Did you know about ‘City of souls’, a town where cemeteries outshine residents?

Colma, California has a population of fewer than 2,000 people, yet it has a jaw-dropping secret: that this 1.9-square-mile town has room for the souls beyond the bodies. In fact, Colma earned the nickname "City of Souls" for an eerie yet fascinating reason. Approximately 1.5 million people were buried across Colma's 17 cemeteries: the dead number 750 for every living individual. From its elaborate mausoleums to peaceful green plots, this eclectic town's history teems with ghostly tales and surprising twists, but how has Colma been the final resting place for such a large portion of souls, and what life is really lived in a community where neighbors reside, essentially, underground? Stay tuned for a story that will both spook and intrigue you.

It was 1848, and a wild rush to the region followed when thousands heard that gold had been discovered in California. Two years later, the population of San Francisco went from a small 812 to a bustling 25,000. But the boom came with an unexpected problem — overflowing cemeteries.
By 1887, Colma became an alternate burial site. Then came the game-changing rumor: living near cemeteries were thought to spread disease. This was a somewhat unsettling belief, and San Francisco authorities outlawed further burials within city limits in 1914. They even decided to exhume graves from existing cemeteries to make room for urban development.
So Colma became a final resting ground for countless souls relocated, thereby becoming a town famously known as the "City of Souls" where the dead outnumber the living ten to one.

Colma, California, is called the "City of Souls" for a very peculiar reason: it has more than 1.5 million buried bodies, yet only about 1,800 living residents. Such is the macabre ratio of 833 corpses per living soul-the outcome of a historical decision that dates back to 1914, when the San Francisco authorities decreed the removal of all tombs inside the city in favor of urbanization.
It is then that around 150,000 cadavers were unearthed and reburied here, turning the town into one vast cemetery. There are 17 cemeteries in the city of Colma today, with Levi Strauss and Joe DiMaggio as among its notable interments. There is little action going on on the streets, and yet there remains a fascinating depth to this rather ghostly town's past. History, after all, lives in Colma's cemeteries and can be seen nowhere else, a truly peculiar town to reside in.
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