The Dark Watchers

Tall shadowed figures, seven to ten feet by most tellings, standing on the ridgelines of the Santa Lucias with the outline of a hat and a walking stick, watching hikers and gone when the fog shifts. The Spanish called them los Vigilantes Oscuros in the 1700s, Chumash story knew the shapes long before, and both Robinson Jeffers and John Steinbeck put them in print in the 1930s; Steinbeck’s mother left offerings on her walks. Science offers the Brocken spectre, your own shadow thrown giant on the mist. The reports keep coming anyway.