Transmitting from the Mojave Wilderness in Joshua Tree, California.

Now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert.

Night has fallen on the desert, and that's when we like to tell monster stories weird tales the thing about

monster stories is that every country and every region and every culture has its own monsters.

And if you hear some local legends of some monster, people claim to have encountered on back roads or around abandoned mines or wherever it is,

you can almost always go back in the historical record and find similar reports from long ago.

As in the case of the Sasquatch,

the Sasquatch of our local mountains,

the San Bernardino's,

the Little San Bernardino Mountains,

here in Joshua Tree,

the San Jacinto's looming over the Coachella Valley.

As Southern California began to fill up with people in suburbs between the 1950s and 1970s,

people from Palmdale to Rialto from Fontana to 29 Palms reported seeing a huge hairy beast lumbering through the night.

Eight feet tall, walking on two legs.

And it turned out the local Indian tribes had stories of the same kinds of creatures.

Whether on the desert or the coastal side of the Southern California Mountains, there was a

similar name for these mysterious beasts.

On the Santa Ana River, Spanish friars heard the name Takui,

and noted areas where the tribes refused to camp because it was the domain of the Taqui.

In Palm Springs, there's a reason why you see the name Tukhites all over the place.

There's a canyon right behind Palm Springs called Taukeets Canyon.

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