Alameda Was Made with Real Bones, Too

Poltergeist Was Fiction.
Alameda Was Real.

In one of the most famous scenes from the 1982 movie Poltergeist, a suburban home begins to collapse into chaos. A mother, played by JoBeth Williams, slips into a half-finished swimming pool as a storm rages above her. The water churns with mud, lightning flashes, and dozens of corpses rise to the surface. Coffins burst through the ground. Skeletons float around her, brushing against her arms as she screams for help.

It looks like pure Hollywood horror. But what most people don’t know is that those weren’t fake skeletons. They were real human remains.

When Poltergeist was filmed, the production used actual human skeletons for the pool scene because they were cheaper and more realistic than plastic props at the time. The special effects team bought them from a company that supplied anatomical specimens to universities.

In the early 1980s, high-quality plastic skeletons weren’t common, and real ones cost less. It was a practical but deeply questionable choice. When the story came out, it added to the film’s reputation for being cursed. Crew members, including the special effects artist Craig Reardon, later confirmed in interviews and court depositions that the skeletons were genuine.

That detail has become Hollywood legend, a bit of trivia traded at Halloween parties.

---

But when I say “Alameda was made with real skeletons, too,” it isn’t a punchline… It’s history.

The horror was never hidden. It was printed in black and white. Alameda’s own newspapers documented the use of Native graves as paving material and no one stopped it.

Shellmounds were cemeteries built by Ohlone people. They were not ancient ruins of some vanished people; they were active burial grounds and ceremonial places within living memory when the United States was declaring independence.

In 1776, Ohlone communities were still here, speaking their language, tending their lands, and burying their dead. They were later forced into missions and labor camps designed to destroy their way of life, and Ohlone Peoples’ ties to their language, beliefs, and cultural practices.

By the time Americans arrived in California, settlers pretended the people were gone.

Newspapers and government officials asked “Where are all the Indians?” while state militias and vigilantes carried out massacres. California’s first governor, Peter Burnett, openly declared that a war of extermination would be waged until the Native race was gone.

Within that system of genocide, settlers desecrated Ohlone cemeteries.

They dug into cemeteries and smashed human bones–not shells, but skulls, ribs, and limbs–into fragments. Those remains were shoveled into carts and mixed with lime to make concrete for sidewalks, roads, and foundations.

Bone dust and ash were spread across fields and gardens, used as fill to raise ground and fertilize crops.

The people who did this didn’t move the bodies with care or ceremony. They desecrated graves and used human remains as raw material for construction. They built the city of Alameda out of Ohlone cemeteries.

Some of the remains were sold to museums and universities, including UC Berkeley, where they were tagged and stored as “specimens.” [There are still thousands of stolen, unclaimed ancestors languishing in UC Berkeley’s crypt.]

Others were discarded, dumped, or paved over. This was not accidental archaeology. It was desecration committed in the shadow of a government that had already declared open war on Native people. By any moral or legal measure, it was a violation of human rights and human dignity.

Alameda once had several shellmounds. But only one of them was known until the Alameda Native History Project did the research and work that institutions like the Alameda Museum were too afraid or disinterested to do, and discovered there were at least 4 shellmounds in Alameda.

The bodies of Ohlone people were razed and pulverized to build the City of Alameda.

Developers leveled shellmounds (Ohlone cemeteries) to grade the city. Local newspapers reported on these uses as they were happening. Ohlone human remains and funerary items were used in landfill across the island, including Bay Farm Road, which was literally paved with bones.

These burial grounds are still being disturbed. Human remains are still unearthed during construction, and the City of Alameda knows exactly where these cemeteries are.

The city knows what was done to the bodies of Ohlone people and still refuses to acknowledge it.

There are no protections, no memorials, and no apologies.

The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area, direct descendants of the Ohlone people whose cemeteries were destroyed, continue to fight for recognition, repatriation, and truth about what lies beneath the city.

So when I say “Alameda was made with real skeletons,” it’s not metaphor or exaggeration. The city’s foundations were literally built with the bodies of Ohlone ancestors, disturbed, ground up, and reused without consent. That is not heritage. It is desecration, theft, and ongoing violence. It is a crime against memory, and against humanity.

This city cannot call itself progressive while it buries the truth. Alameda must acknowledge the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area, apologize for the desecration of Ohlone cemeteries, and take immediate steps to protect the remaining burial grounds.

Every sidewalk, every home foundation, every patch of landfill poured on top of those graves is a reminder that justice has not yet been done.

It is time for residents, allies, and institutions to advocate for justice for the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area and demand accountability from the city that built itself on their ancestors’ bones.

Until there is public acknowledgment, apology, and action, Alameda remains complicit in the California Genocide.