Maybe when you’re a kid you fear monsters under the bed and boogeymen in the vents, but by the time you grow up, these things just aren’t really at the top of your mind in terms of spookiness. Adult nightmares consist of student loans, cancer and not being able to get it up.
So in the spirit of Halloween, we put together a list of the most terrifying, spook-tacular sites in the Bay Area — for us adults.
The Franchise Tax Board Office
Financial District
The main reason you’d have to come here is if you’ve been audited. Are you having heart palpitations yet?
Bonus horror: Staff-training videos play on repeat in the lobby. Why? No one knows. Yes, this is a living Kafka novel.
The Applebee’s at Fisherman’s Wharf
It’s crowded. It’s ugly. It’s full of tourists who miss the familiar taste of white-bread suburbia. And the cocktail menu features drink names like “Applebee’s® Bahama Mama” and “Island Blast Rum Punch.” Mom, I’m scared.
The Marina
I dunno about you, but yuppies — with their perfect bodies, Longchamp bags, sweat-proof makeup and Ivy League educations — absolutely terrify me.
The Oakland Police Department Headquarters
Populated by a large number of “ghosts,” though most take off their hoods when they come to work.
The Bohemian Club
624 Taylor Street
If you weren’t aware, this private club is where rich Republicans go to schmooze. (Rumor has it that the Iraq War was planned here.) It’s also the only place in SF in which the Bush clan will set foot.
Also, their plaque is genuinely creepy.
Treasure Island
From a public-health standpoint, this is mainly scary if you were to live here for a statistically significant period of time — that is, enough to soak up the radiation and chemicals that might give you cancer.
The site was home to a shipyard from 1945 to 1974 and the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) from 1948 to 1960. NRDL activities contaminated soil, dust, sediments, surface water and groundwater with petroleum fuels, pesticides, heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and radionuclides. Soil at the site contains naturally occurring asbestos and metals. Cleanup, operation and maintenance activities, and monitoring are ongoing.
If you’re neurotic and/or a health freak, that’s spooky and also oddly reminiscent of the “airborne toxic event” in White Noise.
The Airbnb Headquarters
In this building, professional gremlins manipulate public policy and encourage unscrupulous landlords to evict long-term tenants to turn their houses into glorified hotels — making rents rise for the rest of us. Pretty scary.
The Parking-Ticket Pay Kiosk on Van Ness
If the long wait doesn’t terrify you, the persistent angry aura emanating from every single patron in the room will give you anxiety nightmares.
The Housing Section of SF Craigslist
This isn’t a geographic “place” per se, but it’s more of an ethereal one. As we all know, having to undergo a housing search in the Bay Area is spine tingling.
