The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most internationally recognized structures of San Francisco and it has even been named one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It was described as one of the most breathtaking and most snapped landmarks in the world by the Frommer’s travel guide. At the time it was opened back in 1937, it was the tallest and the longest suspension bridge in the world but that has changed over the years with a number of huge bridges built across the world. However, it still remains the tallest one in the US.

On the other hand, when a certain place or structure gets photographed as much as this particular bridge, there is always a chance some of those pics will catch something creepy from time to time. It might not even seem that way at the first glance, but once you get deeper into analyzing some of those photographs, you might notice some pretty strange stuff that is bound to give you chills. From an occasional jumper to haunted ships, the Golden Gate Bridge might not be as magical a place as one might think just by watching it from the distance.

15. West Bend Men’s Illegal Adventure

Two West Bend men, Peter Teatime and his friend Tommy, captured on camera their extremely dangerous adventure of illegally climbing on top of the Golden Gate Bridge. They said they planned it for months and it was their great wish to climb one of the world’s most historic bridges while on vacation in San Francisco. They posted the video capturing them performing all sorts of dangerous stunts 750ft in the air, including dangling their bodies over the edge. According to them, their priority is to make sure they don’t put lives of other people in danger so whenever they do some stunts, they check the traffic below first. For the record, California state law prohibits people from climbing the bridge without special permission that is really not easy to obtain.

14. Fatal Incidents

In this picture, you can see a man just about to jump into the waters under the Golden Gate Bridge and one of the bridge workers trying to convince him not to do it. The number of Golden Gate Bridge jumpers is more than alarming, but, luckily, thanks to the bridge workers and to the constant patrol, numerous people have been prevented from committing suicide by jumping. For example, in 2013, over a hundred people were talked down from their suicide attempt thanks to the security measures such as the emergency personnel and the telephone hotline. Once a person jumps off this bridge, the chances they will survive are pretty slim. Approximately 98% of the jumpers die the moment their body hit the water because the impact is so hard, the human body just can’t take it.

13. The Golden Gate Survivors

The chances of surviving a fall from the Golden Gate Bridge are pretty slim because the impact of 220ft fall is fatal in around 98% of the cases. However, that also means that 2% of the people falling or jumping off this bridge actually survive the fall and from that point on, it all depends on how soon they are found and transported to the hospital. One of them was Kevin Hines, a 19-year-old suffering from paranoia who jumped off the bridge in 2000, but who was lucky enough that his body rotated so he hit the water in a sitting position which caused serious injuries but didn’t kill him. Once he recovered, he became a mental health advocate and wrote a book about his experience. He also became a proponent for the net or a suicide barrier on the bridge to help prevent such incidents.

12. The Day The Bridge Flattened

Picture hundreds of thousands of people crossing a bridge at the same time until the bridge’s towers hit their breaking point causing the bridge to collapse, dropping all those people to their death. According to the urban legend, something like that almost happened on May 24, 1987. It was the Golden Gate Bridge’s golden anniversary and 300,000 people were stuck on the bridge shoulder to shoulder when the officials quickly closed the bridge to prevent another 500,000 people from crossing. However, the unpredicted weight of such a huge number of people on the bridge at the same time caused the middle of the bridge to sag 7 feet. Suspension bridges, such as this one, are built to bend more than other bridges, but when all those people started crossing, the steel cables stretched, pulled the towers inward, and pushed the roadway down.

11. The Youngest Jumper

Over 1600 people have committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge with the bridge’s youngest victim being only 5 years old. Marilyn DeMont was a little blonde girl who stood at the bridge’s railing, looked at her father one last time, and jumped to her death in 1945. The father was the one who commanded her to do so and he followed her just a couple of moments later. He was a 37-year-old mechanic with no signs of mental disorders or depression that would make him do something so despicable to his family. Two witnesses watched this terrible tragedy happen, but there was nothing they could have done to stop it from happening. However, they confirmed that the girl wasn’t pushed into the waters; she jumped voluntarily.

10. Wreck It!

It is pretty unbelievable how many movies and TV shows filmed the complete destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge, all of them as scary as it gets. Sure, it is all just a bunch of special effects, but that doesn’t make the whole thing any less uncomfortable to watch, especially if you live in San Francisco and drive over the bridge every single day. So which film do you think wrecked the Golden Gate Bridge the best? We have seen some pretty impressive and creepy effects in the movies Godzilla, I, Robot, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, San Andreas, and many more. It seems that every time a film takes place in San Francisco, you will get to see the bridge at some point (either whole or completely wrecked, depending on the genre).

9. Daredevils’ Paradise

If you enjoy feeling adrenaline rush through your body, you might want to take a walk on the very top of the Golden Gate Bridge. It is definitely not for everyone and if you are afraid of heights, this would probably be shock therapy for your system. However, if you have tried all the usual daredevil activities, such as swimming with the sharks, cage diving, skydiving, or bungee jumping, you might be in for a real treat with this walk across the famous bridge. However, this is not something tourists can normally do, you can’t just climb on top of the bridge whenever you please. You actually need special permission to do so, and it has to be arranged in advance with all necessary security measures.

8. Graveyard Of Sunken Ships

The waters under San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge hide some pretty creepy secrets, such as a scary graveyard of shipwrecks with around 300 sunken ships total. However, only a small fraction of them have been seen and examined by the scientists such as marine archeologists. The team of researchers used a remotely operated vehicle to access some spots with intriguing sonar signals where they found multiple shipwrecks, including the SS Selja steam freighter that sank in 1910 after it collided with the Beaver off Point Reyes. SS Selja was used to transport the goods between the Pacific Northwest and Japan and China. The Selja’s owner tried suing the owners of the Beaver, but the maritime court came to the conclusion that the collision was, in fact, Selja’s fault because it had been going too fast in a thick fog.

7. The Construction Of The Tallest Bridge

At the time the Golden Gate Bridge was constructed back in the 1930s, it was the world’s tallest and longest bridge. Building such an impressive structure wasn’t easy at all. In fact, when you see those guys in the picture being so high up in the air, it seems almost too scary to do. However, they did it and they did it successfully, breaking all of the world’s records in terms of the suspension bridge’s size. The construction began in 1933 and the bridge was officially opened on May 27, 1937, when the opening celebration started and lasted for the whole week. One day before it was opened for vehicles, approximately 200,000 people crossed the bridge on foot or on roller skates. Today, the Golden Gate Bridge no longer holds the record for the world’s longest and tallest bridge, but it is still the tallest one in the US.

6. Something’s Missing

Here is one of the photos taken back in the 1930s before the Golden Gate Bridge was finished and opened for traffic. It looks pretty scary with such a big part missing, doesn’t it? It is hard to believe one of the world’s most recognizable bridges used to look like this a while back. Also, if you look at this picture without knowing what you’re looking at, it gets kind of uncomfortable to look at it, mostly because it seems like somebody had just taken down a big piece of the bridge. Luckily, it wasn’t the destruction – it was the construction that had taken place here almost a whole century ago and it resulted in one of the most famous symbols of San Francisco connecting the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.

5. The Haunted Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge gets visited by millions of tourists every year, unfortunately, some of them travel all that way only commit suicide by jumping off the bridge. When there is so much death surrounding a place, it is quite usual for some ghost stories to start spreading among the people and the Golden Gate Bridge is no exception to that. Numerous pedestrians have reported hearing cries and whimpers on the bridge when there was no one around, some even claim to have witnessed people jumping off and vanishing the moment they entered freefall. Is it possible the ghosts of some of the jumpers are still there, spending eternity on the bridge that was the place of their passing? It is hard to be sure, but those reports are definitely disturbing.

4. The Ghost Ship

The story of the Golden Gate Bridge’s ghost ship is one of San Francisco most popular ghost tales. Back in 1853, the SS Tennessee got caught in a deadly current and collided with the nearby rocks. The spot where the ship went down was named “Tennessee Cove” after the incident. Years have passed and the Golden Gate Bridge was built above the waters where the ship went down and that is when some peculiar things started to happen. Numerous witnesses started reporting seeing this long-lost ship as they stood on the bridge while hearing screams and cries in the mist. Most of those cases occurred on dark, foggy nights when the ship just appeared out of nowhere and then vanished. One of the most famous encounters happened in 1942 when the crew of another ship reported passing by an unmanned ship with the SS Tennessee name written on the side.

3. The Man Who Invented Victoria’s Secret

Contrary to popular belief, the Victoria’s Secret retail store wasn’t founded by a woman named Victoria who really enjoyed wearing great looking and high-quality lingerie. It was quite the opposite. One of the world’s most famous lingerie brands was founded by a man by the name Ray Raymond in 1977 when he opened his first Victoria’s Secret store after he felt embarrassed trying to purchase lingerie for his wife. Five years later, he sold the company to Leslie Wexner and by the early ‘90s, it became the largest American lingerie retailer. What happened to Ray Raymond after that is quite a tragic story. On August 26, 1993, he committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. He was last seen walking toward the bridge before his body washed up on the shore.

2. The Unfortunate Passing Of Steven And Kellie Page

On January 28, 1993, something clicked inside the mind of Steven Page and he committed one of the most horrible crimes imaginable. First, he shot his wife Nancy to death with a 12 gauge shotgun, then he left a message to his mother-in-law to pick up his son at school, and he took his 3-year-old daughter Kellie and drove to the Golden Gate Bridge. The patrol officers noticed his strange behavior as he walked along the bridge with his daughter in his arms so they approached him to check on things. At that moment, Page threw his daughter over the railing before they could stop him, and then he climbed over and committed suicide. The bodies of both father and daughter were recovered the next day from the water and Kellie became the youngest person to die after falling from the Golden Gate Bridge.

1. The Suicide Bridge

While the Golden Gate Bridge is one of San Francisco’s most recognizable symbols, it is well known to be something more than that and not in a good way. It is also known as the “suicide bridge” and over 1600 bodies of people who decided to end their life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge have been recovered from the waters under it since its opening in 1937. Since the bridge is so tall, the majority of jumpers get killed from the impact of the fall the moment they hit the water and it seems that no number of security measures can prevent people from taking their own life there. There are telephone hotlines and emergency personnel patrols in place, a net below the bridge’s deck, and assigned bridge workers, but, unfortunately, the jumpers still find their way down to their death.