Haunted Route 152: The Pacheco Pass in California

It is almost two in the morning, and the rumble of the truck's engine is still powering along. Peers seeing the silence along the dark roads, Only the yellow flickering lights along the highway remind you that you're still on the road. Nothing can be seen around you, nothing can be seen behind you, and the limits of the head lights are all you can see in front of you. As a road turns to the right, once again, the radio appears to have stopped working. The static can find a few words here and there. It's about special orders and phone number to a service you don't care about. It's here when you decide to shut down the radio and instead of concentrate on simply getting through the pass, that's when you realize, and off into the distance, a distinct figure can be seen standing on the side of the road. If you had not passed by any other cars or trucks, you're at thing that resembled a house must have been about half an hour behind you. Now, California typically isn't that cold that late at night, but during this time of the year near the end of the summer, temperature would drop more than normal, especially around these areas. You begin to slow down knowing that the load of the truck behind you will make stopping a bit more difficult. As you get closer, you begin to see the silhouette move from the side of the road toward the middle of it. It appears to be glowing against her headlines, wobbles and crouches down. The type of animal, you think to yourself as you slow down even more, trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness, even as you flick on your high beams. But it isn't until you're less than twenty yards away, as you realize that the thing in the middle of the road isn't anything you have ever seen seen before, turns its head up and extends its wings. A large creature with feathers far too large to be a bird with human like features. It begins to flap its wings towards your windshield as it lets out terrifying shriek. Your truck then comes to a complete stop as you look above you through your windshield. What did you see? You sit there for a moment before you convince yourself to look over to the left side of the truck, convince yourself of being too tired to make sense of what you're seeing. A half man, half bird, creature looking red at you. The reports I've mentioned it before, Creatures, ghosts, and the dark history behind one of the most haunted areas in California, one that is filled with death, darkness, nun explained phenomena. Welcome to California State Route one fifty two with the Pacheco Pass in California. My name is Edwin, and here is a dark memory. One of the largest landowners in Monterey County was a man born in seventeen ninety named Francisco Peres Pacheco. And if his last name rings a bell, it's because many area as parks, and even the Pacheco Pass that this episode is about, are named after him. He was a soldier and a public figure and received many land grants, including this one, the Pacheco Pass. If you were to simply look at the area, you'd consider it a regular piece of land. It is a low mountain pass with an elevation of around four hundred meters. The pass is one hundred and six miles long and is located in an area known as Diablo Range. The name seems appropriate today. You can locate it through the southeastern Santa Clara County in California, and it is the main route through the hills between Santa Clara Valley and Central Valley. As a matter of fact, this was a common drive for me back in twenty thirteen and twenty fifteen, and it is how I came to learn about this area. I always thought there was something strange about those long drives in the middle of the night. It wasn't until I started learning about it that I realized just how bizarre it truly is. The late eighteen hundreds, the area was known as Robbers Pass because of two highwaymen that would frequent the area to rob, rape, and murder travelers. Today, the area is also known as Blood Alley because of the many traffic accents and have occurred there. A trail that runs through the Pacheco State Park was used by the Jocuts people to cross the mountains and trade with other native people. It was first put on paper in eighteen oh five. In general, this area is tough to cross, but there are very few alternatives. Today, it's commonly used by those going from the Bay Area to the Central Valley in California and vice versa. You say that in the seventeen hundreds, Massacres occurred by the Spanish settlers. The history doesn't stop there, as you will soon find out, the many stories that surround this area will make you want to skip your trip altogether. That are one of the local publications, the Gilroy Dispatch. A story of a psychic who was traveling along the Pacheco Pass stands out as an experience you may have heard of her. Her name is Sylvia Brown. She was on the road with her husband Dal driving past the San Luis Dam when she started to feel something strange. Powerful emotions began to run through her body, and that's when she started to see images of what appeared to be a little girl in a covered wagon just as a wagon train was being attacked. She could see images of battles between Spaniards, Mexican and American settlers. She was visibly disturbed and even suffered from a panic attack. Were her images some type of memory of the terrible things that happened in the area long ago? Was she looking at the spirit world? It could be, you see. The Pacheco Pass has been flooded with reports of sightings of ghostly figures and even phantom trucks happened to be walking along the side of the highway one evening through the hills and dry brush of the surrounding areas. Behind her, a semi truck was driving at full speed and through a minor distraction. She was struck and the woman died immediately. Now reports of a truck driving past other drivers, along with a panicked woman screaming from the passenger side window can be heard. However, right when she gets your attention, her and the phantom truck vanish to thin air. As you drive through the dark two way road, you see a figure on there, a woman dress in Victorian clothing, roaming around and turning her head off to the sides. As you approach her, that's when you begin to hear the thunder of the stage coaches, the strange sounds of the horses, unlike any you have ever heard before. They say that this woman fits the description of the legend of the Victorian woman, the one who roams at the side of the highway forever searching for her child. Following story is more of a personal one, and one that inspired, at least in part, the creation of this episode. A close family member is a truck driver, and he and those that work with him used to make constant drives along the Pacheco Pass, and most, if not all, of the drivers have an eerie story somehow linked to it. With good reason too. The area, as mentioned before, has become known for its traffic accidents, so warnings about slow traffic or an emergency operation happening in the area are common alerts that drivers get to either avoid the route or be prepared to wait. Several times drivers alert others of things that appear out of this world. He told me about an encounter that still has not left me. The sun was not going to come up for another couple of hours, and he was hard at work, heading up toward the Bay Area following a delivery at a sprout's market. The engine was humming in front of him with the occasional brake air release as a truck made its way through Highway one point fifty two. Then up ahead on the side of the road, it appears to be a person crosses and stands on the right side waiting for the truck. Now, there are many incidents that are far too graphic to describe that truck driver's see, but it's always good practice to either slow down or move over a lane whenever there's a stopped vehicle on the shoulder of the road, and that's what he did. He flicked on the turn signals change lanes, and then slowed down as he approached a woman on the side of the road, not carrying anything with her. He slowed down, pulled over and watched through the mirror as a young woman walks over to the passenger side of the semi truck. The mirrors loose track of her as she gets closer, so he steps over to the passenger seat and ready to roll down the window and then ask maybe she needed help with something. As hitgehikers are not that uncommon in the mountain areas of northern California, some people still like to experience the outdoors in that manner. But in the middle of the night, alone and without any hiking gear or even a backpack, he looked out the window and decided to lower it, but neither the mirrors nor the lights from the side of the truck had spot her. He stepped over to the window on the driver's side, which had been lowered just a little bit to get some air, but when he looked outside, there was no one there. Again, truck drivers have seen many out on the road, so he suspected that perhaps she had hidden somewhere underneath the trailer who had gone inside, So he grabbed his phone in his flashlight just in case, and opened the door. But once he stepped down and locked the doors, he looked out over the trailer, he realized that there was nowhere else for the young woman to go. The specific area had a few trees that were far away, and no other soul could be seen for miles. The back door of the trailer was sealed shut with no signs of foul play. He scanned underneath the trailer and walked all the way around the vehicle, but there was no one around. He climbed back in the truck and looked around his bunk bed and even opened up the tiny closet compartment just to be safe, but he eventually realized that he was likely the only other person in the area at that time in the middle of the night. The notice he sent out to the dispatch was mixed with confusion and a bit of fear, as he admitted when he told me the story, but nothing could compare with the feeling of validation that he felt when he was asked if he was in the Pacheco Pass, which he promptly confirmed. The phone call went silent for a bit, but then the dispatcher mentioned that he should simply lock his doors and keep driving, that it had not been the first time such an encounter had been described to him and his coworkers. The legend says that a young girl was struck and killed by a semi truck, and her spirit can now be spotted roaming that section of Highway one point fifty two. Up next, we have even more tales of ghosts that roam the Pacheco Pass. The journalist Tom Keller was driving his old car over the Pacheco Pass back in nineteen ninety eight, according to an article that he wrote in twenty eleven for the Union News for Nevada City. It was making the trip as he was falling asleep, between the area of Santa Anela and Watsonville, just after midnight. It was then when a bright light, something that he described as the sun coming out in the middle of the night, illuminated the surrounding landscape for about ten seconds. The light made it look like daytime and he could see everything around him, and the night came once again, shaking and obviously Nervous over the situation, he pulled over to the side of the road, wondering if he should call somebody. Confused, he started doubting what he had actually seen. But it was after some time when he got a call from an artist named Gloria Beth Edwards from Nevada County. Seeing that she wanted to talk about an experience that she had more than forty years before. The interview disintrigued Tom Keller and decided to write a piece about it. According to the article, Gloria had been living in Nevada County since the early nineteen seventies and became known as a wilderness artist whose work had been admired by President Ronald Reagan. Tom visited the eighty year old's home for the interview, and it was then when she told him about her experience. Quote back in nineteen sixty five, I got off of work at Harvey's Wagon Wheel in South Lake Tahoe, and Chum who wrote to work with me and I went up to Kingsbury to go home after midnight, and all of a sudden, the sky lit up. She continues, I thought that maybe there had been an explosion or a fire. We kept going for about a block and then saw this thing come over the mountains. We let everything up like one of those torches used for Weldon. It came right at us, and I thought it was going to hit us. Their terrifying story led her to draw out what she had seen so that she wouldn't forget about it, but decided not to tell anybody in fear of losing her job. According to her interview, people back then used to do that sort of thing if you started seeming a bit crazy talking about UFOs and flying saucers enough to get fired. Just a few days later, though, Gloria heard from an airman that he had witnessed a strange occurrence over the Pacific Ocean. It had been a UFO that came out of nowhere. They tried to get photographs, but the bright light had disappeared. Gloria simply listened, refusing to talk about her own experience at the time until this interview with Tom Keller. Strange lights around the area are just another odd phenomena of the locals and those crossing the Pacheco Pass talk about, but perhaps even more strange, it's a phenomena of time skipping, time warping it's true what they say. However, the route as you cross up a Checko Pass is scenic, the roads themselves do not seem to be the safest, at least to me. Two way roads sometimes passing dangerously close to other vehicles and twists and turns are not for the faint of heart. But what is strange is that many travelers have reported unexplained terrors as they drive along, and some have experienced that the many miles that it takes across the Pa Checko Pass have only taken a few minutes, just like the case on another episode of Barney and Betty Hill and their alien abduction. Could it be possible that other worldly entities are picking off drivers and their passengers, experimenting on them, and then returning the confused humans back to the road without any recollection of it happening. A local was sitting on the courtyard of the very mission he helped found, known as Lamision San Juan Bautista. Back during the times when the missionaries were building the missions all along California. Times were strange as the state was still being inhabited by the natives of California and the relationships between the settlers had to be adjusted between them. The sun was setting after a hard day of work, and even the Native Americans who worked with a day to day task with the mission, with things like cleaning, cooking, taking care of the animals, and washing clothes, we're all heading back to their sleeping areas. But for this monk things were different. You see, he had fallen in love with a young girl from there, and they began meeting secretly on a hill besides Fremont's Peak, not far from the area of the Piccheco Pass. Obviously, this was against the rules, so everything had to be kept in secret. However, it did not take long for the townspeople to find out, and now the monk had to deal with the consequences of his actions. The monk was excommunicated from the church, and as for the girl, she was banished from the tribe. Completely heartbroken and hopeless, the monk hurried over to their meeting spot on the hill to be together just one more time. His heart was raising with fear and excitement as he climbed up the grassy hill, with views behind him becoming clear with every step that he took the young girl would be waiting for him. But when he arrived his heart stopped. The young girl was dead. He knelt beside her as his heart went cold and heavy with sadness. Two souls meeting at the wrong place and at the wrong time. His heart couldn't take it anymore, and without seeing any other purpose to his own life, he took it. Today, travelers claim to see a man in a black robe on the side of the road. Well. Others have said that both spirits still frequent their meeting spot on that hill where they can be with each other. Finally, the section of the road that goes through the Pacheco Path is a single lane highway in each direction, and crossing it at night has not fared well with sleepy drivers who are trying to get back home and have no alternatives but to go through it. Unfortunately, this has led them to crossover onto incoming traffic and meeting their untimely death in that manner. Such was the case of a man who was driving in that section of Route one point fifty two who was in a car accident and did not make it out alive. He was about to get married, and upon learning about the tragedy, his fiance put on the wedding dress and went to the scene of the accident. The heartbreak was too much for her to bear, and in an area after a small grove of trees where there is an outcropping of rocks, she started climbing. She climbed and climbed, without a care in the world about ruining her dress and about her own life. Through tears and cries, she looked down and jumped. She died instantly. Today in that area, reports come in every once in a while of a woman roaming around in her wedding dress, floating through the darkness. As you drive through California States Route one point fifty two, your mind begins to drift away from the double yellow lines as they twist and turn against the black asphalt. You imagine the historic trails that surround the areas, the many people who cross over the mountains with dreams of better lives, generations before you were born, of those who endured the cold, the dark, the ghosts of those who came before them. Your mind begins to play games on you once more, with the strange silhouettes walking barely taking notice of you as you pass alongside them, the hitchhikers, the monk, the large creature with wings, and into the distance. You're convinced that your eyes are playing tricks on you. As you see a pair of lights up ahead, your heart begins to be faster. Your hands script the steering wheel stories were true. You suddenly hear the thud thud thud of the highway against her tires, and you see a strong pair of headlights in front of you, honking. You open your eyes wide and move over to your lane. Once again, it's close. This episode of A Dark Memory was researched by madel Nguera and written and produced by me Edwin Coomarduis. Send me your idea for an episode of A Dark Memory by going to the website A Dark Memory dot com or by using the email in the description of this episode. If it's mysterious, dark or creepy you want to learn about it, find out about our other shows by going to Scary dot Fm or by using the link in the description of this episode. Thank you very much for listening. Let's see as soon