Child
Shadow Clock Podcast | January 2024
Inside the glass-windowed casket lay a child. Golden blond hair framed the face. The flowers in the hands were still intact. The child looked like a real-life sleeping beauty - perfectly preserved after more than 150 years. It wasn’t until the moment Ericka Karner opened an email notifying her that a construction crew discovered the body in her backyard that she was made aware of the child's presence. But who was this young person and why were they there to begin with? Listen here.
Buried Histories
Alta Journal | Fall 2022 Issue
San Francisco’s Legion of Honor museum and Lincoln Park Golf Course sit atop the grave sites of thousands of immigrants and indigent people. Their stories—and some of their remains—are coming to the surface. Read more.
LandMarking City Cemetery
SF Heritage | Jul. 6th, 2021
Lincoln Park, in the northwest corner of San Francisco’s Richmond District, is not lacking in commemorative plaques, interpretative signage, or memorials. A garden and marker behind the golf clubhouse remembers former city champion John Susko. The California Palace of the Legion of Honor museum is a memorial to the Golden State’s fallen dead from World War I. On its east side are bronze tablets inscribed with the names of famous generals from that conflict who planted commemorative trees there. Nearby, the terminus of the Lincoln Highway is marked both with a 1920s concrete plinth featuring a profile of the president and also a more recent interpretive sign about the first transcontinental highway. Read More.
Unmaintained History
Bone Lab Radio Podcast | Feb. 2020
This is a story of death and devotion in a city in flux. In this episode, producers and hosts Jenny Qi and Kate Woronowicz dive into some Bay Area history with LJ Moore and Alex Ryder, who have worked hard to identify human remains inadvertently unearthed during SF home renovations. And we visit the modern necropolis of Colma, California, where the dead outnumber the living, relocated from nearby San Francisco a century ago. Listen Here
Gardens of the Dead
SF Weekly | Sep. 2017
It’s a scene of contrasts, if not out-and-out incongruities. Farmers in straw hats tend to rows of lush green crops as the shadow cast by Colma’s mammoth Home Depot creeps over the field. A Best Buy can be seen in the distance, and Ross Dress for Less and Ulta Beauty beckon from across the street. But underneath the rows of flowers these farmers cultivate lie generations of San Francisco’s dead. Read More
Mystery Solved
Los Angeles Times | May 2017
Her remarkably well-preserved body was discovered a year ago in an unmarked metal casket in a wealthy San Francisco neighborhood.
She was barely 3 when she died and was interred in a long-forgotten cemetery more than a century ago. When workers discovered her elaborate coffin beneath a concrete slab, there were no markings or gravestone to say who she was. Read More
New Clues About 1800s Baby Girl Unearthed Under San Francisco Home
CBS Bay Area | Dec. 13, 2016
After a home renovation in San Francisco unearthed the casket of a young girl, researchers have learned more about her identity.
Researchers say there are indications that more bodies may be buried in the neighborhood as well.
The mystery of the 2-year-old girl found in a casket buried under a San Francisco home is nearly solved. Read More