SAN JOSE, Calif. — In some parts of the Bay Area, ghosts still exist, if you can conjure them.
All you need are waypoints to a vanished time — decaying old buildings, a tombstone or two, a little history and a few old photos — and your imagination. You’ll find those spirits from the past in surprising locations — amid rolling hills in a lovely East Bay valley, for example, or on a muddy island at the south end of the bay.
Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve lies on the southwest edge of Antioch. Today this parkland is an expanse of grassy green splendor, but the area once teemed with people, residents of five bustling towns that sprang up after coal was discovered here in 1859.
