Sightings of Yeti, Bigfoot, and other Bigfoot can be found around the globe. But it seems that they mostly come from forested areas, and in places like arid deserts these creatures apparently do not live. In fact, there are many reports of the sighting of large shaggy humanoid creatures in desert zones and not somewhere in India or Africa, but right in the south of California, where the large Mojave Desert is located.
One such story comes from a place known as the Borrego Badlands. It is located near San Diego. There are very few people there, and there are many dry canyons, dry valleys, dangerous cracks in the ground and many caves deep underground. The Borrego Wastelands are part of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California.
Borrego Wastes.
For many hundreds of years, since the days of the Indian settlements, there have been tales of a tall hairy humanoid creature. When the first Spanish settlers arrived in San Diego in 1769, they heard stories from the Indians many times about a creature who was given the nickname "Hairy Devil". The creature was described as extremely fetid, humanoid and very dangerous to humans.
The colony of these creatures allegedly lived in a certain place near the Santa Ana River and this place was called by the locals "towis puki", which translates as "Devil's camp". All travelers were warned to stay away from this place, but apparently not everyone was frightened by these stories, as many stories about meetings with the "hairy Devil" had accumulated.
In the mid-1800s, with the advent of road coaches, people began to see these creatures more often near a place called "Deadman's Hole", which was passing by the intersection of two coaches. So at the beginning of 1876, one of the passengers of the stagecoach colorfully described how a terrible creature was closely watching him from a short distance.
And soon after that, the mutilated remains of travelers began to be found along the roads. It was believed that these people became victims of wild animals, but all these deaths looked very strange.
Promotional video:
In April 1876, the San Diego Union newspaper published an article by gold digger Turner Helm, who was on his way to Walter's ranch near the Dead Man's Hole with his companion, and stumbled upon the Beast Man. According to the frightened Turner, the creature looked like a "missing link" (this term Charles Darwin called the transitional form between ape and man).
The whole body of the creature was covered with short thick fur, similar to that of a bear, but it was definitely not a bear, since the prospector was describing a completely humanoid face of the creature.
“It was covered from head to toe with short black fur 2–3 inches (5–7 cm) long, but the hair on the head and beard was thicker and much longer. He was about the size of a man of average height, and his features were surprisingly thin and his face was a bit like the face of a Spaniard or a white American settler.
Today, a Yeti sculpture has been erected in the wasteland of Borrego.
Turner and his partner tried to speak to this creature in English, but it did not understand them. Then they spoke in Spanish and even a little in the language of the local Indians, but it was all in vain. The creature all this time stood and looked at the people, but then it began to come closer and stopped only when the frightened men pulled out their guns. Then the creature retreated and disappeared from sight.
A few years later, in March 1888, the San Diego Transcript newspaper published a story by two hunters, Charles Cox and Edward Dean. The men deliberately went to the "Dead Man's Hole" area, because they were furious with many strange cases of murder of local people. All the murders were brutal and it was not clear who could have committed them. Cox and Dean considered the culprit of the mysterious beast and went in search of him.
During their wanderings in the area of the "Dead Man's Hole", they came across a creature that looked like a bear from behind. But then it turned around and surprised the hunters very much.
“Its legs were quite long and with their help it could easily move up the steep stone slopes and bypass rubble, and outwardly it looked very much like a gorilla. His body was completely covered with long dark brown hair, and he was at least 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall.
The front limbs were very similar to the hands of a person and it moved perfectly humanly. The body itself was round and devoid of a tail. The face resembled the face of an Indian and teeth were visible, but these were not the teeth of a predator, but rather the teeth of a herbivore."
After Cox and Dean examined this creature, they decided to kill him and shoot him. The carcass, they said, weighed about 400 pounds (180 kg) and the hunters were sure that it was this creature that was responsible for the mysterious deaths of people in the area. According to the journalist, the body of the creature was later sent to San Diego for study, but then its traces disappeared.
In subsequent years, the monster from Borrego was not seen so often (it is possible that the creatures, after killing one of them, began to avoid meeting people much more carefully), but still there were cases. In 1939, the owner of a small shop said that when he went hiking in the wasteland of Borrego, he was surrounded by a whole flock of ape-like creatures during a halt.
It is curious that they all had fur of an unusual gray-silver color. The eyes burned with red fire and the creatures were apparently very angry with the person. But fortunately the tourist of the creatures was greatly frightened by his fire, and after that they disappeared into the darkness and never returned to him.
A subsequent spike in sightings of strange desert yeti in southern California occurred in 1964. Father and son went on a hike to the Escondido area and there an ape-like creature attacked them and threw stones at them. In those same days, three cows were killed and maimed at a ranch west of Anza-Borrego Park.
One of those who tried to catch the enigmatic creature in the area that year was Marine Victor Stonayow, possibly of Russian descent. He found many unusual three-toed footprints 14 inches (35 cm) long and 9 inches (22 cm) wide. He claimed that he not only saw footprints, but then returned there and made plaster casts of them. The truth is now nothing is known about these casts.
In 1968, a man named Harold Lancaster was conducting exploration in the area and met a strange creature.
“I saw a man wandering in the desert and until he came closer I thought. that this is one of the local miners. But then I began to doubt, took the binoculars and examined them well. And it was the strangest sight in my life, it was a real monkey man!
I've heard of such creatures in the area just above from here, they screamed loudly and frightened people. But I thought it was a hoax and that they do not exist. But now I saw firsthand one of them and it was huge.
And I realized that I was completely defenseless in front of him, and my pistol for him would be like a pellet to an elephant. But I was very afraid that it would come too close and therefore decided to shoot in the air. I fired two shots. Hearing the shots, the creature leapt a good three feet into the air in fear or surprise. Then he turned his head in my direction and rushed to run away."
In 1985, huge humanoid footprints were again discovered in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, and then in the 80s and 90s there were several more abrupt stories about the observation of these creatures, which gradually faded away.
Nowadays, the desert yeti is no longer seen in the wastelands of Borrego, and it's hard to say why. Maybe these creatures have become even more careful, or they have left there to other places.