Have you seen the Yucca Man?

The Yucca Man is basically the Bigfoot of the High Desert.  It has many names including the Sierra Highway Devil and the Borrego Sandman.  It has been described by Native Americans and has stories by settlers as far back as the 1876.  So why is a Sasquatch type creature being seen in the desert?  Does it live in the desert or is it being seen as it migrates seasonally?  We would like to find out!

The image above is allegedly the Yucca Man at the Hidden Valley Campsite near Joshua Tree from 1990.  It looks eerie however I'm not sure how the Yucca Man manages to be so blurry.

Haunting the Mojave: The Yucca Man

https://www.lancastermoah.org/single-post/haunting-the-mojave-the-yucca-man

The Known Unknown: Tales of the Yucca Man

https://longreads.com/2018/04/25/the-known-unknown-tales-of-the-yucca-man/

The Enigma of the Borrego Sandman: Unveiling the Desert's Cryptid

https://www.gotoborregosprings.com/the-enigma-of-the-borrego-sandman-unveiling-the-desert-s-cryptid#gsc.tab=0

The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO)

https://www.bfro.net/GDB/state_listing.asp?state=ca

Story time.  So this is more of a Skinwalker story, but after researching "googling" about the local history of the Yucca Man, I noticed at least some similarities.  Not an exact match but it's strange.  I am copying the story as I originally told it so I'm not trying to match any details with what I know now.  Enjoy.

So I’ve been thinking about this weird encounter lately and wanted to share.  We moved into a new house and I was still working on unpacking a few months afterward.  I was working in the garage at about 10pm and had the door to my backyard open.  I was cutting boxes when I suddenly  heard a strange animal noise coming from just outside the door.  I stood there a little shocked with the box cutter firmly in my hand.  It was kind of a whooping noise which immediately made me think of Bigfoot.  It sounded animalistic, but it sounded more like a human imitating an animal.  As I stood there staring at the door while the noises  continued, it seemed like whatever it was might come into the garage at any moment.  My thoughts raced to coyote, mountain lion, Sasquatch, or maybe a neighbor pranking me.  None of which I wanted in my backyard.   Most of my property is adjacent to open desert and I was still getting used to the area.  So any of it felt possible.  I decided it was late, I can do these chores tomorrow.  I creeped over to the door and locked it up without looking outside.  Then I noped out of the garage and spent a few minutes peaking out the windows, but never saw anything.  Definitely weird, but animals exist so I wasn’t going to put too much thought into it.  The next morning I told my wife, and she listened intently.  When I finished she said, “I wasn’t going to say anything, but something happened to me last night too!” 

So after my story, my wife told me her half of the encounter.  She was laying in bed on her phone, the kids were asleep in their rooms, and I was working in the garage.  It was a quiet night, but then our dog started barking in the backyard.  The bedrooms are on the opposite side of the house from the garage, and it was strange for the dog to be barking by the bedrooms since there’s just a narrow path between the windows and the fence.  One of the kids started mumbling over the baby monitors so my wife was going to go yell at the dog.  But then she heard an adult voice over the baby monitor.  She froze for a moment wondering who the hell that could be.  Were they outside where the dog was barking, but then why would it  sound like it came from the baby monitor?  She was about to get up when she heard me come in from the garage.  Nothing else happened so she wrote it off as I took care of whatever was happening and went to sleep.  

We both immediately jumped to the same conclusion.  Skinwalker.   It was weird because I don’t ever remember hearing the dog bark even with the garage door open.  According to legend, you’re supposed to ignore Skinwalkers and they will leave you alone.  So we did and nothing like that has happened since.  I have heard that Skinwalkers are confined within the four sacred mountains of the Navajo nation.  We are well outside that area in California and so it would have been something similar to a Skinwalker but not exactly.  I asked my coworker who is  from Mexico if there were any Skinwalker legends from Mexico.  She said  yes there is and they a known to haunt over sleeping children called La Lechuza. This immediately matched up with our experience. 

So I still don’t  know what it was.  I think it was a neighbor, maybe not doing anything  on purpose but just making noises.  But there was a whole lot of weird  things happening at the same time.  I recently added a security camera  system and I’ve already caught a roadrunner, a huge lizard, and a big  ‘ole spider on video.  Maybe I will have a video to add to this story,  but honestly hopefully not. 

Afterward: After I started talking about it, some more experiences happened.  I was sitting at my computer after the kids were asleep when I heard a little girl's voice call out my daughter's name from the front yard.  I went to check the cameras and then an earthquake happened.  I checked on the kids but it didn't wake them up.  Another night I went outside with the dogs and I look up at the fence and saw a horned figure sitting on the corner of my fence.  It was about 3 feet tall and moved with an eerie grace.  I immediately thought it was either a cat or an owl so I started talking to it.  Then it spread it's wings and took off revealing itself as a great horned owl.  Now there is a mating pair that hang around the house.  The only thing is, La Lechuza is a shape shifting witch that turns into an owl.  Now they seem like normal owls though and nothing weird has happened in awhile.