On Dec. 9, 1871, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about a âspecterâ that had appeared in the upstairs window of a house on Mason Street. The ghostly face had been scaring neighbors for five days at that point, and as word spread, hundreds of people from all over the city flocked to see it, gridlocking an entire stretch of North Beach.
It was children who first noticed the face in the window at 2119 Mason Street. When they pointed it out to the occupant, a Swedish widow named Mrs. Jorgenson, she investigated the room and found nothing out of place. The Chronicle later noted: âThe room in which the specter-bearing window stands is small and contains a picture and a looking-glass among the rest of the articles of furniture. Therefore, there is no object which might produce on the window the reflection of a human face.â
As gossip spread throughout North Beach that her dead husband had come home to haunt her, Mrs. Jorgenson was forced to repeatedly point out that the man in the window didnât even look like him. Which may have been a bit of a shame for her, given that in its front page follow-up report on Dec. 10, the Chronicle described the window ghost as ârather handsome.â
The paper provided both an artistâs rendering of the apparition and a detailed description. âThe image is of life-size,â it reported, âwith mustache and goatee; well-defined hair parted in the middle, and waving off the forehead.â The paper also said: âThe eyes are quite distinct and, from a circular rim beneath each, seem to be spectacled. The head is pensively cast on the left shoulder,â with an expression that appeared âthoughtful and rather sad.â
The artistâs rendering of the window apparition, as seen in the San Francisco Chronicle on Saturday, Dec. 10 1871.
The same day the Chronicleâs first report came out, the window was purchased for $250 by Robert B. Woodward, the owner of Woodwardâs Gardens. âThe Gardens,â as it was commonly referred to at the time, was a popular amusement park that was open between 1866 and 1891. It occupied the two blocks between Mission, Valencia, 13th and 15th Streets, and it squeezed a lot into that spaceâincluding a museum, art gallery, zoo, aquarium, botanical gardens andâas of 1871âa haunted window section.
Woodward got the glass in the nick of timeâthe Superintendent of the North Beach and Mission Railroad arrived later that day in the hopes of also buying it.
While Woodward was busy removing Mrs. Jorgensonâs window on Mason, half a block away at 708 Lombard Street, another window was causing a furor. And the ghost face in this one, the Chronicle was careful to detail, wasnât nearly as dashing as the first. âThe apparition is of an elderly gentleman with very grotesque features,â it reported. âHe presents a profile view, and is looking contemplatively upward. The pane of glass is rather small, and the old gentlemanâs head seems to be squeezed in.â
Ghost window number two, as presented in the San Francisco Chronicle on Saturday, Dec. 10, 1871.
When the homeowner John J. Hucks, noticed the commotion gathering in front of his house, he rushed outside and told them, in no uncertain terms, to scram. âMr. Hucks was terribly wrothy,â The Chronicle noted. âHe asked us of who and what we were and on hearing our business, broke out violently, declaring that he âwanted no such damned thing as that put in the Chronicleâ about his house.â
Hucksâ mood probably lifted after Robert B. Woodward arrived later that afternoon and handed over $250 for the window.
By then, attention had shifted to yet another house on Mason Street. Spotted in the window of number 2109 was aâwait for it!âspectral butterfly. Based on his text, this appears to have been the breaking point for the Chronicle reporter. âWhat the object of any spirit may be in assuming the shape of a butterfly, we canât see,â he wrote, âunless it is to make a poor reporter overhaul numerous huge volumes of entomology, for the purpose of finding out the particular caterpillar he comes from.â
Shortly after the butterfly image âfaded away and gradually disappeared,â the reporter and his sketch artist were informed by a frantic man running up the street âwith one boot offâ of a fourth ghost windowâthis one at Mason and Green. âBut we had our fill of specters,â the newspaper reported. âIt was getting rather monotonous, this ghost business. So we determined not to interview this fourth abomination.â
At the articleâs conclusion, it was suggested that the âghostsâ were, in all likelihood, merely âiridescent formationsâ resulting from a combination of âdust and moisture.â By that stage, it didnât much matter. Robert B. Woodward was already proudly displaying the âGhost Sensation!â attraction at his amusement park and the city was filled with enough believers to go and visit it.
In 1893, 14 years after his death, Woodwardâs collection of 75,000 curios and objet dâart were auctioned off. Adolph Sutro snapped up a lot of items that would later end up displayed at the Sutro Bathsâbut itâs unclear exactly where the windows ended up. If not for the Chronicleâs willingness to report on such a strange episode, the ghostly windowsâand the wacky behavior they inspiredâwould likely have been lost to the ravages of time. Now they may just live on forever, as all good window ghosts should.
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