Mysterious ghost ship drifts toward San Diego!

An abandoned ship of mysterious origin is presently drifting toward San Diego’s harbor. It has been calculated that the very old sailing ship, named the Mary Celeste, will make landfall at the Maritime Museum of San Diego on October 29, 2021.

Reliable sources have reported that celebrated author and detective Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the character Sherlock Holmes, is speeding his way to San Diego to solve the mystery of this ghost ship.

Why is a deserted ship drifting slowly across the vast ocean without a single crewmember?

Was there a bloody mutiny?

Did they all leap overboard in a fit of mass hysteria?

Is it possible the Mary Celeste is being driven toward San Diego by a crew of ghosts?

If you’d like to help solve this perplexing mystery, please read what is written in the following photograph:

In case you’re curious, that first photo is a public domain image from Wikimedia Commons. I blurred it to make the present day “sighting” just a little more plausible!

According to its Wikimedia page, the old painting shows: Brigantine Amazon entering Marseilles in November 1861. In 1868 she was renamed Mary Celeste. She was found drifting with nobody aboard in November 1872, and is the source of many maritime “ghost ship” legends.

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Giant skeletons terrorize Mission Valley!

Giant, menacing skeletons have invaded the Target parking lot at Westfield Mission Valley!

This afternoon I noticed a pair of monstrous skeletons have leapt up onto the roof of a large truck in order to terrify motorists passing the shopping mall.

Careful they couldn’t see me, I circled the skeletons and was bewildered to observe a legion of other ghouls, ghosts and ghastly creatures lurking nearby. Some were even peering through windows!

Oh, wait. They’re not real?

Just scary props for this year’s outdoor Halloween attraction, The Haunted Hotel Disturbance?

The popular San Diego “haunted house” opens its doors to courageous souls this Friday, October 1st!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Ghostly branches of a cottonwood in spring.

In late spring and early summer the branches of a cottonwood tree can become very ghostly!

I walked under a Fremont cottonwood by the San Diego River this morning. My eyes were intrigued by the windblown white “cotton” that had collected on its own gray limbs and branches.

Check out the upcoming photos. Those drooping white puffs that resemble cotton candy are actually a fruit called achene. Seeds are dispersed by the wind.

I’m no botanist, so I don’t pretend to understand much about it.

I do know, however, that these seeds can plant themselves in a fertile imagination. The cottonwood’s fuzzed branches appear ethereal, like phantom forms from some unearthly world…

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Very scary, spooky photos for Halloween!

Two weeks ’til Halloween!

The deadly creatures are creeping closer, closer… Ghouls, vampires, zombies, demons… Before you know it they’ll be gathered at your door… The approaching horror is inescapable!

Most of these very scary, spooky photographs were taken in past years around Halloween. Ghosts, grim reapers, demons and bloodthirsty monsters were encountered in Balboa Park on the Haunted Trail. The deformed zombies? I took those photos during Comic-Con! An elegantly dressed skeleton couple materialized in front of my camera in Old Town on Dia de los Muertos. Other frightening faces appeared just before Halloween in shop windows!

Are some of the images vaguely familiar? I changed these color photographs to grayscale, then darkened many, blurred a few slightly. So that you might be properly terrified!

Trick or treat!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Something Halloweenish this way comes!

Halloween is sneaking up!

I walked through Little Italy this afternoon and found some fun sights!

That carousel horse mural must be somewhat new, because I don’t recall seeing it before. It kind of fits in with my Halloween theme…assuming it belongs to a dark carnival!

I’m pretty sure the Old Town Trolley Tours driver wasn’t frightened by the owl, but my photo’s lucky timing (and some mysterious image cropping) makes it seem that way!

BOO!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Marigolds add meaning to El Campo Santo.

Most of the traditional Día de los Muertos decorations have been put away.

In the small El Campo Santo cemetery, marigolds are all that remain.

According to Mexican tradition, marigolds, with their color and scent, guide spirits back to the living.

El Campo Santo (The Holy Field) is where many of San Diego’s earliest residents were buried. Marigolds on graves remind the living that those who founded our city are still with us.

To learn more about some of the people laid to rest in Old Town’s historic El Campo Santo cemetery, click here.

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Creepy creatures appear downtown!

Securely shutter your windows and lock every door! Creepy creatures have materialized throughout downtown San Diego!

As I walked about this morning, I suddenly realized that I was hopelessly surrounded. Closing in around me were witches, spiders, ghosts and an army of skeletons! Not to mention a few terrifying clowns!

The dark forces of Halloween were unstoppable! They had even caused the mighty Zoltar to retreat!

There was no escape from the madness!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Walking down a dark, spooky Haunted Trail!

Today I felt brave enough to walk through a very dark, very spooky corner of Balboa Park.

Night had fallen, the crooked branches of black trees surrounded me, and my eyes were on a swivel as I approached The Haunted Trail!

Did I manage to photograph anything that was remotely scary?

You be the judge!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

A restored streetcar, a crazy driver, and ghosts.

Do ghosts ride on a city’s restored streetcar? Can you say with complete certainty they don’t?

There’s one apparently crazy streetcar driver who likes to converse with ghosts. His unseen riders remember old times that the living have forgotten.

You can read this strange, emotionally charged story by clicking here!

Creepy clowns, ghosts and demons in a park!

Legions of creepy clowns, ghosts, demons and undead are slowly gathering in a popular city park. I photographed them lurking among shadowy trees and spooky buildings, waiting to terrify nice, innocent, completely unsuspecting people who happened to be walking down the park trail!

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As you might have guessed, this morning I took a stroll around the perimeter of The Haunted Trail, which is being built once again in the southwest corner of Balboa Park for Halloween!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!