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Unearthing Spooky Stories in San Francisco and Beyond #HLAS #hereliesastory

💀 SMALLPOX - 1868 💀 Smallpox is a horrifyin

💀 SMALLPOX - 1868 💀

Smallpox is a horrifying disease - it killed and disfigured millions of people before humanity eradicated it in the 1970s.The virus causes fevers, vomiting, and tell-tale ulcers (POX) on the skin. If people survived, they were scarred for life by these lesions. Historically, smallpox had a fatality rate of 30%, and because the disease was visible, it caused panic and scapegoating ON SIGHT. It was called “the speckled monster” and it’s probably the virus most responsible for wiping out the Indigenous people living in America.

Smallpox was introduced to the Americas by European colonizers, and it came to California in the 1830’s. San Francisco had an outbreak of smallpox in 1868. Outbreaks continued into the 1870’s and 1880’s.

Smallpox is a respiratory virus, so it’s spread in the air. Even before germ theory was really understood, this was known - quarantine and isolation were used to try to limit the spread. People were terrified of smallpox. Diphtheria was killing twice as many people at this time, but it didn’t get the attention because it wasn’t visually as scary.

In a climate of terror over a scary disease, scapegoats emerged. In SF, that was Chinatown. Nationalist groups like The Workingmen’s Party exploited fears about disease and blamed immigrants for outbreaks. It wasn’t just them, either. A fear that Chinese were taking over the city intersected with the fear of a “loathsome” disease led to the Board of Health declaring Chinatown a nuisance and a “laboratory of infection.”

In response, the city opened a smallpox hospital near the Almshouse, segregated of course, and employed a comically horrifying SMALLPOX PADDY WAGON to round the infected up and bring them there. People did not want to go for this ride!!! They hid patients, removed the “yellow flag” quarantine notices on their doors, and turned to local providers instead. Like most things, poor neighborhoods like Chinatown and SOMA were oversurveilled and over-enforced. These were the people being dragged off to rot at Laguna Honda, not the people living in private homes on Nob Hill. ⬇️

🦠 EPIDEMIC WEEK AT HLAS 🦠 I’m currently re

🦠 EPIDEMIC WEEK AT HLAS 🦠
I’m currently researching The Pest House, a long-forgotten isolation hospital on the site of modern day Zuckerberg General. This article is taking me FOREVER to write so I thought I’d post some bits along the way. Some racist, gruesome bits, as it turns out! This week, we will cover Victorian era disease epidemics in our city - how they started, how they were spread, and who got blamed. Spoiler alert, it was Chinese people! Every time!

As much as I love the ick factor, sometimes I have to step back and be like, lady, why do you do this to yourself and your readers?? But the answer is always RIGHT THERE: it’s because we somehow keep forgetting, my dudes. Take a look around you - record high incidences of anti-Asian violence, straight up denial of basic science in the name of idiotic, fantastical propaganda, a broken health care system, visible suffering on the streets all around us.

You don’t even have to look at this metaphorically - Laguna Honda Hospital, the nation’s largest publicly funded nursing home, has lost federal certification because of allegations of substandard care. The City disputes the charges, but in the meantime a dozen patients have died during the transfer process, and no more low income elders can be admitted. Laguna Honda is the site of the original Almshouse and Smallpox hospital. Sure, it’s not as terrible as the Pest House but like WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?

All of the diseases I’ll talk about this week have been cured. All have been mapped and studied in terms of public reaction, government interventions (or lack of), and how those intersect with race, poverty, and morality. Super interesting, super local shit. Enjoy. 💀

Happy National Puppy Day from the canine companion

Happy National Puppy Day from the canine companions at HLAS: Oreo and Bruno! If you’ve ever heard barking or doors crashing open on my videos, it was them. They do not like anyone walking past the house, flying past the house, existing in the neighborhood, or CLOSING ANY DOOR IN THIS HOUSE. This is their house, I only pay the mortgage.

Hobbies include:

🦴 Chewing bones and breaking two teeth that require emergency surgery that costs several thousand dollars

🦴 Alerting at the sound of a doorbell like they’re in the control room at NORAD and a balloon just crossed the horizon

🦴 Peeing on each other!!!!!!! Why!!!!!

🦴 Taking up the entire middle third of the bed, pushing the peasant humans to the very edge of the mattress which is starting to feel like we might need those toddler bed guards? So we don’t roll off and break a hip??

🦴 Turning down dog kibble that has not been spiced up with parmesan cheese or leftover potatoes

Anyway, they’re not puppies anymore but I obviously keep baby pictures on hand. Do not ask to see my kids, bc I will show you my dogs every time. Thanks to the @sanfranciscospca for many years of happiness with these little shelter hooligans. 🖤 #nationalpuppyday

🗞️ NEWSLETTER OUT TOMORROW! 🗞️ You may

💚 HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY YOU GOOFY HEATHENS!

💚 HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY YOU GOOFY HEATHENS! 💚

I am looking forward to drinking some beer tonight, this holiday finally fell on a Friday, but because I am actually a 500 year old bog witch with a VERY EARLY bedtime, I’ll be in bed watching @monstrumpbs episodes about various Irish monsters by 8pm. Sláinte.

Over on the website I have a delightful catalog of the most entertaining and terrifying Irish ghosts and ghost-adjacent creatures. To celebrate. With humor and dignity and there are only some tiny rants about British genocide in there, you’re welcome. 🔗in bio ☘️

I write about hidden history, and the throughline

I write about hidden history, and the throughline of my work is the more things change, the more they stay the same. The past teaches us about our present, and sometimes this work makes me want to throw my phone in the ocean.

Right now I’m neck deep in the very fun subject of mapping disease and poverty in San Francisco! Did you know that 19th century reformers basically thought that all poverty was linked to disease and vice, and they just wanted to make sure it stayed in the slums where it belonged? Shit has changed so much! Anyway, I was reading Jacob Riis’s book “How the Other Half Lives” about the tenements in NYC at the turn of the century which was just as delightful as you are imagining.

The tenements were horrifying, yes - but did you also know they were EXPENSIVE TO RENT? It’s true! They were overcrowded, rickety, dark, moldy, and full of vermin but they were also NOT CHEAP. They cost as much or more than decent rentals in other parts of the city. I read this and thought huh, there’s something new.

AND THEN I OPENED THE @nytimes TODAY to a full page spread about the persistence of poverty in America and uh. . . the same thing is happening today, my guy. As sociologist Matthew Desmond explains, it’s still very expensive to be poor. Rent has doubled in the past two decades, rates are up everywhere, there’s not enough housing ANNNNDDDD slumlords and landlords in poor areas often charge just as much for their units as those in decent areas. This is the part where I throw my phone in the ocean.

In the 1890’s, slumlords could overcharge new immigrants because they didn’t speak the language, didn’t understand the rules, and didn’t have the social capital to fit in anywhere else. Nowadays, a raft of industries prey on poor folks for the same reasons and more - lack of cash for deposits, bad credit, no credit, lack of immigration status. Poor people locked out of the main market for services like healthcare, housing, and banking are forced to use predatory systems like slum properties, payday lenders, and check cashing services. WHICH ARE VERY EXPENSIVE. ⬇️

💀 NEW SITE 💀 We have a brand new website an

☠️ BEN FRANKLIN AND THE BODY SNATCHERS ☠️

☠️ BEN FRANKLIN AND THE BODY SNATCHERS ☠️

OK, I KNOW Ben Franklin wasn’t President, but he was President-Adjacent and this is a good fucking story so here we go.

Franklin lived in London from 1757 to 1775, serving as the Ambassador to the American colonies. He lived at 36 Craven Street with a landlady and her children, and he befriended one of their frequent guests, William Hewson. The house became a landmark in London, and in 1998 it was renovated.

What do you think they found in the basement there, gentle reader? Some old shoes with buckles? A kite with a key attached to it? A Costco-sized bottle of Valtrex? (he is the horniest founding father - IYKYK).

No, no. They found 1200 HUMAN BONE FRAGMENTS from the remains of ten adults and six children. Just a shitload of 200 year old skeletons. It turns out that Hewson was running an underground anatomy lab on the property. These bones were most likely the remains of stolen cadavers. Ben Franklin and his friends were performing illegal autopsies in pursuit of medical knowledge.

If you don’t know about this era, it was the start of an explosion in scientific and medical knowledge. Doctors were gaining a more technical understanding of how the body worked, and they needed to look at it closely to advance their craft. Dissecting dead people, however, was mostly illegal. The religious and moral standards of the time forbade it. The only bodies that students and doctors were allowed to autopsy were those of hanged criminals.

To get bodies, doctors turned to grave robbers, or body snatchers. That’s probably where Hewson got his remains. There was a wharf at one end of the street and a gallows at the other, making the location convenient for body smuggling.When the experiments were done, he probably just buried them there in the basement.

Franklin isn’t directly implicated in the scheme but you have to think he participated. He loved science - he would not have missed a chance to learn anatomy firsthand.

🧟‍♀️ ANDREW JACKSON AND THE BELL WITCH 🧟‍♀️

The legend of the Bell Witch is sometimes called “America’s Greatest Ghost Story.” It centers around the Bell Family of Adams, Tennessee, and a poltergeist that haunted them.

John Bell, his family, and the people he enslaved (natch, this is a story about ANDREW JACKSON) were tormented by an entity on their property. It first showed itself as a ghost dog in the fields, then began making loud, chaotic noises at night. The children began to complain about hearing something chewing on their bedposts at night, and then having the covers mysteriously yanked off of them.

The activity escalated into full scale violence - slapping, scratching, and pulling hair. It developed a voice and began singing and speaking to people. Sometimes it would carry on conversations, sometimes it would shriek and beat the shit out of whoever was around. This bitch was UNPREDICTABLE!

The story attracted a lot of attention, and people wanted to see the Witch for themselves. Skeptics purportedly showed up to debunk the story, only to get the shit slapped out of them by the Witch.

One of these tourists was ethnic cleanser, populist douchebag, and SEVENTH PRESIDENT OF THE US, Andrew Jackson. That guy loved a scary story, and he decided he wanted to see the Bell Witch with his own crusty eyes. The Witch was none too pleased - on the way, their carts got stuck in the mud and they heard her voice say something akin to “Square Up, Andy. See you in an hour.”

At the farm, one of the man bragged about being a “witch tamer” and I think you can guess how that went. He ended up ass over elbows and crying to leave. Jackson made his men stay the night, and when he left it’s rumored that he said he’d rather be at war with the British than the Bell Witch.

Team Witch all the way.

It’s WEIRDO PRESIDENTS WEEK on HLAS, wherein I t

It’s WEIRDO PRESIDENTS WEEK on HLAS, wherein I tell you the stories of you DIDN’T hear in school. I’m gonna skip the mayhem and moralizing about how a lot of our so-called Founding Fathers were actually terrible people engaged in some light genocide while waxing about freedom - y’all are already there. Instead, let’s talk about some exceedingly gruesome, strange, and ALSO PRETTY FUN shit that is buried in the notes sections of their biographies. Examples include:

🇺🇸 Stolen Corpses
🇺🇸 Body Snatching
🇺🇸 Poltergeist Tourism
🇺🇸 Seances

GOOD TIMES RIGHT?!

We are starting out with the story of Abraham Lincoln’s Body. Did you know his corpse took a train ride across the US? And was one of the first embalmed bodies to lie in state? And it was actually STOLEN? And reburied? SEVERAL TIMES???

Link in bio to the full post, and a video shared in stories.

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The Lost Cemeteries of San Francisco

Find out what happened to the cemeteries of San Francisco: where they were, why they were moved, and how the hell did so many graves get left behind?

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