San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
A NEWSROOM GHOST STORY
The Chronicle archive looks harmless, but something lurks among the stacks
Despite being in a basement and filled with some really old stuff, The San Francisco Chronicle archive would make a horrible haunted house.
It has fluorescent lighting places — “Automobiles General” and white acoustic ceiling and then “Streets Van tiles, like the office in “The Ness” — came up empty, Office.” The colortabbed and I told my editor I struck manila folder filing system out. One day later, I was that lines the shelving says looking for a different photo “dentist’s office” not “gothic in the Market Street files and house of horrors.” The largest found an envelope. “AUTO pieces of machinery are ROW 1940” was written in two Reaganera microfiche looping writing on the envelope, readers. Neither appears to with no other markings. be possessed by demons.
But after going through These were total ghost my first four decades not negatives. believing in ghosts, I’m Two points to support 93.5% sure that the basement that: of The Chronicle is haunted 1. Auto row was not on by both benevolent and evil Market Street in 1940. spirits. 2. The photos included an
Upon entry, the archive image of every single auto appears to be a functional dealership on Van Ness. It mess, like the inside of a was as if I had sent a photo child’s tree house with a request back to 1940, and the ladder that parents are too photographer completed the old to climb. Someone comes request and sent it forward in to vacuum and empty the through time. garbage, but no authority More recently, I’ve taken figure has organized a cleaning to addressing the library effort in decades. ghosts directly upon walking
The office equipment tells into the library, even if no the story of The Chronicle’s one is around. (“Hello library technology through time: ghosts! Hoping to find Calvin Coolidgeera manual some photos of Jerry Brown typewriters, electric typewriters when he was a small child from the 1970s, a today!”) computer like the one Matthew They respond by filling Broderick used in these requests, like radio DJs “WarGames” and a MacBook of the afterlife. Librarian Bill Pro. One random Van Niekerken found negatives drawer might be overflowing from “The Last Waltz,” with Phil Frank’s old Travels arguably the most famous With Farley cartoons, another S. F. rock concert in history, might be full of ink pads misfiled in an envelope for a and stamps bearing the Bread & Roses concert. names of photographers ( Thanks, library ghosts! from the 1940s. ( Raising the That was the mostread Flag on Iwo Jima photographer online Chronicle story of Joe Rosenthal included; 2016.) We found a cache of he worked at The mysterious glass negatives Chronicle until the early featuring a variety of scenes 1980s.) throughout San Francisco
But the photos and negatives after the 1906 earthquake themselves are filed and fires. meticulously, as if by a religious But on other days, a trip to order. By generations The Chronicle archive is of librarians and photographers filled with terror. who I’m not convinced Photos of trickortreaters have left the space. from the 1950s always include
The first sign of otherworldly at least one unsettling forces came in May sight. The worst I’ve seen is a 2012, during a routine search group of children walking for a photo of San Francisco’s with a grown man in a auto row on Van Ness homemade costume that Avenue in the 1940s or ’ 50s. looks like a cross between a Sifting through the obvious bear and Leatherface from
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
The worst finds are the scary clowns. My greatest straightfromaStephenKingnovel archive moment arrived when I started scanning our photos of PlaylandattheBeach in 1972, taken by Greg Peterson on the amusement park’s last day of operation. In the nearly abandoned park, by a mine ride, I saw a distant figure sitting on a bench.
Zoom closer ... it appears to be a clown. Zoom even closer ... it appears to be a clown that may or may not be human. Zoom ever closer still ... and IT’S STARING
STRAIGHT INTO MY SOUL.
That’s not a friendly clown who is going make you a balloon animal and end it there. That’s a clown that finds a place to lurk in the city’s sewers and follows you and your friends into adulthood. A clown from a King Diamond song. I’m pinning 40% of San Francisco’s unsolved murders since 1972 on that clown.
Jim Henson once said, “It’s OK for kids to be scared,” and I think that’s true for journalists, too. I don’t know whether the kind library spirits are stronger than Playland Clown, but I think about it every time I’m in the basement, and the motionsensing fluorescent bulbs turn off and take a few beats longer than they’re supposed to to come back on.
Waving my arms frantically, wondering if when they flicker back, Playland Clown will be sitting on the desk next to me.
Don’t kill me today, clown. I have one more story to write, and I need to make it count.
Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s culture critic. Email: phartlaub@ sfchronicle. com Twitter: @ PeterHartlaub