The story goes like this…
On a dark desert night, a young Marine reports for duty at his scheduled post at a guard station at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms. It’s an uneventful shift… until just after midnight when a low growl rumbles from the desert beyond the guard booth. The young Marine steps out of his booth to investigate. He advances two paces and then doubles over as the pungent odor of rot catches in his nostrils. He staggers towards the pitch-black wilderness, clutching his throat. And then he sees it, two large eyes, glowing like red-hot coals, staring at him in the night. The Marine reaches for his weapon and then bam! He falls back into the sand, struck down by the mysterious beast! The young Marine is found by his command the next morning. The Marine’s face has a gash running from temple to jaw, small rocks and long pieces of coarse wiry brown hair embedded in the wound. His firearm also lies next to him, twisted into the shape of a pretzel.
In nearby Joshua Tree National Park, in Hidden Valley Campground to be exact, reports to rangers pour in of campers awoken in the middle of the night by tents ripped in half, foul smells suffocating the campground, and big glowing eyes frighting everyone. In the morning, campers find enormous human-like footprints surrounding the sites. A grainy photograph makes its rounds—it shows the back of a large, hairy, fifteen-foot creature loping down the campground road into the darkness.
Amateur investigators and budding cryptozoologists draw connections between this “Desert Yeti” and the murderous hairy devil from Indigenous desert mythology. In neighboring Edwards Air Force Base, more than one account describes a Sasquatch-like creature running loose in subterranean tunnels beneath the base. And folks in the high-desert cities relay stories of a shaggy Bigfoot terrorizing children, scratching at homes, killing cattle, harassing hikers, and jogging alongside desert highways in the middle of the night.
Is this hairy ‘squatch, known commonly in Joshua Tree as “Yucca Man”, a fact or a figment of fanciful imaginations? Stay at Hidden Valley Campground and investigate for yourself!
Discovery more creepy Joshua Tree tales in 150 Things to See, Do & Love: Joshua Tree National Park, now on Amazon.
Pudgy Buffalo 
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