Do you believe in ghosts?

I spot him while standing on a lawn in the Presidio

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Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash

Hi lovelies,

It was October; of course it was. There I stood at the sweeping lawn’s edge of the restaurant where my friend Cecily and I had just dined, debating my imminent move to a pale green house not far from it in the Presidio. Like most housing in the Presidio, the house in question had formerly been military housing. Like most housing there (and in San Francisco), it had been renovated and was now extremely competitive to get into.

This was when I spotted him. We’d had a long dinner, Cecily and I, and I was a little dizzy with wine, so I didn’t immediately recognize what he was: a man who wasn’t glowing pearlescent so much as lit, dimly, enough to be visible against the backdrop of shadowy forest bordering the far end of the main Presidio lawn. He was less than 40, 50 yards away from us. I could just see that faintly gleaming figure silhouetted against the trees of the deepening woods behind him.

And he was beckoning toward me. This was lucent as sunshine even in the sweeping night that fell all around me, though it took a few agonizingly slow moments in my wine-blinkered state to register that I did not feel afraid. Nor did I feel threatened.

Instead, I felt—pulled. Called toward him. I wanted to go, to be nearer to his presence. Perhaps even to take his hand and let him steal me away with him, away into the dark.

It was not my first spirit visitation, though it was the most significant at the time. I wasn’t close enough to make out his features, other than a sweep of chestnut shoulder-length hair. But still there was the reality of his body there, solidly there (or so it seemed), not all that far away. And it was evident as he continued to beckon me, with a decisiveness that felt contagious: Come here. Come with me. This is the way, the path forward, the one you should be on.

And I just knew, quick and sure as my own name, that I would live there, that the Presidio would be my home.

This place was one of eucalyptus trees, their bark forever peeling to keep them in varying states of undress. Owls swooped low overhead on massive wings when you least expected them, busy with the workings of their sharp-taloned claim to the night. An entire fucking forest in the midst of San Francisco! And it would remain on my heart.

The Golden Gate Bridge, as seen through the trees of the Presidio. Taken April 18, 2020.

The Presidio National Park is bordered on two sides by the salty brine of the Pacific Ocean, a fact that is punctuated by the the San Francisco fog horns, their insistent calls loosing low warnings from opalescent gloom. The Golden Gate Bridge looms to the northwest, orange hue bright as a slash in fog or blue sky and insistent, too, in its way, while the Marina and Cow Hollow districts sprawl on the eastern side. The luxurious Presidio Heights and Sea Cliff neighborhoods lay south of all that sylvan splendor.

Now a National Historic Landmark District, the Presidio was first established as a military outpost by the Spanish in 1776; when Mexico achieved its independence from Spain, it became a Mexican outpost in 1821. For a time it served as the largest American post on the west coast. The U.S. Army began their landscaping efforts in earnest in the 1880s, planting hundreds of thousands of trees by 1892—nonnative blue gum eucalyptus included. Over a century later, it would join the national park system in 1994.

But it has always been native Ohlone land, specifically the traditional territory of the Yelamu, a local tribe of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples. I don’t know which camp he fell into, my ghost man, my spectral dude. Indigenous or soldier? I have my guesses. And it is no small wonder to me that the entire park is “haunted”, though I don’t love that word. Let’s say hallowed instead—after all, it is built on stolen tribal lands.

Not every paranormal visit I’ve had has been so friendly. And when I think about why most people are given to write off their own experiences with ghosts, spirits, and other entities, I wonder if that’s the foremost reason they turn away. There is an intense fear of the unknown, after all, which is valid in more ways than one. Some spirits are angry and vengeful, of course (I’ve personally experienced, and been told by other healers, that these are primarily the ones who have died gruesome or violent deaths). And I, too, have been afraid.

Not only is it frightening to wrap our minds around something outside the confines of our physical living forms, indeed, our corporeal reality—but that it can somehow reach phantom fingers beyond the grave to join us again, for however long?¹

Especially in October, when the veil grows thin. And especially if we are open to it—sometimes without even realizing we are, simply by way of feeling intensely. In other words, when we are so very alive in our sadness; when we grieve, especially after the death of a loved one; and when we feel heartbreak, or other heightened and very human emotions—this is when we are most open to such experiences.

I can’t recall if I immediately shared with Cecily what I saw, though even as it was happening, I knew this was to become a pivotal piece of my own mythology. It would weave itself into the tapestry of my time in San Francisco, a place steeped in magic and color, late nights walking through the cool mist of the forest, its breath mushrooming green all around me as I pulled the sleeves and hood of my cloak velvety close.² Even the hawks that lived in one of the trees outside my window later that year have their place within this map, this mythos of my verdant heart. I remember the sound of their call.³

I don’t need to tell you that moments like that—where we know our lives will be changed forever—are rare. A part of me is standing on that expanse of lawn still, facing the woods on the borderlands of spirit and reality, past and present. Part of me yet lifts my hands to grasp those of the ghosts I sensed there, of my year in the Presidio. I have always believed in them.

xx,

Kimia

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1. Not to mention all the horror movies about possessions, poltergeists, and exorcisms, which I am Emphatically Not Into.

2. You’re goddamn right I wore a velvet cloak!

3. I’ve written of it before, and I will again.