Mar 16, 2021 08:05 AM
https://www.livescience.com/dark-watcher...usion.html
EXCERPTS: For hundreds of years, people have looked up at the hazy peaks of California's Santa Lucia Mountains at sunset and seen tall, cloaked figures staring back. Then, within moments, the eerie silhouettes disappear.
These twilight apparitions are known as the Dark Watchers — shady, sometimes 10-foot-tall (3 meters) men bedecked in sinister hats and capes. They primarily appear in the afternoon, and according to a recent article on SFGate.com, visitors to California have seen them perched ominously on the mountaintops for more than 300 years.
[...] So, who — or what — are the Dark Watchers? One theory ... is that they are merely figments of the observers' pattern-seeking minds. In other words, it's a classic case of pareidolia: a psychological phenomenon in which an observer's brain finds patterns or significance in a vague or random image.
[...] "In reality ... shadows — like those of a hiker — are cast on particularly misty mountain peaks. If the sun is behind the observer, the mist plays with the shadow, making it look huge and menacing." The spectral figures are usually surrounded by a rainbow-colored halo, produced by sunlight refracting off of water droplets in the fog or clouds, according to the BBC... (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: For hundreds of years, people have looked up at the hazy peaks of California's Santa Lucia Mountains at sunset and seen tall, cloaked figures staring back. Then, within moments, the eerie silhouettes disappear.
These twilight apparitions are known as the Dark Watchers — shady, sometimes 10-foot-tall (3 meters) men bedecked in sinister hats and capes. They primarily appear in the afternoon, and according to a recent article on SFGate.com, visitors to California have seen them perched ominously on the mountaintops for more than 300 years.
[...] So, who — or what — are the Dark Watchers? One theory ... is that they are merely figments of the observers' pattern-seeking minds. In other words, it's a classic case of pareidolia: a psychological phenomenon in which an observer's brain finds patterns or significance in a vague or random image.
[...] "In reality ... shadows — like those of a hiker — are cast on particularly misty mountain peaks. If the sun is behind the observer, the mist plays with the shadow, making it look huge and menacing." The spectral figures are usually surrounded by a rainbow-colored halo, produced by sunlight refracting off of water droplets in the fog or clouds, according to the BBC... (MORE - details)