SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Dunsmuir is a quaint little town nestled in the mountains of Northern California, and one hotel in the area has quite the haunted past. On the week of Oct. 16, that haunted history got a little more colorful.

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On Sunday Oct. 16, Hotel Dunsmuir owner Mark Juarez was having a normal day renovating his historical hotel when one of his guests noticed the faint smell of smoke. Juarez says he found the source of the fire in room 106, on the first floor, before putting it out with a fire extinguisher, “which felt like overkill,” Juarez told KRON4.

Juarez says the initial fire looked small and went out without a problem. As he rallied his contractor, asked a woman to call the fire department and prepared to get the guests out of the lobby in just in case, the fire somehow reignited. When Juarez and his contractor returned to room 106, it was fully engulfed in flames.

The men proceeded to empty three fire extinguishers into the fire, but Juarez says they had no effect on the rising blaze. Fire crews arrived on scene and mitigated the fire a short while later, but Juarez says the incident has still left him with many questions, like how did this fire start?

Fire crews on scene at the Hotel Dunsmuir fire on Oct. 16 (Photo courtesy of Mark Juarez)

Hotel Dunsmuir sustained a significant amount of smoke damage in the fire, and Juarez says the city of Dunsmuir won’t allow him to reopen and host guests until a fire inspector comes to check out the property. Juarez says because the Dunsmuir area is so small he has had a tough time getting ahold of an inspector.

KRON4 reached out to the Dunsmuir Fire team to get more information, but the email was not returned.

Hotel Dunsmuir History

Locals have known Hotel Dunsmuir to be a haunted location due to it’s colorful history. The hotel is 5 stories tall – the tallest in the county – but you wouldn’t know it because the floors are inverted, meaning they go 4 floors down into the ground.

According to Hotel Dunsmuir’s website, the hotel was built in the 1800s, but the first structure burned down in a large fire in 1903 which devastated the town. The building was rebuilt and called The Weed Hotel in 1904, with renovations built “around the building’s original brick skeleton.”

In the 1940s, the hotel was refurbished in an Art Deco style and became known as “Dunsmuir’s Finest,” according to the website. There’s even rumors that John F Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe would meet up in Dunsmuir.

Juarez says the paranormal history of the hotel is some of the most interesting. A paranormal expert toured the hotel and told Juarez that there were 13 ghosts living there.

“He said the ghosts are friendly, they are here to protect you. They’re not gonna let you get hurt,” Juarez tells KRON4.

Filming of ‘Hotel Dunsmuir’

The history and rumored hauntings in the hotel drew film director and visual artist Michael Zaiko Hall to shoot his latest film “Hotel Dunsmuir” at the location in 2020.

“My producer stayed at the real Hotel Dunsmuir one night. He wrote me and said, ‘There is something very strange about this place,’” Hall told KRON4. After meeting with the owner and touring the hotel himself, he knew it was the right place to film.

All cast members who booked the film also signed on to stay at the hotel for the duration of the shoot. Lead acress Jet Jandreau was excited about the idea of ​​staying there, even after odd things started happening.

Actors in “Hotel Dunsmuir” including Jet Jandreau (Photo courtesy of Hotel Dunsmuir filmmakers)

“My ghost experience happened on the very first night I was there. The ghosts were checking out all of these new people,” Jandreau said. The day she arrived Jandreau removed all of the throw pillows from the bed in her room because they weren’t her taste. However, Jandreau says that she woke up in the middle of the night one of the largest throw pillows was at her feet on the bed.

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“I thought to myself, ‘Okay, I know someone is trying to make me aware that this is their space,'” Jandreau told KRON4.

Jandreau wasn’t the only one to report strange happenings during filming. Hall says he experienced some inexplicable incidents as well. According to Hall, he was alone in a quiet room when, “suddenly the faucets in the bathroom just turned themselves on full blast. It was extremely shocking,” Hall told KRON4.

During filming in April of 2021, Juarez, Hall and Jandreau got a bit of a surprise from a group of birds. Around 10 pm one night over 500 birds, later identified by Juarez as chimney swifts, flew into the lobby of the hotel and made themselves right at home. Juarez tells KRON4 the five people in the lobby carried the birds out of the hotel one by one and released them.

In mid October “Hotel Dunsmuir” was released on streaming platforms. The film also premiered at the Atlanta Horror Film Festival, where Hall won the Best Director award.

Visiting Hotel Dunsmuir

Juarez hopes that his hotel can spark more tourists to visit Dunsmuir and check out its beauty. He believes that the hotel’s new scars from the recent fire only add more character to the story of the establishment. If you get a chance to visit the town of Dunsmuir pay close attention to the locals nearby–some were cast in roles in “Hotel Dunsmuir,” giving the film an added note of local gravitas.

“We cast locals, people from Dunsmuir, and they pulled it off!” Juarez said of the performances.

The post ‘Haunted’ lodge in Dunsmuir the place hearth broke out has unusual historical past appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

The mansion on the corner of Jackson and Laguna streets has seen better days. The front door, atop the stone steps where a dashing Nazi spy once regaled overeager San Francisco reporters, is locked today. The paint on its colossal, curved Romanesque twin towers peels in the sun, exposing the original cinnamon-colored sandstone beneath.

2090 Jackson Street is not like other San Francisco mansions. For starters, it’s big. With 30 rooms covering just under 20,000 square feet of space, it’s one of the biggest private residences in the city. It’s also very old. Built in 1896 for a very rich man named William Franklin Whittier, the home survived the great earthquake and outdates any other building on the block. And perhaps most notably, during World War II, it was a Nazi enclave.

As with most old, storied homes in San Francisco, some say the place is haunted. Ghosts may not be real, but ghost stories are a window into some wild histories of the city, and 2090 Jackson doesn’t disappoint. If a ghost does exist there — the fables say the dim outline of a figure often appears on a wall in the basement of the giant building — then there are a number of former residents who may seek to spook the aging sun-baked palace. Here are the candidates.

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William Whittier moved from Maine to California at the age of 22 and quickly entered the glass and paint business, with huge success. He founded Whittier, Fuller & Company, the paint and glass manufacturer, then built the town of Hemet in SoCal and was generally a rich white man making a fortune in California, which was the thing to do in the 1850s. Whittier was also a man-about-town. The San Francisco Chronicle once called him “one of the most widely known citizens of San Francisco.”

In 1896, architect Edward R. Swain celebrated Whittier built a giant mansion. Some stories say he built it as a gift for his wife, who died in a carriage accident during its construction.

He moved in at the age of 64 with his three children — Billy, Mattie and Jane. (Beyond losing his wife, Whittier lost two other children before the age of ten for undisclosed reasons, but times were indeed tough.)

Within a year of the relocation, all adult children married or moved out and left William alone in the 30-room palace, where he likely spent many lonely hours in the octagonal smoking room on the third floor. What drove Whittier’s children out of the home so soon, beyond marriage, is not clear. The San Francisco Examiner reported on his third child Jane’s lavish wedding in the Presidio a few years later, but noted that her father was not in attendance.

Billy, who is invariably described as the “black sheep” of the family, was reportedly a drunk and an endless disappointment to his dad. Whittier once bribed him with an offer of $300 a month to sober up and move down to sleepy Hemet by the lake to live a good life. Billy turned down the offer and continued to drink and party in San Francisco for the rest of his days. Whittier was so maddened he changed his will, deciding to no longer pass the mansion down to Billy.

2090 Jackson Street, San Francisco.

Andrew Chamings/SFGATE

San Franciscans were intrigued about the old millionaire in his mansion, as were the gossip columns of the era. One decidedly large San Francisco Chronicle article in 1907 eagerly reported that Whittier had left the city to lust after a “vivacious young widow” named Mrs. Tilden, whose husband, a Red Cross volunteer, had been shot dead in his car in the Mission the chaotic days after the earthquake.

Whittier, who was 75 years old at the time, was a “devoted admirer of Mrs. Tilden for some time and had showered favors upon her with the burning intensity of a youth.” Another Pacific Heights society watcher claimed that Whittier’s interest in the young widow was “purely parental.”

Either way, the paper announced that “The Whittier mansion at 2090 Jackson street is closed, and his whereabouts or the date of his homecoming are profound mysteries.”

There are many bizarre stories about the goings on of Jackson Street during the following years.

On a Sunday night in 1912, a chauffeur named HC Freeman working for Whittier at the mansion awoke to shattering glass in his bathroom. He reported to the police that two bullets were fired from the street, through the window, and into the looking glass. Quite curiously, Freeman told the cops that he had a habit of staring into the mirror at himself for long periods of time, and he suspected that the shots “were an attempt on the part of someone familiar with his habits to end his vain career. ” Perhaps coincidentally, Whittier’s glass and paint company is credited with being the first to manufacture mirrors on the West Coast.

Two years later, the archives reveal that during the mysterious and fatal bombing of the Old Vedanta Hindu Temple — a majestic building I once argued may be the most beautiful in the city — a resident at 2090 Jackson got hurt. Morris Walter, likely a tenant of Whittier’s, survived the bombing with a “destroyed right eye” and lacerated face. However, the brief mention in the papers states that Walter merely walked the few blocks up the hill and “went home” rather than to the hospital that day.

Whittier died of pneumonia in his giant home in 1917, and with black sheep Billy spurned from the will, Mattie moved in. The building was a private residence until 1941 when the mansion’s second, even stranger act began.

That year, as was raging in Europe, the mansion was sold to the German Reich. Dozens of Germans diplomats moved in to the new lavish consulate.

The Nazi who ran the operation, Captain Fritz Wiedemann, was a stylish former German soldier who once acted as Hitler’s personal assistant. The Chronicle described him as “Hitler’s most astute diplomatic and espionage agent,” while also complimenting his appearance as “suave and smiling,” just months before the US would join the war.

Fritz Wiedemann and a photo of his boss.

Archival / Unknown

Wiedemann appeared to live two lives in San Francisco. Herb Caen mentioned the Nazi in many columns, painting him as a playboy in the city, who friends referred to as “Bubbles.” At the same time, stories were surfacing that in his position in San Francisco, Wiedemann was directing all Nazis in Central and South America, and was “chief disseminator of all Nazi and German propaganda in the United States.”

But only weeks after moving into the consul’s new home, on June 16, 1941, the US government kicked all German diplomats out of the country.

Reporters gathered in Pacific Heights that day to interview Wiedemann. “I like the city and the scenery. Without politics, I would like to live here,” he said on the front steps of 2090 Jackson.

When asked if he would be heading back to Germany to fight for his fuhrer, Wiedemann replied, “No idea,” though consular staff said they were all being sent to South America.

The saddest Nazi that day may have been Wiedemann’s 15-year-old son, Eduard, a Lowell High School student who loved life in the city. “I like it here,” Eduard told reporters in his distinctly Californian accent while “sulking” around the grounds. “It’s swell.”

Young Eduard Wiedemann stars longingly over the Bay from his family’s residence at 2950 Vallejo Street, after being told he must leave America due to his dad being a Nazi.

San Francisco Examiner / Archival

Outside of San Francisco, Wiedemann’s story took many more turns. Years later, it was revealed that as early as 1940, Hitler’s former right-hand man was spurned by the dictator after he had an affair with a Hungarian princess, who the fuhrer had been using for secret missions. Wiedemann then betrayed Hitler and urged the British to attack the Nazis, warning them that Adolf had a “split personality and numbered among the most cruel people in the world.”

Wiedemann didn’t make it to South America, but instead spied for the Germans in China, where it’s unclear if he worked for or against the Third Reich.

Back on Jackson Street, after the war, life normalized. The mansion was seized from the Germans in 1950 and became a private residence again. From 1956 to 1991, its tall wooden doors opened to the public as the home of the California Historical Society. It sold to a private resident in 1991 for $3,000,000 and hasn’t changed hands since. Its current worth is estimated at around $17,000,000.

So who haunts the basement on Jackson Street? Maybe one of Whittier’s children who died before adolescence, or maybe Billy the drunk who died just a few years after his father, returning to claim what was his. Maybe it’s the vain chauffeur, back to get one last look in the mirror, or maybe the one-eyed Hindu temple visitor, who crawled up the hill after the bombing. My money, however, is on Eduard, the sulking son of the double-crossing Nazi, back from exile in the swell city he loved.

The post The unusual San Francisco mansion that was as soon as a Nazi enclave appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco is a mystery. One of the best cities in America to walk to, but filled with streets so steep your legs will burn; a center of zero-emission vehicles and electric bikes criss-crossed with the world’s last manually operated cable car system; a left haven with more free market billionaires per capita than any other city in the world.

This complexity can lead to nuanced questions about the city, but sometimes people open their phones and ask, “Is San Francisco a country?”

I found the strangest questions people asked Google about the city, apparently largely shaped by a misunderstanding of maps and a campaign of misinformation from right-wing media.

Here goes.

(The following questions are all taken from the top 50 Google Search queries related to San Francisco.)

Is San Francisco in New York?

No.

Is San Francisco Open?

Yes indeed! San Francisco is open. The city was the first to shut down during the coronavirus outbreak and recorded some of the lowest per capita deaths from the disease in any major city in America. Bars, restaurants, clubs and gyms are all open now (if you are vaccinated).

Come to visit. Enjoy the view from the top of the Mark. Get the best Sichuan food in the country at Spices. Check out the sea lions at Fisherman’s Wharf (don’t worry, the Bushman seems long gone). Have a cutty pony in Dolores Park. You can even take the cable cars again.

Is San Francisco the City of Love?

No, this is Paris. But the summer of love was here. San Francisco is “SF” or maybe “Baghdad by the Bay” or even “Frisco” (if it’s good enough for Otis Redding, it’s good enough for us). It’s never “San Fran” and it’s definitely not the “Golden City,” despite what Goop thinks.

Is San Francisco Safe From Fire?

Although the city’s history has been shaped by a devastating inferno and the surrounding state suffers millions of acres of damage every year, San Francisco is largely safe from forest fires. The last urban conflagration near San Francisco occurred in Oakland in 1991 when a wind-fueled firestorm destroyed nearly 3,000 homes and killed 25 people in the hills.

Is San Francisco an Island?

Almost. The city is at the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, surrounded on three sides by water that becomes less salty from the Pacific through the Golden Gate to the bay. The south side of the city is a land border with San Mateo County and the cities of Daly City and Brisbane.

However, San Francisco has islands, from the tiny Seal Rock off Ocean Beach to Alcatraz, Treasure Island, a small part of Angel Island and, furthest away, the uninhabited Farallones – home to many shipwrecks and a colony of elephant seals (and some hungry seal-eating Sharks).

Is San Francisco Built on Sand?

Great question. Kind of like that. The entire western part of the city – now filled with the green lawns of Golden Gate Park and suburban streets – was once sand dunes. Part of the city on the east coast was built on the wreckage of ships abandoned by gold-crazy prospectors.

Some downtown skyscrapers are literally built on sand, which didn’t work well for the residents of 301 Mission St.

Is San Francisco a Country?

No. But it once had an emperor. In 1859 a San Francisco newspaper published a notice announcing that an English businessman in the city, Joshua Norton, had proclaimed himself “Emperor” of the United States at the request of a “large majority” of the population.

Although he had no real power and all of his decrees were ignored, he became a real city celebrity, walking the streets wearing a beaver hat decorated with a peacock feather. Most of his ideas were ridiculed, for example when he created his own currency with his face on it, but he suggested building a bridge to Oakland 50 years before this became a reality.

Joshua “Emperor” Norton, San Francisco

Bettmann / Bettmann archive

The town took Norton’s crazy ways, selling pins and belt buckles with his likeness, and even providing him with military insignia if his beaver hat was thin. After he fell dead on California Street in 1880, 10,000 San Franciscans are believed to have attended his funeral.

Is San Francisco Better Than Los Angeles?

Yes sir.

Is San Francisco Safe?

It is possible that this question will be asked by confused Fox News viewers with fond memories of the beautiful city that is now picking up host Laura Ingraham’s prime-time rant against San Francisco, calling it a dystopian city in decline. She recently claimed the city was “ruining itself” by building a bike path in the city.

Let’s look at the violent crime numbers. According to FBI data from 2017, the homicide / negligent homicide rate in San Francisco is 6.35 per 100,000 people. This number is far lower than years ago (in 2007 it was 13.63). It also makes the city safer than Miami, Las Vegas, Chicago and Omaha, Nebraska in this metric. In fact, San Francisco has fewer murders, aggravated injuries, and rapes per person than 65 of the country’s 100 most populous cities. Recent data shows that violent crime in the city continued to decline from 2018 to 2020, although the number of vehicle thefts increased.

So safe from crime? Relatively yes. Safe from right primetime agitprop? Maybe not.

Is San Francisco Coffee Good?

Despite an infamous 1963 headline that said, “The Terrible Coffee in SF Restaurants: The People of a Great City Are Forced to Drink Booze,” Tea and Coffee magazine ranks the city’s coffee as Seattle today second best in the country. Coffee businesses from Folger’s to the bougie third-wave roaster Blue Bottle (now owned by Nestle) started in the Bay Area.

It’s not cheap, and not all of it is delicious. I went to Lombard Street once and paid $ 17 for a cup of coffee that went through a cat’s gut and tasted like donkey.

Is San Francisco Sodom and Gomorrah?

No. The biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were ravaged by divine retribution by a very angry god because of their human wickedness. San Francisco is very beautiful and doing well.

Is San Francisco Bike Friendly?

Yes very. According to a SmartAsset study, it is the safest city in the country for cyclists.

One of the busiest bicycle routes in the city is the wiggle. The zig-zag cycle path between the Panhandle and downtown, which winds its way through the hills, is an extremely popular commuter route for cyclists who want to avoid the leg crusher inclines. The route actually follows an ancient stream that was used by cattle and settlers long before the bicycle was invented.

San Francisco

Alexander Spatari / Getty Images

Is san francisco cold?

Honestly, yes. Except for a couple of weeks in early fall, when it’s downright magical.

Is San Francisco Chinatown Safe?

Yes sir. And pretty. The largest Chinatown outside of Asia is a vibrant, bustling neighborhood with hidden alleyways, fantastic food, ornate churches, and some of the best bars in town. It is also home to Portsmouth Square, where elders gather to play Chinese chess in the oldest public square in San Francisco.

Is San Francisco Dog Friendly?

Very. DogTime rates the city as the third best in the country for dog owners. Puppies are welcome in many restaurants and even gyms, and the city has a lower relative pet deposit than anywhere in the country.

The city’s fondness for dogs could start with a curious furry duo named Bummer and Lazarus. In 1860, San Francisco’s city dogs were loved. The couple had a penchant for going to saloons and drinking from fountains to the delight of residents. They were exempted from city ordinances and even received evening tickets to every opera house in the city. Mark Twain praised their demise, and their stuffed bodies were on display in their favorite bar long after they uttered their last ruff.

Is San Francisco known as the windy city?

Come on now.

Is San Francisco expensive?

Very. Illegally. A family of four needs to make $ 111,136 annually to make ends meet in San Francisco. Investopedia lists the city as the second most expensive city in the country after New York. Despite the endless stories of people who have left San Francisco, the city is still very sought after. Time Out has just named it the greatest city in the world, and with the ocean and bay leaving no room for suburban sprawl, there’s little chance it will become more affordable anytime soon.

Is San Francisco Hilly?

Extremely. There are 48 named hills in the city. Some, like Irish Hill, were wiped out by dynamite. Others, like Mount Davidson and Mount Sutro, are hidden paradises in the middle of the city. Many have their own famous identities, from the parrots on Telegraph Hill to the old calm of Nob Hill. The hills and steep streets make the city what it is. An ambitious man tried walking up the 10 steepest streets and found that the steepest block is not where you think it is.

Is San Francisco Due To An Earthquake?

Yes sir. I mean no. I’m sorry, nobody really knows. Experts say the bay should experience a quake at the city’s 1906 level every 200 years. USGS says the chance this will happen in the next 30 years is around 2%. So probably not? But it can’t hurt to start building this earthquake kit.

What is the main newspaper in San Francisco?

San Francisco has a long history of belligerent newspapers claiming this coat, mostly between the Call, the Examiner and the Chronicle. In the 1890s, this resulted in an extravagant and sometimes stupid skyscraper war, which was eventually ended by the 1906 fire that gutted the towers of the Publications downtown.

This resulted in a very brief moment of brotherly love when all publications joined forces in the days following the disaster to publish under the Call-Chronicle-Examiner.

Today the biggest news site in San Francisco is SFGATE. With about 25 to 30 million monthly readers, only the LA Times can count more loyal readers across California.

San Francisco is dying?

No.

The post ‘Is San Francisco dying?’ People are googling some unusual questions on SF appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

You may have spotted a mysterious string of lights lined up in a row on Thursday, moving like a train across the night sky.

Elon Musk is in charge of the show in the sky and tonight there will be a rerun that is even brighter.

Musk’s SpaceX company launched the Starlink satellites on May 4th – yes, Star Wars Day – from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center. The Falcon 9 booster threw 60 Starlink satellites into the atmosphere.

The last forecast as of Friday 11:30 a.m. when the satellite train will first soar across the Bay Area skies is Friday 9:24 p.m. to 9:25 p.m. They are visible for about 5 minutes, according to the Heavens-Above website. There you can enter your location to determine when the satellites will pass in your area. (Note: the display may change slightly during the day.)

The page indicated that Starlink is almost right over your head tonight and is 10 to 15 times brighter than last night. The satellites will rise from the northwest and disappear into the shadow of the earth shortly after crossing the head to the southeast.

Here you can also check when the satellites are passing your area.

The Starlink train is particularly noticeable in the sky because, according to the company, it is “60 times closer to the earth than traditional satellites” and can provide communications services to remote, underserved areas.

According to the International Astronomical Union, the satellites can be made of reflective material when sunlight hits them in the hours just after sunset or before sunrise.

“They launch another 60 of them every few months,” said Gerald McKeegan, an astronomer at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland. “When they first launch them, they’re a small line of satellites that are close together and then they slowly separate from each other. People enjoy seeing these fairy lights, but astronomers just go crazy with light pollution They supposedly take them up into the atmosphere over time to make them less visible. “

The union and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory have both raised concerns in the past that the satellites are too bright and are causing problems for astronomers.

“The organization generally welcomes the principle of dark and radio-silent skies as essential not only to improving our understanding of the universe we belong to, but also as a resource for all of humanity and to protect nighttime wildlife,” said the Union in a statement posted online. “We do not yet understand the effects of thousands of these visible satellites scattered across the night sky, and despite their good intentions, these satellite constellations can threaten both of them.”

McKeegan said the Starlink satellites, as well as other satellites, are disrupting their work at the Oakland Science Center.

“We have an asteroid search program in the middle that takes pictures of the sky to look for moving objects,” he said. “What happens is these satellites are drawing those white streaks across the image. It ruins the image. It was a little problem before, but it’s a much bigger problem with more and more satellites.”

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