Welcome back to DEAD Time. This month, we’re doing a deep dive into the largest state park in California, the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, which has a rich paranormal history. Podcasters and friends Derek Hayes and David Flora were so interested in the strange stories surrounding the location that they teamed up to create the new documentary Shadows in the Desert: High Strangeness in the Borrego Triangle. In the documentary, Flora and Hayes explore the legend of an 8-foot-tall skeleton, ghost stories, cryptid sightings in the desert, and UFO encounters. The documentary follows Flora and Hayes as they chase ghost lights in the desert, talk with eyewitnesses about UFO sightings, and even take a look at petroglyphs that were drawn by the Indigenous People who used to occupy the area, which might back up some of the stories of high strangeness.
Derek Hayes is the award-winning host of the podcast Monsters Among Us and has also appeared on Travel Channel’s Paranormal Caught on Camera. David Flora is an actor and the host of the podcast Blurry Photos. The two podcasters became friends and realized they shared an interest in the paranormal stories about the Borrego Triangle, which led to the creation of the documentary Shadows in the Desert: High Strangeness in the Borrego Triangle.
Bloody Disgusting was excited to have the opportunity to talk with Derek Hayes and David Flora about the new documentary, their interest in the high strangeness in the desert, and a lot more. Read on to find out what Hayes and Flora told me about the weird paranormal history of the Borrego Triangle.
Bloody Disgusting: How did the two of you first become interested in the Anza-Borrego State Park and the high strangeness in the desert?
Derek Hayes: My wife and I had camped there several times and each time we would go there we would hear a different paranormal story. There was the legend of Bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts, all kinds of crazy stuff. Each time I went, I thought that I would pick up a book or a documentary, but I was disappointed to find out there really wasn’t any information out there. All these stories existed, but no one has really tapped into them. So, that’s where the idea got started. And then I just kind of planted the seed with David. We were talking about doing a project together, so I was sort of throwing the idea out to him to see if he’d be interested in picking it up.
David Flora: I did some research on the Borrego Sandman and found that that story went back to the sixties in Desert Magazine. Derek was like, “Well, what else is out there?” So, we both started looking around and found all these old west ghost stories and then UFO encounters and then Bigfoot encounters. And it just kind of snowballed until we were like, “We have a ton of information. Let’s put this into something. Let’s make something out of it.”
BD: You mention the Abominable Sandman several times in the documentary. The story originated from an article in Desert Magazine in 1964. When did you first become interested in the Sandman and why?
DH: The interest in the paranormal goes way back to when I was a child. I would read books, I would watch older documentaries, anything with a mystery intrigued me. As I became old enough to explore these things on my own, that sort of became a hobby of mine. I wanted to go to these places and check them out for myself. And it’s kind of evolved to the point now where we’re looking for places that other people don’t know about yet. We’re trying to find the quiet hot spots.
DF: As far as the Desert Magazine article in particular—I think we found it interesting because the desert is the absolute last place we would think a Bigfoot type of cryptid could exist [laughs]. Because you have this shaggy, Chewbacca-looking thing running around in one of the most inhospitable, and hot and dry, places with no food and no water. How does that happen? That’s kind of what we wanted to get to the bottom of. Then as we went through the process, we talked to experts in Biology, experts in Cryptozoology, and also in the wildlife of the area. They told us how something could survive. Another thing we didn’t think of, they migrate up to the higher altitudes in the summer and then migrate back down in the winter. So, they’re constantly in a decent temperature, finding food and water, and it’s just very fascinating. That kind of opened the door for us to discover all these other stories that were out there.
BD: Can you tell me more about the ghost lights that have been reported by numerous people in the desert?
DF: The ghost lights are a lot of fun because they have a long history. It goes back to the building of the railroad out there, which they called the impossible railroad because it was in such harsh terrain, and it was a feat of engineering. It’s the world’s largest curved, wooden trestle. It’s over Goat Canyon and that is said to be the spot where a bunch of weird stuff has happened. When they were building it, people were dying mysteriously, workers were dying. It was just too weird and not enough of a coincidence. There is a story from the late sixties that a train was going down the tracks and they saw an orb of light coming towards them from the opposite direction. They thought it was another train, so they slammed on the breaks, and according to the story, killed at least one person. These lights were seen back when they were building it as well. The train story was particularly fun to research, and I’m not going to spoil anything, but it has a very wild ending. The more I dug into it, I was like, “Wait a minute. There are some facts here that don’t really make sense.” It really goes off the rails, if you will forgive the pun [laughs].
DH: There is another thing that really backs up all these legends, too. We found a lot of cave art, from the Native American cultures who were there, that seem to depict some sort of aerial phenomena and strange activity that’s going on in the sky. Of course, we can’t determine for certain what they were drawing, but our modern-day interpretation could very much be of these ghost lights that are reported throughout the entire region.
BD: You talked to several people about Goldie, an orange or gold metallic flying object in the sky. The Cahuilla people talked about it as well. Can you tell me more about that?
DH: Essentially, in the western part of the triangle there is a legend known as Goldie, which is a daytime UFO. It’s a bright light that people see hovering around the mountain tops in that area during the day. This legend has been around for hundreds of years and people have described it all sorts of different ways. The legend goes all the way back to the Native American cultures of that area. The Cahuilla people described it as Tahquitz, their creator spirit. This is how he manifests, and this is how he travels from mountain to mountain. So, to this day, we don’t really know what it is. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to see it, but we talked to so many people who have seen it. What they’re describing just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. It’s got to be some kind of strange phenomenon; a UFO, a ghostly spirit, something like that.
BD: You both have podcasts and Derek you’ve appeared on the TV show Paranormal Caught on Camera. Can you each tell me a little bit about your individual podcasts?
DF: I’ve got four podcasts, but the main one and the one Derek and I met through, is called Blurry Photos. I’ve been doing that since 2012 and it was originally a more comedic take on some of these subjects. Then my cohost at the time left to pursue other things and I took it over solo, so it’s been more of a deep dive. I’ve been kind of academic about how I approach these topics from then on. I’m also a cohost on Hysteria 51, which is a paranormal, comedic podcast; I host Quiz Quiz Bang Bang with my wife, which is a trivia podcast; and I just started one called Five Minute Frights, where I read little bite size stories that are compiled and written by Tom Lyons, who is an author who I’ve done several audiobooks for.
DH: Essentially, I produce, host, and write a show called Monsters Among Us. It’s a call-in show about all sorts of paranormal subjects. It covers everything from ghosts to Bigfoot to aliens to ESP, that sort of thing. This is a little bit different from most call-in shows because the people who call in leave their story in the form of a voice mail, so it’s very succinct, it’s very short, we get right to the point. So, we’re able to share seven to ten stories per episode. We’ve been running for seven years now, so we’ve got quite the back catalog.
Shadows in the Desert: High Strangeness in the Borrego Triangle will be available on streaming platforms later this year.
The post Derek Hayes and David Flora Discuss New Documentary ‘Shadows in the Desert: High Strangeness in the Borrego Triangle’ [Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.