This Paranormal Life - Podcast From Area 51 Hunting For The Yucca Man

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Area 51 is synonymous with UFO and alien incidents, but that doesn’t mean other strange paranormal phenomena doesn’t take place. Legend has it that in the remote areas of Joshua Tree and the Mojave Desert there lives a kind of sub species of Bigfoot known as the Yucca Man. But what do we know about the beast, and can we find him in the desert ourselves? Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our Secret Society Facebook Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get access to weekly bonus episodes! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy Official TPL Merch!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thisparanormallife.com/store⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Intro music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.purple-planet.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Edited by Philip Shacklady Research by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ewen Friers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to this paranormal life. My name's Kit. My name's Rory. And this is Area 51. Welcome back to this paranormal life. We are still out here recording live in the Nevada desert, located extremely closely to Area 51. Our car broke down. We don't know how to get home.

We're stuck. All we can do is podcast. We're here indefinitely, I think, until they hopefully take pity on us and invite us to join the Illuminati inside the facility. Rory, it's so exciting to be recording these episodes because Area 51 is one of the most secretive and highly classified locations on Earth famous for its connections to UFO and alien research. Now, it is located here in the Mojave Desert.

Just behind us. A desert that borders California and Nevada where we're situated. This is one of the most ancient and inhospitable locations in the world. You're telling me. The petrol station down the road didn't even have white monster. Rory almost killed himself in the public bathroom. He was so devastated. How am I supposed to survive out here?

I was like it's right here behind the purple one. Oh, really? All right, I'll come out. I talked him off the ledge. Now, Rory, we've already been talking a lot about Area 51 and some of the tales that surround it to do with UFOs. But here in the desert, there are other stories too. Bizarre paranormal tales that tell us something strange

is definitely going on out here. Well, that's it. You know, every night people are looking up at the sky at all the lights and the crazy sights. People aren't looking at the ground and seeing what's going on here in the desert. That's 100% right. This place gets so many tourists

from all around the world, as you say, looking to the skies that is easy to forget the older paranormal stories. This is one of them. It's 1971 at a U.S. Marine base in the Mojavee Desert. A young Marine strolls across the base on a beautiful morning in the desert. He's headed to the front gates of the compound

to begin his sentry duty shift. As he approaches, to swap out with the previous guard, he's surprised to see the post is unmanned. Oh, that's never a good sign. So he picks up the pace and raises the alarm. Arriving at the gate, he discovers last night's guard lying in a heap on the ground. Oh shit.

He calls for help and engages this unconscious private. Cody! It's your buddy Bill. I'm here, Cody. I'm here. What happened? Cody, can you hear me? Huh? When along came one of their seniors. What's going on here, soldier? It's Private Cody, sir. I came here to relieve him on Sentry duty, but he was all roughed up, lying here, barely conscious. Wake up, Private. What happened?

Cody gradually regained consciousness. Hurry up, Private. A little quicker than that. All right, right, hey, man, give him a second. Nope, the century's unmanned. Is there any man on that century? Hey, guess whose hide gets tanned? Muggin's over here. But Cody does awaken and begins to retell a bizarre encounter.

He claims that while he was on duty, late the night before, a huge figure appeared out of the darkness and approached the gates. Oh, that's not good. He called out. Who goes there? This is U.S. Marine property. State your business. As the figure approached, Cody got a better look.

It was a manlike creature totally covered in hair. It was huge, around 12 feet tall. Oh my god! Its eyes glowed red in the darkness. And as it got closer, Cody described a foul smell. Why did they put him in charge of keeping the base safe? If his response to a threat is, uh, excuse me, I don't think you're supposed to be here. He didn't say that.

Roy, wait till you hear what he says next. I think you're gonna actually warm to Private Cody. Private Cody said, Bap, bap, bop, bap, bap! Let loose with his dirty Harry. One in the knees, one in the knees, one in the head. No, that is not, that is just forgetting all your basic training. I think you would get court-martial dragged over the coals for that.

Cody did speak up. I said halt, you smelly f***. I'm armed and I will shoot. I said halt. Halt, damn it! That was all he remembered. Raising his rifle, then all black. Who?

His fellow Marines looked at each other skeptically after this story. Get this man to the hospital ward. He's been out here for too long. The sun must have got to him. As the men helped Private Cody to his feet, it reveals that his rifle is under him, laying on the ground. Oh my God, sir, look at his rifle. Mother of God.

The rifle is completely bent in half in the middle. Word traveled throughout the base of what happened, and rumors spread. because for some it wasn't the first time they had heard a story like that. There was a few desert names for what Cody had seen, but the most common one was, the yucca man. Whoa! All right, I've never heard of this before. No, nor had I before I looked into it.

That's a better name than calling him the rifle bender. For sure. Doesn't have the same kind of scary sound to it. The yucka man? Yeah. Sounds like he's gross, like, ah, yuck! Now legend has it that out here in the Mohawk Mojavee Desert, and especially in remote areas of Joshua Tree, there lives a species of cryptid.

Some call it the Sierra Highway Devil. Some call it Mojave Marvin. I will not be calling it either of those things because they sound sillier than Yucca Man. And certainly rifle bender. But this is kind of a scary situation being because usually when we investigate these creatures, we are in the safety of our cozy little podcast studio. So we can make fun of these guys. We can talk shit about them. about them. We can say they're not real, give them double nose, because there's no way they

could possibly hurt us. Today there is a real threat. Right, we are describing a beast that stocks the land we currently sit on. Yeah, so I'm sure that you have more storytelling to do and some cool pictures. I'm going to need you to jump real quick onto how to kill it. We do have a little bit to get through. Sure. Can we do like Christopher Nolan thing? Maybe go to the future, find out how to kill it. We can go back to the past. Do your footsteps, by the way? Sometimes I just, I'm sure. Don't say that. Don't say that. And also, the sun is going down.

It's going to be pitch black here quite soon. Oh, God. Not to put pressure on you or anything. Look, let's try and get through the story and then get to the bit where hopefully by the time I finish the story, the Yucca Man will have stocked us and you will be ready to presumably twist his neck and kill him on the spot. Okay, good. Stop saying his name, though, because you've said it so many times. Yucca Man. It's like Beetlejuice.

I don't want you to summon one. That's what private code he said when he unloaded it. his Glock 9mmy. Yuck, yuck, yucka. Yucca man is a kind of distant relative of the more familiar Sasquatch or Bigfoot, but is adapted to the desert environment. I was going to say, you gotta lose some of that fur if you're gonna make it out here. I had to shave my chest this morning.

You've actually completely nailed it. Yeah, he is supposedly sandier colored fur to camouflage him into the surroundings. He's also said to be mostly nocturnal. That's all right. more minutes of daylight here. Okay. Because he wants to avoid the desert heat of the day. Ooh.

Because for anyone who doesn't know, we are out here in the Mojave Desert, we are very close to where the world's hottest temperatures have ever been recorded. Yeah. And of course, Rory, just like Bigfoot or Sasquatch, Native American lore of this area has referenced such a creature long before modern sightings.

As described on Long Reeds, the Native American population has long consider these creatures to be supernatural entities, with names that sometimes translate to something like hairy devils. Straight off the bat, let's just give you a quick artist's interpretation of what this thing might look like.

Please, I want to be able to spot one if I see it. Oh, Jesus, this thing is horrible looking. He has not shaved his chest yet like Rory. No. He doesn't have the Manscape sponsorship just yet. This guy has more hair than Bigfoot. He looks like Bigfoot's been doing no shave, no hair. Although he does kind of weirdly look like Californian Bigfoot. He's kind of slouchy. I could see him

riding a nine-foot longboard down Malibu on a chill longboarding day in the ocean. Yeah. This is, hey, let me tell you, if you see one of these things in the desert, you're not mistaken it for anything else. That is weird. Yeah. I think we should hear him coming in the next 20 minutes. And of course, named after the Yucca tree that populates this part of the desert and Joshua Tree is famous for. And so our first sighting clearly lines up with some of those Native American legends, but thankfully there have been other, or not thankfully, been other more recent sightings. Because while this corner of California was always inhabited, it kind of exploded in population in the 60s and 70s as housing developments popped up throughout the desert. So as people journeyed to

live here, like clockwork, there was a huge uptick in sightings of the Yucca man. I guess that makes more sense, more people, more eyes. There's an old newspaper report that documents numerous cases saying later reports of the Yucca man came in 1979 when a couple from Desert Hot Springs reported that their car was stopped by a large, hairy man who stepped into the road. They said it stepped out from behind a yucca bush and that its chest was the size of a refrigerator. Whoa! With arms hanging down below its knees with long tan hair. After stopping the car, it then ran off into the desert. Wow, did it, so how did it stop the car?

I think they slammed on the brakes, is what they're saying. Right, oh, I see, I see. Thankfully, he didn't, like, pound the bonnet, like King Kong kind of sitting the car smashing in my head. Yeah, just absolutely crushed it. But kind of trippy that this was reported all the way back in 1979. They continue that during the same year, in Hemet, 17 possible Yucca Man footprints were found, each about a foot and a half long and six feet apart. Even hikers would describe their tents being opened,

and their belongings thrown about the police by a group of smelly, hairy beasts. There's more than one? Oh, yes, brother. Absolutely. You think that beast that I showed you doesn't like to fuck. Oh, God.

Yeah, they're procreating. There's more of them. I'm pretty sure. It's a good question, though, because with Bigfoot, sometimes it's hypothesized that there is just one left. Yeah.

But I just kind of don't think there can be. Otherwise, he would have to be, like, 300 years old. I guess because we're just talking about the yuck up. man, but there's yucca men, presumably yucca women as well. Yeah, I'm imagining a kind of YMCA style band of yucca men. Yeah.

Okay, this is good to know. So I'm even more at risk than I thought being out here, because apparently there's a billion of them. They mate like bunnies. I mean, it would be kind of great if you were like, not only are there yucca men, but there are also yucca woman. And I was like, oh, God, and what? Where are they?

And where do you find the yucca women? Oh, no. Are they 12 feet tall too? Because that would be f*** dope. And is there like, I don't know, like a summoning call you can do? Or is there like a way that you can find them? Did the artist draw that one? Did the artist, could you air drop me?

I'd like to see an interpretation. He didn't. Okay, can you email the artist and see if he would take a commission? Because I would be really interested in that. Does the Yucca woman step on her victims before let's move on? As I say, reports and sightings of this thing have existed for decades. the least. So we know that people took this thing seriously. So seriously, in fact, that in 1973, you are going to need to hold on to your hat, Rory. That's one for the video.

Video Watchers, Rory's hat almost fell off from the fucking wind. Because this story's about to get crazy. Is that what you're saying? Exactly. Because in 1973, two separate vigilante groups, I'm going to come on and say it, dad squads, let's just call it what it is. Hell yeah. We're out tracking what they thought was a yucca man. when in the dark of night, they both stumbled across each other and were so startled, both groups opened fire on each other in the desert. Before anyone gets mad at me for laughing, thankfully, no one could see shit in the dark and no one was hurt, thank God.

I mean, this does sound like a very silly scenario that would never happen, but at the gas station, literally just 15 minutes down the road, we went in to get some snacks, and behind the desk they are just selling ammo for guns. Yeah. Which we weren't really expecting. I know whether we're in America, but that's always still kind of a weird thing to see coming from the UK and Ireland.

Yeah, I know. So trippy. Because back in Ireland, we have a spud gun, which is a gun that shoots only pieces of potato. Yeah. So the ammo that you need for that is actually in the vegetable aisle. You don't need to put it behind the desk. The thing about a spod gun is, if an Irishman shoots you with that,

he must really f*** hit you. We love potatoes. The idea of wasting a drop of potato on shooting someone is unthinkable. The only way to explain it is to say to an American, imagine you could eat bullets. Yeah, that's how we feel about potatoes. Do spud guns still exist? Do the kids play with spud guns? It feels wrong somehow, doesn't it, to give a kid a gun of any kind? Yeah, I feel like that's something I'll say on my deathbed. I'm like, back in my day, gunshot potatoes. And they'll be like, all right, granddad, close your eyes and die, please, so we can get your money. Bold of you to assume that you're going to have money when you die.

I think they'll be like, all right, granddad, hurry up and die so we can save on funeral costs. This is dragging on. You want me to die so bad? Fine, I put a spudgun against my head. I'll do it, I swear. But I think part of what fascinates me about not only this paranormal tale, but also the others we're discussing across this series. we're recording out here in the desert at Area 51. And so these paranormal tales interface with the secretive military presence here in the desert.

Yeah. Are these things just coincidental neighbors or is something else happening? Because sightings of these desert Bigfoots have also been reported around Edwards Air Force Base, further northwest. And in several military bases in this part of the world, base security, lab work, workers and pilots have all reported seeing strange, tall, hairy men stalking the desert. Wow! According to some researchers, sightings have come from both around the perimeter of these facilities and inside them.

Well, that's just dangerous. These motherfuck are carrying clipboards in a fake land yard and breaking into Area 51! This is like any of the scenes in The Avengers where Hulk is like doing math, but he's still enormous for some reason. And they're like, does he hate math that much that it makes him the Hulk? I don't understand how this works. Imagine they arrest the Yucca Man and they're like, why did you break into Area 51? He's like, it's air-conditioned. It's cold. It's nice.

Yeah, I'm boiling out here. You guys have a canteen that serves mac and cheese. I've been eating beetles and lizards for six fucking years. Some even claim that the Yucca Man has been captured on CCTV before. But I will say that is yet to be revealed. But Rory, I'm not going to leave you hanging, because whilst we don't have that CCTV footage from Edwards Air Force Base,

we do have a photo by Ken Lane that surfaced in the 1990s. Whoa. Now, Lane is a writer and journalist who wrote a book about the Mojave Desert called Desert Oracle, and this photo remains to this day pretty much the best Yucca Man evidence there is. Now, I'm going to be lenient when I look at this photo because as someone who has been filming

and taking cameras in this desert for the last couple of days, I realized how difficult that can be. Yeah. So I'm an experienced photographer out here. Oh, don't laugh. All right, cut that, Phil. Cut that.

I just didn't realize that the Yucca man was a ghost. That's all. I didn't realize he was a night phantom. Well, Rory, I think you just said, you're an expert of videography. I think that you know that with a camera, there's such thing as a shutter speed. And at night, the shutter speeds become slow,

which causes things that move quickly, like a yucca man, whose borderline Yusin Bolt, to be honest. We never said that. They probably are. But if there was a long exposure on this camera, it could cause something moving to become blurred, which I believe is what has happened here.

Yeah, I mean, but blurred in such a way that he really is kind of translucent. It's kind of just the shape of a figure. There's no defining. characteristics here. Aside from like a tiny mound where a head would be, but aside from that, it is kind of a, it is a blur. It's tough. Hey, it's tough. Look, as I said, I've been taking film, taking videos and photos here at night and it is difficult. You do have that kind of delayed shutter speed. It's a pretty scary thing to witness, I'll be honest with you. Yeah, because this is,

for anyone not watching the video, this is kind of POV from a car stopped on a road. So the the headlights are illuminating this dirt road and you can see a figure. A definite figure. It's kind of cool because you can see why it's called the Yucca Man in that image because I guess it kind of does look like a yucca tree. And a little bit, yeah. I'm just a little bit scared as well because that photo was kind of taken at night in the desert. And while we've been recording this podcast,

it has kind of transcended into night in the desert. The sun really has set behind us. So, yeah, how much longer we got here, Bud, because we really got to get home. I don't want to be out here when the Yucca men start coming. Rory, I'm glad you brought it up because this photo tells us something could really be out here. And as you notice, it's now getting very dark.

And these creatures are nocturnal. I think the only way for us to know whether this thing's real or not is for us to have a look for ourselves. Wait until sundown, wait until dark Rory and journey into the desert behind us. Oh my god. Under cover of night and find the yucca man for ourselves. What do you say?

I say we need to buy some of that ammo. Let's go. Okay, we are out. We are in the field. We are in the bush. We are... This was a mistake, man. I can't do it.

I can't do it, man. It's scary as fuck. Actually is kind of scary. This is not okay, man. This is not like the podcast studio in London. It's safe. It's cozy. It's air-conditioned.

It has a fridge with drinks in it. I'm cold. I'm not cold. It's the desert. It's been pretty hot. All right, man. We got a job to do. We got to find out whether this thing's f***ed or not.

We do have reinforcements in the name of equipment. Rory, show the people. Boom. One flashlight, military grade. Is that all you brought? This thing is like a beam to the heavens. A light? A torch?

Well, it's only one of the things that I brought. Oh. The other thing, boom, night vision goggles. Okay. That's a bit more like it. If there's things out here, we're going to see it. Yeah. I just don't know how to use it because I actually didn't have time to meet these threats.

I will find fast. So. That is genuinely extremely useful though, I think. We know this thing's nocturnal. We know it's going to be hiding deep in the bush, trying to avoid contact with humans. Okay, we've got some sort of action going here. I think it's powered on. I think this is going to work.

And then last but not least, if all else fails and we need to draw this thing out, we do have one clue. clue that it is part Sasquatch, part beast, part big foot, some kind of distant or not so distant relative. That is why we're going to draw it out with this. I've done too much already. Okay, let's hit him. After stumbling around in the dark for a while, it became clear finding this thing would be no joke.

We would need every piece of tech at our disposal. This is impossibly dark. This is crazy. This is a very, very dark night. I think we need to bust out the night vision goggles and see what we can do. All right, you ready? Let's go. Boom!

Oh yeah, that's more like it. Here we go. Can you see anything? No, keep it. Would you start? You're talking to my ears. Sorry. Sorry.

We had all but given up on finding the Yucca man and we're heading back to the car when I walked off to take a leak. That's when Rory captured this. When I got back, he was gone and I found the camera on. on the ground with this footage. No one has seen him since. Thankfully, before he died, I mean disappeared, we recorded next week's final episode of our investigation into Area 51.

Join us next week for Area 51's most shocking UFO incident yet.