Beyond the Beyond: Local Lore – Who Are the Dark Watchers?

Beyond the Beyond: Local Lore – Who Are the Dark Watchers?

I’ve read probably two hundred books on the paranormal, maybe more. I’ve devoured thousands of hours of podcasts on everything from alien greys to the Michigan Dogman to shadow people and time slips. I’ve written about the subject of the unknown at length, and I’ll tell you one thing I do know: that I don’t know what the hell a Dark Watcher is.

It recently came on my radar when I had a request from a person online to write about it. Or, I guess, to write about them. The Dark Watchers are California folklore. It stretches back to the Native American tribes settled around the Santa Lucia mountains.

During the 1800s, California and the tribes there underwent significant changes due to the arrival of European settlers. The results were displacement and cultural assimilation. Despite this, many of the tribes around Big Sur including the Chumash, Esselen, and Ohlone helped to preserve their culture by telling stories passed down by multiple generations.

Some of these stories were about tall, shadowy figures who would look over travelers on their way through the mountains and wilderness. They usually appeared at dusk or at dawn, and always in silhouette with no visible features to speak of. Sometimes, they would be wearing dark brimmed hats. Remind you of anyone?

The Spanish called them Los Vigilantes Oscuros, which literally translates to Dark Watchers. They described them as shadowy, featureless humans who stalked them as the sun began to fall. Some were ten feet tall or more, with long coats or capes waving slowly in the wind behind them.

The tale was immortalized in the 1930s by poet Robinson Jeffers, who lived and wrote on the central coast. In his 1937 anthology “Such Counsels You Gave Me and Other Poems,” Jeffers wrote “He thought it might be one of the watchers, who are often seen in this length of coast range, forms that look human to human eyes, but certainly are not human. They come from behind ridges to watch… He was not surprised when the figure turning toward him in the quiet twilight showed his own face. Then it melted and merged into the shadows beyond it.”

John Steinbeck, a Salinas native, wrote a short story called “Flight,” where a boy commits murder and is forced to flee into the Santa Lucias. His mother, superstitious, urges him “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.”

Steinbeck’s own mother, when traveling to Big Sur, would often leave an offering of fruit or nuts for these mysterious beings, and on her way back home would leave flowers planted in their place.

These figures seem to represent an archetype of sorts. They are the ones that exist at the very edges of our perception. They remind me of the shadow people that those with sleep paralysis sometimes view as they’re locked in place and the barrier between dream and reality seems to dissolve. Maybe that’s where the myth comes from: travelers, weary from lack of sleep, looking up at the mountains above them and seeing dark, human-shaped things looking down at them from far above.

Or are these projections from our own psyche? Representations of being watched or judged, magnified by an already heightened sense of awareness while exploring unknown territory filled with snakes, bears, and maybe even tribes of people who don’t exactly take kind to strangers in their land.

Maybe they’re ghosts, black-eyed children, men in black, or something else entirely. Something that exists at the point where our senses are overwhelmed. The intersection of the known and the unknown. A projection of our shadow self onto the outside world.

It could be that there are spirits in our world. There are things we can see if our awareness is dialed in a very certain way. Whether that’s through looking at our environment with intensified sensitivity, exhaustion, psychedelics, prayer and meditation, or something else, there may be times that we can see through the veil and witness what some might call “the real world.” And how would our somewhat, sometimes primitive brains make sense of that world? Well, just ask the thousands of people who have seen UFOs, ghosts, strange creatures through the tree line, and yes… maybe even all-black beings watching them from afar.

Have you seen a dark watcher? Message @beyondthebeyond1 on Instagram.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Eastern Sierra Now. Readers are encouraged to conduct further research and consult with relevant experts or professionals before making any decisions or taking any actions based on the information provided in this article.

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TM Rush