(piano music)
- [Old Woman] Colma is a very unique community.
We have a million and a half underground residents,
and 1700 living residents.
We have become the city of souls.
(guitar music)
My name is Pat Hatfield,
and I am the retired historian for the town of Colma.
I have lived here now for 65 years, since 1950.
We have now 17 cemeteries.
I call us the United Nations of cemeteries,
because we have a cemetery for everyone.
We have, for instance,
we have four Jewish cemeteries,
we have a Catholic cemetery,
a Greek cemetery,
an Italian cemetery.
(piano music)
And we even have a pet cemetery.
We have very famous people like Wyatt Earp,
and Joe Dimaggio,
and William Randolph Hearst,
and it just goes on.
We inherited hundreds of thousands of bodies because,
during the gold rush,
so many gold miners came here,
and with them,
they brought so many diseases
that San Francisco innocently had 27 cemeteries.
And they were full.
The city father said,
"Our land is to be for the living, not for the dead."
So, an eviction notice was passed in 1914,
and the bodies were slowly transferred here to Colma.
The Colma residents really respect our cemeteries,
but we call them our parks.
That's what they are.
We picnic them,
we walk in them,
our children play in them.
They're just a part of us.
We do have a slower pulse here,
almost dead.
(piano music)