While reading through “MONSTER! The A-Z Of Zooform Phenomena” by Neil Arnold (HIGHLY recommended, btw!) I found the following entry:
“WATCHERS- spectral figures in hats and cloaks said to haunt the Santa Lucia Mountains. Every time these weird, eerie beings are seen, it is said they always look to the sky.”
I’ve never heard of these beings before, so I tried to find out what I could learn about them. A web search for “watchers” turned up a loong trail of dead ends. I got results pertaining to “The Watchers”, having to do with the Nephilim (the race of superbeings and “giants” mentioned in the Book of Genesis and expounded on further in the Book of Enoch, when the “sons of God” mated with human females). Interesting, yes, but not what I was looking for.
Since the Santa Lucia Mountains are in California, a search for “watchers California” revealed a number of results about a California family known as “The Watchers”. Apparently, there is a house in California and for whatever reason, there is ALWAYS a male member of the family standing at the front window with a camcorder videotaping the front of the house and the street. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Why? Nobody knows. The housedwellers are reclusive and eccentric, the males (I believe there are two or three) are usually wearing overalls, and there is an elderly female in a wheelchair. There are quite a few Youtube vids depicting locals driving by the house and videoing themselves being videod. It’s become sort of a local pastime to drive past the “Watcher House” just to see them. Again, it’s interesting, alright. But again, those aren’t the Watchers I’m looking for.
But finally after seeing a reference to “DARK Watchers”, I found a few hits using that search term.
Here’s some pertanent information (at last!) from the Weird California site:
From about Avila Beach, through San Luis Obispo, and all the way up to Monterey, runs the Santa Lucia Mountains. Lurking within these mountains are the strange and mystifying Dark Watchers. The Dark Watchers, as they have come to be known, are apparently giant human like phantoms that are only seen at twilight, standing silhouetted against the night sky along the ridges and peaks of the mountain range. When spotted, the beings are usually seen staring off into the open air of the mountains seemingly at nothing in particular before vanishing into thin air occasionally right before the spectators eyes.
Who or what the Watchers are, no one knows. Where they came from or why they are there, again lost in speculation. And what they are looking for or watching is beyond anyone’s current comprehension.
The Chumash Indians first spoke of them in legends and their cave painters drew them in their colorful wall drawings. Later legendary author John Steinbeck described them in his short story, “Flight”:
“Pepe looked up to the top of the next dry withered ridge. He saw a dark form against the sky, a man’s figure standing on top of a rock, and he glanced away quickly not to appear curious. When a moment later he looked up again, the figure was gone.”
The poet Robinson Jeffers mentioned them in his poem “Such Counsels You Gave to Me” as “forms that look human . . but certainly are not human”. If Jeffers or Steinbeck ever actually saw one of the Watchers is unknown, but the local legend has been around since long before they wrote about it.
In the mid sixties, a Monterery Peninsula local who was the past principal of a local high school saw them while hiking in the mountains. He had enough time to study the dark figure, to see its clothing and notice how the figure was strangely studying the mountains. When the principal called out to his fellow hikers, the figure disappeared.
Other, more recent sightings have included a dark hat and cape in the description of the mountain residing phantoms.
I still haven’t been able to find anything on the original legend, just a few references to John Steinbeck’s and Jeffers’s mentions of them in their works. Supposedly, John Steinbeck’s mother actually saw one of them, and Robert Steinbeck (John’s son) also wrote a short story (allegedly based on a local tale) in which a DW plays a major role.
