The California Haunted Trail

California's haunted map runs the length of the state. Gold Rush ghost towns sit in the Sierra foothills and mission bell towers line the coast. San Francisco keeps its Victorian hotels in circulation as inns, while Los Angeles holds a dense cluster of downtown buildings and movie palaces carrying decades of layered history. More than 500 documented locations sit across this network, reaching north into wine country and east into the desert. Southern California carries the heaviest concentration, which is why the featured loop starts there: seven daytime stops between Santa Monica and the Inland Empire, four historic hotels for the overnight leg.