nivek
As Above So Below
The Mysterious Dark Watchers of California
Meandering along the coast of California from Monterey County all the way up into central San Luis Obispo County is the Santa Lucia Mountain Range, a rugged expanse of peaks and wilderness that is imposing enough to have posed a hurdle to early Spanish explorers making their way to the California coast. It is a place of undeniable natural beauty and history, and it has also long been said to be the haunt of inscrutable shadow beings that seem to stand and observe our world from afar.
What have come to be known as the “Dark Watchers” are typically said to be very tall humanoid entities ranging in height from 7 feet tall all the way up to around 15 feet tall, dressed all in black and wearing flowing cloaks and wide brimmed hats, with many sightings also mentioning some sort of staves or sticks in the beings’ hands.
Facial features are not typically seen, and they are almost always silent, enigmatic figures usually seen at a distance up on ridges silhouetted against the darkening twilight sky, always at around dusk or dawn, quietly looking over and surveying their domain with unknowable purpose and often vanishing in the blink of an eye, especially if one is to try and draw closer.
The Santa Lucia Mountains
Such bizarre entities have been reported for centuries, with the accounts supposedly traced back to at least the Native Chumash tribe of the central coast of California and the Channel Islands, who apparently had a rich tradition of lore on these enigmatic beings and called them “The Old Ones.”
Early Spanish explorers and Mexican ranchers also knew of them, referring to them as Los Vigilantes Oscuros, and they were often seen by early explorers and soldiers in the region, who described the unsettling experience of being observed by them from cliffs high above. These beings have been sighted ever since, going on to be mentioned in countless literary references and sightings reports.
One very well-known literary mention of the mysterious beings was written of in John Steinbeck’s 1938 book The Long Valley, in which the creatures were written of in a short story called Flight, particularly in one passage that reads:
These literary accounts draw from the same local traditions, which have gone back centuries and continue on into this day. In the mid 1960s there was an alleged sighting of the Dark Watchers made by a high school teacher, who was out hiking in the range at the Monterrey peninsula. As he walked along he claimed that he had seen a tall dark figure looming up upon a ridge, which seemed to be in the process of merely standing and contemplating the scenery.
The hiker called out to the mysterious figure and at that instance the entity simply dissolved from sight as if it had never been there at all. There have been numerous supposed sightings of these strange entities since, right up into very recent years. One strange occurrence was told of by a witness from Moreno Valley, California, who in 2011 said:
Also in 2013 was an account from a witness known only as “Brian,” from Hollister, California, who claimed to have seen the entities as they were driving home. He would say of the incident:
There are numerous other accounts of seeing these inexplicable shadow beings out in the wilderness silently surveying the land, to the point that, rather interestingly, John Steinbeck’s own son Thomas Steinbeck wrote an entire book on the subject after having his own encounter.
He would go on to research the lore of the Dark Watchers and pen the book In Search of the Dark Watchers along with co-author Benjamin Brode, which goes into quite a lot of depth into the phenomenon and its cultural origins. Some have pointed to this being a trick of light or illusion, but that somehow seems to be an inadequate explanation for the entirety of this phenomenon.
It seems that this is a phenomenon for which there are no clear answers, and those enigmatic tall beings dressed in dark upon the cliffs and ridges of these mountains at twilight remain a baffling mystery. Are these just illusions or hallucinations? If so, why should they be confined to this one mountain range?
There is also the idea that this may be due to the presence of infrasound signals in the area, which can be caused by natural processes such as the wind along the rocks and can have strange effects on the human psyche, but again why should the Dark Watchers legend take root here of all places if that is the case, and why would the reports be so consistent in the appearance and behavior of the entities?
Could this be something else? Are these some sort of supernatural or even inter-dimensional entities here on some unknown mission?
It is impossible to tell, and the Dark Watchers of California remain a compelling mystery that really captures the imagination.
.
Meandering along the coast of California from Monterey County all the way up into central San Luis Obispo County is the Santa Lucia Mountain Range, a rugged expanse of peaks and wilderness that is imposing enough to have posed a hurdle to early Spanish explorers making their way to the California coast. It is a place of undeniable natural beauty and history, and it has also long been said to be the haunt of inscrutable shadow beings that seem to stand and observe our world from afar.
What have come to be known as the “Dark Watchers” are typically said to be very tall humanoid entities ranging in height from 7 feet tall all the way up to around 15 feet tall, dressed all in black and wearing flowing cloaks and wide brimmed hats, with many sightings also mentioning some sort of staves or sticks in the beings’ hands.
Facial features are not typically seen, and they are almost always silent, enigmatic figures usually seen at a distance up on ridges silhouetted against the darkening twilight sky, always at around dusk or dawn, quietly looking over and surveying their domain with unknowable purpose and often vanishing in the blink of an eye, especially if one is to try and draw closer.
The Santa Lucia Mountains
Such bizarre entities have been reported for centuries, with the accounts supposedly traced back to at least the Native Chumash tribe of the central coast of California and the Channel Islands, who apparently had a rich tradition of lore on these enigmatic beings and called them “The Old Ones.”
Early Spanish explorers and Mexican ranchers also knew of them, referring to them as Los Vigilantes Oscuros, and they were often seen by early explorers and soldiers in the region, who described the unsettling experience of being observed by them from cliffs high above. These beings have been sighted ever since, going on to be mentioned in countless literary references and sightings reports.
One very well-known literary mention of the mysterious beings was written of in John Steinbeck’s 1938 book The Long Valley, in which the creatures were written of in a short story called Flight, particularly in one passage that reads:
This is undeniably based on the pervasive lore of these entities, and other writers at around the same time made mention of the Dark Watchers, including notably poet Robinson Jeffers, in his poem Such Counsels You Gave to Me & Other Poems, in which he calls them “forms that look human… but certainly are not human,” and says of them:
These literary accounts draw from the same local traditions, which have gone back centuries and continue on into this day. In the mid 1960s there was an alleged sighting of the Dark Watchers made by a high school teacher, who was out hiking in the range at the Monterrey peninsula. As he walked along he claimed that he had seen a tall dark figure looming up upon a ridge, which seemed to be in the process of merely standing and contemplating the scenery.
The hiker called out to the mysterious figure and at that instance the entity simply dissolved from sight as if it had never been there at all. There have been numerous supposed sightings of these strange entities since, right up into very recent years. One strange occurrence was told of by a witness from Moreno Valley, California, who in 2011 said:
In 2013 there was a report made by a Elizabeth Benitez of San Mateo, California, who claimed to have seen the specters in broad daylight near the San Luis Obispo reservoir. She would say of this encounter:
Also in 2013 was an account from a witness known only as “Brian,” from Hollister, California, who claimed to have seen the entities as they were driving home. He would say of the incident:
In 2015 there was a report from a long distance runner calling himself Joey, in Sylmar California. The witness said that he had been out training for a race in the mountains when he saw something peculiar, saying of his experience:
There have been many other reports as well. As recently as 2018 there was a report from a witness from Ojai , California, who was out hiking in the mountains when he came across something very bizarre indeed. He would say:
There are numerous other accounts of seeing these inexplicable shadow beings out in the wilderness silently surveying the land, to the point that, rather interestingly, John Steinbeck’s own son Thomas Steinbeck wrote an entire book on the subject after having his own encounter.
He would go on to research the lore of the Dark Watchers and pen the book In Search of the Dark Watchers along with co-author Benjamin Brode, which goes into quite a lot of depth into the phenomenon and its cultural origins. Some have pointed to this being a trick of light or illusion, but that somehow seems to be an inadequate explanation for the entirety of this phenomenon.
It seems that this is a phenomenon for which there are no clear answers, and those enigmatic tall beings dressed in dark upon the cliffs and ridges of these mountains at twilight remain a baffling mystery. Are these just illusions or hallucinations? If so, why should they be confined to this one mountain range?
There is also the idea that this may be due to the presence of infrasound signals in the area, which can be caused by natural processes such as the wind along the rocks and can have strange effects on the human psyche, but again why should the Dark Watchers legend take root here of all places if that is the case, and why would the reports be so consistent in the appearance and behavior of the entities?
Could this be something else? Are these some sort of supernatural or even inter-dimensional entities here on some unknown mission?
It is impossible to tell, and the Dark Watchers of California remain a compelling mystery that really captures the imagination.
.
