Legends 11: Dark Watchers

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Welcome to Lore Legends, a subset of lore episodes that explore the strange tales we whisper in the dark, even if they can't always be proven by the history books.

So if you're ready, let's begin.

You can feel it on the back of your neck, that sensation that you aren't alone as you walk down a darkened street at night or through a long, narrow alley, that someone or something has its eyes on you.

Maybe it's a trick of the darkness.

Perhaps it's our innate fear of the unknown.

After all, we humans tend to be afraid of what we cannot see.

Maybe that's why our kids often demand a nightlight, like a luminous barrier to keep the monsters away.

But then again, maybe we are being observed.

That rustling in the bushes outside our house, the strange sounds coming from behind the trees.

The truth is, we never know for sure, at least not until it's too late.

The playwright Samuel Beckett once wrote, Strange feeling that someone is looking at me.

I am clear, then dim, then gone, then dim again, then clear again, and so on, back and forth, in and out of someone's eye.

It seems, at some point in our lives, we're all drifting in and out of someone's watchful gaze, a character in a narrative that only they know.

In the end, maybe Rockwell was onto something when he wrote his 1984 Smash hit, Somebody's Watching Me.

And that's probably why so many urban legends and whispered rumors feature some sort of invisible observer hanging in the shadows just out of reach.

What they are waiting for always depends on the story.

but it's a common theme that can't be ignored.

So settle in, turn on a light, and allow yourself to go on a journey through this terrifying realm of folklore and legend.

After all, there's nothing wrong with hearing examples of Dark Watchers and the people they hunt, as long as you don't look too closely into the shadows.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore Legends.

When people think of New Jersey cryptids, they usually think of the 13th child of Mother Leeds, otherwise known as the Jersey Devil.

But there's another lesser-known beast that prowls the Garden State.

It lurks much farther north than the Jersey Devil, in Sussex County, near the Appalachian Mountains, and it's known as the Big Red Eye.

The creature has allegedly been around since the late 1800s, although the first official sightings didn't occur until the mid-1970s.

And its name, as you might imagine, hints at some kind of Cyclops-like creature with one, well, big red eye.

And that's not far from the truth.

In reality, it's most often described as a beast that stands nearly eight feet tall, is covered in hair, and sports a pair of glowing red eyes.

And at night, it fills the darkness of the Kidatinny Ridge with loud, terrifying screams.

Back in February of 1975, a Sussex County man named John Adams claimed to have had several encounters with the big red eye while he was driving.

The first incident actually involved both Adams and his wife.

It was just a little after lunchtime, in broad daylight, when they spotted something quickly crossing the road near their home.

He described it as being nine feet tall and sort of a half man, half ape-like creature that walked on two legs.

Its body was covered in long gray hair, and it managed to get across the street in just two steps, bolstered by its long swinging arms.

The second time he spotted the creature, his 15-year-old son Gary was in the passenger seat.

It was later at night, around 8 p.m., and it was foggy out.

John was doing what we've all done on a hazy night, hunching over the wheel and doing his best to navigate, when the headlights of an oncoming car lit up the fog.

Instantly, a huge shadow was projected on the foggy night air, and the shape was eerily familiar.

A moment later, John watched as the same creature he and his wife had seen before slowly emerged from the fog.

After two such encounters, Adams knew that it was time to go looking for the beast.

One night, not long after his second sighting, he gathered a group of friends and together they ventured into the woods.

After searching for a long while, they eventually came to a frozen lake where they found a set of deep footprints measuring 18 inches from toe to heel.

But those footprints are only part of the story.

The more the group searched, the more they realized that they weren't alone, because watching them from among the trees were two sets of glowing red eyes.

A few years later, people started hearing eerie moans and screams along a rural thoroughfare known as Wolf Pit Road.

According to the reports, the sounds would usually start around 2 a.m.

and carry on until sunrise.

For one family, those sounds became all too real.

Barbara Seitz and her family used to live on Wolf Pit Road, and she claimed to have heard the same haunting shrieks coming from her barn one summer night.

Curious, she crept outside and walked around the perimeter of the barn, where she came upon a horrifying sight.

The building's giant door had been ripped clean off its hinges by something that clearly wanted what was inside.

With her heart in her throat, she stepped over the threshold, only to discover that six of the family's eight pet rabbits had been killed and mutilated beyond recognition, with barely a trace of blood.

The other two rabbits were missing.

The following nights, around 9.30 p.m., the family dog, with the amazing name of Golden Boy, started barking.

The commotion startled Barbara and the rest of the family, who ran outside only to see a frighteningly tall shadow looming over their dog.

Golden Boy chased after it before the creature turned and swung its arm, batting the 70-pound canine through the air as if it were nothing.

Then it escaped through an apple orchard that led to a nearby swamp.

After that, Barbara and her family vowed never to be caught off guard again.

They were ready the following night, armed with rifles and shotguns, waiting for Golden Boy's signal.

Then, without fail, the dog's barking announced the creature's return.

In the commotion, one of the family members reported seeing two glowing red eyes staring at him from a nearby chicken coop, at which point, everyone opened fire.

Flashes of lights illuminated the night sky as a cacophony of gunfire deafened their ears.

And as the big red eye disappeared once more into the apple orchard, Barbara's husband Richard swore at least one of his shots found its target.

Yet they found no trace of blood anywhere.

The New Jersey State Police, as well as the Department of Fish and Game, tried to play it off as an unidentified woods animal, but almost everyone else knew the truth.

Over 50 more sightings were reported during the summer of 1977, and countless more called in to report blood-curdling screams emanating from the Kitatinnis.

Over the following 20 years or so, things calmed down.

That is, until the mid-1990s, when a whole new generation of people in a whole new area of Sussex County all had encounters with something they could only classify as supernatural.

It was a shaggy monster that stood eight feet tall and with glowing red eyes.

Far from the bumper-to-bumper traffic of New Jersey's highways, there exists a cryptid that stalks Ben McDewey, the highest peak in eastern Scotland's Cairngorm Range.

It's called Amphir Leamor, or the Big Grey Man.

Ben McDewey is the second highest mountain in Scotland, and in fact, all of the United Kingdom.

It casts an imposing shadow at 4,295 feet tall, which provides plenty of space for all kinds of creatures to live.

And for J.

Norman Collie, that creature was Amphir Leamore.

Collie detailed his exploits in 1925 when he gave a speech to the Kieringorm Club about his experience on Ben McDewey in 1891.

The club was holding its annual meeting in Aberdeen.

Collie, a mountaineer, scientist, and organic chemistry professor at University College London, had been invited to speak.

He talked about how he'd been traveling through a misty fog on the summit when he heard something behind him crunching the ground as it walked.

Collie didn't think anything of it.

He would stop and listen, listen, only to shake his head and press forward.

But as he walked, the crunching sound got louder and faster until the professor was practically running down the mountain to safety.

It scared him so much, he vowed never to return to Ben McDewey alone ever again.

After Kali's speech, his account was widely publicized.

This brought others out of the woodwork who began to relate their own encounters with the uncanny on Ben McDewey.

These included an account from a friend of the late Alexander Kellas, who died in 1921 on an attempt to ascend Mount Everest.

Kellas had allegedly seen a 10-foot-tall figure lurking near the peak of Ben McDewey as well.

But not all sightings of the big gray man were actually sightings.

Some were simply described as a sense of being followed or mysterious footsteps within earshot.

One mountaineer, Alexander Tunian, claimed that in 1943 he had seen the big gray man on Ben McDewey and shot at it with his revolver.

After hitting it three times without slowing it down, Tunyin fled.

Ten years later, another mountaineer named Sir Hugh Rankin came forward, and he managed to get further than anyone, because according to him, he'd actually spoken to the creature.

Rankin had been hiking Ben McDewey with his wife on an unusually quiet and misty day when she alerted him that they were being followed.

According to Rankin, a devout Mahayana Buddhist, walking slowly behind us, he wrote, was a huge human figure, about eight to nine feet tall, dressed in Eastern robes and sandals.

His head was shaven and on his forehead was the bodhisattva symbol, a wheel, which revolves perpetually.

Rankin went on to describe that the symbol glowed as the being lifted its hand, blessing the couple.

Then he heard what he described as a sweet, unearthly music before the Amphir Liyamur walked away.

Of course, as part of his religion, he also believed that these enlightened deities, or bodhisattvas, lived amongst the highest peaks of the Himalayas, with one residing in Scotland's Cairngorm Range.

It's possible that he simply had a spiritual experience atop the mountain, amid the scenic vistas and the natural beauty.

Others, though, believe that the Big Grey Man may just be a hallucination, one brought on by exhaustion due to the difficult conditions of Ben-McDewe.

Other theories that have been suggested for the presence of the creature are aliens, elementals, and the convergence of ley lines.

But there is one alternative explanation for the amphirlia more.

It dates all the way back to 1791, over a century before Collie would give his fateful speech.

A writer and shepherd by the name of James Hoag was only 19 years old when he noticed a dark figure looming over the sheep pens.

According to Hoag, it was foggy that morning.

The sun had cast a rainbow halo around him as he walked toward it.

He later remarked that it, first appeared to my affrightened imagination as the enemy of mankind.

Fearing for his safety, the young shepherd fled, leaving him unsettled for the rest of the day.

Hoag returned the next morning, vowing to prove that what he had seen was real.

Without varying his route at all, Hoag reached the same spot as before and saw it, a 30-foot-tall being that froze the young man where he stood.

All he wanted to do was run home and hide under the covers, but he couldn't move.

Instead, he wept and removed his hat, scratching his head.

The creature mimicked Hoag's movements, with arms like trees and fingers like branches.

Suddenly, Hoag fell to the ground laughing and the eerie figure did the same.

Then he got up and bowed to which the creature followed suit.

It was when he turned toward the sun that the shepherd saw the figure in all its glory.

According to Hoag, the Amphirliamor had a nose about a foot and a half long and a mouth big enough to swallow a person whole.

But he only ever saw this scene of enchantment when the sun was rising and there was fog covering the fields.

Years later, he finally learned what had really caused those visions, a phenomenon known as Bracken Specter.

The Brackenspecter was named for a peak in Germany's Hars Mountains that rises above the clouds.

It's an optical illusion caused when the sun shines behind an observer who is looking down on mist or fog, magnifying their shadow on the vapor in the air.

And the Brackenspecter is real.

I've seen videos of this occurrence with my own eyes, which casts the folklore of the big gray man in in a whole new light.

Perhaps in the end, these mysterious beings aren't really watching us from afar.

They're just a trick of our eyes, deceiving us into believing that we're not alone.

5,000 miles away from Scotland, back in the United States, is the Santa Lucia Mountain Range of California.

Located along the coast, these mountains are home to a group of figures who appear at their peaks, often around dusk or dawn, and are known as the Dark Watchers.

The Dark Watchers have been described as being anywhere from 7 to 15 feet tall, although a few witnesses claim to have seen far shorter beings who were only a few feet in height.

These Dark Watchers wear wide-brimmed hats and long black cloaks.

They hold staves or long sticks, and they're often seen looking into the distance as if they're waiting for a ship to come in from the sea.

But unlike the Amphirliamor or the Big Red Eye, the Dark Watchers don't interact with humanity.

They just observe from a distance, occupying the spaces where humans can't reach, like high mountaintops.

Although the figures do sometimes turn to look at you before disappearing into the mountains.

According to legend, the Dark Watchers are migratory travelers with super hearing and the ability to see across long distances.

Where they go depends on the food available in a particular area and how many strangers may be nearby.

And because of these reasons, the entities are constantly moving along the range.

Now, aside from their heightened sense of sight and sound, they also have noses that would put Cyrano de Bergerac to shame.

They can smell synthetic odors, such as those of electronics, plastics, and the weatherproof coatings on modern gadgets like cameras and GPS trackers, which is why they often don't appear to people carrying such devices, because they can smell them coming.

And while not everyone believes in them, their presence has captivated certain people who view them almost as gods.

These individuals tend to leave small gifts of food in the hills in hopes of gaining their favor and compelling them to appear.

According to several sources, the origins of the Dark Watchers can be found in the stories of the Chumash tribe found around the Santa Lucia range.

Allegedly, the stories were created long before Europeans made contact, but contrary to these sources, nothing in the Chumash folklore appears to map directly onto the stories of the Dark Watchers.

It's more likely that their association with the tribe is a modern white invention instead.

It's also been suggested that in the 1700s, Spanish explorers observed the phenomenon and named the beings the Vigilantes oscuros, or literally Dark Watchers, although even this claim comes from nebulous origins.

To find the earliest references to these nomadic creatures, one must go back to the late 1930s.

California poet Robinson Jeffers included a reference to them in his 1937 poem, Such Counsels You Gave to Me.

Many of Jeffers' works were about the central California coast.

This poem in particular speaks of watchers along the mountains and, I quote, that look human to human eyes, but certainly are not human.

When the narrator gets too close, he sees his own face before the figure melts into the shadows.

One year later, John Steinbeck referenced the Dark Watchers in his short story Flight, in which the main character's mother warns him to stay away from dark watching men in the mountains.

A number of people have claimed to have seen the Dark Watchers over the years, all with similar stories.

They describe the distant sight of shadowy humanoids standing on the mountaintops at dawn or dusk, yet when they try to point them out to friends and companions, the figures have already vanished.

Of course, skeptics have their own explanation as to what the Dark Watchers really might be.

Some say that they're simply optical illusions caused by light bouncing off of trees, or pareidolia, the case of the brain looking for recognizable shapes and patterns, like seeing a smiley face in a wall's chip paint.

Others claim that they're animals, simply standing in place at a distance, or hallucinations caused by exhaustion and isolation.

And one of the more unique theories is that the watchers are the result of infrasound, which is a sound just below the range humans can hear.

It can be caused caused by the wind, which is plentiful at higher altitudes, like on top of a mountain.

In fact, scientists reported that during one experiment with infrasound, 22% of the subjects exposed to it reported feelings of anxiety and fear, along with the sensation that something was pressing on their chest.

And given the distance and elevation at which they're often seen, it's also possible that the Dark Watchers are nothing more than our old friend, the Brock Inspector, the same illusion responsible for the big gray man.

But for the more supernaturally minded, perhaps you might join the folks who see the strange figures atop the Santa Lucia Range and believe them to be wandering spirits or visitors from another planet.

Whatever they are, they're out there and they're watching.

The Dark Watchers have captivated California natives for decades and in different ways.

The lore that has been built around them has expanded over the years as more people witness them and attach their own beliefs to the stories.

From their soaring heights and extraordinary senses to their elusiveness and ethereal nature, the Dark Watchers elicit strong emotions in even the most skeptical of observers.

Observers like Olive Hamilton.

Where some people believe the Watchers to be ghosts or aliens aliens or nothing but optical illusions, Hamilton was one of the few who saw them as more.

To her, they were like gods to be worshipped, or at least revered.

Her lifetime straddled the edge between the 19th and 20th centuries.

She was born in San Jose, California in 1865, and she worked as a school teacher for a number of years.

While she was alive, she gave birth to four children.

three girls and one boy.

And for a long time, she would ascend the mountains to pay her respects to the dark watchers, leaving them a small basket of flowers, fruits, and walnuts, as one writer put it.

She did this on her way to school each day, depositing them in a secluded alcove near Mule Deer Canyon.

And on her way home, she would go back to the alcove to find a number of presents waiting for her in return.

She would take home feathers, seashells, and pine nuts left behind, presumably by the Dark Watchers.

Hamilton felt this daily exchange was like having a conversation with ancient beings.

Olive's grandson Thomas Thomas once said that she was not given in to falsehoods or tall tales.

According to him, and I quote, if she couldn't see it, read it, hear it, touch, or taste it, it didn't exist.

But honestly, these beings did exist, at least to her.

Now, as we've learned, the Dark Watchers have been an inspiration to writers and poets from California.

Robinson Jeffers wrote about them in his work.

Thomas wound up writing a book about the subject in 2014.

It was titled, In Search of the Dark Dark Watchers in collaboration with painter Benjamin Brody.

And the author John Steinbeck also incorporated them into his own writing.

Steinbeck was responsible for some of the greatest novels of our time, including The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.

His work has done much to help capture and convey the experiences of Californians of his era, so it should be of no surprise that the Dark Watchers found their way into a story or two of his.

But it wasn't because of his love of the West Coast.

It was because his family had a history with them, primarily through his mother, Olive Hamilton.

If the legends of old have anything to say about it, there's often a good reason we feel like we're being watched.

In the era of doorbell webcams and 4K video cameras in all of our pockets, you think we'd have gotten used to those sensations.

But clearly, our fear of dark watchers isn't going away anytime soon.

But don't run just yet.

We've tracked down one more story from this realm of folklore, and it's a great conclusion to today's adventure.

Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

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Many of the creatures and beings we've discussed today could easily be explained as tricks of light or optical illusions.

But sometimes the shadow isn't just a shadow.

Sometimes what's hiding inside it is all too real.

On October 17th of 1941, a 73-year-old Denver man named Philip Peters was at home alone.

His wife, Helen, had spent the last five weeks in the hospital recovering from hip surgery.

Meanwhile, Philip's neighbors had been bringing him dinner each night so he could have some company and a good meal while he waited for his wife to come home.

So when he didn't turn up for dinner on the night of the 17th, his neighbors started to get worried.

They went to his house to check on him, and that's when they came across a grisly sight.

Philip was dead, lying on the floor, having been bludgeoned to death with a cast iron stove shaker.

Whoever had hit him had had done so 37 times.

The police were at a loss for a suspect.

The intruder was long gone and there was no evidence of forced entry.

The victim had no known enemies and his murderer hadn't taken any valuables from the home either.

Several months later, Helen Peters was finally released from the hospital.

She came back to her empty home a widow, but after she returned, She started hearing strange rumors around the neighborhood.

Local children claimed to have seen the lights in one window flicker on and off.

Another woman said that she'd seen a ghost-like face looking at her from behind the glass.

And the women who'd been taking care of Helen after her surgery also claimed to have witnessed some odd happenings around the house.

One of those caretakers actually called the police after hearing some tapping coming from the kitchen.

She followed the sound and saw that the door leading to the upstairs floor was open.

A foot appeared in the opening, followed by a slender white hand, which had wrapped its long fingers around the door.

The woman shrieked in terror as the foot's owner fled back upstairs.

She quit that night, only to be replaced by one of Helen's neighbors.

Although, things weren't any better for her either.

That neighbor reported a late-night disturbance in which she'd heard a crashing sound downstairs.

When she went to investigate, she saw a demonic-looking ghost clad in ragged clothes.

It was gangly and glaring at her with haunting yellow eyes.

She screamed and it vanished.

This was the last straw.

Helen Peters moved in with her son in Grand Junction and the house was abandoned.

Detectives were then assigned to keep an eye on it in case any more supernatural visitors showed up.

And on July 30th of 1942, their vigil paid off.

One of the detectives noticed a figure moving through the house.

They ran inside to search the property but came up empty until they heard a noise coming from upstairs.

As they opened up one of the closets, they saw a pair of legs scurry up through a small opening that led into the attic.

One officer grabbed the legs and yanked their owner back down to the floor.

The culprit had finally been caught, but it wasn't a ghost.

It was a 59-year-old man named Theodore Edward Conies, who had been living in the Peters attic for the last year.

The local police chief described Conies as just under six feet, but thin as a wilted weed.

His dirty hair hung low over his ears, and his skin was the ugly, unwashed gray of an overcast sky.

And here's the deal.

Conies had actually known Philip Peters for some time.

He'd been his guitar student when he was younger and had tried to make a life for himself in New York.

But after falling on hard times, Conies came back to Denver and sought out Peters, hoping for at least a warm meal.

But the elderly man was visiting his wife in the hospital at the time.

So Connies decided to help himself to some food, then a makeshift home in the man's attic instead.

And with his capture, the full picture finally came into view.

On that fateful October night, Peters had entered the kitchen and found Conies, who beat his unwitting host to death without even thinking.

He then retreated to the attic and continued to live in the house until his capture.

Conies was sentenced to life in prison after that for the murder of Philip Peters, and he died in the Canyon City Penitentiary in 1967.

Oh, and one last detail.

According to Officer Fred Zarno, the attic was small.

A man would have to be a spider, he said, to stand it long up there.

Which is how Theodore Conys earned his nickname, the Denver Spider-Man.

In the end, he was a legend who was much more than just a scary story to tell around the campfire.

He was a real monster lurking in a normal, everyday home.

And it makes you wonder how many other houses in the world might have their own Theodore Conies.

You better go check your attic, you know,

just to be sure.

This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by Harry Marks and research by Cassandra De Elba.

Lore is much more than just a podcast.

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And as always, thanks for listening.

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