Sightings - Char Man Urban Legend: California, 2006

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Does something terrifying lurk in the hills above Ojai, California? Though urban legends often blur the line between thrilling stories and chilling truths, in this sleepy town, one fiery tale has endured for decades. But is the Char Man simply teenage superstition, or something much, much darker? Sightings is a REVERB and QCODE Original. Find us on instagram @sightingspod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Campfire stories have a way of weaving themselves into the fabric of our childhoods, blurring the lines between thrilling tales and chilling truths. But what happens when these tales, whispered among flickering flames, become a haunting reality? whispered among flickering flames, become a haunting reality. Some legends, it seems, are far more sinister than campfire smoke. Welcome to Sightings, the series that takes you inside the world's most mysterious supernatural events. I'm McLeod.

And I'm Brian. And today, we're running as fast as we can from a terrifying urban legend. So, if you're brave enough, journey with us to Ojai, California, where one fiery myth casts a long shadow. They say he roams the night, a smoldering figure born from tragedy. But is the Char Man merely a campfire tale, or does he lurk in the shadows, waiting to be summoned? Find out on this episode of Sightings. Let me tell you a story. Ojai, California, 1948. The Great Fire, as they called it, was roaring across the valley,

eating everything in its path and leaving nothing but ash in its wake. Some say it first sparked near the pool at Wheeler's Resort when a butane pipe burst. Others say it began when the flames of hell breached the rocks in the hills outside of town. Whatever the cause, more than 30,000 acres were soon ablaze, with 1,500 firefighters risking life and limb to quell the inferno. Most of the townspeople of Ojai managed to evacuate to safety. But not everyone. See, out past Old Creek Bridge there was a cabin.

And in this cabin lived a man and his wife. A pair who, unlike their neighbors down the hill, failed to hear the warning sirens or smell the smoke before the flames were licking at their doorstep. It's said that the man tried to save his wife, but the front of the cabin became a wall of heat, blocking his path to her. And as he tried over and over and over again to get into that cabin, to reach the wife he loved so dearly, he was burned so bad that the skin melted right off his body. And as he lay on the boiling dirt, unable to move, he could only listen as his wife screamed,

He could only listen as his wife screamed, Help me! Help me! from inside the cabin as she was slowly consumed by the flames. And hearing that turned that man's mind into an inferno and his heart to ash. Fueled by remorse and rage, he became something more than human. Something worse than human. Something worse than human. Something known as Char-Man. And now, he wants revenge.

My name's Bobby Parsons, and if you were raised in Ojai like I was, I'd bet you learned the story of the Charm Man when you were a teenager. It's a rite of passage here, an all-in-good-fun mashup of spooky campfire stories and late-night dares. But for me, well, learning the legend of the Charm Man wasn't quite so innocent. I grew up the youngest of three, which made me the constant punching bag of my older brothers. And once they became teenagers and learned about Char-Man from their friends, they decided to use his story to scare me out of my wits. So they took me into the hills and rehashed the legend, which suggested that if you stood on Old Creek Bridge and shouted,

Help me! Help me! Then you'd see the horrifying creature for yourself. That, my brothers said, was the only way I'd become a man. I was nine years old at the time, so I felt like I didn't have one say or another in the matter. And sure enough, I found myself standing on that bridge in the middle of the night with nothing around for miles but my two idiot brothers waiting with our bikes. And they reminded me that if I didn't do it, didn't cry out and glimpse the horror for myself, then they'd never, ever, ever let it go. And look, I'd be the first to admit I was a total wuss as a

kid, so I didn't have much courage to spare at that moment. All I remember is that I was so scared I couldn't even speak, couldn't even mouth the words. So I just closed my eyes and hoped to pass out from the sheer stress of it all. But before that could happen, I heard it. A scraping sound on the old rickety wood of the bridge. And I felt something. A presence, almost. Getting closer. Closer. But how?

I hadn't said anything. Hadn't cried for help. Hadn't summoned the char man. But I didn't dare open my eyes to see what was beside me. Even as I felt the baby hair on my left arm begin to singe. And I was too terrified to move, to recoil, even as my arm felt like it was fully on fire, like I was standing next to a being made of pure flame, until... Wham! I hit the ground hard, and I opened my eyes to find my brothers standing over me, laughing and pointing at my crotch because I'd peed my pants.

But right then, I didn't care about that. I was worried about my arm, which throbbed with pain, and I screamed at my brothers to show me the lighter one of them had to be hiding. But they looked at me like I was crazy and said they just tackled me, that's all. It was just a stupid scare. So from then on, I was terrified of fire and the woods and the thought that something else was on the bridge with me that night. It messed me up real good and I kept having dreams of that bridge that night and though I could never actually see him, the char man, I could feel him and his disturbing warmth beside me. This continued well into my teens, terrifying me each night, but by day, I tried to play the tough guy. So I got in fights, got into shit, and even though the dreams eventually faded, my macho overcompensation didn't. And by 19, I landed myself in prison. I don't want to get into what caused it, other than to say I screwed

up good and was looking at 10 long years. And as the days ticked by in my tiny cell, that dream started up again. Of that bridge. That thing. And it started getting to me. Feeding on my fear. Driving me crazy and I wanted a way out. Needed a way out. I'd give anything for it. And you know what? Turns out fate has a pretty wicked sense of humor.

So for any of this to make any sense, you need to understand there's these things in the prison system called conservation camps, where the state reduces sentences for assistance with things like disaster relief. And in huh, was definitely not my gig. But like I said, I'd give anything for a way out, even if it meant facing my fears. So I sucked it all back and went out into the wilderness. And yeah, I was terrified the first time I found myself staring at an inferno. But instead of killing me, it empowered me. Because it turns out I was actually good at this whole firefighting thing. So day in and day out, I braved the woods,

fought the flames. I saw how these fires ravaged people's lives, and I learned firsthand what empathy really was. And then, as my dreams of Charman faded like smoke on the horizon, I realized I'd beaten my fears. Or at least, beaten most of them. Because even though I'd learned to fight fires like a pro, the thought of that bridge still terrified me. And that fear? All I could do was ignore it. Forget it. Bury it. And it would have to stay buried forever. A few years later, I'd earned my early release. And wouldn't you know it, I decided to keep working on the front lines fighting wildfires.

I joined a hotshot crew, the best of the best out there, and battled blazes across the state each fire season. Before I knew it, a few more years had passed, and sure enough, my thoughts of that bridge stayed buried and never surfaced once. Then I met Cotton. He was a new recruit in my crew, and like me, he grew up in Ojai. So one night, after handling a brush fire near Chico, we all got to drinking, and Cotton got to talking about Ojai. And then he did it. He brought up the Char-Man. Suddenly that bridge came rushing back to me, that creeping fear. And I did my best to hide it, even as Cotton said that next time we're down in SoCal, we ought to stop in Ojai, show the boys Old Creek Bridge, and see if the legend was true or not. I didn't say anything during all this, of course. I just stared down into my beer as the guys oohed

and aahed and had a good time with a silly teenage legend. But sure enough, the next week took us down by Santa Barbara, just up the coast from Ojai. And since I was jockeying for crew leader, the guys looked up to me, so I couldn't wuss out on the trip they planned to visit the hills outside of town. The bridge outside of town. So I felt my heart fall into my stomach as I realized that I was about to meet the Char Man again. as I realized that I was about to meet the Char-Man again, whether I wanted to or not.

There were five of us in the cab of Cotton's Ford F-150. And as he drove, Cotton told us his version of the Charman legend. Like the version my brothers and I learned, Cotton's story started with the Great Fire of 1948. But in his story, it wasn't a husband and wife in that cabin in the woods. It was a father and son. And as the flames whipped through the hills, they destroyed the cabin, killed the father, and burned the son. But the son didn't die. Instead, his body was left from a tree and stripped all the burned skin from it before fleeing into the hills past Old Creek Bridge, where he's hidden, demented, and charred ever since.

So, Cotton said, it's become sport among Ojai teenagers to stop their cars on the bridge at night and scream, help me into the wilderness. And some have claimed that a figure will come running at them from the woods. A horribly burned man who glows orange from the flames that emit from the cracks in his skin. And the legend goes, if you can't flee quickly enough, the char man will start attacking your car windows. And if he's successfully able to break through, he'll drag you into the night and skin you alive. Of course, the other guys in the car thought all this was a load of bull, but Cotton told us he'd actually seen the Char-Man for

himself, real and in the flesh. He said it happened back when he was a teenager. He and a buddy got drunk one night and drove out to the bridge. They parked smack in the middle of it, cracked a fresh beer, rolled down the windows and started calling out for help. He said it was just a game for them. They started with a whisper, then got louder, louder, louder, until they were shouting with abandon out into the night. But nothing happened. No glow appeared in the distance. No cries came from the trees, and nothing came scraping at their windows trying to pull them out into the darkness. So after a while, the boys gave up. Cotton grabbed his keys, cranked the ignition, After a while, the boys gave up.

Cotton grabbed his keys, cranked the ignition, and as soon as the headlights blasted to life, the boys froze. Something was standing on the bridge right in front of their car. A bandage-clad figure staring at them. It looked like a man, Cotton said, but its eyes were black, pitch black like the night. And those black eyes just stared at the boys, who were too scared to move until, all of a sudden, the figure clenched its fists and its whole body caught fire like a human torch.

And then, Cotton said, the thing opened its mouth and screamed something awful. And without even thinking, Cotton slammed the car in reverse and they got the hell out of there and never looked back. Now the other guys in the car seemed unsettled. A few tried to laugh it off, but I could tell they were straight up spooked. But me? I knew Cotton was bluffing. He'd just made the legend his own. Or had he? It was I to say what Charman really was. I hadn't seen him. I just felt him. Known he was there.

And he'd haunted my dreams ever since. Soon enough, we were on Old Creek Road and driving out into the hills above town. I knew the road well. I knew the bridge would appear any moment. And right on time, it did. It was an old wooden thing, and I was amazed that it was still standing since I last saw it as a kid. But there it was.

And Cotton pulled the truck right up onto the middle of it and turned off the ignition. He told us that since he'd already seen the charman, he was going to leave the truck and wait down the road. The rest of us were to stay in the car, then say, help me, help me, soft at first, then louder and louder and louder until, if we were lucky, we'd see the Char-Man for ourselves. Then, with an ominous salute, he disappeared into the dark. The other guys looked at one another, skeptical. One asked me if this whole thing was bullshit, and I said of course it was. But another suggested that since we drove all this way,

we might as well put the legend to the test. So we rolled down the window, and on the count of three, the other guys started saying it. Help me. Help me. Slow and quiet at first, then louder. Louder. And as the guys' shouts reached fever pitch, screaming full blast into the night, the truck shook, and I swear you could hear a pin drop in there. And we all looked around, scanning the dark for something. Anything. When... Wham! A flaming hand smacked the driver's side window, and everyone, all full-grown men, straight up screamed. And in reply, we heard laughter. A very human snicker with a voice I knew all too well.

It was Cotton, of course. And with a sly smile, he held up a fire-resistant glove that was still sizzling from the lighter fluid he doused it in. Everyone got a good laugh out of that. And of course, Cotton readily admitted that his story was a bunch of bullshit. He'd seen nothing at all on this bridge back when he was young. But as that fear still coursed through my veins, I got to wondering what I'd experienced on this bridge then. Had it all been in my head? A fever dream of a terrified nine-year-old? Or had something really, truly happened back then?

And worse, would it keep haunting me for years to come? So, as Cotton got in the cab and turned the ignition, I told him to wait, that there was something I needed to do. I needed to end this, once and for all. A few minutes later, I found myself standing alone in the dark. Cotton and the others had retreated down the road and were told to give me five minutes before coming back. So with the clock ticking, I sucked back my breath and walked out onto the bridge, just like I had some twenty years before.

And I could feel myself shaking as I planted my feet right in the center of the wooden planks. Then I closed my eyes and waited. I knew I didn't have to say anything. That if the charr man was indeed real, that he'd have no trouble finding me here. And I didn't know what I expected to get from this, other than confirmation I wasn't crazy, or a way to put my fears to rest. But as the seconds, then minutes, ticked by and nothing happened, I began to suspect that everything, all twenty years of it, had been in my head. And I was just about to open my eyes and look away when I heard it. That familiar,

terrifying scraping sound on the rickety wood of the bridge. And I felt a presence, a warmth, growing ever closer. So I did what I had been too afraid to do twenty years ago. I opened my eyes. And there he was, standing right in front of me. The Char-Man. He was a portrait of pain, with a blackened and charred face. Blistered flesh hung like rotted cloth from his cheeks and forehead, with glowing embers smoldering in the cracks of the skin that remained.

His nose was a gaping hole, his ears charred nubs, but his eyes, pure vivid flame, and they stared deep into mine with a burning intensity I'll never forget. And despite the horror standing before me, I didn't feel any fear. Instead, I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness, just like I felt for the victims of the wildfires I fought each day. So I did the only thing I could think to do, and said two words. I'm sorry. And the charr man seemed to consider that for a moment. Then he slowly retreated back into the night, until the faint glow of his charred skin vanished into the dark.

And as I stood there, alone on that bridge again, I felt... lighter, somehow. Because I'd faced my fears, and come out on the other side. And the Charm Man hasn't haunted my dreams since. Sightings will be back, Sightings. I gotta say, I'm really excited to talk about this one. I feel like I have more of a personal connection to this type of story than maybe some of the other legends we've talked about. Because this is an urban legend, which I imagine has to have afforded you some creative flexibility, Brian. It sure did. And I guess that's the beauty of urban legends.

They're this framework, almost, more than the story itself, that each teller can make their own. And it's always evolving. Yeah, and this was our first urban legend on the show. So what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to wrap my head around what differentiates this from other sightings we've discussed. You know, I'm trying to put my finger on it, but there's something about this type of story that for me kind of gets to the experiential, emotional, just very human heart of all sighting stories. Exactly. And because it seems to be such a fluid format,

I guess, told more among friends or around the campfire than other stories, the content really changes based on who's telling the story. And that's what makes it feel so personal, because it's always told from the perspective of, oh, my friend did this or, you know, someone I knew who knew someone who knew someone. It just personalizes it in a really weird way. Yeah, it's deeply individualized. And I think about urban legends I heard growing up like Candyman or Bloody Mary, where, you know, you'd go into the bathroom and look in the mirror and say the name five times and then they'd appear behind you or something like that's the one that I remember. And you dare each other to do that. And I mean, I'm sure someone who grew up somewhere else heard a different version of those same stories. Yeah, I remember my dad used to tell

us urban legends on road trips, you know, things like the hook man or the killer hiding in the backseat of a car waiting to pounce on you. And all of these feel somehow grounded in modern life, which is why I guess they're urban legends. And they most often involve teenagers. They seem to be kind of the target audience for this kind of thing. Which is, it just strikes me, this fascinating impulse we have to scare each other, to test each other and to test ourselves, which is really in line with the teenage age, you know, where you're trying to develop a sense of identity, where you're trying to test boundaries and test your own courage and feel strong or find strength. Yeah. Yeah. And personally, I know that the

stories that stuck with me growing up were the ones where you had to do something, so to speak, to summon the legend, like Bloody Mary, which you mentioned, you have to go into the bathroom by yourself, say your name and summon her, basically. Or Charman, where you're supposed to stand on the bridge and shout, help me to draw him out of the woods. There's something terrifying about the act of actually doing it, which is probably why these stories are so popular. You know what it is? It's like a battle with your own imagination or like the tiny, tiny chance that the story could actually be true and something could truly be coming for you. It's like in all probability, it's not real.

But on the just faintest whiff of a chance that it is, you're dead. Yeah, that's it. So, I mean, I don't at all believe in Char Man or Bloody Mary or Candyman, but I still hesitate because of that sort of risk reward imbalance. where we're both the antagonist and the hero simultaneously trying to push the bounds of how much fear we can generate within ourselves, how powerful is our imagination, and all the while challenging ourselves to discover how much adrenaline-spiked panic we can master. You know, it's like a psychic workout

where we pit our imagination against our willpower in this internal grudge match. Oh, wow. That was steep, McLeod. I agree. And I feel like it's all rooted in that kind of primal fear of the unknown. And as we've seen through a lot of the stories we've talked about, Charman isn't the only one to do it. It's certainly not the only urban legend to do it. In fact, there's a whole bunch of other terrifying supernatural men who have been scaring people for decades. You know, an obvious one that I think has come up in the last 10 or 20 years, thanks to the internet, has been Slender Man. You know, but have you heard, for instance, McLeod, of the Goat Man? I want to. I've not heard of the Goat Man. I just love goats.

I think they're hilarious. And the sound. I would really hope that Goatman doesn't make that sound, though, because that's the least scary sound. Well, I guess anything's scary when you're being ripped apart. Yeah. You know, so Goatman's from Maryland. He's this allegedly hairy creature with a human face who reportedly stalks the woods and eats dogs. So maybe it's terrifying for those dogs. Yeah. What about Bunnyman? Have you heard of Bunnyman?

Are you kidding me? Are these real? I mean, my mind immediately goes to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Well, Bunnyman is a Virginia urban legend outside of D.C. And it's about this dude in a bunny suit. Okay, that is genuinely terrifying. I'm sorry. Even worse, he attacks people with a hatchet or an axe.

You know, the weapon changes depending on who's telling the story. But it's this murderous dude in a bunny suit. And a lot of these stories, like Bunnyman, also happen to center on a bridge. In this case, it's Bunnyman Bridge. You know, which is kind of similar to how the bridge in Ojai is now known as Charman Bridge. Oh, man. You know, it's fascinating that it's a bridge, you know, that it's always a bridge. Yeah.

Because there's a lack of escape. There's this kind of, it narrows the playing field, so to speak. Yeah. Or like a bathroom, a confined space. It always involves kind of no escape or limited escape. Yeah. Interesting thought there. Which maybe just that amps up the fear, which is the whole point. But anyway, this story was Char Man. Let's talk Char Man. Is there any actual, where a son told his mother this story, which involved a dude who was burnt to a crisp in the fire, Ojai fire of 1948. And he now allegedly hid in the ruins of his house.

He's covered in bandages. People spot him. He didn't really do anything. But that was the first time that, you know, I guess people were circulating. There's this weird guy in the woods who is Charmant. The versions that we heard in the story that you read were more aggressive Charmant, I guess. The first one, which we mentioned, was about the fire hitting a house in the hills. It was a man and a wife. The man managed to escape the house, but the wife did not. He hears her yelling, help me, help me, but he couldn't save her. And that torment of not being able to save her while

being horrifically scarred himself turned him somehow into the char man. And then the other version was the kind of the variation of that, which was that the man survived, but his father died. The guy got horrifically burned and went insane. He skinned his father to remove all the burn scars, hung him from a tree. And then when the police officers arrived and were like, well, what the heck is going on here? The dude attacked them and ran into the woods and then became Char Man. Wow. I mean, obviously these can't all be true, if any of them are at all. Was there even a fire in 1948? them are at all. Was there even a fire in 1948? Yeah, there was a fire in 1948, but there was no record of anyone actually dying in that fire. But I can see how, you know, a giant fire in 1948

would provide the kindling, so to speak, for a compelling legend. I see what you did there. I mean, look at me. I love it. Yeah. I'm wondering, McLeod, though, why do you think that we have all these different versions of the story, but why do you think it became a thing at all? I find it really fascinating that I think in all of these stories, whether it's Bloody Mary or Char Man, maybe not Bunny Man, which I've just now learned about, or Goat Man, who I guess is just a monster. now learned about, or Goatman, who I guess is just a monster. But they're all people. They're all based on people who have suffered horribly traumatic physical anguish. And I think part of it is, is it's the thing we fear most. It's sort of the thing, this unknown, horrific event that that we god forbid should ever happen to us you know i wonder

if there's also some element of trying to process social anxieties in a weird way like i'm thinking of ohio california that's fire country and these people who live there kind of live under this constant threat of wildfire. So is Char-Man a way of rationalizing that fear? Or testing yourself against it so that you can kind of keep upping your resistance to it. It's like micro-dosing a poison, kind of. But in the case of Char-Man also, it kind of, in terms of setting, it kind of hits on some of the greatest hits. You already mentioned a bridge. in terms of setting, it kind of hits on some of the greatest hits. You already mentioned a bridge.

The bridge is kind of this symbol of a passageway between this life and the next. That's a great take on the bridge. And then also, I think another element that comes up a lot in urban legends are either the forest, which I guess could stand in for kind of the unknown, or the idea of like a dangerous wild man, so to speak. Right. Who's outside of the social norms. You know, in this case, it's a crazy dude who's burned really badly. And, you know, I guess when you combine bridge and forest like we have in Charman, it just equals this the right climate, so to speak, for a legend like this to kind of spring up.

Yeah. And this one in particular brings kind of nature into the into the mix a little bit. It's very cool. And but the thing that my brain kind of keeps coming around to with just the term urban legends is that word legend. It's it's sticking with me. It's because a legend indicates a story with historical context, if not truth, that it's based usually on some event or some vibe of the time. And, you know, which causes us to wonder what really happened. And, you know, urban legends, I think, are just sort of modern history or more recent history. So it begs the question for me, is there any anything else to this, any evidence or facts around this besides the fire? out there somewhere in the Ojai Valley. Now, it's more of an article that's about the fact that the urban legend exists, but it does comment that kids are theoretically seeing something and teens are becoming obsessed with it. It noted in the article that 60 teenagers were spotted in one

place looking for this thing on one night. Of course, the article did end with the line, though, no one ever actually found any supernatural being but i love this line many found a convenient haven for parking and romancing well yeah i mean i guess they go together a little bit don't they yeah yeah now there is a police officer from oi who was interviewed at some point and gave an explanation for what char man could have been he said that back in 1961 the police got a report from teenagers who were parked out on this remote road that they were approached by, quote, an awful looking creature that looked badly burned and deformed. Now, once more and more and more people are like, I'm seeing something,

I'm seeing something, they did mount an investigation and they found something, an explanation theoretically for this. So there was apparently, and this is kind of sad, an elderly man who lived alone in the rural part of Ojai with his dog near where all these sightings happened. And he reportedly had some kind of really bad skin cancer that made his face look badly deformed or I guess burned essentially. And these kids just happened to see him in passing, and imaginations took flight, and they started making up all these horrible stories about him being burned and him being a monster and all this stuff.

And I think it just all kind of took on a life of its own from there. Right. I can imagine if this guy was real, him maybe at some point yelling at some kids because he's just tired of being bothered. And it's a shame that this guy had to deal with that and that this happened to him, if this is true at all. But I can see how this just kind of spiraled. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, I think, you know, we could talk about this all day over a couple of glasses of bourbon, I think. But I think this is probably as good a place as any

to wrap things up. But listeners, we want to hear what you think. Did you grow up in Ojai? Have you seen a sizzling dude in the woods? Tell us on Instagram at SightingsPod. Or leave a comment on Spotify. It's the place to be to discuss theories and let us know what you think about the show. And as always, if you like what we're doing here, leave us a five-star review and tell your friends about us. And Brian, I want you to tell me what we're talking about next week. Well, it's a bit less of a mystery, I will give you that. But I will say, in terms of concrete details,

that we are heading to New England and that you'll want to keep your eyes on the skies for this one. Oh, I know where you're going. No, I'm not going. It might be an alien story, okay? I love alien stories. I'm sorry. I'm giving you a hard time. No, it's a fun one. It's a good one. So we hope you guys come back and listen with us next week, same time, same place, here on Sightings. See you all then.

I like men in black. Sightings is hosted by McLeod Andrews and Brian Sigley. Produced by Brian Sigley, Chase Kinzer, and McLeod Andrews. Written by Brian Sigley. Story music by Madison James Smith. Series music by Mitch Bain. Mixing and mastering by Pat Kicklighter of Sundial Media. Artwork by Nuno Cernanos.

For a list of this episode's sources, check out our website at sightingspodcast.com. Sightings is presented by Reverb and Q-Code. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you're first to hear new episodes every week. And if you know other Supernatural fans, tell them about us. We'd really appreciate it.