The ides of March is the day on the calendar used by the Roman Kingdom and the Roman Republic that corresponds to what we know as March 15. It is a reference that is familiar because
William Shakespeare wrote of it in his play
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, where, in Act 1, Scene 2, a soothsayer warns Caesar,
Beware the ides of March.
This foreshadows the assassination of Caesar, an historical event that occurred on the ides of March in 44 BCE and accelerated the dissolution of the Roman Republic. Because the audience knows its history, the effect of this moment in the play is to emphasize the hubris in the reply Caesar gave:
He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.
Later, while on his way to his death at the Hall of Pompey, Caesar passes the soothsayer and jokes, Well, the ides of March are come,
implying that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the soothsayer replies,
Aye, they are come, but they are not gone.
This is all of interest to me today because details of the death of Julius Caesar served as a prompt for an adventure upon which my daughter and I embarked last week during a visit together to San Francisco.
Shakespeare relied on the 1579 translation into English by Thomas North of
Parallel Lives, from
Plutarch,
as the source of text for those scenes in Julius Caesar. Plutarch wrote Life of Caesar
circa 110 CE and cites seven authors in its bibliography, including subordinates and friends of Caesar who knew of the details of his death. Elsewhere, the historian Suetonius identified the soothsayer as a
haruspex named Spurinna.¹ A haruspex was a person trained to read portents in the entrails of sacrificed animals, especially the livers of sheep and poultry. For the Romans, the practice was a means to divine the will of their gods, then act in accord with the interpretation of the signs; Spurinna was not simply a concern troll, he had an actual job that
required a specialized education to be qualified for hire, and sufficient authority to warrant a hearing by Caesar. Now, as always, the ides of March have appeared upon the turning of the calendar page, and the habit of 426 years since Shakespeare called our attention to it invests the day with intrigue
and notoriety that accepts that a priest successfully predicted the future by examining offal. My daughter and I agreed that these were suitable prompts to make a visit to San Francisco this month an occasion to seek evidence of our own of manifestations of occult forces, yet if there is a back room or an alley in San Francisco where the entrails
of chickens are being combed for omens, we were certain to not be welcomed to observe that gruesome ritual. We decided to go instead in search of ghosts.
The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco was built for the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition and styled by its architect, Bernard Maybeck, as a decaying Roman ruin, making it the clear landmark from which to scout for spectral exhibitions on a tour of the city that had been inspired by the death of Caesar. It was thus that we discovered that our visit was to coincide with the San Francisco Sail Grand Prix races, part of an annual sailing competition that meets in venues around the world where teams vie for an overall championship. The races are short, with each crew sailing a one‐design fast‐foiling catamaran known as an F50, capable of exceeding 60 mph through the water. The San Francisco course was laid out between Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge, with grandstands from which the entire course could easily be seen ashore at Marina Green across the street from the Palace of Fine Arts. Despite its having nothing to do with the unearthly, we bought tickets to attend the event on Saturday and, because we had sailed in the same water, were particularly excited to see what these rocket ships could do with the winds blowing into the bay from beyond the Marin Headlands.
The fan experience of attending the races was sterling. Seats could not have been closer to the racecourse; the action on the boats as the crews handled their duties could easily be seen, helping one imagine being a participant. Big screen monitors played live video being taken by helicopters flying over the racing boats, with overlays that showed a
course outline, and boat position and right of way. Between heats, trivia questions and race results were posted to the screens while an announcer on stage recapped events and rallied the audience to cheer for its favorite international team. On one’s phone, an app could be installed that duplicated the view on the monitors and added options to
examine details about each boat and its crew. The operation struck a well‐thought‐out and polished balance between high‐tech, media‐dense extravaganza and old‐fashioned day at the ballpark. 
It was all enough to make me feel sorry for the folks who had organized the J/24 World Championship
races held on Puget Sound last fall, with nearly sixty boats on hand racing for the prize, as, even with effective local sponsorship, their budget was a fraction of that on display at the Sail Grand Prix race, in part leaving fans to have to work to do something as simple as finding the racecourse each day: my wife and I had to drive to the
marina where the boats were being moored and track down a race official to ask for the position of the boats, which changed each day as the race officer read the weather forecast and tides. Because of the distances involved, even with binoculars, the race action was indecipherable from whichever parking lot we happened to find that was closest to the
course, and there was no live narrative being broadcast or streamed. No one with a t‐shirt cannon arrived on scene to hand out swag.
After thoroughly enjoying ourselves watching the boats, my daughter and I settled in at Queen Anne Hotel in the Pacific Heights neighborhood. Built in 1890 as a finishing school for the daughters of the elite families of San Francisco, its construction was funded by James Fair, who was one of the four owners of the Consolidated Virginia Silver Mine and the California Mine near Virginia City, Nevada. The owners of the mines were known worldwide as the Silver Kings because, during twenty‐two years of productive operation, the two mines yielded $150,000,000 in silver and gold, placing the owners among the richest people in the United States. The famous Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, built by his daughters, is named for James Fair, who, when he died in 1894, was the largest taxpayer in the city of San Francisco. The school that he built was named Miss Mary Lake’s School for Girls, after the woman Fair chose to serve as its headmistress. Mary Lake devoted herself to the school and her charges until the school closed in 1896. We had elected to spend the night in the hotel that now occupies the restored school building because the ghost of Mary Lake is said to haunt its spaces.
The Queen Anne Hotel is a lovely Victorian mansion filled with ornate woodwork, period antiques, and elegant parlors, where guests have described a benevolent specter tucking them into bed, unpacking their luggage, folding their scattered clothes, and forming a watchful presence as they slumber. Those with the habit of explaining such things agree that it is the shade of Mary Lake, still acting as caretaker, which roams the hotel seeking occasion to be helpful. If this were so, then we had found an ideal place to spend the night during our probe of the city in search of places where the veil between worlds grows thin.
We ate dinner at the nearby Fior d’Italia,
which bills itself as America’s Oldest Italian Restaurant
and occupies the ground floor of the
San Remo Hotel,
built by Bank of America founder Amadeo Giannini after the 1906 earthquake and fire. Named after the picturesque Italian town on the Gulf of Genoa, we had come to the hotel because it, too, is said to be haunted, and we had retained a
guide to conduct us through its narrow corridors and guest rooms, where we would receive instruction in the use of the tools of the trade of paranormal investigation.
Our guide, Jamie, did not come with a grimoire in hand, but he did come with EMF meters, a Frank’s Box, dowsing rods, and other assorted utensils for us to use during our time in the hotel. For two hours, we were entertained with stories of true crime and mournful characters while patrolling the San Remo, snapping pictures hoping to capture images of spirit orbs, posing questions for mute phantoms to answer with the aid of the dowsing rods, and listening to the AM radio spectrum for audible reports from correspondents stationed in the empyrean province. My daughter, ever in search of the cauchemardesque, was not the least troubled by the prospect of successfully rousing the dead, whereas I, certain no such thing was possible as we busily signaled for attention, also had little interest in confronting the consequences of being wrong.
Stories of life after death are timeless. They can be found in the ancient cultures of India, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and many others. In the Sumerian tale Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld (c. 2700–1400 BCE), Gilgamesh is given a firsthand account of the afterlife by Enkidu, who has returned from the
underworld where he went to retrieve his friend’s lost items. The Mesopotamian goddess of love, Inanna, journeys to the underworld in Descent of Inanna (c. 1900–1600 BCE), where she dies and is resurrected. In the first century CE, the Roman statesman Pliny the Younger reported in a letter the story
of the philosopher Athenodorus, who, one night while in Athens, Greece, heard the rattling of chains and woke to find a bearded man in his room motioning that Athenodorus should rise and come with him, leading Athenodorus to a courtyard of the house where the apparition suddenly vanished. Marking the spot, Athenodorus and city magistrates returned
the next day and unearthed the skeleton of an old man, bound with chains. The first recorded instance of what could be classified as a poltergeist (noisy ghost
) occurred in Germany in 856 CE. The mysterious force was said to have terrorized residents of a farmhouse by throwing stones, lighting fires, and harassing the family that lived there.
At the San Remo Hotel on this night in 2025, no ghosts presented themselves to us despite our entreaties, but we had a ball searching for them.
Later, back at the haunted Queen Anne, as I was making notes about the day and then drawing up the covers to sleep, I cast a skeptical eye about the room, hoping no visitation from an eidolon would awaken me to prove that my dubiety was misplaced. I wanted nothing to do with imps and imps names — Elemanzer, Pyewacket, Peckin the Crown, Grizzel, Greedigut, et cetera.² Neither fairies nor goblins were welcome to disturb my peaceful realm, and a Blue Lady, revenant, banshee, or wraith would have been directed to try the room of my daughter, who would have offered a seat and reviewed a questionnaire prepared for each before coaxing them to the Land of Nod. As it was, I awoke fully rested the following day to enjoy my cup of coffee in the sitting room of the hotel, listening to the ticking of the clocks, having passed the night without exercise. My daughter soon reported that she, too, had slept without ado but had relished the obbligato of mystery.
We had heard of the Millionaire’s Bacon at Sweet Maple and took advantage of a lovely Sunday morning to stroll down the hill from the Queen Anne Hotel to the restaurant to give their bacon a try. With preparations that included cinnamon with chipotle and citron with sea salt, the number of complaints at our table was zero, and we enjoyed being in a room full of cheerful people who were having an experience similar to our own.
Both of us wanted to see the tulips we knew to be in bloom at Golden Gate Park, so, after breakfast, we made our way across town to the park, where, in 1902, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands had donated to the City of San Francisco a tulip garden, along with a Dutch windmill to provide irrigation. We were delighted to find there not just thousands of tulips in rainbows of color, but also dozens of other species of seasonal flowers in bloom: daffodils, poppies, primroses, and the like. Pathways and grassy lawns among the flowers invited one to stroll and to linger for a moment of veneration of a natural world that composes such masterpieces as these. We mingled with the many families who were visiting the garden, whence, through the trees that bordered its grounds, could be seen the Gulf of the Farallones beyond the Great Highway at the western edge of the city.
In Faust, the play by Goethe, Mephistopheles says: Naturally, if a God torments himself six days, and says to himself, Bravo, at last, in praise, He must have made something clever.
³ From 1958 to 1969, the U.S. military disposed of chemical and conventional munitions at several sites in the Gulf of the Farallones. Beginning in 1946 and ending in 1970, around 47,800 barrels of nuclear waste were also dumped in the gulf, littering a 540‐square‐mile area of sea floor; their location was largely unknown
until mapping and monitoring efforts by the U.S. Geological Survey pinpointed them in the 1990s.⁴ As I have traveled, my interest in the myriad ways people find to sully and wrack this pale blue dot has met with constant replenishment, amazement at the human genius for rapacity, and despair at the cavalier manner in which the spoiling inventions of our species have been strewn about. We have all seen it – the scale of it;
the ruin; the profligacy; the wantonness; the criminality; the handiwork of the poverty of imagination and the selfishness of those who toss candy wrappers out of car windows or dump nuclear waste into the ocean in 55‐gallon drums that rust into nothingness. I chuckle every time I watch the
Clarke and Dawe bit,
The Front Fell Off,
a satire on an interview with an official rationalizing an oil tanker spill, but its agonizing truth is that, It’s been towed beyond the environment,
is precisely what a government might say to explain its discarding poison in plain view of the 800,000 inhabitants of one of the loveliest cities in the Western Hemisphere. As she paused for me to take her picture, I looked westward over the shoulder of my daughter toward the Farallon Islands and felt the unease that chaperones the scourging of
the Earth that is the legacy of her forebears, my generation included. On March 7, a new all‐time daily record of 430.6 ppm of CO₂ in the atmosphere had been recorded at the NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory at Mauna Loa, Hawaiʻi.⁵ I wondered what a god who had created a paradise might say about its misuse by its tenants and how much longer flowers such as those that surrounded us could endure the consequences.
Our amble through the park had roused us to think about ice cream at The Original Ghirardelli Chocolate & Ice Cream Shop. We had abandoned their line for a table on a previous visit to Ghirardelli Square, because everyone in the city had decided to join the queue that afternoon and we had important business to attend to elsewhere. At the time, we promised one another that we would one day return and submit ourselves to the necessary wait to win a seat at the emporium, when we would finally treat ourselves to its confections. Very little argumentation was required to persuade ourselves that a helping of ice cream chasing the bacon and eggs we had already eaten would make a fine coda, so we hurried to the square to take up position in the line outside the door of the shop. We instead walked instantly through the door, as no wait was needed, and, once seated within the charming space, made a careful study of the menu. We both decided that the World Famous Hot Fudge Sundae was the best choice from among many enticing offerings, then got busy savoring the classic mix of sweet whipped cream, viscous fudge, tart cherry, and dense vanilla ice cream, all garnished with nuts and an entire chocolate bar. The spoons seemed nearly a foot long to reach the bottom of the serving dishes.
After that, there was nothing to do but drive out of the city across the Golden Gate Bridge and begin making plans for our next exploit. I once watched as my daughter, maybe seven years old at the time, persuaded a carnival ticket‐taker that, despite not measuring up to the You must be taller than this to ride
line drawn on a stick, she
was perfectly confident in her capacity to safely take a place on the roller coaster and should be trusted to do so, being then waved through with a flourish — so I know we will always at least seriously consider getting out of the house and doing something out of the ordinary. We ain’t afraid of no ghost.