In 1866, Mark Twain wrote a newspaper story called “The Kearny Street Ghost” that has haunted the minds of San Franciscans ever since. He was a San Francisco correspondent for a Virginia City, Nevada paper called Territorial Enterprise, and allegedly reported this story after conversations with a real live SF resident.
Here’s how Twain’s tale twists:
It’s the 1800s, and a dude named Albert Krum can’t keep a maid to save his life.
Every time a maid goes to her bedchamber to sleep after a day of work, within moments of turning out the light, she’s attacked by “dead and damned scalliwags” AKA evil spirits. One spirit in particular seems to show up more often than the rest: a tall, shadowy male figure intent on attacking women.
He takes maids “by the hair” and “grabs [them] by the waterfall” (which I can only assume was the original “grab ’em by the pussy”) before “bouncing” them on the floor two or three times to get his thrills. The man hurls things at maids too, like washbowls and boots and hoop skirts. He’s really loud, stomping around like the Nutty Professor (yet Krum nor the rest of his family ever hears the evil spirit’s footfalls or come to the maids’ aid during these alleged attacks). As soon as the maids manage to get their lanterns lit again, the stomping stops and the haunting ceases.
No one knows what or who is messing with the maids, just that it keeps happening—and that Krum’s chamber pot keeps filling up with no one there to empty it. This is not the lavish life he pictured when he moved into his fancy Kearny Street home. What’s a farty rich guy to do?
Finally, everything changes when a new broad named Bridget gets hired, gets into bed, and turns out the light. As soon as she does, a tall, thin figure appears in the corner of the room and glides slowly toward her in the dark—a kind of 19th century Slender Man. Rather than flee, she pulls the covers up over her head and starts screaming bloody murder, something that Twain claims most young females would never think to do.
“With admirable presence of mind she covered up her head and yelled,” Twain writes. “Few young women would have thought of doing that.”
(Yes. Because being nearly paralyzed with fear and screaming with your head hidden under the covers is a brilliant act of intellect and bravery. For women, apparently…)
So while Bridget does her gender proud by doing absolutely nothing, Mr. Tall, Dark and Slender moves all the way over to the bed, standing over her. He then lets out a monstrous groan and lays a white kitten covered in blood on the pillow by Bridget’s screaming head. He moans once more, then says, “Oh, God, and must it be?” before putting another bloody kitten on her pillow. He repeats the same thing until there is a pile of nine, meowing kittens covered in blood, before letting out one final moan and vanishing.
Bridget peeks out from under the blanket, lights her lantern and sees the litter of cat babies with bloody fingerprints all over them. A white mama kitten paws into the room, sees the kittens, then “swell[s] her tail in mortal fear,” wanting nothing to do with them.
Twain ends the story with: “What do you think of that? What would you think of a ghost that came to your bedside at dead of night and had kittens?”
Do you really want to know what I think, Mark? Hm?
I think what scares me the most about this whole thing is the state of journalism in the 19th century—and that somebody actually published this in a newspaper as fact!!! (You can read the original story here.) There is no Albert Krum listed in the public records for living on Kearny Street in the 1860s, and Twain was a known weaver of tall tales, so the whole story is looking pretty phantasmic.
But for the fuck of it, let’s say this really did happen and the story is legitimate. If so, I have SO MANY QUESTIONS.
Where were these bloody kittens being pulled from? The air? The dead man’s chest? Mouth? Butt hole? Why were they bloody? Was it the Bloody Kitten Man’s blood? Do ghosts bleed? Was it the kittens’ blood? Did he hurt them? Why was he hurting kittens in the afterlife? Did the ghost help the white cat deliver the kittens and then just carry them around without washing them? Or did the ghost give birth to them? And why was he so upset about kittens? Was he allergic like I am? What on Earth happened to Twain to make him invent this bizarro bloody cat tale? These are the things that plague me.
Despite the perturbing lack of details, I kind of love this story. It’s a little bit stupid yet still scares the shit out of me because it checks all the horror boxes: 1) It leaves enough to the imagination to make me want more 2) calls up compelling, spooky images in my mind of what lurks in the dark corners of my bedroom and 3) contains that poignant, signature misogyny no classic horror story seems to be without.
The takeaway from all of this is that a century and a half ago, Twain was probably bored or just desperate for a byline and made a story up. And while the tale of the Bloody Kitten Man hits a dead end when it comes to verifiable facts, it certainly lives on as one of San Francisco’s most famous hauntings.
I’ll certainly never be able to pass Kearny Street again without trembling at the sound of a wayward meow, or a man’s sinister moan in the darkness… Probably not because I believe Twain’s story, of course—but because real live San Franciscans are freaky as all hell.
