The Dark Watchers
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."
1970's Stamp of Robinson Jeffers
Also in 1937, 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. - Weird California: You Travel Guide to California's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets
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Man tries to 'kill the devil' by setting his house on fire
A fire believed to have been started by a man trying to “kill the devil” has razed four houses in Kampung Bagan Dalam at Jalan Assumption here.
The 54-year-old had allegedly set fire to his double-storey wooden house at about 7.30am yesterday.
A neighbour, Wani Azman, 16, said he saw the man screaming that he “had killed the devil” after setting the wooden structure alight.
“The fire quickly spread to other houses. I shouted for help and fled from my house with my family members. I then saw the man casually walking away from the scene like nothing had happened.
“Luckily, my family’s house was spared,” she said.
Another neighbour, Abdul Razak Ali, 46, said his family of six was cleaning the house after sahur when he spotted the flames.
“The fire reached my house and razed it within minutes. My nephew managed to carry me to safety,” said the wheelchair-bound victim.
Butterworth fire station chief Mohd Khalil Abdul Rahim said 30 firemen managed to bring the fire under control within 30 minutes, adding that a distress call was received at 7.35am.
No casualties were reported and losses were estimated at more than RM250,000. Police are now looking for the man to assist in investigations into the case, which has been classified as arson.
Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, who is also Bagan MP, later handed over RM1,000 each to three of the house owners while the fourth received RM800 when he visited the scene.
He said the money came from the Social Welfare Department and the state district office.
Businessman Datuk R. Arunasalam also visited the victims, who are staying with their relatives, and gave them rations. - The Star
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American wakes up speaking fluent Swedish
Michael Boatwright's driver's license says he was born in Florida, but after waking up from a hospital bed in Palm Springs, Calif., all he can speak is Swedish.
MyDesert.com has a new in-depth report on Boatwright, who was found unconscious in a motel room on February 28. He has no memory of his life and only responds to the name "Johan Ek."
Doctors have diagnosed Boatwright with Transient Global Amnesia, a disorder in which patients are unable to form new memories.
Medical personnel also believe Boatwright is in a dissociative fugue state, wherein a person forgets their past and can sometimes take on a new personality.
Boatwright, who appears to have lived in Sweden for much of his life, has an online portfolio that says he got a bachelors from Michigan State and Masters from Stockholm University.
It's unclear if Boatwright's symptoms will be temporary, but similar conditions make headlines with regularity.
Two months ago, the Telegraph reported on a man with "Walking Corpse Syndrome" who thought he was dead.
And, unlike Boatwright who likely spoke Swedish before he found himself in the California hospital, Englishman Alun Morgan woke up from a stroke last December to discover he could only speak Welsh, a language he never formally learned. - THP
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Alien spaceships abducted our pet dog and stole our car in Cardiff
The fleet of 12 to 15 alien space crafts were seen by 37-year-old Keith Robins one evening in 1992 while on a Whitchurch camping trip with friends Christopher French and Sylvan Salway.
Still at school, Keith and his friends had asked permission from their parents to go on the trip. But the group were left disappointed when before they had a chance to pitch their tent, the alien vessels made off with their Datsun Cherry and all its contents.
“We got all our stuff together and we parked the car up in Whitchurch,” said Keith, from Rumney.
“We went looking for a gully area. My two mates were a little bit further ahead of me.”
With Keith’s camping tent and Chris’ eight-week-old pit bull staffordshire terrier eight-week-old puppy still inside, the locked car “vanished” off the face of the earth without the engine starting.
“It all happened so fast in about three to five minutes. I walked back to the car and it had just vanished off the face of the earth,” said Keith.
With the car missing, it was at this point that all three noticed a bright glow above the trees that were there for just under a minute before zooming off into space.
“These lights came from behind these massive trees. About 12 to 15 of them. I thought they were pink flamingos. My other mates thought they were fire flies,” he said.
“They then just speeded up and were gone in 30 seconds. I was baffled – so confused.”
The next day, Keith and his friends reported the incident to the police, leaving out the mysterious floating objects, but a search for the Datsun Cherry and it’s contents proved futile.
Keen to find out what he saw, Keith sent a handwritten letter and diagram showing the alien space crafts and sent it to the MoD in October 1992.
“I don’t 100% know what happened but what happened I’m going to believe it for the rest of my life. I’m willing to have a lie detector test,” he said.
“I’ve been telling this story for years.
“I’ve been a believer ever since.”
Mr Robins’ story was just one of many extraterrestrial tales revealed to the public when the Ministry of Defence released its final cache of UFO documents.
The 25 files contained 4,400 pages of reports received between 2007 and 2009 with details of alien abductions, air chases between police and UFOs and spaceship wreckages.
The MoD’s UFO desk, which handled these reports, saw the number of UFO sightings rocket, with 600 reported in 2009 alone.
Buckling under the weight of these submissions, the project was recently shutdown, but Nick Pope, who worked for the UFO project from 1991 to 1994 said believers should not be laughed off too quickly.
“The believers only have to be proved right once,” he said. - WalesOnline
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