Werewolf Hill

A few miles west of Carlsbad, County Road 427 begins a slow climb through the Northern reach of the Guadalupe Mountains. Rising about 400 feet the road bears slightly north before winding back to the Southwest, and although it’s not named on any map, the locals call it, Werewolf Hill.

There’s no record of any werewolf sighting, or even an account of who first referred to the area by that name, and even more curious, the most common legend about the hill doesn’t even involve a werewolf.

A young couple drove out to the hill for a romantic evening, it was dusk, and the night sky was already making its way across the eastern horizon. As time is known to do in situations of young love, the night speed by and the couple soon found themselves in the darkness of a moonless night. Knowing there’d be trouble if they didn’t get home soon, the young man tried to start his car, but the battery was dead, so he decided to walk back to the highway for help. He walked off into the darkness of the cold desert night. She locked the doors, climbed in the back seat, and fell fast asleep wrapped in the warmth of a musty old blanket.

THUMP! She was awoken by the sound of a large object hitting the roof of the car. There was a light was moving around in the darkness and the sound of footsteps in the loose gravel. She prayed that it was her boyfriend but was too scared to move. As soon as the light diminished and the sound of the footsteps began to distance themselves from the car, she slowly edged her way up to the window, squinting through the darkness, she saw a woman with a lantern, walking off into the distance, barefoot and holding a hatched. Terrified she curled up in a ball under the blanket to wait out the night.

She must have fallen back to sleep because when she opened her eyes, she could see sunlight streaming through the coarse weave of the blanket. She sat up and stepped out of the car and into the morning sun. As she closed the door her hand stuck on the handle, a viscus red liquid stained her palm, glancing back at the car, she met the lifeless gaze of her boyfriend’s decapitated head, placed in the center of the car’s roof.