Proctor Valley Terrors

San Diego is full of history and interesting ghost stories. Ranging from the Whaley House, where I have had some of my own experiences, to the lonely ghost of Kate Morgan in the grand Hotel Del Coronado. One you don't often hear about though, is Proctor Valley.

Proctor Valley is a large, dry area in the South and the East of San Diego. It goes to the base of Mt. Miguel. If anyone has heard of it, no doubt they've heard of the Proctor Valley monster. Stories about the monster date back for over a century. I guess the land used to have cattle ranches, and every so often they'd find a cow that had been dragged miles from the ranch and mutilated. They even have a huge footprint at a local museum that they once found in the valley.

It is also the sight of numerous hauntings. These include a demon car, a huddled woman in blue, a woman in white with a supposedly mutilated face, the ghost of a homeless man and numerous others.

One night around midnight I decided to go there with a friend, let's call him Kevin. We made our way there as the entrance to the valley is about a five minute drive from me, I can even see Mt.Miguel from my backyard. Anyway, we made our way into the valley as he had been there before. Although Kevin did not have an off-road vehicle, we tried anyway, and actually did pretty well with all the potholes, ditches, and sharp curves.

We went out about five miles into the middle of the valley when we decided to get out of the car. We had trekked along for about ten minutes when we heard some rustling. Remembering that there were coyotes in the area, we quickly hurried back to the car and left back to his house.

About three months after that, I was hanging out with another friend, who I will call Tommy. He had never been to Proctor Valley before and while he was hesitant and nervous, he found himself driving us over there. It was different this time though, because now as soon as you got off the paved road, there were warning signs at the entrance of the valley, probably due to the construction of houses next to it.

We went ahead anyway. But instead of going off-roading, we decided to just take one of the unpaved roads. The area is genuinely creepy, especially since in the dead of night it is nearly black out there and you can really only see the things next to your windows and the headlights. We really had no idea where we were going, we just followed the road.

About five miles into it we passed a police car going in the opposite direction. As if I wasn't nervous enough, that really got my heart beating, seeing as how I'm a minor out breaking curfew and we could have been trespassing. But he didn't pull us over so we kept on going.

We were at about the eight mile mark, and it was around 1 A.M. by now so we decided to turn back since nothing seemed to be happening. I was a little disappointed but I was worried about more police and figured that it'd be best to get out of there before they spot us again or before we ended up getting lost.

So we turned around. Once we passed the seven mile mark we saw something though. Just out of nowhere we saw a pair of headlights behind us in the distance. But they were far, far away so we were not worried. About five minutes later I looked back and noticed that they were closer this time, but still pretty far.

About another five minutes later, Tommy looked in his rear- view mirror and asked me if the headlights were indeed getting closer. Starting to get a little nervous, he decided to go faster in hopes of losing them. Going fast on these roads is NOT a good idea, as those potholes, ditches, and sharp curves I mentioned earlier just seem to pop out of nowhere.

And yet the headlights gradually kept getting closer and closer. Tommy wanted to pull over and turn off the car so they would pass us and not see us, but I just didn't feel safe doing that. Heck, I just didn't feel safe period. So instead he just went faster. By the time we had hit the four mile mark, I could see the headlights in the side rear-view mirror on my side, which meant that they were coming in close and coming in fast.

So Tommy sped up once again, barely even going through the curves and instead just plowing through bushes so we could get towards the exit. But no matter what we did, they did the same. By the two mile mark they were right behind us tailgating. When I looked back the headlights were sure enough right there. One thing I noticed though, was that I could not see a body to the car, only the headlights. But I assumed (and hoped!) that it was just because of the darkness.

We eventually hit the entrance and Tommy drove as fast as he could to get to the pavement of the main road. When we finally hit the main road Tommy stopped the car and asked what had happened to the headlights. We looked back and saw them standing still right at the very last strip of dirt before the pavement.

They then slowly started going backwards as if the car was backing up. We watched as they went all the way back until the headlights were small specks.

As we were driving on the main road Tommy asked me if I could see the car, like actually see it. When I said no, he said that neither did he, and it was almost as if it was a big, solid black mass with headlights, with no details or windows or anything, just a black body with headlights.

People have told us that it might have just been someone playing a trick on us. But it didn't feel like that, it felt like something wanted us out of there. It felt like we were in danger.

Perhaps it was the fabled demon car?