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![🌉 THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE 🌉
[CW: suicide. If you’re not up for this today, please scroll on, my dears.]
We all know it and love it! This iconic, international orange beacon of the Bay is probably the most well known SF landmark. It’s hangout of weather bestie @karlthefog . It’s on all our logos. Despite its beauty - or maybe because of it - there are some dark stories about the bridge. You’ve probably heard of the suicides here, but did you know that people think workers died and were entombed in the towers?
YEAH. This is a story I’ve heard multiple times from real people! It goes like this - during construction of the bridge, a worker fell down into one of the tall supports, and there was no way to get him out. He died and was entombed in there. In one version, concrete is poured over him. In another, you can hear him hammering against the struts as a ghost.
This story isn’t true. I searched the news archives and the internet and there is no record of it. In 2018, SFGate debunked it. The story has all the hallmarks of an urban legend - reported by someone tangentially associated with the narrator, who supposedly worked on the bridge wayyyy back in the 1930s. Details are light, versions vary - classic stuff here. I know for absolute certainty that if this post escapes containment, someone will comment that their grandfather was there and it’s absolutely true.
So where did this come from? Urban legends are a form of folklore, or informally passed information. They follow the personal narrative format, and they tend to express a warning, or expose what people are afraid. Despite the relatively good safety record of the bridge construction, workers DID die. For the first four years of construction, no one died - which was a miracle at that time. In 1937, however, a catwalk failed and 12 men fell into the Bay. Only two survived. This was, of course, before OSHA AND during the Great Depression. One of the survivors spoke of doing dangerous work, whatever they were told, lest their job be given to someone else. ⬇️](https://hereliesastory.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)
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