M.L. Behrman - Mojave Mysteries: Real Tales of Unknown Creatures, UFOs, Ghosts, Devil Cults, Giants and Mysterious Murders in the California Desert (Desert Paranormal Series Book 1)

If youre looking for a remote spot to hone your vision and meditate upon the divine nature of the cosmos, the desert is the spot. A long line of prophets and religious leaders over the centuries have proved that. Nothing beats sitting on a high rocky outcrop or open space and watching the sun go down while pondering the meaning of life or simply enjoying the beauty of nature and creation. But, the desert also has that same draw for another type of personality; those that want to use its remoteness as cover for their crimes and warped cult activities. Whether its the wacky drugged-out ravings and murders of someone like Charles Manson and his family or the numerous black mass and demonic societies that often practice their evil far into the interior, the desert has given birth and more often death , to many inclined to the dark side. I have more than a few cases of the strange and bizarre relating to this malevolent aspect of the beautiful Mojaves spiritual consciousness in my files, but first want to relate something that happened to me personally.

Its no surprise that as I love to wander and explore out in the desert Ive come across more than a few things that have left me scratching my head. But few have made me feel there was a genuine evil or darkness to their existence more than the following little story.

I often just travel about in my jeep visiting the long abandoned or ruined cabins that dot the desert in untold numbers, taking pictures and poking about to discover just what people were doing out there in the middle of seemingly nowhere. Often the ruined shack or cabin is testimony to the failed dreams of a mining operation or desperate homesteading, other times you just know there was something going on that would take someone with the observational and deductive skills of Sherlock Holmes to unravel. Back in 2006 I was motoring along an old dirt track out in the Mojave south of Barstow near Ord Mountain just kind of drifting and seeing what I could see when I spotted an old wrecked cabin out on a flat spot near a ravine. As there were no signs or warnings that it was private property, and the trail to it didnt look as it had been recently traveled, I cruised over and parked. It was your fairly common 1930s style cabin with a couple of rooms, iron stove in the corner and an outhouse just near the back door. The tar paper roof had mostly collapsed and the plasterboard walls were pretty much broken out and shot full of holes unfortunately a natural fate of anything left unattended in the desert. It sat on a concrete slab so I didnt have to worry about snakes under the rotten floorboards, I just had to keep an eye out for the numerous rusty nails that poked up from the collapsed roof beams (cheap 2x4s actually) and make sure I didnt impale myself on anything nasty. The first and main room was empty other than a moldy ripped up mattress in the corner and some broken beer bottles with scatterings of rat droppings. But it was in the second, more complete room that I came across something really shocking and also depressing.

Someone had painted a huge red dripping pentagram on the back wall, in the middle of which was nailed the crucified body of a large black desert raven. The body was desiccated and dried, but the huge wings were outspread and the beaked head still sat atop the slumped shoulders with its long sharp beak open in a silent scream. All around it was spray-painted numerous foul obscenities and bloody curses, directed mainly at women, and the repeated lines this is for the master and I am coming for you adorned the walls. Yikes! The whole thing just had the feeling of murderous insanity and mental sickness, obviously from the hand of some warped adult more than the misguided lark of drunk or goofy teenagers and I just spent a few more moments in the room before leaving without even taking a picture. Why record it? Who would want to look at that crap again? I have to admit I had to stifle the urge to just drop a match on the place and burn it down, but refrained. Stepping out the smashed doorway, I immediately looked around the ground to see if I could see any prints or signs that the person or persons who had done this might have recently visited, but saw nothing but my own boot prints and the tracks of a few animals. You can bet I also pulled out the binoculars and scanned the nearby hillsides to make sure nobody was even then watching me or their ghastly shrine. I walked back to the jeep and left. The devil nonsense didnt really bother me as I think most that crap is a joke, but the misogynist threats and killing of an innocent animal bothered me and rather put a damper on the rest of my day trip. I had to wonder if the person that did that was capable of something even worse, and could only hope he had been locked up (or better yet, run over by a truck) before committing any further outrage. But as the following accounts will show, there seems to be a more than a few more others out there up to the same sort of mischief or worse!

One rather horrid modern account I have is from a man, an undocumented worker as you will, who was hitchhiking from the aptly named Sandy Valley just along the California-Nevada state line down to Baker. He had been working as a house painter and had a friend in the small desert town who could hook him up with a crew that was doing private contracting jobs. Taking one of sole roads out of Sandy Valley, the man, whom well call Antonio, was not having much luck, as the road is not that well-traveled and he had been hiking most of the day in a searing June heat. Arriving at the dirt turn-off into the Mesquite Wilderness Area, he was sitting by the road finishing the rest of his water figuring he was going to have to spend the night laying on the hot ground just off the road when to his delight an old pickup came down the road and seeing him with his thumb out, actually stopped. Most people wont pick up hitchhikers in the best of areas, and finding someone way out in the desert either means theyre lost, or worse, some whacko looking for trouble. But Antonio lucked out. And the better part of the deal was that the driver was an older woman in her fifties along with someone he took to be her daughter, a younger woman in her twenties. Anyone whos ever hitchhiked knows that its a two-edged sword; you never know whos going to stop and sometimes they can be the nut! How many times have we heard of serial killers cruising the interstate just to find random and vulnerable victims? But the two women seemed friendly enough, so sliding in beside the daughter Antonio thanked them and although they said they were only going part way down to Baker, he was more than glad to get out of the burning desert sun. He had noticed they had some grocery bags in the back of the pickup and figured they were on their way back from the store.