I've recently been reading San Francisco: The Unknown City. They briefly discussed a curse on Pat Montandon, who I had previously only heard of through her appearance in the Tales of the City books.

This task inspired me to reasearch the story further. Apparently she gave a party to which she invited a tarot card reader. This person became angry and cursed her and her house, which was on Lombard Street. After that, many strange things happened in the house, including the appearance of bloodstains, fires, and a mysterious death. She finally moved out. She wrote a book, Intruders, about the events. It is being made into a movie.

As usual in horror films, she discovered that her house (1000 Lombard St.) was built on top of a former cemetery (perhaps the unofficial North Beach cemetery?) location. The nearby San Francisco Art Institute is also reputed to be haunted for this reason. Of course, this is usually enough, so why was the curse required as well?

One of the best web pages about this is, of course, by Mister SF - an excellent reference for interesting information about The City.

References:

• http://www.sfgate.com/offbeat/pat.html


• http://www.undertakerslounge.com/week_of_8403.htm


• http://patmontandon.com/index.htm


• http://www.sfheart.com/Haunted_San_Francisco.html


• http://www.sanfranciscocemeteries.com/


• http://www.mistersf.com/notorious/index.html?notintruders.htm