Nocturnal

AUTHOR’S NOTE

While I always strive for as much accuracy as possible in these books, I was forced to modify some aspects of the policies and procedures of the San Francisco Police Department and the Medical Examiner’s Office in order to create a more streamlined tale. Remember, folks: this is a story about a race of monsters lurking beneath the streets of San Francisco — it’s quite possible I made up a detail or two.

The buried ships of San Francisco, however, are real. The discovery of gold in 1848 generated a migration to the Bay Area, resulting in over six hundred ships being abandoned in the bay. As the city expanded, many of those abandoned ships were buried. Special thanks to Ron Fillion for his map of the buried ships and the historical information available at http://​www.sfgenealogy.com/​sf/​history/​hgshp1.htm.

“Certainly, there is not any dust of empire sepulchered below, nor is there anything resembling dust in the ooze beneath those bay-born thoroughfares. But we do know, or every San Franciscan ought to know, that that ooze is the winding sheet of many a gallant craft that once proudly plowed the bounding billows of the open sea, and which formed one of the great fleet of vessels that brought the fortune-hunters to the Golden Gate — that made up the Argonauts’ Armada of golden dreams that was soon to be scattered and strewn even as was that maritime pageant once assembled under the management of Philip of Spain.”

— WALTER J. THOMPSON, “The Armada of Golden Dreams”