10ft tall ‘Dark Watchers with strolling sticks’ vanish should you attempt to strategy them
The eerie tales of the 10ft tall Dark Watchers have been circulating since the 1700s, with these shadowy figures said to haunt the misty Santa Lucia Mountains.
These entities are often described as giant-sized, featureless dark silhouettes, usually seen sporting brimmed hats or walking sticks. They are most frequently spotted during the twilight hours and at dawn, silently observing travellers from the horizon along the Santa Lucia Mountain Range in California. However, they seem to be somewhat elusive, as legend has it that they vanish if anyone attempts to approach them.
The stories of these shadowy figures originated from the local native tribes, who reportedly spoke of these apparitions in their oral traditions.
When Spanish settlers arrived, they too reported sightings of these spectral figures, referring to them as Los Vigilantes Oscuros (The Dark Watchers).
(Image: Getty Images)
The sensation of being watched from the hills was also reported by Anglo American settlers when they began settling in the region.
Since then, sightings have continued, and in 1937, the creatures made their literary debut in Robinson Jeffers, poet of life along the Central Coast, which mentioned the “watchers” in the titular poem in his collection Such Counsels You Gave To Me and Other Poems.
The following year, John Steinbeck, who grew up in Salinas, spoke of them in his short story Flight. In the tale, a teenage Mexican American boy is compelled to escape into the Santa Lucias after committing a murder. As he departs, his mother tells him to pray, look after his horse and “when thou comest to the high mountains, if thou seest any of the dark watching men, go not near to them nor try to speak to them”.
In the mid-1960s, according to old newspaper clippings, a former high school headmaster from the Monterery Peninsula encountered a mysterious figure while hiking in the Santa Lucias. The figure, perched on a rock surveying the surroundings, disappeared when the principal alerted his fellow hikers.
(Image: Getty Images)
However, there are several theories that might quell the excitement of those hunting for mythical creatures.
One theory suggests that what some believe to be shadowy figures could simply be ordinary shadows from trees, distorted by fog or mist and misinterpreted by our brains as human-like forms.
This trick of the mind is known as pareidolia, where our brain’s tendency to find patterns helps us make sense of the world around us. It’s the same principle at work in Rorschach inkblot tests and when people claim to see faces in the moon’s surface.
Another hypothesis on the table is known as the Brocken spectre, sometimes referred to as a “mountain spectre”, which may happen under specific atmospheric circumstances when the sun hits just the right angle. This can result in a person’s shadow being projected onto surrounding cloud banks, causing the eerie appearance of an immense, shadowy human-like shape.
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