The Dark Watchers are a strange group of dark, human-like beings who stand atop the slopes, ridges, and peaks of California’s Santa Lucia Mountains and Arizona’s Mount Mingus and Mount Graham.
Who are Dark Watchers?
Dark watchers are said to keep an eye on those who travel into the mountains but are not violent. They are most frequently observed at twilight, peering upwards toward the sky while standing atop the hills. They appear to be spirits, but their origins are unknown.
For more than 300 years, visitors to California have seen them positioned ominously on mountaintops.
The Santa Lucia Mountains run from Monterey County up through central San Luis Obispo County along the California coast. They posed a challenge to the Spanish explorers making their way to the ocean in the state’s early days.
In the 1700s, as these explorers made their way up the mountains, they reported seeing the dark figures and dubbed them Los Vigilantes Oscuros – meaning the dark watchers. Later, American settlers passed over the hills described feeling watched from above.
What do They Look Like?
The Dark Watchers are pictured as tall, featureless dark shadows, generally wearing brimmed hats or carrying walking sticks. They are most frequently reported to be observed around twilight and morning.
They are claimed to stand stationary on the horizon of the Santa Lucia Mountain Range, watching travelers. According to mythology, no one has ever seen one up close; if approached, they vanish.
Folk fair and Stories About Dark Watchers
Tales of the Dark Watchers are sometimes associated with the Chumash people of California. However, it appears that these Indigenous Americans do not have anything remotely resembling these specters in their folklore.
Legend says that while the Dark Watchers make it their job to study those in the mountains below severely, it is best to look away since any who ventured to approach these figures vanished into obscurity.
Unfortunately, stories concerning the Dark Watchers are as hazy as the shapes themselves, but 20th-century novelists such as John Steinbeck created his mythos based on the phenomenon.
And while they may be dark in appearance, appearing as shadows if they appear at all, they are not dark in spirit, according to people who claim to have encountered them. Instead, they are peaceful entities who hide in the shadows of forest glens or between rock outcroppings, only appearing in the open when people pass through their domain.
Robinson Jeffers famously described the figures in a poem in 1937 and John Steinbeck’s short story Flight the following year. The protagonist in Steinbeck’s story flees to the mountains after killing a man in a struggle.
His mother advises him before he departs, “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.”
He glimpsed a black figure on top of the mountains for a minute, but he glanced aside, for it was one of the dark watchers.
Some say the Dark Watchers are little people, while others say they are tall and thin; if they appear at all, it’s usually at dawn or dusk, when the sun is low. Indigenous people who lived there, as well as Spaniards and Mexican ranchers, called them “Los Vigilantes Oscuros” and told stories about the watchers.
“The old timers of Big Sur swear by it,” says Santa Barbara artist Benjamin Brode, who created a series of paintings for the 2013 book In Search of the Dark Watchers with his buddy, author Thomas Steinbeck, who passed away in 2016.
Thomas, John Steinbeck’s son, wrote about how the famous author’s mother, Olive Hamilton, who lived in King City, Salinas, and Pacific Grove during her life, not only saw but interacted with the Dark Watchers. His grandmother was fiercely honest, and if “she couldn’t see it, read it, hear it, touch it, or taste it… it didn’t exist,” Thomas wrote.
Nonetheless, Hamilton insisted that as a young teacher riding through the remote woods of Big Sur to reach her students, she saw the watchers on several occasions and even traded fruit, nuts, and flowers with them, leaving the gifts in a shaded nook near Mule Deer Canyon on her travels south. When she returned, the watchers had reciprocated her kindness.
Why do Dark Watchers Observe People?
Several theories have been discussed throughout the years to explain the Watchers, such as the Watchers being a group of migratory people that monitor but avoid travelers in the mountain range.
Some tales are more supernatural, such as those implying that the Watchers are present to assist individuals who wander off their path in the mountains; also, the Dark Watchers have been claimed to provide exceptional hearing and vision to aid travelers in the region.
One of the odd beliefs surrounding the Watchers is that they are only visible to travelers carrying simple items such as walking sticks and hats; if you carry high-tech equipment on your journey over the range, legends say you are less likely to see any Watchers.
Are Dark Watchers Dangerous?
So far, they have been entirely harmless, and no attacks on individuals have been reported.
Conclusion
While there is no physical evidence that these figures are anything more than visual abnormalities, many people have taken intriguing photographs of them. Some scientists have attempted to deduce what people believe they have seen from these photographs.
Though modern science has revealed that the Dark Watchers are simply hallucinations, the phenomenon is no less frightening.