“Spooky San Francisco” event at the Balboa Theater, Halloween night

If trick or treating ain’t your thing on Halloween and you can’t find a costume party to attend, head over to the Balboa Theater for “Spooky San Francisco”, featuring a documentary about the city’s cemetery history plus short films and other surprises.

The event, hosted by the Western Neighborhoods Project, will screen “A Second Final Rest: The History of San Francisco’s Lost Cemeteries” from filmmaker Trina Lopez. The film looks at the early cemeteries that were spread throughout western San Francisco in what is now Laurel Heights, Rossi Park, Lincoln Park Golf Course, and the Legion of Honor. View photos of the old cemeteries

A Second Final Rest is a story of spooks, a truth stranger than that which many can imagine. It hearkens back to the film Poltergeist with its famous line that goes something like “They moved the tombstones, but they forgot to move the bodies!” But it also speaks to the dreams of a restless world and the desire to leave a mark in it before we depart. Whether there is room for the living and the dead to coexist as the years pass remains to be seen. I hope A Second Final Rest generates more questions than it answers, and reminds viewers to ponder humankind’s effects upon the earth now and after death, and to appreciate life while there’s still time. [trinalopez.com]

The evening begins at 7pm on October 31, and tickets are $10 for adults, $7.50 for seniors and children. You can purchase tickets online at the WNP website (which we recommend because the event will most likely sell out in advance).

Sarah B.