Spooky places of the Peninsula

Colma may be home to many of the Peninsula’s cemeteries but any ghost stories there are being taken to the grave.

Instead, local haunts where things go bump in the night and residents swear by spooky sightings are a tad more mundane.

A distillery. A store. The courthouse?

Those seeking some Halloween thrills and chills in San Mateo County may do well to start on the coast with a legend so well known and eerie it merits a strong drink to calm the nerves.

The Blue Lady of the Moss Beach Distillery was recreated for the world on the television series "Unsolved Mysteries” but is common lore for those in these parts. According to the distillery, the lady is the ghost of a beautiful, young woman who some 70-odd years ago had an illicit affair with a handsome piano player in the restaurant bar even though she was already a wife and mother. The woman died in a violent automobile accident and now haunts the distillery, looking for her lost love.

Many unexplained events have been chalked up to the Blue Lady: mysterious phone calls, rooms locked from the inside, women diners losing earrings only to have them all discovered in a single spot weeks later and even sightings reported by children.

Further inland, an employee at the Woodside Store was so shaken by a ghostly canine apparition that dissolved before her eyes, she quit.

"It was a rainy, stormy Saturday when I got a call and she said ‘I can’t stay here. I can’t come back.’ As she was closing up, she said there was a huge dog standing right in the employee area then it disappeared,” recalls Mitch Postel, executive director of the San Mateo County Historical Society.

The Woodside Store is touted by the society as a way to visit the 1880s. Dr. R.O. Tripp and Mathias Parkhurst built it in 1854 and it served as country store, post office and community center until 1909. Dr. Tripp always had big dogs around the property, Postel said.

Some of those animals made it into photographs from the era currently in the society’s possession. The particular employee looked at some of those pictures and what do you think she saw? The same dog that gave her such a fright.

Postel said he didn’t get much of a chance to interview her about what she saw after that.

The county history museum itself might have a spirit or two hanging around. The Redwood City Kiwanis helped the museum move into his current home at the historical courthouse and one member reported seeing movement and lights. One night, a curator working late said the elevator kept going up and down. He thought somebody was in the building. While in the basement, the curator saw the elevator come all the way down and the doors opened.

No one was there.

For his part, Postel said he doesn’t believe in ghost stories but can see why some people do. First, there’s the desire to want something after death — to think it’s not all over.

Then, of course, there is loving the thrill of the unknown, the curiosity of another world.

If there were to be spirits hanging around, Postel suggests one of Colma’s many cemeteries as a good spot. After all, they do house many known figures, like Wyatt Earp, William Randolph Hearst and Joe DiMaggio.

But the Colma Historical Association is quick to dismiss the idea, especially around Halloween when some might take ghoulish fascination a little too far.

Don’t worry; Postel dug up a tale for those whose Halloween wouldn’t be complete without at least one story involving headstones and gravediggers.

The Purissima Cemetery, all that’s left of the town of Purissima south of Half Moon Bay, includes a little boy who died from a fever. A grown man fell ill with similar symptoms about a week later and appeared to have also died. However, he woke up just as funeral preparations were being finished.

Suddenly the boy’s family and the town were worried — "Oh my god, did we bury this kid alive?” Postel recounts.

The city exhumed the boy’s grave and opened the coffin. His body was flipped over inside.

For all its skin-crawling entertainment, Postel isn’t so certain about the story’s historical accuracy.

"I wouldn’t stake my life on it,” Postel said.

Maybe that’s why ghost stories are about the dead.

Michelle Durand can be reached by e-mail: michelle@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 102.