Charles Kohl shot himself in this 53-room Tudor mansion in 1921 after a years-long obsession with the woman who had once shot him. The Sisters of Mercy have reported unexplained activity ever since.
2750 Adeline Dr, Burlingame, CA 94010
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The mansion is a private school campus; not open to general public. Events on the grounds are occasionally open.
Access
Limited Access
Landscaped estate grounds; the mansion exterior is viewable from Adeline Drive
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1914 · English Tudor Revival Architecture · San Francisco Gilded Age Estate · Sisters of Mercy Educational Institution · Peninsula Historic Landmark
Charles Frederick Kohl was the son of Charles Frederick Kohl Sr., who built a fortune in San Francisco's Kohl Building and Pacific Coast shipping interests. The younger Kohl used the family wealth to build one of the Peninsula's most elaborate private estates: a 53-room English Tudor Revival mansion at 2750 Adeline Drive in Burlingame, completed around 1914. The grounds included formal gardens, outbuildings, and staff quarters appropriate to the scale of the main house.
The incident that would define the mansion's later reputation began in 1912. Kohl's French maid, Adele Verges, shot him through the chest at the estate. Kohl survived. Verges was charged and prosecuted; the circumstances of the shooting — including whether Kohl's conduct had precipitated it — were documented in San Francisco newspaper coverage of the era. Kohl recovered physically but, according to accounts published in the San Mateo Daily Journal and 7x7 magazine, became increasingly obsessed with fear of Verges over the following decade.
In 1921, Kohl shot himself inside the mansion. He was 39. Contemporary accounts attributed the suicide to his preoccupation with Verges, who remained alive at the time.
The estate sat briefly before the Sisters of Mercy purchased it in 1924. They converted the mansion and grounds into a Catholic girls' school — Mercy High School — which has operated continuously at the site through the present day. The mansion's 53 rooms were repurposed as classrooms, offices, and institutional space. The original Tudor Revival exterior is largely intact.
Sources
The documented paranormal reports at Kohl Mansion begin with the nuns who moved into the building after 1924. Their accounts — preserved in the San Mateo Daily Journal's historical coverage and in 7x7's Bay Area haunts feature — are notable for their specificity: footsteps on floors without occupants, lights turning on and off independently, and the mansion's elevator activating without anyone calling it. The women reporting these phenomena were members of a religious order not culturally inclined toward sensationalism.
The accounts mention that cleansing ceremonies were performed in the mansion — religious services intended to address whatever was causing the disturbances. The ceremonies apparently produced no lasting change in the phenomena.
The question of attribution is left open by the available sources. Charles Kohl died by suicide in the building in 1921, three years before the Sisters arrived. Whether the reported phenomena connect to his death or to some earlier occupant history is not addressed in surviving documentation. What the sources confirm is the continuity of the reports: phenomena documented in the early Sisters of Mercy period recur in accounts from staff and students across subsequent decades, making the Kohl Mansion one of the more consistently reported haunted locations on the San Francisco Peninsula.
The Kohl Mansion exterior — a 53-room English Tudor Revival structure — is visible from Adeline Drive. The building and its grounds are used by Mercy High School and are not open to the general public. The driveway approach and estate perimeter can be observed from the public road.
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