The ghost cow weirding out California since the early 1800s
In the middle of the San Francisco Bay lies Yerba Buena Island. A patch of land that, technically, thousands upon thousands of people visit every single day. Not because it’s one of the countless tourist hotspots of California, but because it connects the western and eastern spans of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.
Thousands more pass through it every day thanks to the Yerba Buena tunnel that covers the same route but underground. I would bet serious money that vanishingly few of those people who pass think twice about the island that connects two of the most populous districts of the state. However, they should, because no matter how many jokes you can tell at America’s expense for its so-called lack of history, the truth is that once you look past the standard historical narratives, it’s everywhere.
Even in a patch of land as seemingly inconsequential as Yerba Buena Island. An island that went through several names before settling on Yerba Buena in 1931, all named for its wildlife. It was a farming island, nd its population of one particular farmyard animal led to it being nicknamed Goat Island by the locals, but that’s not the call you’ll hear today on a dark night, so the legend goes. No, that would be a mournful moo of the island’s oldest, saddest guest.
If the legends are to be believed, this part of California is haunted by a ghostly cow who wanders the island at night, calling out to someone or something in distress. What precisely it’s calling out to dates back to long before California was part of the United States, way back to the golden age of piracy of the early 1800s, when there was a hotbed of piracy on the west coast of America, with several pirate crews taking refuge on the islands scattered off the coast.
According to the tale, one crew took solace on the island and did as many pirates were wont to do. They got hungry.
They searched the island for food, and it would be easy to say they found and killed the hero of our story. Butchering it for sustenance. However, I said this story was a sad one, right? No. The story goes that they found her calf. That’s right, the ghost cow of Yerba Buena is a mother, confused and distressed at having lost her child, crying out at night for them to return home.
This actually checks out for a number of reasons. After all, cows are smart, emotional creatures. If the spirits of humans in distress can stick around long after they’re gone, it stands to reason that the spirits of non-human creatures with emotions can do the same. More importantly, the phantom cow wouldn’t be alone on Yerba Buena. There have been several reports of non-bovine ghost activity on the island, mostly centred around the motorway that runs through it.
If you’re ever riding the Bay Bridge and see a man dressed in 1940s-style garb in a state of confusion, he might not be some unlucky, rideless soul who got lost on the way to a Gatsby party. Instead, he might be the spirit of a driver from 1948 whose car ran out of gas, which is why he stepped out of his car to use a nearby phone without looking where he was going. Hell of a way to spend the rest of existence, eh?
In fact, there have also been numerous reports of drivers on the bridge having their windows knocked on with no one there, and even one particularly terrifying report of a headless driver sprinting down the highway.
Hopefully, they can keep the poor cow company there. God knows she needs it.