Want to get creeped out for Halloween? Take this ghost tour of UC Berkeley

It s a gloomy night at UC Berkeley and Ying Liu is about to give a haunted tour of the school Before we start I just have a question she says How much gore can you handle There s a brief silence before a woman in our tour group pipes up Gore it up And maybe when I start crying ratchet it back Liu is dressed all in black shoes to jacket and carries an EMF meter to detect potential spikes in the electromagnetic field She s a familiar face to anybody who s watched The Haunted Bay a show she created that ran for three seasons on Amazon Prime in In the series Liu and her crew of paranormal investigators run around the Bay hunting ghosts They determined one and proved its face on camera at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco and have spectrally spelunked at the USS Hornet aircraft carrier in Alameda and Oakland s historic gay bar the White Horse Inn Ying Liu leads a tour on the University of California Berkeley campus on Sept Liu founder of The Haunted Bay a show on paranormal actives on Amazon Prime gives true crime-based paranormal tours in and around the UC Berkeley campus area Douglas Despres for the Bay Area News Group The Berkeley tours are something that Liu is offering personally this year to fans of intimate historically based trauma tours She also does one in San Francisco She s like a journalist in her methods She digs through newspaper archives to uncover stories of death and destruction and also interviews locals tenants safeguard guards janitors to give her the scoop and even access to haunted places The tour s motto is True ghost stories Evidence Scares Related Articles Pumpkinpalooza Our Trader Joe s autumn taste test Trader Joe s new Halloween mini-totes colors price and everything else we know Don t let animals get spooked this Halloween Bay Area pumpkin patches Your guide to finding the perfect pumpkins this fall All hail Farmer Mike the Bay Area s preeminent pumpkin carver Tonight we re taking a -mile hike around campus and surrounding neighborhood home to a few of the oldest buildings in the city The journey begins with mild goosebumps but will take a grisly turn at the halfway point warns Liu We sign a legal waiver releasing liability for no doubt suffering a heart attack from fright In our group is Zach Holms from Los Gatos Ruby Knight from Canada and Helen Knight from Rockridge I forced them to come Helen says indicating the other two I just can t not believe in the paranormal We arrive at the Campanile a -foot clock tower built in used by the biology department to store hundreds of thousands of prehistoric fossils It s rumored pranksters have arranged animal bones so visitors stepping out of the tower elevators get an awful surprise At least two people have killed themselves jumping off the tower Liu says Anti-suicide bars were then installed in the s So people say this place is haunted In fact one person declared they ve seen a hand sticking out of the ground she says Ying Liu founder of The Haunted Bay says that Sather Tower aka the Campanile is a considered a haunted location on the UC Berkeley campus Douglas Despres for the Bay Area News Group Next stop is a gnarled tree that s grown into a torturous shape If you turn your head to the right it looks just like a screaming skull like something out of Sleepy Hollow Liu notes Best tree ever Helen says We arrive at the Faculty Club where university folks hang out to drink during football games The ghost of an overworked history professor named Henry Morse Stephens is explained to haunt the place His life s work on the San Francisco earthquake was reportedly lost in a s fire he s known to recite poetry in there Liu says This must be one of those fun doddering old ghosts from the Harry Potter universe Inside the club where it s quiet and dark as a tomb Liu whips out her EMF reader and asks if anybody is there Nothing It also depends on if they want to communicate with you cautions Liu I m so hurt Helen says We adjourn to take a bathroom break Zach carries the meter into the men s restroom and it promptly flashes red by the toilet I don t want to be here he says Ying Liu left leads Ruby Knight Helen Knight and Zach Holms on a paranormal tour around UC Berkeley on Sept Douglas Despres for the Bay Area News Group We re nearing the halfway point when things are supposed to get scary Our party roams through the shadows of the campus forest redwoods looming overhead dripping abnormally large spiders steam seeping from underground tunnels A freshman walking by says to his phone Ugh This morning I woke up in the shower At a co-op for participant housing on Prospect Street Liu stops and says There was a cult that lived here In the s the One World Family Commune moved in and practiced a belief in UFOs and a kind of tantric yoga group sex called Natural Selection Later the house was taken over by strict vegetarians known as Lothloriens named after the elvish land in The Lord of the Rings One of the Lothloriens made headlines in after murdering his girlfriend Roberta Bibi Lee in the Oakland Hills They determined her body decomposing with animals having eaten a few of it Liu says Residents informed me that Bibi Lee s ghost had still been haunting the place It stomped around and targeted angry young men They did a ritual to get rid of it and the stomping went away But now there s a spirit that stands in front of people s doors and watches before they go to sleep she adds That s just life in the ghost world You win particular battles you lose specific Ying Liu left instructs a group for a guided paranormal tour in Berkeley on Sept Douglas Despres for the Bay Area News Group Liu is taking a break to talk about the scariest thing that ever happened to her a nightmare with a dead woman and a ripper who pulls out intestines She is slight and soft-spoken you have to lean in to hear her which makes it all the more unnerving when you absolutely understand what she s saying My dreams are vivid like full-color horror movies she notes This is about the point when the tour group decides to leave early saying they re freaked out and also tired I don t judge she says Everyone s got different fear levels This is not for the easily scared Still on the night s docket is a jaunt to the former California School for the Blind which burned down ages ago guests at the nearby Claremont Resort Club overview hearing crying and moaning coming from the grounds There s also a structure on UC Berkeley s Clark Kerr Campus where the body of a likely homicide victim was discovered in It was skeletonized and leadership believe it was a Texas man last seen in With all this grimness in her life what does Liu do for fun I love animals I rescue hamsters they re the little lights of my life she says loading up her TikTok channel full of the derpy creatures They re like little puppies that want to run into my hand and lick me they re like little angels Details Berkeley tours take place every week and are for general admission and for students tour meets by UC Berkeley and lasts three hours for details and booking visit thehauntedbay com