San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is said to be home to two ghosts, a ‘White Lady’ who resides at Stow Lake and a police officer who might try to give you a ticket.
If you happen to encounter any of these two, just keep moving forward to avoid any trouble. What troubles? Well, we have a story to tell.
Golden Gate Park Stories
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Golden Gate Park has been a popular tourist destination and is also popular for some spine-chilling stories. The most famous ghost story of Golden Gate Park is the Lady in White at Stow Lake.
People claim if you visit the Golden Gate Park lake late at night, you will see a lady in white floating above the lake. Some people say that she will run up to you and ask you if you’ve seen her baby.
An article published on January 6, 1908, in The San Francisco Chronicle, talks about two couples riding in this park. They had claimed to have seen this woman of Stow Lake.
There are other reported incidents where people claimed that they were pulled over by a police officer who doesn’t even exist. Crazy, isn’t it?
For more than 100 years, visitors have been telling stories of a lady in white that appears at Golden Gate Park looking for her baby. Are you brave enough to visit after dark?
The White Lady
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Nothing beats a good ghost story especially one that is over 100 years old, and San Francisco’s Legend of the Lady of Stow Lake is just that. A story that is a century old full of sadness and remorse, and a curse if you dare to chant the spell to unleash it.
In the Victorian era, there was a young woman who was boating on the lake with her baby. The baby, unfortunately, fell in.
She went after the baby, and both of them drowned. Since then, she’s been looking for her baby in spirit form.
There’s been this legend that if you go to Stow Lake at night, she will either arise from the water in a ghostly form, dressed all in white, or she will pass you along the banks of Stow Lake and ask you if you’ve seen her baby.
She always looks the same way, in a long white dress, with long, fair hair, and glowing from the distance.
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There’s another version of the White Lady that varies a little bit. But the most common telling is that in Victorian times, there was a beautiful young mother and her child in a pram.
She came to the edge of Stow Lake. And she became distracted, and her pram rolled away and into the water. She looked everywhere for it.
The mother ran around to bystanders asking if they had seen her baby. She panicked, and eventually threw herself into the waters of Stow Lake and disappeared underneath, never to be seen again.
If you come here at night and start yelling to her that you have her baby, she’ll ask you, do you have my baby?
And there’s no right way to answer her because if you say yes, she might curse you. And if you say no, she’ll do the same because you’ve tricked her.
How spooky is that!
The Phantom Police Officer
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San Francisco Golden Gate Park is full of ghost stories. Take a walk around the Stow Lake at night and the White Lady might come out of the lake to ask if you have seen her baby.
But wait, there’s one more spectre waiting for you. One of them is a ghost cop car tailgating you at night without any headlights! Luckily, all you have to do is exit the park because the ghost cop can’t follow you out.
There’s another story of a police officer who will pull you over and give you a ticket, in spite of no violations or if he sees you breaking any rule.
However, locals claim they have received tickets from the police officer, only to find out he didn’t exist or was dead years ago.
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Imagine you’re in your car driving through the park, you run a stop sign or you don’t give way to a pedestrian, then all of a sudden you see flashing red lights behind you.
Out of nowhere, you see a cop who pulls you over and comes to your window. You look out just like this and say, What’d I do wrong officer?
The officer doesn’t talk and quietly writes you a ticket, points, and tells you when he wants you to show up in the court.
You go to court, you appear in front of a judge and the judge says is this a joke and the judge tells you that badge number that officer left was from a deceased officer who died twenty to thirty years ago.
Reality or a Myth?
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Skeptics say that these urban legends and myths are far-fetched stories that locals created just to creep more people out of Golden Gate Park.
But it makes me wonder if these are just stories or do they have some truth in them. Paranormal experts say that it might be a residual haunting and not an intelligent haunting.
One of the misconceptions about ghosts is most people think that they are the spirits of the dead, that they’re roaming the earth.
But you’ll find that most ghosts are really something that we call residual haunting, a type of haunting hat keeps repeating itself.
I believe that this woman of Stow Lake could be just some memory that is replaying itself over and over again, that has somehow imprinted in the surroundings.
A lot of ghost stories are here in nature. It can get so quiet and so dark that any sound or anything strange you see, your imagination can run away with you.
