250 Douglass St, San Francisco, CA 94114

These days this classic 19th century Victorian is all apartments, but once upon a time it was the Clarke Mansion, named for one Alfred E. Clarke, who complained of poltergeist activity there.

When intrepid ghost hunters spend the night in the house in 1874, the Daily Alta Californian featured the following account:

“Your reporter has received the following statement from two of these gentlemen: While standing on the sidewalk a loud crash inside the house startled them. The door soon after opened and they were invited in to see the cause. A heavy marble-top bureau at the top of the stairs had fallen forward, and deeply indented the balusters, without showing a scratch on itself, and without breaking the mirrors.

“Ten minutes later a heavy chair came whizzing down stairs, breaking a leg in the fall. Half an hour later a light paper box whirled down. At midnight they saw a heavy trunk fall with a startling crash, rebounding from the wall to the baluster, deeply indenting both, and striking the floor with such force as to break its iron straps and wrench its top from the hinges. [...] One of the gentlemen closes his statement as follows: ‘What I have seen and heard to-night is the work either of devilish spirits, or of equally devilish man.’”