Strange flying creature seen near Delano

Searching one of my favorite sites for weird and strange tales I ran across a creature sighting near the small town of Delano.

The creature is described as having a bat like body with a head similar to that of a crow and covered completely in feathers. Witnesses estimated it to be about three feet tall and about the size of a large dog (between 40 and 60 pounds). It's been seen mostly near Avenue 8 between Delano and Richgrove for the past seven months or so.

Locals also think that it may be eating stray dogs as many mutilated carcasses have been found in the area with feathers similar to that seen on the creature found next to it.

As to what this creature could be, I don't know. I wish there was a description of the wing span, not the height of the creature, as that could help explain things more. My first thought is it's just nothing more than a vulture, but the description is a bit different. That and I don't think a vulture would leave feathers as it's head and neck are featherless to begin with.

So this had me thinking about a story I wrote about sometime ago of another large flying creature spotted in the Central Valley, this time in Fresno. This sighting was of a large bird like creature with a 12 foot wing span seen flying over Fresno. Could this creature and the one seen in Delano be somehow related?

To be honest I think the creature is just a misidentification of a regular bird (perhaps a hawk) and not some strange dog eating creature roaming the country side. As for the feathers found by the dogs, could be any type of bird. Crows are scavengers and the feathers could be from them.

Or I could be completely wrong and there is some unknown creature flying around the country side in the southern part of the San Joaquin Valley. I'll keep my eyes and ears open for anything else regarding these sightings.

The phantom hitchhiker of Browning Road

In the small town of Delano, about 30 miles north of Bakersfield there is said to be a spirit of a woman who haunts Browning Road. No one who the girl really is, but there are stories that she was a young woman who was crossing the street early one morning when she was struck by a car and killed instantly. It's said that if you drive down the road that sometimes you can see her standing on the side, as if she's waiting to cross. There have even been reports of her actually appearing in the backseat of several vehicles, undoubtedly terrifying the driver.

Most of the sightings seem to have occurred on a stretch of road south of town between Garces Highway (Hwy 155) and Woollomes Road. One witness reported seeing a shadowy figure leap in front of a car they were following and watched the figure disappear as the car swerved to avoid hitting it. Another reported that they heard the story, but not believing anything took a drive there one night. They said they were messing around and flashing their headlights trying to attract the ghost of the girl. There was one passenger in the car and they looked outside and saw the ghost standing next to the car. Terrified they sped off as they were severely shaken up.

Phantom hitchhiker stories have been around for centuries. And for some reason it was always some desolate road that the ghost chose to haunt. In the case of the Browning Road ghost, the woman seems to haunt the road she was killed on? The legend is so well known that at one time there was an active Facebook group for people to report their sightings. Sadly it is no longer available.

Another interesting note. I was exploring the Google Streetview of the stretch of road that is said to be haunted. I noticed a roadside memorial. Hard to say if this is for the ghost of a woman or for someone else, but usually these are only at places where someone has died and I found that interesting.