An Evil Gnome in Tulare County

A family moved in to a farm house near the Tule River in the area around Porterville, in rural Tulare County, California.

After moving in, the mother, Tammy, began to feel on edge, as if she was always being watched. And one location, in particular, made her uneasy: the barn. Even the family's animals (pets as well as fowl such as geese and chickens) avoided the barn, and everyone got the creeps when near it. They could never put a finger on what bothered them, but knew that something was not right.

One night, when returning home from the grocery store with one of her children, Tammy heard a sinister chuckling and saw movement out of the corner of her eyes. Turning, she saw a small (2-3 feet tall), gnome-like creature. It as wearing a red hat, a gold-colored shirt, and black pants, and when it "smiled" at her, it revealed to rows of brown, decayed, and sharp teeth.

Tammy ushered her child into the house, and they huddled inside as the creature waited outside. They said that they could see it's red hat through the kitchen window, which would have required it to climb the wall, grow, or hover, as that window is a good ten feet off of the ground. The creature eventually left. Although Tammy and her family would occasionally hear the creature chuckling, they never saw it again, and eventually moved off of the property.

Eventually, a woman named Charlie and her family moved into the house, and it all began again. They noticed that animals, both domestic and wild, avoided a building that they called "the shack" (presumably the barn that made Tammy uneasy). On at least one occasion, Charlie felt so unnerved while walking near the shack that she picked up her two young children and broke into a sprint to get away from it.

And then, one day, things picked up and became much more frightening.

Charlie heard what sounded like a car fighting with something inside the shack. When her husband went to investigate, he found a cat alright, entirely skinned on one side and with a huge bite taken out of its neck. He stepped out to clear his head, and when he stepped back in, the cat was gone.

A short time later, at 3 a.m.*, Charlie and her husband woke to a guttural, eerie singing coming from the back yard. Looking out their window, they saw the same creature. It was looking at them as they looked through their window at it. It pulled a fish out of the koi pond that Charlie had installed, and smiled as it ate the fish and stared at the couple. Charlie's husband yelled out the window that he was going to call the police, an the gnome flipped them off** and then walked away, laughing the entire time. When the police arrive,d they found nothing but child-sized foot prints.

The creature returned every night at 3 a.m., messed about with their lawn ornaments (mostly gnome and fairy ornaments, naturally) and eating the fish in the pond. Finally, the family locked the ornaments away and put the fish into a tank in the house. When the creature showed up the following night, it was pissed. It proceeded to scream in it's odd, guttural language, while running in circles around the house. Charlie ran downstairs to find the dogs barking at the dog door, which she quickly secured from the inside before running upstairs to lock all of the windows.

The family left shortly thereafter. When a writer introduced Charlie and Tammy to each other, they went back to look in on the property. The barn/shack was gone, but when they went to speak with the current resident, they were rudely rebuffed and sent packing. A commenter claiming to be Tammy claimed that she would later learn, however, that others in the area had been terrorized by the creature for years, and that, some years later, the creature seemed to follow her to her new home. Some web commenters from the area claim that, while they never saw anything, they always felt uneasy in the vicinity and avoided the property in question.




* I make a point of noting the time only because 3 a.m. plays a prominent role in modern ghost folklore. This seems to be a development of the last few decades, with midnight being important in earlier folklore. Initially, the 3 a.m. time, from what I have read, comes from the three numbers that mark "the beast" in the book of revelations, which has come to be the "number of the devil" in popular folklore, and so the fact that there are three numbers have made 3 a.m. (get it get it?) important to many people who like a religious bent to their ghost stories. I have also heard that as this is three in the dark, it can be a dark reflection or parody of the holy trinity.  Personally, I have always thought this was a rather silly conceit that generally just makes me roll my eyes, but that's me.

** Well, rude hand gestures ARE the universal language, after all.

Commentary: While not specifically a ghost story, I feel like this one falls more on the weird spirit side of the spectrum than the cryptozoological one, so I decided to add it here.

That said, the story fits very nicely into the tradition of the western European Faerie stories. Although we tend to use the term "fairy tale" nowadays to describe something both fantastic and gentle if not childish, the actual folklore from which the term "fairy" comes were, in fact, more often dark and molevolent (indeed, if you were to tell a 10th century person that they were "fae" they wouldn't think that you were calling them feminine, they would think that you were saying that they were doomed to a horrible fate at the hands of the supernatural). When Black Sabbath sang about fairies in boots dancing with dwarves, they weren't trying to call up a cartoonish image, but were, instead, trying to describe something otherworldly and terrifying.

So, the idea of a malicious gnome terrorizing a family in an isolated farmhouse is absolutely in keeping with these older traditions. That said, the description of the creature in the story doesn't match that of a gnome so much as it does a faerie (later Christianized as a demon) from northern Europe known as a Redcap - these creatures looked in many respects like the garden gnomes that we appreciate so much, but were vicious murderers whose hats were red with the blood of their victims. Should their hats dry out the redcap would die (or be sent back to Hell, or be banished from the material plan, etc. etc.). The redcaps wore iron boots (unlike other such folkloric creatures, they weren't afraid of iron), but nonetheless ran faster than any human could. They were vile, often dirty, and enjoyed the pain and suffering of others.

It is interesting to me, as a resident of the San Joaquin Valley, where this story takes place (Tulare County is just south of Fresno County, where I currently live) that this story is reliant on northwestern European faerie mythology, and not the more common Latino folklore that permeates much of our local ghost folklore (in fact, I went for a walk this afternoon along a trail said to be haunted by a La Llorona spirit). Given the tendency for many neo-pagan groups to rehash selective elements of Celtic and Germanic folklore, it may be that this is the source of this, or it may be something else.  Regardless, it makes for an interesting story.

Naturally, the internet being the internet, on the web pages where this story was posted there is a lot of speculation as to what happened, ranging from discussions of fairies to speculation that the little man might have been an escaped mental patient. And in one web forum the there is an active debate as to whether or not one more fervent evangelic Christian poster is justified in calling this thing a demon.

The text of the story at Weird Fresno is taken from Mysterious Universe, so they may seem redundant, but the blog comments at Weird Fresno are worth a look.  First, off, there is someone who claims to be the "Tammy" from the story, further describing her experiences.  Secondly, there is a commenter who claims to have seen the same type of creature at another location in another state.  As stated above, this story bears more than a passing resemblance to some of the faerie folklore from which gnomes are derived, so it seems only fitting that others would claim similar encounters.


Sources: Weird Fresno, Mysterious Universe 

Night Marchers of Hawaii

Mainlanders such as myself tend to think of the beaches of Hawaii as being places of calm seas, warm sand, and half-dressed attractive people. I should, of course, know better - I am a native Californian and know that many people hold the same false view of my own home state - but nonetheless, this is how I think of Hawaii.

However, legend holds that the beaches of Hawaii are home to a rather fearsome group of spectres - Huaka'ipo, better known to mainlanders like me as the night marchers (though the words actually translate into "Spirit Ranks").

The Huaka'ipo are said to be the spirits of Hawaiian warriors who march in a single line throughout the island, playing drums and chanting. At sunset, or before the sun rises, the spirits march from their burial places to the locations of past battles, homes, or sacred places.

It is said that you her the drums first, followed by the sounds of chanting and conch shells, and then you may see torch light, and possibly smell a foul odor, before finally seeing the Huaka'ipo - and as they are non-corporeal, they may march through fences, walls, even homes. But resist the urge to look - the spirits are touchy, and are said to kill anyone who does not bow their head and look at the ground as a show of respect, some versions of the legend require that any witness lay face down on the ground to show respect, and some even hold that you must go inside or otherwise get away from the marchers to avoid attracting notice. Some legends hold that anyone killed in this manner is doomed to accompany the Huaka'ipo for their eternal march. However, if you are descended from one of the spirits, then you will be safe from their wrath.

There are, of course, other ways to avoid their notice. Specifically, placing leaves of the ti (not a typo) plant around your home will ward off evil spirits, and the Night Marchers (whether the Night Marchers are considered evil is open to debate, I suppose). Also, showing them respect may result in great things coming to you. Some versions of the stories even hold that the night marchers are a harbinger of death, rather than the cause of death, though these stories seem to be in the minority.

Most versions of the legend hold that there are multiple marches, each led by a different chief or commander, and that the characteristics of the march will correspond with the tastes and desires of that leader. And some marches are said to count gods among their members, with even brighter torches burning either out of respect to the god or due to the god's power. The marches containing gods usually contain six - three male and three female.

Typically seen at night, these spirits may be seen during the day of they are transporting a descendant to the afterlife. Whether that descendant is going to a more "normal" afterlife, or doomed to march with the Huaka'ipo is unclear.


Commentary: There is so much going on in this story, and it is fascinating to me both as a ghost story enthusiast and as an anthropologist.

When I first read about the night marchers, my first thought was that it was similar to the watchers in California's coastal mountains. But as I read more about them, it became clear that this was a very different sort of affair.

It seems entirely possible that the legend is based on actual rituals in which dancers or marchers would move about a territory either as a show of force or to collect tribute or both. In fact, such processions are common throughout the world, and the belief that the marchers may have in their ranks (or may become) spirits or gods while engaged in the ritual is also not uncommon throughout the world. It's easy to see how such a practice might, over time, become a ghost story, much as the very real 'Antap group became boogey men in Californian folklore. Some of the sources I read hinted at such an origin for the legend, though none explicitly stated it. I will need to do a bit more research to check into this.

Another similarity I noted was to the Wild Hunt of European folklore. In the wild hunt, spirits (or faeries, or demons, or ghosts, all depending on which version you encounter) head out along the countryside. In some versions of the story, it's demons chasing the souls of sinners, in others seeing the hunt can be a harbinger of death. In all cases, what is said to be seen are spectral humanoid creatures with the accoutrements of hunters chasing across the countryside.

And, of course, the versions of the story that hold that seeing or hearing the marchers is an omen of death are similar to the Banshee stories, as well as other ghost stories from throughout the world.

So, what to make of these similarities?  Well, my take on it is that some elements of the story grew up in Hawaii - probably including all of the standard parts (the form and nature of the march, the presence of gods, etc.), either as an element of folklore, or as a post-contact description of traditional practices. Other elements were likely added over time, as people from different cultures settled in Hawaii during the 19th and 20th centuries. I suspect that some aspects, including the apparent grouping of them all into the "night marchers" rather than individual parties of spirits, comes from the development of both tourist culture and modern media, which tends to result in the homogenization of local variations.

I also wonder, though I have no information to support this, whether the claim of safety if you are a descendant of one of the marchers might be a reaction to non-Hawaiian invasion of the islands. Throughout the world, local folklores change, sometimes radically, when outsiders arrive, especially when they are colonizers. The claim that you are safe if an ancestor is among the marchers seems consistent with these sorts of changes - a way of saying "you may live here, but you don't belong here, like I do!"



Sources: Funkypickens, Listverse, Hawaii News Now, Wikipedia, Huffington Post,

Popobawa - Zanzibar, Africa

Okay, I'm going to give a content warning here: This entry is probably not fit for younger readers, people who are sensitive to discussions of sexual assault, and it is definitely not fit for twelve-year old boys who will just use it as an excuse to crack inappropriate jokes about anal sex*. You have been warned.

Also, I can see some readers getting into a racist "oh, these primitive Africans" rant, and I'll talk about why you shouldn't be so confident in the Commentary section.

There is something haunting Tanzania.  Called the Popobawa - a bat-like creature that is said to sexually assault people in the night. In addition to these assaults, it is also said to generally haunt the home of its chosen victims, making noise, moving objects, and trying to frighten them. Once it has gotten it's fill of terror in one home, it moves on to the next one, usually in the same neighborhood.

Although the Popobawa may attack anyone in the household, it is alleged to prefer to anally rape men, and then threaten to return to repeat the action if the men do not tell others about the attack. As a result, men who have been attacked must confess the violation to others, compounding the trauma of the event.

Popobawa, which appears to translate to "bat wing" in Swahili, is a shape-shifter and can appear in many forms, but it's natural form is said to be that of a large bat-like creature with one eye and a gigantic penis, though this "natural form" may be more a creation of western media than an aspect of the Tanzanian folklore regarding the creature. In Tanzanian folklore, it appears that the creature has no true shape, and that the name refers to the shadow that it casts when it appears. The creature's appearance is said to be accompanied by scraping noises on the walls and roof, and a sulfurous smell.

The Popobawa prefers to attack people in their homes when they are alone, and so, during Popobawa panics, many men choose to spend their nights outdoors, sometimes in the streets (often the only open place in some of the crowded towns and cities), which has led to fatalities from automobile traffic.

It is also said that the Popoabawa may be frightened away by gatherings of people, or by recitations of passages from the Koran.

The origins of the Popobawa are unclear. While many people in Europe and the Americas like to think of it as a cryptid (that is, a creature not formally discovered by science but alleged by believers to exist, a'la Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster), it's pretty clear that the people of Tanzania consider it to be a spirit or demon of some sort. One story holds that a sheikh (a respected member of the community with informal authority) summoned a djinn (an spirit in Islamic folklore, in many ways comparable to the demons of Christian folklore) in order to attack neighbors with whom he was having difficulties, but that he lost control of the djinn and that it is now loose as the Popobawa.


*I was a twelve-year-old boy once. I know how you work.

Commentary:  Okay, let's get the first thing out of the way - I know that there are people reading this and thinking "oh, those primitive/superstitious Africans/Muslims! They have such dumb beliefs!" To which I will point out that panics regarding spectral sexual assault are not in any way unique to Africa or to the Muslim world. Christian and general European folklore is filled with stories of spectral rapists - Succubi, Incubi, "old hag", and many a faerie story - not to mention more recent stories about aliens abducting people and subjecting them to various sexual probes and experiments. And massive panics regarding this sort of thing are not unheard of in the west - consider the amount of claims of "Satanic Ritual Abuse" that appeared during the late 1970s and early 1980s. So, if you are inclined to look at this as a sign of gullibility or foolishness in a poor and underdeveloped part of the world, just be aware that your own culture is perfectly capable of producing very similar things.

Alright, that rant done, it's time to talk about this story. We have a story about a creature that goes about terrorizing households, and sexually assaulting members of the household (though allegedly prefering the male members). Let's assume, as I am inclined to, that this is all folklore. What does it mean?

Well, a number of different hypotheses have been put forward. Including:

- That this story is used to describe or cover up actual sexual assaults.

- That this story simply reflects a local variation on folklore surrounding the phenomenon of sleep paralysis.

- That this story reflects feelings of male inadequacies in a changing and poor region of Africa, with the metaphorical rape being used to metaphorically describe fears of emasculation.The insistence by the creature that mean admit to their violation in order to prevent further violation seems very much in line with this.

- That the story reflects fears of political instability. In fact, Popobabwa panics, during which many people report encounters and men often take to sleeping outdoors, typically accompany elections.

- That the story is a metaphorical discussion of Zanzibar's past as a slave market used by Arab traders. While plausible, the Popobawa first appeared on the island of Pemba in the 1970s, and so it seems unlikely that it would reflect directly the experience of 19th century slaves and slave traders.

Of course, none of these explanations are exclusive of the others, and it may well be that the Popobawa is a folkloric conglomeration of the anxieties, concerns, and very real assaults experienced by people living in Tanzania. It would appear to be a way in which ghostly folklore represents real-world issues, a phenomenon known the world over.





Sources: Podcast, BBC News, Wikipedia, Center for Inquiry, Cryptid Wiki, The Demon-Hunters Compendium,

Dudleytown

In Cornwall, Connecticut, there is a location within the ominously-named Dark Entry Forest that is said to be among the most haunted locations in the Americas. The location is the ruins of Dudleytown, a once-prosperous town that was founded by a cursed family, and which was doomed as a result.  All that remains now are the cellar pits and odd bits of rock wall where once there were buildings and fences.  And there are those that say that spirits or demons also remain.

Legend holds that Dudleytown is the earthly receptical of a curse that began in 1510, when Edmund Dudley was beheaded after he was revealed to be conspiring to overthrow the King of England.  His son, John Dudley, tried to marry his son to Lady Jane Grey, thus entering the royal family...and all three were executed. Shortly afterwards, John Dudley's other son returned from France, bringing the plague with him and unleashing an outbreak that killed thousands of people.  John Dudley's third son decided to get out while the gettin' was good and left for the Americas in 1630.  Once there, he had sons, who would later settle in Connecticut...

Or, an alternate version is that Governor Thomas Dudley of the Massachusetts Bay Company was related to Edmund Dudley, and was the uncle of four Dudley Brothers who settled in Connecticut. In this version of the story, Thomas Dudley is a horrible tyrant who executes those who are not Puritans...

But regardless of the exact version, four brothers, Abijah, Barzillai, and Abiel, founded Dudleytown in the late 17th or early 18th century. Depending on which version of the story you are going with, these four brothers carried a curse with them, or one of Thomas Dudley's victims cursed him and all who dwellt near him (including his nephews), damning the land on which he lived, which would become Dudleytown. In the Governor Dudley version of the story, he is murdered - hacked to death and his body left on his land - and the murderer is never found.

The three Dudley borthers lived the rest of their lives in Dudleytown, Abijah and Barzillai dying of natural causes, apparently.  But Abiel...oh, Abiel went insane!  He lost his mind, and shorlty afterwards lost his fortune and even his home, dying a pauper

While Abiel was still alive, Nathaniel Carter bought Abiel's house (the unfortunate fellow could no longer afford it) in 1759, thus activating the curse*.  After displacing poor, mad Abiel, the Carter family moved out of Dudleytown in 1763 and went to reside in Bimghamton, New York...but somehow left their 13 year old son behind.  The result, rather unexpectedly, was that the son survived the rest of the family when a Native American raiding party attacked the Carter's New York homestead in 1764, gruesomely killing and scalping Nathaniel Carter, his wife, and even their infant child. In 1774, Nathaniel's borther, Adoniram, and his entire family died of cholera, thus adding more lives to the Dudleytown curse.

And the horror kept on coming.  In 1792, Gershon Hollister is said to have been murdered at the home of William Tanner.  Afterwards, Tanner reported seeing strange animals in the forest as well as demons, and this eventually drove him insane. In 1804, a General by the name of Swift was at home with his wife, when she walked out to the front porch and was killed after being struck by a bolt of lightning.  Mary Cheney was born in Dudleytown in 1811...and the curse followed her after she left, leading to disaster in her hsuband's career and sickness on her part, and she finally committed suicide in the 1830s. An unspecified plague hit the town in 1813, killing all of one family (the Jones family) and killing off many others.

As the 19th century wore on, crops failed, farm animals routinely vanished without explanation, and unexplained deaths continued. Come the end of the 19th century, only the Brophy family (transplants from elsewhere who arrived in 1892) remained.  First the Brophy sheep began vanishing, then his sons vanished (though it is worth noting that they were wanted by local law enforcement...so, "on the lam" might be a better description than "vanished").  After a few years, Mrs. Brophy died of unknown causes.  He was sometimes seen around Cornwall, muttering about "demons"...and then his house burned to the ground and he vanished, as well.

Dudleytown remained abandoned to whatever demons Mr. Brophy had encountered until 1930, when Dr. William Clark, a pathologist from New York, decided to build a summer home at that location.  Things were quiet until 1937, when Dr. Clark left on a business trip, leaving his wife behind. When he returned home, he found her in an upstairs room, cackling to herself, having gone quite mad.  She never recovered, eventually dying in an asylum.

Dr. Clark was the last resident, but the Clarks weren't the last people to encounter evil at Dudleytown.  Local folklore tells of a satanic biker gang that enters the Dudleytown area to hold rituals.  People report being attacked by demonic creatures with cloven hoofs and strange green eyes.  People report seeing shadow people, floating balls of light, dark human forms rising out of the cellar pits, having weird images show up on film (or in digital pictures), and that animals seem to be strangely absent from the area.  And, as is so often the case, stories persist that a TV news crew arrived to film a story around Halloween, only to have their equipment fail while they were present.



*For the life of me, I can not figure out why the curse is said to begin with one of the Dudley ancestors...when A) they weren't actually related, and B) the alleged displacement of an unfortunate madman seems to be reason enough to cause the curse without the convoluted stuff from the previous centuries.

Commentary:  As ghost stories go, this is one of the greats.  Dudleytown is creepy, famous, and a real place...all of which make for a good story.  The story of the curse, the demonic creatures having been sighted by residents, and the fact that the ruins are still there (though entry is prohibited by the current landowners, and people do get arrested for trespassing, so, really, stay out), it all makes this particular tale all the more delicious as ghost stories go.

Unfortunately, for all of the giddy creepy thrill that the story supplies, it really doesn't stand up to any sort of scrutiny.  As at least one source has pointed out, the story of the curse and the early deaths/madness actually doesn't hold up very well, even using just the information provided in the common versions of the story itself - pretty much everyone who is said to have died or been driven insane by the curse was quite elderly at the time...and, well, therefore would be expected to be experiencing dementia or death (for example, Abiel was 90, and the symptoms of his madness are pretty consistent with dementia).  Moreover, the number of people who are said to have died in various versions of the stories are, actually, well short of what you would expect for a rural 18th/19th century community, indicating that being in Dudleytown might actually have been good for your health. So, ya'know, not so scary, that.

A short but accurate and useful write-up of Dudleytown's history if provided on it's Wikipedia entry (accessed October 23, 2013):

Dudleytown was never an actual town. The name was given at an unknown date to a portion of Cornwall that included several members of the Dudley family. The area that became known as Dudleytown was settled in the early 1740s by Thomas Griffis, followed by Gideon Dudley and, by 1753, Barzillai Dudley and Abiel Dudley; Martin Dudley joined them a few years later. Other families also settled there.

As with every other part of Cornwall, Dudleytown was converted from forest to farm land. Families tilled the land for generations. Located on top of a high hill, Dudleytown was not ideally suited for farming. When more fertile and spacious land opened up in the mid-West in the late 19th century, and as the local iron industry wound down, Cornwall's population declined.

During the early 20th century, old farms in Cornwall were sold to New Yorkers seeking a better life in the countryside. Much of the Dudleytown area land was acquired by the Dark Entry Forest Association, which planted thousands of trees. During the 1930s, New York's Skidreiverein Club spent their winter weekends skiing on trails they built in Dudleytown; in the summers, they canoed down the Housatonic River.

Then, even the mysterious or horrifying deaths turn out to be more mundane than legend would hold.  Records show that Gershon Hollister was not, in fact, murdered, but instead died due to an accident during a barn raising.  Mary Cheney did not kill herself, but died of a lung disease, likely tuberculosis, and she had never been to Dudleytown - her death is especially easy to trace, as she married Horace Greeley.  Harriet Clarke did commit suicide, but in New York, not Dudleytown. General Swift lived in another location near, but outside of, Dudleytown (also, Swift was, like Abiel, quite elderly when he "went mad" so it was probably just dementia again).  Mrs. Clark was not driven insane, and in fact continued to live in the area after her husband's death in 1943.  And so on and so forth...

What's more, the verifiable history of Dudleytown is rather different than the legend holds.  There's no known relation between the Dudleys of Connecticut and Edmund Dudley.  Similarly, if you match up the time the periods during which the Dudleys of Dudleytown lived (the mid-to-late 18th century) with the life of Thomas Dudley...that he was their uncle seems remarkably unlikely...and they didn't settle in the area until after others already had, so their uncle would not have lived there, and in fact he died of natural causes at his home in Roxbury in 1653. Also, the Dudley brothers were actually Gideon, Barzillai, and Abiel, there wasn't an Abijah.

What's more, there is plenty of evidence that the town was deserted not because of weird supernatural goings-on, but because of the difficulty in obtaining freshwater, poor conditions for agriculture (rocky ground and a placement that resulted in shade from the hills and trees pretty much all the damned time), and variations in the local iron industry all provided potential causes for abandonment.  Add to this that Dudleytown was never really a town (stories of it having been a more substantial settlement are false), but rather part of Cornwall, and, well, many residents probably just moved to other parts of the town or county when land became available.

One Reverend Dudley, the author of the Legend of Dudleytown page linked to below, traces the origin of the ghost stories to the 1938 publication of the book They Found a Way, though it is conceivable that elements of the story already existed in local folklore, but even that isn't too terribly odd a thought.  After all, frequently shadowy location with an abandoned town?  If you don't make up a ghost story for that, then you are just being a lazy sod.

Still, even knowing all of this, I still love this story.  It still creeps me out, and if I ever find out that I will be visiting Connecticut, I will try to get permission to visit this site.

Sources: Wikipedia, The Legend of Dudleytown, Cornwall Historic Society, Prairie Ghosts, Ghostvillage, Damned Connecticut, ghosttowns.com (wildly inaccurate information, but a fun read), The Illustrious Internet!, The Ghosts Of Ohio (because, of course, a website about Ohio will cover Connecticut), Exciting Earth, paranoid ramblings from the Illustrious Internet

The Dark Watchers of the Santa Lucia Mountains

The Santa Lucia Mountains dominate central California's Coast from San Luis Obispo to Monterey. I can say from experience that the mountains are generally pleasant, providing both beautiful scenery and a quiet place to retreat from life's demands. However, legend holds that they are also haunted by strange, pitch-black specters that appear at a distance and seem to watch those who wander into the mountains or sometimes simply stare off into the distance. Their nature and purpose is unknown, but they have long been reported by people venturing into the mountains. The story is the same - someone will be climbing a slope or hiking a trail or beating a path through thick vegetation, and look up only to see a large, human-like figure garbed in a black hat and black robes, with no skin showing, looking down at them or else slowly surveying the area. If the witness moves to approach the figure, or tries to call the attention of others to it, it vanishes.

Image from weirdus.com

These specters, known as the Dark Watchers, are well known in local folklore, and even appear in John Steibeck's short story Flight and Robinson Jeffer's poem "Such Counsel You Gave to Me." It has been claimed that the Chumash who lived in the southern portions of the mountains, down around San Luis Obispo, have stories about these beings that date to before European contact with the area. They certainly were a well-known phenomenon by the 1930s, when Steinbeck and Jeffers were writing.

Commentary: This type of story is the reason why I love ghost stories as much as I do. While there's nothing bad reported to have happened to the people who have witnessed the Dark Watchers, they nonetheless are sinister, creepy, and just generally oogie. Just imagining seeing one of these things as you're going for a walk in the woods is enough to send a chill down your spine.

Oh yeah, this is the good stuff.

As noted above, it is clear that the stories of the Dark Watchers were in circulation by the 1930s, but it is often said that the Chumash who lived San Luis Obispo county had old stories about them. This may be, but the compilations of Chumash stories that I am familiar with (and because of my job and my training, I am familiar with most of what has been written about the Chumash) do not include stories of the Dark Watchers or anything similar. On the one hand, it can not be expected that the ethnographers who were collecting stories managed to get everything, so that there are stories out there that have not been captured by anthropologists is a certainty. However, it is also a common tactic for people trying to make a claim seem legitimate to falsely claim that there were Native American stories concerning it. So, there may have been stories about the Dark Watchers amongst the Chumash (and the Salinan, who occupied much fo the rest of the Santa Lucia Mountains), but I will remain a bit skeptical of this claim until I see it from a reliable source and not simply posted on websites.

I am tempted to call this a variant of the shadow people stories that have become popular in recent decades. Certainly it bears many of the same traits, and is nearly identical in appearance. However, as the Dark Watchers pre-date the popular shadow people stories and have taken on a local cultural significance, so for reasons of talking folklore, I am going to treat them differently, even though they likely have the same explanations.

Special Video:

...and here's a short film about the Dark Watchers:



Sources: Local lore, Weird U.S., Published book, Blog

Shadow People

We all know the feeling - you are minding your own business, perhaps you are doing some housecleaning, perhaps you are out for a walk, perhaps you're driving home after a long day, and you see something out of the corner of your eye. Something black, moving, and seemingly intelligent. It's just there for a split second, a shadowy form, human in shape, but with no distinguishable features other than it's dark hue. You turn to get a better look, and it is gone. Perhaps you have a feeling of fear or dread on seeing it. Regardless, you know that, whatever it is, it isn't good.

Some people claim to have seen more than just the split-second image in their peripheral vision. Stories abound of people seeing figures that look like living, 3-dimensional shadows. Sometimes these figures appear to be following or attempting to interact with the witness, at other times they appear to simply be passive observers. On occasion, they even appear to be trying to do harm. Although typically they are solid black with no distinguishable features, there are some that appear to have red, glowing eyes.

Although sometimes seen during the day, these strange creatures are typically spotted at night. Often, the witness feels a sense of fear or dread upon seeing them, and often there is a strong sense that these creatures are here to do damage to us or our world.

Commentary: This one is a bit of a departure from the stories that I normally post in that it's more a phenomenon than a specific story. I had tried to find a specific story that could be tied to a particular time and/or place, but always found Shadow People were either shoe-horned into existing stories about haunted places, or were simply mentioned as "a weird thing happened to me" stories without the location being relevant and often not even mentioned.

Still, even if it breaks the mold a bit, I wanted to find a way to include Shadow People on this site because they are rapidly becoming an important piece of our ghost story folklore, and I find the stories really damn creepy. Really, I find few things more shiver-inducing than walking down a dark road while listening to someone talk about their encounters with Shadow People.

That being said, I don't actually believe in Shadow People. Not in the least. So, what do I think is going on? Well, this quote from About.com's entry on Shadow People provides some useful information:

Those who are experiencing and studying the shadow people phenomenon say that these entities almost always used to be seen out of the corner of the eye and very briefly. But more and more, people are beginning to see them straight on and for longer periods of time. Some experiencers testify that they have even seen eyes, usually red, on these shadow beings.

As does this one from the Shadow People Archives:

Sometimes it appears as the mere silhouette of a person, usually male, but generally lacking any other characteristics of gender. However, in no way does the description end there. There are “hatted” shadow beings, hooded shadows, cloaked ones, and solid or wispy, smoky types. Some are seen only from the waist up. Others clearly have legs that are seen fleeing from their observers. They dart into corners, through walls, into closets, or behind television sets, bushes, and buildings. Sometimes they simply fade into the dark recesses of the night. Lacking in the description is one common denominator unifying the many different types of shadow people that enter our world…except that they are “intensely dark.” But even then, there are exceptions.

So, for quite some time, reports seem to have been of vague shadowy images viewed out of the corner of the eye, sometimes accompanied by a feeling of dread. Over time, however, people have begun describing seeing more intense encounters. The descriptions of these entities are extremely varied, but are beginning to become standardized into a few typological categories.

Let's take this one apart, shall we. And let's start with the nature of vision and memory.

Our eyes have large blind spots, and we are constantly unconsciously scanning in order to make out what is in the world surrounding us. Since we can't look at everything at once, our brain has to fill in the gaps between scans of an area by supplementing the image with information that has either already been gathered, or else tries to fill-in-the-blanks with semi-related information. Most of the time, this works so seamlessly that we don't notice it, but sometimes it doesn't, and we will see things - just for a split second - that shouldn't be there. It's a common phenomenon, and it happens to all of us. This pretty easily accounts for the majority of "black shapes that were there until I turned to look at them" whether people label them "Shadow People" or not*.

The accompanying feelings of fear and dread can also be explained naturally. It's startling when we see something moving where we thought that there was nothing, thus fear is generated. There are also more than a few different things that can mis-fire in the brain of a perfectly normal, sane person that can result in hallucinations and/or feelings of dread, see this article in Science Now for an example.

Many encounters with Shadow People, much like many ghostly encounters in general, occur while a person is in bed, either about to fall asleep or waking up from sleep. Again, knowing a bit about how our brains work (and how our bodies prepare for and revive from sleep) explains most of these cases. As described in this journal paper, it is perfectly normal for people to experience hallucinations - with vision, sound, and even emotion - in the period surrounding sleep. It's common for someone to insist "I know that I was awake" when this is pointed out - but the truth is that we often can't consciously tell when we are completely awake (and therefore not prone to sleep-related hallucinations) and when we are not completely awake. Add to this the fact that it is very common for people to dream that they have woken up and experienced something, and it can be difficult to figure out what actually occurred and what did not (I have had such experiences myself). So, again, a common line of evidence doesn't actually stand up to scrutiny.

Now, let's look at memory. Most people think of memory as functioning more-or-less like a computer's hard drive: data is coded, and then retrieved more-or-less intact when we need it. Turns out, that this isn't even vaguely how memory works (see here, and here). Memory is a much more active process, and we are, in essence, re-creating a memory each time that we call it up and usually end up either adding things to it or taking things away from it, the end result being that memories that we don't think about too often are more accurate than memories that we think about frequently.

It gets worse, though. In addition to our brains monkeying around with our memories every time we recall them, experiments have demonstrated that we are prone to having false memories implanted by simple suggestion. Some of these false memories can even become extremely vivid - to the point that the person with the false memories will remain convinced that the event actually occurred even after the method by which the memory was created has been explained.

And remember, these problems with memory apply to perfectly healthy, normal, honest, and sane people. This is not pathological, it's just the way that our brains work.

When you add our weird way of handling vision to the way in which our brains handle memories, it begins to seem pretty likely that many, probably most, cases of Shadow People in which the witness truly believes what they saw can be cracked up to oddities of human vision combined with the cludginess of human memory. Add to this the fact that, with the Internet, people can easily come across other people's stories, and you can see how a memory of one thing can begin, over time, to conform to a "group consensus" memory. This common social phenomenon would pretty easily explain why the variation in Shadow People stories seems to be shrinking, people are remembering more intense encounters, and a few specific "types" of shadow people are becoming the norm.

What about the other examples of people seeing Shadow People? Can I explain all of them?

Well, it's really not necessary. There are many, many different ways that the stories can come about - from honest misperception to people intentionally making stories up, and when you throw in a small number of people who actually are suffering from some mental pathology the mix gets pretty thoroughly screwy - and so you simply have to accept that there are probably many different origins for many different stories. You can find the root cause of individual stories, and probably find patterns that allow you to explain a wide variety of stories (such as what is described above), but there's always going to be at least one or two stories that don't fit that explanation, and so you'll have to figure out what happened in those cases. Hell, some people may even have seen something truly strange, but it's hard to separate the signal from the noise.

This, of course, hasn't stopped a large number of crackpots from developing a large number of psuedo-scientific explanations. If you type "Shadow People" into Google, you will be inundated with talk of "extra-dimensional beings", time travellers, and so on. All of the people talk of these things as if they are completely reasonable, without ever stopping to consider what terms such as "extra-dimensional" even mean**. Essentially, people interested in Shadow People have begun spinning explanations of this phenomenon without A) stopping to figure out if there is even a phenomenon needing explanation, and B) stopping to figure out if their explanations even make sense or are even vaguely plausible using the concepts to which they themselves are appealing. And so, we get some rather long treatises on the nature of something that may not actually exist using explanations that are cobbled together from pop-culture misunderstandings of physics and mathematics.

...and people wonder why I just stick to the stories and don't get into the research.


*I have had a recent experience with this myself. Not long back, I was driving home from southern California. It was late at night, and I was tired and had been driving for five hours straight. Off to my left, I saw a massive shape, a large 4-legged creature that was completely black, come chargin towards me. I swerved (thankfully there was nobody else on the road near me) to escape, and a split second later realized that my eyes and brain, in their fatigued state, had translated the movement of the trees and the black nightime sky into an image of a pure-black beast rushing towards me.

**Hint - it's a term that comes from mathematics and is applied to physics via that route. The way that Shadow People enthusiasts use the term doesn't actually make a lick of sense and owes far more to comic books than to physics.

Sources: Science Now, Podcast, Shadow People Archives, About.com, Journal Article (on hallucinations in normal, sane people), Wikipedia, Radio Show (warning, this one is pretty damn crazy)

The Little Red Man, Salem-Winston, North Carolina

The location now known as Old Salem Village and Gardens was once the location of a Morovian colony. It is also the former home of a strange creature known as the "Little Red Man."

As the legend goes, there was a cobbler named Andreas Kresmer living in the colony during the late 18th century. He was killed in a construction accident while preparing the foundation for the colony's house for unmarried men. After his death, people claim to have heard the sound of a cobbler at work when in the vicinity of this building. Eventually, people began to report seeing a small man, wearing a red cap (as Kresmer himself did) in the vicinity of the building.

Over time, the building came to be used as the home for widows. On one occasion, the granddaughter of one widow, a girl named Betsy, ran in to her grandmother's room, telling a story about a small man in a red cap who wanted Betsy to come and play.

Eventually, the ghost was exorcised by a minister following a run-in with one of the community leaders. Since then, the ghost has passed into obscurity.

Commentary: What a great story! What appears to be going on here is a mixing of two types of folklore. The first concerns the classic ghost story - a man dies during an accident and thereafter elements of his life continue to echo in the setting in which he died - specifically the sound of a cobbler's tools at work. Classic stuff.

The other type of folklore concerns the spirit people* of northern European folklore. The little red man resembles the trolls, elves, and faeries of Northern Europe, and his association with a a domestic task (in this case, shoemaking) is reminiscent of mythological creatures such as brownies. The melding of the two is not entirely odd, as some European folklore from the Renaissance onward (possibly continuing an earlier tradition) conflated the spirit people of folklore with dead humans.

The stories of European spirit people would have come with the Morovians when the arrived in the Americas. That such a story would get attached to their new colony is unsurprising. That it would be attached to a particular person as it was is rather more interesting (and given Morovian record-keeping habits, it appears likely that Kresmer was, in fact, a real person). One is left wondering why this occurred.




*Most cultures have folklore concerning spirit people, be they "the ancestors", angels, trolls, kobolds, faeries, devils, or any number of other names. These are usually conceived of as the intelligent forces, benign or malevolent, behind nature, and descendants of them are seen in even the "big three" monotheistic religions of the world.


Internet

In Need of a Spirit House

I was travelling in Thailand with friends. We noticed that many houses had a small pagoda on a platform outside of the house, and we asked what it was. We were told that it was a "spirit house", a shrine where spirits could live so that they wouldn't bother the people who lived in the actual house.

While we were travelling, we stayed at the home of a British ex-patriot who owned several houses and cabins on a piece of property. Unlike the Thai homes that we had seen, his property did not have a spirit house. We thought that this was interesting, but didn't make anything of it.

The first night that we were there, I was laying in bed with my friend Dawn. We heard the dog growling outside, so I got up to see what he was growling at. When I opened the door and looked to where he was growling, I say nothing. He continued to growl for a little while, maybe five minutes, and then whimpered and took off. I thought this was strange, but didn't make anything of it.

I went back to bed, and picked up the book I was reading. Then I started to hear the movement of the hammocks that had been strung up ont he patio, and heard some other noises I couldn't identify. After a few seconds of this, the lights turned off - and these lights were controlled by an old-fashioned switch, one that took some real force to turn off.

Maybe the owner should have set up a spirit house.

Commentary: This story came from a coworker who had spent a considerable amount of time travelling in Asia.

The belief in household spirits, whether conceived as the ghosts of the ancestors, the household gods (such as in ancient Rome), or as the spirits of nature is common across many cultures and across time. Religions and folklore that attest to the existence and importance of these beings ranges from ancient Rome to modern Asia, and appears to have been a strong element in many ancient versions of modern religions.

The measures necessary to appease or curry favor with these spirits likewise varies across time and space. In some cultures, it is necessary to give them their own dwelling place and make offerings. In others, veneration through prayer is necessary. Regardless, in most of these places, stories about what happens to those who fail to make proper respects indicate that the spirits will act malevolently, whether through acts of mischief and nuisance, or through more sinister actions including injury and death.

Sources: Personal Account

The Devils of Mt. Mulligan, Australia

Mount Mulligan is known to the Djungan people of northeast Australia as Ngarrabullgan, and it is said that it is home to Eekoo – mountain devils or spirit-people who dwell in the mountains and cause danger and sickness to fall upon those who travel to the mountain. This is especially problematic, as there are numerous water sources on the mountain, while the surrounding area is extremely arid. Only powerful shamans should venture to the mountain, as they alone have the strength to ward or fight off the Eekoo.

Commentary: This story is representative of two aspects of Australian Aboriginal culture. The first is the “habitation” of the landscape with beings who hold great significance in the cosmology and mythos. The other is the use of mythology to warn against entering a dangerous place.

The question in this case is: why is Ngarrabullgan a dangerous place?

The answer is not known. What is known is that it was not always seen as a dangerous place. Archaeological sites dating from before 600 years ago are relatively common on the mountain. And then, suddenly, the number of sites drops off. Something occurred around 600 years ago that made this location less hospitable – whether it was a ecological change and the mythology changed to prevent people from wasting their time looking for resources, or a social change in which only shamans were to have direct access to the mountain’s resources is unknown. Regardless, it appears likely that tales of supernatural menace on the mountain began around 600 years ago.

SOURCES: Academic Publication

The Channel Islands 'Antap

Although the native peoples of the area, the Barbareno and Ventureno Chumash, had many stories about the islands, two are of particular interest here, and both were collected by anthropologist J. P. Harrington.

STORY 1: The first story concerns an Italian fisherman in the employ of a Chumash man. They go out to Santa Barbara Island during a fishing trip, and find a large rock containing a cave off of the shore of the island. The top of the cave contains a vent hole, and the Italian man climbs up to it and looks in. He begins acting strangely and returns to the boat. On the trip back to the mainland, the Italian tells his employer that he had seen two men in the cave, both Chumash, and that when water would rush into the cave, they would stand and begin blowing their ceremonial whistles. The Chumash employer returns home and tells his relatives of this. And elderly relative informs him that the whistling ceremony began on Santa Barbara Island, and that anyone who witnesses it will soon die. Not long after that the Italian man drowns while working off of the coast of Santa Barbara.

STORY 2: The second story concerns an Anglo-American (in the mid 19th century, these distinctions mattered) and a Chumash boy who went to Santa Cruz Island to gather abalone. The Anglo man found a cave in the rocks in which he saw two men with a bullroarer and an elderwood flute practicing ceremonial dances. When the water was at high tide, the cave was hidden, but at low tide it was exposed. As waves crashed into the cave, the two dancers were not affected. The man and the boy left to return to the mainland. On the way back, the man fell out of the boat and drowned. The boy returned home and told his grandmother what he had seen. She told him that he had seen the ‘Antap, a dangerous thing to see, and she gave him a potion made of toloache (Jimson weed) to prevent evil from coming to the boy.

Commentary: Probably the two most common things that one hears when an alleged haunting is discussed are: the location of the haunting is built on an “Indian Burial Ground” (usually nonsense), the other is that “The Native Americans have stories about this being a bad place” (also usually nonsense). There are many Native American stories about supernaturally dangerous places and things, but most of the popular ghost stories that claim a Native American link make that claim falsely. But not these two.

These stories, as noted, were collected by the early Californian ethnographer J. P. Harrington. Harrington was an odd and rather controversial figure who has gained both loyalty and notoriety amongst those with whom he lived and worked. ex-wife even wrote a tell-all book about her life with him in an age before tell-all books were the rage. The family of the woman who took care of Harrington in his old age, with whom I am acquainted, claim that the ex-wife’s book is all exaggeration and lies. Personally, I don’t claim to know, but I do know that he was a colorful character and a fascinating story in and of himself.

These stories are interesting because they show the continuation of older traditions, but also the way that those traditions were changed by the arrival of Europeans. The ‘Antap were an actual group in Chumash society – a religious/ritual organization that could only be entered if one’s parents paid for one’s entry during childhood. In order to rise through the ranks of Chumash society and become a person of high status, one must be a member of the ‘Antap. Like many traditional and “mystery cult” organizations, the ‘Antap held that it was dangerous for the uninitiated to witness ceremonies. As a result, the ‘Antap’s ceremonies, and many aspects of ‘Antap society, remained shrouded in secrecy, and the ‘Anatap themselves seem to have become boogie men towards the end of the prehistoric period. By the early 20th century, many have ceased viewing the ‘Antap as human shamans and ritualists at all, and have come to view them as supernatural beings, as seen in these stories (it should be noted, though, that many people continued to view them simply as powerful humans – shamans, sorcerers, or even assassins, but human nonetheless). As such, the ‘Antap had now become associated with places of magical danger.

SOURCE: Academic Publication