Dark watchers
For six years I lived in Monterey, California, near Del Rey Oaks. One day I was hanging out with my childhood friends, Kevin Ford, Brian Phelps, John Rochelli and John Mead. We were strolling along the beach looking for unusual sea shells. While John Rochelli and John Mead were fighting with long strands of seaweed, I noticed an unusual person on top of a hill looking out to sea. I told everyone to stop and take a look. This guy was at least 6ft 6in (2m) tall. He wore a black fedora and black trench coat and had a huge wooden walking cane. As we got closer, Kevin said he noticed that he had no facial features – no eyes, no nose, no mouth. I didn’t see what he was talking about; all I could see was the man’s silhouette. Kevin screamed out and we stopped just for a moment to look at him. When Kevin and I looked back up the hill, the strange man was gone. The other two said they hadn’t seen him and that it was just our imagination.
At the time, and for many years afterwards, I merely thought we had seen a ghost, but a few years ago, I read about the Dark Watchers (aka Los Vigilantes Oscuros), seen observing travellers along the Santa Lucia Mountains. We saw our figure at twilight around 7pm, and Dark Watchers are known to be seen at twilight or dawn. They are said to stand motionless, like the figure we saw. According to newspaper reports from the mid-1960s, a Monterey Peninsula local and former high school principal on a hiking trip in the Santa Lucias spotted a dark figure standing on a rock and surveying the area. When he called out to the other hikers, the figure vanished.
When I took basic training at Fort Ord, I met Private Thomas Laywater. He was from Carmel and during his high school days, he would make trips to Carmel Valley to see his girlfriend. On one particular trip on a hot day, he saw the silhouette of a man standing motionless on a rock ledge looking out over Carmel Valley. He made a U-turn to investigate; he couldn’t understand how this guy was standing on a rock ledge fully clothed on such a hot day. When he got closer, the figure had disappeared, so he assumed it had been a ghost. William Carlisle
California