The Dark Watchers (also known by early Spanish settlers as Los Vigilantes Oscuros) is a name given to a group of entities in California folklore purportedly seen observing travelers along the Santa Lucia Mountains.
[2] While sometimes attributed to the Chumash people who historically inhabited the central and southern coastal regions of California, nothing analogous to the legend appears to exist in their mythology.
[4][1] The Dark Watchers are most famously given a brief mention in John Steinbeck's "Flight", included in the 1938 collection of his short stories The Long Valley: "Pepé looked suspiciously back every minute or so, and his eyes sought the tops of the ridges ahead.
But when he approached it he recognized the shabby clothes and pale hair and even the averted forehead and concave line from the eye to the jaw, so that he was not surprised when the figure turning toward him in the quiet twilight showed his own face.
[7][8] According to newspaper archives in the mid-1960s, a Monterery Peninsula local and former high school principal went on a hiking trip in the Santa Lucias when he suddenly spotted a dark figure standing on a rock and surveying the area.