From haunted hotels and shadowy forests to infamous crime scenes and historic streets with centuries of strange stories, America is filled with wonderfully eerie places worth traveling for. My upcoming book, Eerie Escapes: 50 Scary Weekends in America, brings them together in 50 carefully curated, delightfully creepy weekend trips, including 30 regional trips and 20 seasonal escapes.
Inspired by the book’s regional trips, this Micro Eerie Escapes series gathers a few of the best experiences from my full weekend trips and compacts them into one-day spooky travel adventures, each built around a single day of eerie exploring and an overnight stay. Each escape combines haunted places, true crime, local legends, creepy accommodations, atmospheric meals, and thoughtful little details that carry the eerie mood from check-in to the final stop.
From Alcatraz to Winchester: A Haunted Bay Area Escape
San Francisco seems made for eerie travel. Fog erases the tops of hills and softens the lights along the waterfront, Victorian houses rise above steep streets, and the cold waters of the bay surround one of America’s most infamous prisons. Over one evening and one very full day, this escape leads from a gently haunted hotel and the storied streets of Union Square and Nob Hill to the ruins of a lost oceanfront bathhouse, the cells of Alcatraz, and the bewildering passageways of the Winchester Mystery House.
The Itinerary
Preview: Queen Anne Hotel • San Francisco Ghost Tour • Sutro Baths • Alcatraz Island • Winchester Mystery House • Pied Piper
Check In to the Queen Anne Hotel
1590 Sutter St, San Francisco, CA
Begin with an overnight stay at the Queen Anne Hotel, a richly decorated Victorian hotel in Pacific Heights. Built in 1890 as Miss Mary Lake’s School for Girls, the building retains carved woodwork, patterned wallpaper, chandeliers, antique furnishings, and quiet parlors that make stepping inside feel like entering another period.
The hotel’s best-known ghost is Mary Lake, the school’s former headmistress. Her presence is most closely associated with Room 410, believed to have been her office. Guests have reported finding blankets tucked around them, belongings mysteriously unpacked, and personal items moved. Other stories describe footsteps on the stairs, cold spots, shadowy reflections, and piano music heard when no one is sitting at the keys. The haunting is usually described as protective and gentle, but the thought of an unseen figure quietly tending to sleeping guests can still make the room feel wonderfully strange.
If possible, reserve Room 410, now known as the Mary Lake Suite, or request a room on the fourth floor. After checking in, explore the parlors and staircases, then have dinner before beginning the evening’s ghost tour.
Take an Evening Ghost Tour
After dinner, explore the darker side of Union Square and Nob Hill on a ghost walking tour. Look for a route featuring historic hotels, private clubs, architectural landmarks, and stories of tragedy, scandal, and reported hauntings. After dark, the illuminated windows, steep streets, and grand facades give these elegant neighborhoods a more mysterious character.
One option is San Francisco Ghosts: Gold and Ghouls from US Ghost Adventures, a year-round walking tour featuring haunted locations around Union Square and Nob Hill, including the Fairmont Hotel, Pacific-Union Club, and 450 Sutter Building.
Afterward, return to the Queen Anne and spend the night surrounded by dark wood, old mirrors, and the possibility that Miss Mary Lake may still be keeping watch over her former school.
The Next Morning: Explore the Ruins of Sutro Baths
1004 Point Lobos Ave, San Francisco, CA
Begin the full day at Sutro Baths, where the concrete remains of an enormous nineteenth-century bathhouse lie below the cliffs at Lands End. Developed by Adolph Sutro in the 1890s, the glass-enclosed complex once held seven swimming pools, slides, springboards, museum displays, restaurants, and enough space for thousands of visitors. Sutro even displayed Egyptian mummies among his collection of curiosities. The baths eventually declined, and a fire destroyed the building in 1966, leaving flooded foundations, broken walls, and passageways beside the Pacific.
Descend toward the ruins while morning fog still clings to the cliffs. Wind moves through the old foundations, seawater gathers in the abandoned pools, and waves strike the rocks beyond the crumbling walls. One legend tells of a heartbroken woman who still wanders the baths waiting for a lover who never returned from World War I. Other stories involve apparitions, cold spots, feelings of unease, and strange rituals conducted inside the tunnel cut into the cliff.
No ticket or reservation is required. Arrive early and allow approximately 45 minutes rather than attempting the longer Lands End Trail, since the day depends on reaching Pier 33 in time for an early Alcatraz departure.
Morning: Cross the Bay to Alcatraz
Pier 33 Alcatraz Landing, San Francisco, CA
Continue to Pier 33 for an Alcatraz Day Tour. The ferry crosses the cold waters of San Francisco Bay toward an island that served at different times as a military fort, military prison, and maximum-security federal penitentiary. From 1934 until 1963, Alcatraz held inmates including Al Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, and Robert Stroud.
Inside the cellhouse, rows of narrow cells rise beneath steel walkways while doors, voices, and footsteps echo through the enormous room. The included audio tour uses the recollections of former correctional officers and inmates to guide visitors through prison routines, escape attempts, violence, isolation, and life on the island.
Alcatraz’s ghost stories include whispers from empty cells, clanging doors, shadowy figures, and an oppressive stillness associated with D Block and its isolation cells. Even surrounded by other visitors, the narrow cells and echoing corridors can make the prison feel deeply isolated from the city visible across the water.
Reserve one of the earliest available departures through Alcatraz City Cruises, the National Park Service’s authorized ferry provider. Allow approximately 2.5 to 3 hours for the ferry ride and island visit, then pick up a quick lunch before leaving the city for San Jose.
Eerie Photo Op: Inside the Cellhouse, photograph Broadway, the long central corridor running between B and C Blocks. Stand near one end and frame the rows of barred cells, steel walkways, and overhead lights narrowing into the distance. Take the photograph without flash to preserve the corridor’s shadows and cold institutional atmosphere.
Share your trip photographs: #EerieEscapesSanFrancisco
Afternoon: Enter the Winchester Mystery House
525 S Winchester Blvd, San Jose, CA
After returning from Alcatraz, drive south to San Jose for an afternoon tour of the Winchester Mystery House. Sarah Winchester purchased the original farmhouse in 1886 and spent the next 36 years expanding it into an enormous Victorian mansion filled with elaborate woodwork, stained glass, twisting corridors, shallow staircases, doors opening onto walls or empty space, and rooms altered as the house continued to grow.
According to the legend that made the mansion famous, Winchester believed she was haunted by people killed with Winchester rifles and kept building either to appease or confuse their spirits. Historians have challenged that interpretation, noting that many of the house’s peculiarities have practical explanations and that no conclusive evidence establishes supernatural motives.
The uncertainty has become part of the experience. Visitors still report footsteps, voices, cold spots, moving lights, and the feeling that someone has entered a room just behind them. As the tour winds through interconnected rooms and stairways leading in unexpected directions, the mansion can feel less like a home than an elaborate puzzle that never quite reveals its solution.
The standard Mansion Tour lasts approximately 65 minutes. Reserve a midafternoon tour, and confirm the final tour time before planning the trip, since this tightly scheduled escape depends on completing Alcatraz and reaching San Jose before the mansion closes.
Scare Challenge: If self-guided Basement and Attic Access is available, descend into one of the mansion’s basements and find a quiet place away from the other visitors. Start an EVP recording and ask, “Sarah, are you still building?” Remain silent for 13 seconds, then stop the recording. Wait until you have left the mansion before listening for a response.
Return to San Francisco for Dinner and Drinks at the Pied Piper
2 New Montgomery St, San Francisco, CA
Return to San Francisco and finish the escape at the Pied Piper inside the historic Palace Hotel. Dark wood, leather seating, warm lighting, and Maxfield Parrish’s enormous The Pied Piper of Hamelin painting give the bar the atmosphere of an elegant remnant of old San Francisco.
President Warren G. Harding died at the Palace Hotel in 1923 and is among the spirits said to linger inside. The hotel is also associated with a mysterious Lady in Red, while patrons at the Pied Piper have reportedly felt an unseen hand tap them on the shoulder.
Have dinner and a cocktail beneath the famous painting, then raise a final glass to the prisoners of Alcatraz, the mysteries of Winchester, and whatever may still be wandering the halls of the Palace Hotel.
Darker Stories: Local Crime and Legends
True Crime Story: The Doodler Murders
Between January 1974 and June 1975, six gay men are believed to have been murdered by an unidentified killer known as the Doodler. Most of the victims were found near Ocean Beach and Golden Gate Park. One, Warren Andrews, was discovered unconscious at Lands End in April 1975 and died several weeks later, giving the case an unsettling connection to the cliffs and trails surrounding Sutro Baths.
The killer’s nickname came from a survivor who told police that the man described himself as a cartoonist and doodled while they spoke in a late-night diner. Investigators developed a composite sketch and identified a person of interest, but no one was ever charged. The investigation unfolded at a time when gay men faced the threat of public outing, discrimination, and violence, circumstances that complicated witness cooperation and helped the killer remain unidentified.
Decades later, San Francisco police reopened the investigation, released an age-progressed image of the suspect, and increased the reward for information to $250,000. The case remains active and unsolved.
Historical Crime Story: The Demon of the Belfry Murders
In April 1895, the disappearance of 20-year-old Blanche Lamont and the murder of 21-year-old Minnie Williams transformed San Francisco’s Emmanuel Baptist Church into the scene of one of the city’s most sensational Victorian crimes. Both women belonged to the congregation and knew Theodore Durrant, a 23-year-old medical student who served as assistant superintendent of the church’s Sunday school.
Blanche was last seen entering the church with Durrant on April 3. Nine days later, Minnie was seen arguing with him outside the same building before following him inside. The next morning, women preparing the church for Easter discovered Minnie’s body hidden in a closet. A search of the building then led investigators to Blanche, whose body had been concealed in the church belfry since her disappearance.
Durrant was arrested, convicted, and condemned to death as newspapers across the country followed what became known as the “Crime of the Century.” The press called him the “Demon of the Belfry,” comparing the case to the Jack the Ripper murders that had terrified London only a few years earlier. Durrant maintained his innocence until he was hanged at San Quentin in 1898. Emmanuel Baptist Church was demolished in 1915, erasing the building but not the story that once held San Francisco in horrified fascination.
Local Legend: The Phantom Airship of 1896
In November 1896, witnesses across Northern California began reporting a brilliant light moving through the night sky. Some described little more than an unexplained glow behind the clouds, while others claimed to see a dark, cigar-shaped craft equipped with a powerful searchlight. Reports soon spread through Sacramento, Oakland, San Francisco, and neighboring communities, drawing crowds outside to search the skies.
One of the most memorable sightings occurred over San Francisco near the Cliff House and Seal Rocks, just above the coastline surrounding Sutro Baths. Witnesses claimed the mysterious light passed overhead while frightened seals plunged from the rocks into the ocean. Members of Mayor Adolph Sutro’s household were reportedly among those who saw it.
Newspapers proposed secret inventors, experimental flying machines, mistaken planets, elaborate hoaxes, and mass excitement, but no craft was ever conclusively identified. The California sightings faded in December, only for reports of similar phantom airships to spread across the United States the following year. More than a century later, the strange object remains an early and wonderfully Victorian precursor to modern UFO lore.
Complete the Escape
Pair It with a Ghost Story: “The Empty House”
Before settling into the Queen Anne Hotel, read “The Empty House” by Algernon Blackwood.
First published in 1906, the story follows a young man and his aunt as they enter Number 13, an abandoned house with a violent past, hoping to investigate its haunting. Empty rooms, unexplained footsteps, slamming doors, and the terrible sense that something is moving through the darkness make it an especially unnerving companion to a night in a historic hotel and a day inside the Winchester Mystery House.
What to Watch Along the Route: Vertigo
Pair the city’s fog, steep streets, and grand old buildings with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological thriller Vertigo.
Filmed throughout San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area, the movie follows a former detective drawn into an obsessive mystery involving apparent possession, death, and an impossible return. Its dreamlike views of the city make familiar streets, hotels, towers, and waterfronts feel beautiful, disorienting, and faintly unreal.
Light the Escape: The Winchester Mystery House Candle
Light The Winchester Mystery House Candle from Ghost Poppy before reading the evening’s ghost story or watching Vertigo.
With notes of dried florals, incense, and redwood, the candle evokes Victorian rooms, séance smoke, and the dark wood of Sarah Winchester’s labyrinthine mansion. Each candle also includes a QR code leading to more of the location’s haunted history.
Until the Next Escape
I hope you’ve enjoyed coming along on this Micro Eerie Escape and feel inspired to take the trip yourself. Follow the entire itinerary or choose the stops that intrigue you most, then make the adventure your own. Until the next escape, may you find strange stories, atmospheric places, and just enough unease to follow you home.