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For hundreds of years, people have gazed at the misty peaks of the Santa Lucia Mountains in California at sunset and have seen tall, masked figures look back. Then, in a few moments, the strange silhouettes disappear.
These crepuscular apparitions are known as the Dark Watchers – shadowy men, sometimes 10 feet tall, decked out in sinister hats and cloaks. They mostly appear in the afternoon, and according to a recent article on SFGate.com, visitors to California have seen them perched ominously on mountain peaks for over 300 years.
“When the Spaniards arrived in the 1700s, they started calling the apparitions los Vigilantes Oscuros (literally ‘black watchers’),” SFGate editor-in-chief Katie Dowd wrote in the article. “And when the Anglo-American settlers began to claim rights in the area, they too felt the sensation of being watched from the hills.
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A famous observer who sensed the presence of the Watchers was American author John Steinbeck. In his 1938 short story “Flight,” a character sees a black figure staring at him from a nearby ridge, “but he quickly looked away, for he was one of the dark observers,” Steinbeck wrote. “No one knew who the Watchers were, or where they lived, but it was best to ignore them and never take an interest in them.” (It was a family obsession; Steinbeck’s son Thomas then co-wrote a book on the Watchers with painter Benjamin Brode, Dowd wrote.)
So who – or what – are the Dark Watchers?
One theory, according to Dowd, is that they are only the product of the model-seeking spirit of observers. In other words, it is a classic case of pareidolia: psychological phenomenon in which the brain of an observer finds patterns or meaning in a vague or random image.
The phenomenon is the reason why some people see Muppet faces on the moon, or the face of Jesus on a burnt toast. In this case, the ordinary shadows on the hills of Santa Lucia can be interpreted by the viewer’s brain as large masked figures (observers tend to appear in the late afternoon, when long shadows adorn the hills, afterwards. all).
This pattern-seeking effect could be amplified by the presence of low-level fog or clouds, according to Dowd. Shadows cast against the clouds are responsible for another infamous illusion, known as the Brocken Specter.
“German residents near the Harz Mountains have, for centuries, reported seeing grim numbers on Brocken Peak,” Dowd wrote. “In reality, the Brocken Specter … occurs when shadows – like those of a hiker – are cast on particularly hazy peaks. If the sun is behind the observer, the haze plays with the shadow, causing it to seem huge and menacing. “
Spectral figures are usually surrounded by a rainbow-colored halo, produced by sunlight refracting water droplets in fog or clouds, according to the BBC. Although this is common in the Harz Mountains, where fog frequently seeps in at low altitudes, you can see the effect on any misty mountainside with the sun in the back and clouds below. from you. You may have seen it yourself from an airplane window; navigating between the sun and the clouds, the aircraft can cast a rainbow-rimmed shadow on the clouds below that appear supernaturally large.
So it’s possible that hikers in the Santa Lucia Mountains are just staring at their own shadows when spotters come to watch. (Sorry, Steinbeck.)
Originally posted on Live Science.
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