The Most Haunted Places in California

Ranked

1. 

   1. Whaley House San Diego · Haunted House / Historic Home · Family Comfort: Moderate

   Thomas Whaley built his 1857 brick house on the site of San Diego's gallows, where Yankee Jim Robinson was hanged in 1852. Within a year the family heard heavy footsteps upstairs, which Whaley attributed to Robinson, and the house later saw the deaths of young Thomas Jr. in 1858 and Violet Whaley in 1885. Staff and visitors still report those footsteps along with the scent of cigar smoke or lavender perfume.

   6 original accounts · documented across 5 decades, 1857-1964 · retold in 8 later publications

2. 

   2. Hotel Del Coronado Coronado · Haunted Hotel / Inn · Family Comfort: High

   The hotel opened February 19, 1888, and hosted President Benjamin Harrison in 1891. The next year a woman calling herself Lottie Bernard checked in, waited five days for a man who never arrived, and was found dead on the beachside steps on November 29, 1892; she was later identified as Kate Morgan. Guests in her old room, 3312, report a television switching on by itself, flickering lights, and a sudden breeze with no window open.

   6 original accounts · documented across 5 decades, 1892-2021 · retold in 5 later publications

3. 

   3. Star of India (Maritime Museum of San Diego) San Diego · Museum / Historical Site · Family Comfort: High

   Launched in 1863 as the iron-hulled Euterpe, the ship circled the globe repeatedly before her 1906 renaming to Star of India and 1923 retirement to San Diego. On June 26, 1884, apprentice John Campbell fell from the main mast, crushed both legs, and died three days later at sea. Visitors and crew report a cold hand near the mainmast and footsteps on the rigging where no one is climbing.

   4 original accounts · documented across 3 decades, 1875-1909 · retold in 5 later publications

4. 

   4. USS Hornet (CV-12) Alameda · Museum / Historical Site · Family Comfort: Moderate

   Commissioned in November 1943, the aircraft carrier Hornet earned seven battle stars in the Pacific before recovering the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 crews in 1969. More than 300 men died aboard the ship over her service life, from combat losses to accidents common on carrier decks. Overnight visitors and staff report young men in 1940s sailing uniforms in the chief petty officers' mess and engine room, and the aft elevator activates on its own.

   13 original accounts · documented across 2 decades, 2009-2024 · retold in 2 later publications

5. 

   5. Comedy Store (former Ciro's nightclub) West Hollywood · Haunted Dining / Bar · Family Comfort: Low

   The building opened on New Year's Eve 1935 as Club Seville and by 1940 had become Ciro's, a Sunset Strip nightclub that ran until 1957 with gangster Mickey Cohen among its regulars; Mitzi Shore built it into the Comedy Store in 1976. Former doormen and a waitress who later wrote a book on the club's ghost stories describe a recurring presence dating to that earlier club: one doorman recalled blowing out two lit candles in the showroom only to find them relit twice before he reached the stairs, where the air had turned freezing cold, while the waitress said tables set for the night were sometimes found unset again when staff stepped away. A Los Angeles Times investigation documented an orb sighting near the visiting journalist and a sensed cold air presence during an on-site walkthrough with the show's investigators, and a 1982 UCLA parapsychology investigation recorded a response in the basement long rumored to have served as the earlier club's mob-era torture room.

   4 original accounts · documented in 2022 · retold in 2 later publications

6. 

   6. San Francisco Art Institute (Chestnut Street Campus) San Francisco · Other Dark Tourism Site · Family Comfort: Moderate Private, not open to visitors

   The institute was founded in 1871 as the California School of Design; its present Chestnut Street campus, a Spanish Colonial Revival complex by Bakewell and Brown, opened on Russian Hill in January 1927, and the school held its final commencement in 2022 before a 2023 bankruptcy filing. The tower's reputation traces to art student and night watchman Bill Morehouse, later a Sonoma State professor, who in 1947 reported footsteps climbing the tower floor by floor and a third-floor door that opened and closed on its own, then reported the same phenomenon again when he and five friends staged an ambush at that door and found no one behind it. A separate night watchman around 1962 reported a woman's laughter and a glimpse of a woman in a blue dress who vanished before he could investigate. During a later renovation of the tower, workers described a run of accidents and injuries they blamed on the building, and a seance called in to address it concluded the disturbances were the collective psychic energy of generations of frustrated art students rather than any single spirit.

   4 original accounts · documented across 2 decades, 1940-1968 · retold in 2 later publications

7. 

   7. The Queen Mary Long Beach · Haunted Hotel / Inn · Family Comfort: Moderate

   Launched in 1934 on the Clyde, the Queen Mary became a troopship in World War II, nicknamed the Grey Ghost for her ability to outrun submarines while carrying more than 810,000 soldiers. The engine room's heavy Door 13 killed at least two crew members over the years. Staff and guests still report a figure in blue coveralls near that door and a woman in a white evening gown seen dancing alone in the Queen's Salon.

   2 original accounts · documented across 4 decades, 1960-2025 · retold in 6 later publications

   Disputed by a historical authority A local investigative news piece, citing a published book, reports that the Queen Mary's famous Stateroom B340 murder legend originated with staff who invented it in the late 1980s to discourage guests from requesting an unavailable room, a finding echoed by Wikipedia's note that no historical record supports the story.

8. 

   8. Alcatraz Island San Francisco · Prison / Reformatory · Family Comfort: Moderate

   Alcatraz ran as a military prison from 1850 to 1933 and then as the federal government's toughest penitentiary until 1963, holding men including Al Capone and Robert Stroud, the so-called Birdman. Guards described crashing sounds in empty sections of the cellhouse and self-securing cell doors for decades, with the punishment block's Cell 14D consistently reported as the coldest spot. Former staff and investigators still describe footsteps in corridors just checked and found empty.

   1 original account · documented across 2 decades, 1992-2024 · retold in 4 later publications

9. 

   9. Brookdale Lodge Boulder Creek · Haunted Hotel / Inn · Family Comfort: Moderate

   Brookdale Lodge opened in the early 1900s along Highway 9 in the Santa Cruz Mountains under founder James Harvey Logan, creator of the loganberry and a Santa Cruz County judge, and by the Prohibition era it was hosting organized-crime figures as a speakeasy before peaking in popularity in the 1950s and 60s, when its creek-fed Brook Room dining hall drew Hollywood celebrities. Local legend attributes a fatal drowning in that creek to a young girl, sometimes described as a relative of the founder's family, though the historical basis for the story is unconfirmed. Guests and staff describe her apparition in the Brook Room and phantom sounds in the Mermaid Room; one blogged account relays a guest's story of a girl who approached her table, showed fear, and fled into the closed dining hall, after which staff found its doors locked from both sides.

   1 original account · documented across 3 decades, 1940-2012

10. 

    10. Linda Vista Community Hospital Los Angeles · Asylum / Hospital · Family Comfort: Moderate Private, not open to visitors

    Built in 1904 as a railroad hospital in Boyle Heights, the building served the community until closing in 1991 and sitting empty for two decades, drawing horror-film crews to its intact wards. During those vacant years, crews and investigators described a doctor's figure standing at the top-floor corner window and a young girl's laughter echoing through empty corridors. The building reopened in 2012 as senior housing and is not open to visitors.

    Documented since 1904 · 6 independent sources · 6 media mentions

Superlatives