Under California's 1909 eugenics law, the facility performed forced sterilizations on patients. Roughly 1,600 patients died at the hospital across its 79 years of operation; approximately 400 were buried in a mass grave at Ukiah's Russian River Cemetery, marked by a single granite headstone. The hospital closed in 1972. The Buddhist community City of Ten Thousand Buddhas purchased the site in 1974, and all original buildings survive.

$ All Ages Family: High

Temecula — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Palomar Inn

Temecula, CA

The Palomar Inn was built in 1927 by Lena McCulloch under the name Hotel McCulloch, making it one of Old Town Temecula's original commercial landmarks. It was the first hotel in Temecula with electricity and indoor plumbing. Under new ownership about a decade later, the name was changed to Palomar Inn. The building has served as a hotel, drugstore, soda shop, and post office across its nearly century-long history.

$$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Thousand Oaks — 1

Samuelson Chapel spire at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks
Haunted Hotel / Inn

California Lutheran University

Thousand Oaks, CA

Mount Clef Hall is a dormitory at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, built in 1961. Local legend claims the dorm was constructed on the site of a former hotel where a small child was murdered.

$ Students/Residents Family: Low

Tiburon — 1

Photo of Angel Island Immigration Station
Museum / Historical Site

Angel Island Immigration Station

Tiburon, CA

The U.S. Immigration Station on Angel Island operated from January 21, 1910 to November 5, 1940, processing hundreds of thousands of immigrants while enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Approximately 175,000 Chinese immigrants were detained here, with stays ranging from days to 22 months and a rejection rate of roughly 18%.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Torrance — 1

Goodyear blimp flying low over Torrance and Redondo Beach. Photo taken from Hopkins Wilderness park in Redondo Beach.
Other Dark Tourism Site

Bishop Montgomery High

Torrance, CA

Bishop Montgomery High is a private Catholic secondary school in Torrance, California. The school operates as a religious educational institution administered by the Catholic Church.

$ All Ages Family: Not Recommended

Tujunga — 1

Aerial survey view of Tuna Canyon Detention Station Site
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Tuna Canyon Detention Station Site

Tujunga, CA

Tuna Canyon was a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the hills above Tujunga. On December 16, 1941 — nine days after Pearl Harbor — the Department of Justice converted it into a detention facility for immigrants classified as 'enemy aliens.' At peak capacity it held 320 people, including Japanese, Italian, and German residents and Japanese Peruvians transported from South America.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Two Harbors — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Banning House Lodge

Two Harbors, CA

The Banning House Lodge was built in 1910 as the summer home of the Banning Brothers, who owned Catalina Island from 1892 until selling it to William Wrigley Jr. around 1919. The craftsman-style house served as U.S. Coast Guard officer quarters during World War II, then as a private girls camp in the 1950s, before being converted into a 12-room bed and breakfast.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Valencia — 1

The Revolution roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California
Other Dark Tourism Site

Six Flags Magic Mountain — Revolution Coaster

Valencia, CA

Six Flags Magic Mountain opened in 1971 in Valencia (Santa Clarita), California. Its Revolution roller coaster — originally called the Great American Revolution — opened in 1976 and is recognized as the world's first modern roller coaster to feature a vertical loop. The park remains a major, operating Southern California amusement destination.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Vallejo — 1

The 1927 Vallejo City Hall building at 734 Marin Street, Vallejo, California, now housing the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum
Museum / Historical Site

Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum

Vallejo, CA

Operates inside the 1927 Vallejo City Hall building. Documents the history of Vallejo and the adjacent Mare Island Naval Shipyard, established 1854 as the first U.S. naval base on the West Coast and closed in 1996.

$ All Ages Family: High

Venice — 1

Photo of Del Monte Speakeasy (Townhouse)
Haunted Dining / Bar

Del Monte Speakeasy (Townhouse)

Venice, CA

Italian immigrant Cesar Menotti opened the bar at 52 Windward Ave in Venice in 1915, and his original tile signage still marks the entrance. When Prohibition began in 1920, Menotti disguised the street-level operation as a grocery store while running an active speakeasy in the basement, supplied by rum runners who used a network of tunnels connecting to a pier three miles offshore. Frank and Annie Bennett took over operation in 1966; Frank became a fixture at the bar until his death in 2003.

$$ 21+ Family: Low

Victorville — 1

Aerial survey view of 7th Street
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

7th Street

Victorville, CA

7th Street is the heart of historic Route 66 in Victorville, California. Established as the primary thoroughfare through town when Route 66 was authorized in 1926, the street preserves mid-20th-century automobile culture with period buildings, museums, and iconic Route 66 landmarks including the California Route 66 Museum and the New Corral motel.

$ All Ages Family: High

Volcano — 1

Three-story brick St. George Hotel on Main Street in Volcano, California's Amador County Gold Country
Haunted Hotel / Inn

St. George Hotel

Volcano, CA

The St. George Hotel is a three-story brick hotel in Volcano, a near-ghost town in California's Amador County Gold Country. It is the fourth lodging built on its site after three predecessors burned, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Wawona — 1

Photo of Wawona Hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Wawona Hotel

Wawona, CA

The Wawona Hotel has operated in Yosemite since 1879, making it one of the oldest resort destinations in any U.S. national park. It is a National Historic Landmark. In the 1920s a small plane crashed on the hotel grounds and the injured pilot died in the property's Moore Cottage outbuilding before medical help arrived.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

West Covina — 1

Aerial survey view of Galster Wilderness Park
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Galster Wilderness Park

West Covina, CA

Emil and Gladys Galster donated 42 acres on the north slope of the San Jose Hills to the City of West Covina in 1971, stipulating that the land remain a wilderness park available for educational use by scouting organizations. The park is operated by the San Gabriel Mountains Regional Conservancy in partnership with the city. The nature center building is largely closed; trails remain open daily.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

West Hills — 1

Aerial survey view of Shadow Ranch (Shadow Ranch Park)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Shadow Ranch (Shadow Ranch Park)

West Hills, CA

Shadow Ranch was built between 1869 and 1872 as part of a 9,000-acre wheat operation in the western San Fernando Valley by Alfred Workman, an Australian immigrant. The adobe and redwood house was LA Historic-Cultural Monument #9, and the Wizard of Oz screenplay was written on its grounds in the 1930s.

$ All Ages Family: High

Wheatland — 1

Camp Far West Lake shoreline and surrounding oak woodland landscape
Outdoor / Natural Site

Camp Far West Lake

Wheatland, CA

The area surrounding Camp Far West Lake holds significant Nisenan (Southern Maidu) historical importance. The Nisenan inhabited the region from the Sacramento Valley into the Sierra Nevada, spanning modern Placer, Nevada, Yuba, Sacramento, and El Dorado counties before European contact. Camp Far West was established as a military post in 1849 to manage conflicts between indigenous populations and gold-rush settlers, though it ultimately could not prevent the decimation of the Nisenan people.

$ All Ages Family: High

Wilmington — 1

Drum Barracks Civil War Museum exterior, Wilmington, California — the last surviving Civil War military structure in the Los Angeles area
Museum / Historical Site

Drum Barracks Civil War Museum

Wilmington, CA

Drum Barracks was established in 1861–1863 as the Union Army's headquarters for Southern California and the Arizona Territory. Built on 60 acres in present-day Wilmington, the post housed 500 soldiers and processed thousands of California volunteers heading east. After the war it served in the Indian Wars before closing in 1871; the single surviving junior officers' quarters has operated as a Civil War museum since 1987.

$ All Ages Family: High

Woodland — 1

Exterior facade of the Woodland Opera House State Historic Park on Second Street in Woodland, California
Theater / Performance Venue

Woodland Opera House

Woodland, CA

The Woodland Opera House, designed in 1885 by San Francisco architect Thomas J. Welsh, was the first opera house to serve the Sacramento Valley. Destroyed in the Great Fire of July 1, 1892, it was rebuilt on the original foundations and reopened in 1896. Closed from 1913 until the Yolo County Historical Society purchased it in 1971, it is now a California State Historic Park and National Register landmark.

$ All Ages Family: High

Woodside — 1

Photo of Woodside Store Museum
Museum / Historical Site

Woodside Store Museum

Woodside, CA

The Woodside Store was built in 1851 by Dr. Robert Orville Tripp, a self-taught physician who created one of the first multi-function commercial establishments on the San Francisco Peninsula. It served simultaneously as a post office, general store, bank, saloon, and dental office, making it the commercial hub for the lumber and farming community of early Woodside.

$ All Ages Family: High

Yorba Linda — 1

Photo of Yorba Cemetery
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Yorba Cemetery

Yorba Linda, CA

Yorba Cemetery occupies 40,000 square feet of land that was part of Rancho Cañón de Santa Ana, granted to Bernardo Yorba in 1834. When Yorba died in 1858 he willed the parcel containing the San Antonio Chapel and burial ground to the Catholic Church. Burials continued from 1860 until 1939, with members of prominent Californio families including the Yorba, de los Reyes, Peralta, Dominguez, and Navarro families. Orange County acquired the cemetery in 1967 and manages it through OC Parks.

$ All Ages Family: High

Yucaipa — 1

Aerial survey view of Mill Creek
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Mill Creek

Yucaipa, CA

Mill Creek is a 17.8-mile stream originating in the San Bernardino Mountains that historically served as the site of the first commercial three-phase alternating current power station in California. The Mill Creek No. 1 Hydroelectric Plant, a 250-kilowatt facility near Redlands, came online in 1893. Spanish missionaries introduced irrigation from the creek via the Mill Creek Zanja as early as 1819.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

By type

Haunted Hotel / Inn (107) Museum / Historical Site (94) Outdoor / Natural Site (80) Other Dark Tourism Site (58) Haunted House / Historic Home (52) Cemetery / Burial Ground (51) Haunted Dining / Bar (50) Theater / Performance Venue (46) True Crime Site (25) Asylum / Hospital (18) Ghost Tour / Walking Tour (8) Prison / Reformatory (5) Battlefield / Military Site (4)