Top 10 Unsolved Mysteries and Creepy Legends in California

Probably the strangest place in all of California. It's like California's version of Skinwalker Ranch. Every creepy, weird, and mysterious thing you can imagine: UFOs, Bigfoots, ghosts, anomalous energies, unexplained disappearances, and everything else. Some even theorize the mountain is an Earth "power point."

The main legend associated with this volcano is it's the new home for the Lemurians (Lemuria is the Atlantis of the Pacific). Native American tribes in the area claim their ancestors used to see "sky boats" coming in from the ocean, then flying from the water to the mountain. Local residents claim encounters with pale white people with elongated heads.

I've actually driven past Mt. Shasta. It's quite impressive and beautiful.

Known as The Battle of Los Angeles. On February 24-25, 1942, just a few months after America entered WWII, air raid sirens went off in the city of Los Angeles and a total blackout of the city was ordered.

A very large craft entered and hovered over L.A. Shortly after the sirens and blackout, our military shone a spotlight on the craft and started unloading. They began to shoot .50 cal machine guns and fired 12.8-pound anti-aircraft shells at it. Between 3:16 am and 4:14 am, over 1,400 shells were fired. The shelling assault did nothing to the craft, which reportedly slowly cruised away back towards the Pacific Ocean. According to witnesses, the artillery was exploding all around the craft like it had a protective force field or shield of some sort.

The "all clear" order wasn't given until after 7 am. Several buildings and cars were damaged, and 5 people died as a result of the anti-aircraft shelling. The Los Angeles Times has a great photo of the craft (incident) on its front page for February 26, 1942. Official explanation: False alarm caused by "war nerves."

The murder of Elizabeth Short is one of the most famous unsolved murders. Short, a native of Boston, relocated to Southern California in hopes of becoming an actress.

On the morning of January 15, 1947, Short's body was discovered in an undeveloped area of Los Angeles (on South Norton Ave. between Coliseum and West 39th). She was naked, had cuts and slashes all over her body, was severed at the waist, and her right breast was cut off. Her body was drained of blood, and she was given a "Glasgow Smile" (both sides of her face were cut from mouth to ear, giving her a "Joker" smile).

Even more disturbing, the person who dumped the body set her up as if she was "posing." The lower half of her body was about a foot away from the upper half, with her legs open in a sexual manner and her intestines neatly tucked under her buttocks. The top half had her arms over her head, with her elbows bent at a right angle. The police also noted that someone washed the body before dumping it.

During the investigation on January 21, 1947, a local newspaper editor received a phone call claiming to be Short's killer. He informed him he was eventually going to turn himself in, but first, he wanted the police to pursue him a little further. He also told the editor to expect some of Short's belongings in the mail.

On January 24, a manila envelope was discovered by a postal worker. It contained Short's birth certificate, business cards, photos, names written on a piece of paper, and an address book with the name Mark Hansen across the front. Police claim the envelope and all its content, like the body, were cleaned with gasoline. The cops were still able to get partial fingerprints from it, but they claimed the samples were compromised during transit and could not be properly analyzed (some claim a cover-up). There's a theory that the killer may have been a cop or someone very powerful and well-protected.

Needless to say, Mark Hansen was instantly a suspect... more

To this day, I'm really curious about what happened here. Back in the early or mid-'90s, a couple of us were hanging out at a friend's house when there was a live breaking special report that interrupted the TV.

The reporter was on the scene at Riverside Hospital in Riverside, California, where the hospital was evacuated because of "toxic fumes" that came out of a woman. They reported that a woman came in under what they thought was cardiac arrest. When they cut her open for surgery, or it might have been when they simply inserted an IV, toxic fumes came out of the woman's body. They reported the woman's blood was "crystallized" and the doctors and nurses who were working on her got very ill from the fumes, and their blood started to crystallize too.

The reporters (this broke on many local channels here) looked scared and panicked. The scene in the background seemed chaotic. It was mid-evening when this happened. The news said that was all the info they had at the time and would report back and keep us updated throughout the night and have more on it in the morning.

Well, guess what? Complete silence. No follow-up reports, nothing in the newspaper. My friends and I were so intrigued by this story, we were searching for days for more info to no avail. The media must have been told to drop the story and stay silent by somebody for some reason.

In the Santa Lucia Mountains, which stretch between Avila to Monterey along the coast, are The Dark Watchers. Apparently, The Dark Watchers are gigantic shadow phantoms that numerous hikers have claimed to see on a regular basis.

They always appear around twilight and seem to be gazing off at nothing in particular. When and if people are able to make it up to where they are and approach them, they vanish right before their eyes. Supposedly, they are so big they've been reported to have been sighted by pilots flying over the area. People who frequently hike the area claim it's almost a guarantee you'll see them. They've even been depicted on cave drawings from the Chumash Indians and are part of their oral legends.

In the '60s, a local high school principal who frequently hiked the area was able to observe one for a long period of time. He claims he witnessed it long enough to make out clothing (they have capes or cloaks) and noticed the figure was strangely studying or surveying the mountains.

Supposedly, there's an underground city built by "lizard people" under Los Angeles. This all started with a mining engineer and treasure hunter named G. Warren Shufelt in 1933. Shufelt apparently built a radio x-ray device and found tunnels. I know for a fact that an underground tunnel system exists because I've been in them. They are rumored to stretch from the coast all the way to Riverside. One supposedly goes directly under Disneyland.

Shufelt found chambers and even "underground cities" under L.A. According to him, the city he found under L.A. was in the shape of a lizard (its head under northeast Los Angeles with its body extending to the downtown Central Library where the tail is located). With permission from the city (he was to turn over any treasure or artifacts that were found to the city), he began drilling from a Los Angeles Library located at 518 Hill St. His shaft made it down 250 feet before the city abruptly called off the project for some reason. The hole was then filled.

The L.A. Times newspaper did a few reports on this story. Check out the front page on January 29, 1934. Now, for how the "lizard people" story came to be. When the news broke of the discovery of the catacombs and "city" under L.A., Little Chief Greenleaf of the Hopi Indian Tribe claimed his tribe knows who built and occupied the underground city. They claim that an ancient race of scientifically advanced humanoid reptiles built the catacombs and city, using chemicals to dissolve or bore out the rocks/ground, to escape from some sort of cataclysm over 5,000 years ago.

One interesting note is they claimed the tunnels from the "city" extend all the way to and out the Pacific Ocean. They claimed the ebb and flow of the ocean waters forced air into their city through the tunnels. Now, Google underwater entrance off the coast of Southern California. Kinda weird, right? Sleestaks, anybody?

I also wanted to note when I first heard of this story many years... more

In 1961 in the city of Watts, police were receiving numerous phone calls from multiple concerned citizens about a strange, bizarre creature that had the body of a dog and the face of a woman roaming around.

She was described as having hair all over her body and walked on all four legs, but all the people that reported it swear it was not a dog. Police initially thought the first few reports were prank calls. However, after 3 more hours of numerous calls, they changed their minds. To this day, there are reports of an unknown creature that lurks around the train tracks of Watts.

As usual, there's a lot of "monster" stories associated with this kind of topic. I chose to post this one because not only is it one of the more intriguing ones, it also happened about 3-4 miles from where I used to live.

On November 8, 1958, a man named Charles Wetzel was driving on Main St. in Riverside, California. When he approached the bridge that goes over the riverbed, which was flooded and overflowing its banks, his radio cut out. As he was trying to fix his car radio, a creature emerged and started attacking his car. He describes the creature as a bipedal, reptilian-like, 6-7 feet tall, with scaly skin, no nose, no ears, and fluorescent eyes. He also described it as having "a round scarecrowish like head like something out of Halloween." (I find it interesting that this happened right after Halloween. Prank?) He further described it as having long, slender arms and legs that grew out of its sides rather than underneath its body.

His account is that the creature jumped on his hood and started to claw at his windshield. He floored the accelerator, causing the creature to fall off his hood onto the ground, where he claims he partially ran it over. He reported the incident to the police. The police reports state that there were indeed deep claw marks on his windshield and underneath his car, and he did appear to have run something large over. The next night, another man claimed he was also attacked by an unknown creature in the same area.

It gets a little weirder. On July 21 of the same year, across the country in Nebraska, another man with the same name (Charles Wetzel, both of whom had a son named Charles) also encountered a creature. However, the Charles Wetzel in Nebraska claims he encountered a tall "kangaroo-like" creature. Nowadays, there are a lot of homeless people who live down in the riverbed. To this day, there are strange reports along the riverbed of reptile-like creatures hovering over the water and watching people.

What's an unsolved mysteries list without a lake monster, right? We have got a couple of stories over here. I chose "Tahoe Tessie" because it's the most frequently sighted.

About half a dozen sightings are reported each year. The creature is described as 20-80 feet long, serpent-like, with reptile features and smooth skin. Reportedly, it swims with an "up and down" motion rather than "side to side" like a snake or reptile would.

Lake Tahoe is a very old, large, deep lake (1,465 feet) with a lot of underwater caves, so it would be ideal for a "monster" to occupy. It is rumored that in 1970 Jacques Cousteau himself came to study and explore the lake. It is claimed that he discovered something so disturbing, he wouldn't release any data or underwater footage because humanity wasn't ready for what he discovered in the lake.

Personally, I think people might be seeing a large sturgeon or catfish (look up how freakishly big these fish can get).

We had a recent sighting here in the SoCal mountains (Lake Arrowhead) that was all over the media. Personally, I think the lady and her kids who reported it are mistaken or just straight full of crap.

However, people claim they see these gorilla dudes and dudettes regularly, especially in northern California.