Est. 1892 · San Francisco Cemetery Evictions · California History · Notable Burials · Dark Tourism Destination · Mass Disinterment History
San Francisco's relationship with its dead began deteriorating in the late 19th century. As the city expanded and real estate values climbed, the cemeteries that had occupied the western residential neighborhoods since the Gold Rush era became politically inconvenient. In 1900, the city prohibited new burials within city limits, citing health and land-use concerns. In 1912, the Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance requiring the eviction of the major cemetery complexes — Laurel Hill, Calvary, Masonic, and Odd Fellows — which together held tens of thousands of graves.
The relocations were conducted between roughly 1920 and 1941. Approximately 130,000 bodies were moved from San Francisco's major cemeteries to Colma; another 55,000 Catholic pioneers and other groups followed. Most were reinterred in mass graves, the individual markers lost. Many families paid $10 per grave for reburial; many more were moved anonymously.
Colma had been incorporated in 1924 specifically to serve this purpose. Cypress Lawn had been established there in 1892 by Hamden Holmes Noble, who saw that San Francisco's cemetery real estate was precarious. By the time the evictions were complete, the 2.2-square-mile town had become one of the highest concentrations of buried human remains per square mile anywhere in the world. The dead outnumber the living by roughly 1,000 to 1.
The 17 cemeteries that now operate in Colma range from denominational grounds (Holy Cross, Home of Peace, Hills of Eternity, Olivet Memorial) to the municipal Colma Municipal Cemetery to the elaborate grounds of Cypress Lawn. Notable burials include Wyatt Earp (Hills of Eternity, despite being a Protestant — he was buried beside his Jewish wife), Joe DiMaggio (Holy Cross), William Randolph Hearst (Cypress Lawn), Levi Strauss (Home of Peace), and A.P. Giannini, founder of Bank of America (Cypress Lawn). The town's living population is approximately 1,500.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colma,_California
- https://cypresslawn.com/blog/history-colma-city-souls/
- https://www.kqed.org/news/10779164/why-are-so-many-dead-people-in-colma-and-so-few-in-san-francisco
EMF anomaliesCold spotsPhantom presenceAtmospheric unease
The haunting reputation of Colma operates more at the scale of the landscape than the individual story. When 130,000 people are disinterred and relocated in mass graves, many anonymously, the specific narrative of a haunting becomes difficult to locate. Ghost-tour operators who run Colma routes focus on atmosphere and the unusualness of the place: the fog that sits heavy on the flat cemetery grounds, the juxtaposition of car dealerships and shopping centers with the cemetery gates immediately behind them, the fact that Colma's living residents are outnumbered roughly a thousand to one.
The Haunt Ghost Tours, which has offered Colma cemetery paranormal investigations since at least 2012, includes Woodlawn, Home of Peace, Hills of Eternity, Cypress Lawn, and Holy Cross on its Colma routes. Tour guides report EMF anomalies and occasional visitor experiences of cold spots and presences, but no specific named spirits or documented incidents stand out in the public record.
What draws people to Colma more than any ghost story is the dissonance of the place. San Francisco threw out its dead when they became inconvenient. The people buried in Colma — most of them — did not choose to be there. The poems carved into the walls at Angel Island Immigration Station fifteen miles away speak to the same fact: the ground holds people who had no say in where they ended up.
