Reviewing the Weird: Out on Foot: Nightly Patrols and Ghostly Tales of a U.S. Border Patrol Agent by Rocky Elmore

First, thanks to my friend Teresa for gifting me this book.  It’s an engaging read that presents the dangers and challenges that United States Border Patrol agents face during their nightly tours walking the trails and canyons along the U.S.-Mexico border.  Now retired, Border Patrol agent and author Rocky Elmore presents a well-written account of the dangerous occupation and what agents working along the border must contend with during their nightly shifts, often in very isolated and spooky areas.  Elmore spent most of his twenty-year career (1994-2013) covering the Otay Mountains near San Diego, California.  Later, he transferred to Kingsville, Texas and finished his career in Tucson, Arizona.

Out on Foot showcases Elmore’s experiences as well as those of other agents who have witnessed armed drug smugglers, large and small groups of illegal aliens, big cats, various apparitions, and even a Bigfoot encounter in isolated areas along the border.  Elmore frontloads his book with realistic details of the high-stress and taxing job of border agents: from their intense training, to overcoming inexperience, to the importance of tracking and gathering up groups of illegal aliens and often, making the call to shoot or not shoot while dealing with hostile killer guides and armed escorts – all the while fighting one’s fear, Mother Nature, wildlife, and equipment failures.  He aptly illustrates that each night has the potential for danger.  In most cases, agents work in complete darkness aided only by an agent with a scope in a nearby truck. At times, luck offers an unexpected helping hand. 

Elmore maintains that the “majority of the accounts in this book come from some of the best agents that have ever served in the U.S. Border Patrol” (106).  His work is a “collection of events that involved over 500 agents  . . . over a thirteen-year period” (212).  Elmore asserts that border agents experienced the events in the book “because they are not afraid to go in the mountains and canyons in the dead dark of night.  They go where some might say, “‘angels fear to tread,’” and they often go there alone” (106).  This gritty realism provides the backdrop for the paranormal events that Elmore features. He goes out of his way to illustrate that the paranormal rarely come from “agents who are easily spooked or scared” (106).  Whether it’s the apparitions of a faceless woman or a toddler in a white nightgown; Luis A. Santiago, a Border Patrol agent, who is believed to have been murdered on the job; or a Native American warrior in “historical dress” (104), agents reported seeing these specters in or near the famed Otay Mountains area east of San Diego.  Elmore asserts that many agents, including himself, felt an evil presence there and that, “Many of these stories took place before the mountain burned off in the wildfire in 1996” (212).

The Otay Valley was also called “The Indian Diggs” where archaeologists had “excavated Indian relics such as arrowheads and pottery” (103), and many agents described a marked temperature difference in that area.  It was cold.  Before the cleansing fire, Elmore notes that many paranormal events allegedly took place in the area, in addition to the rapes, desertion of groups of hapless illegal aliens left to die, victims of large mountain lions and death of border agents.

According to Elmore, some sought out the area for satanic rituals.  In Chapter Eight, “Otay Lakes and Otay Valley: Witch Weirdness,” Elmore tells the story of his encounter with a “Witch’s camp” (93), and how he at first thought he saw a bound and gagged woman tied to a tree only to discover that it was a mannequin.  The experience unnerved Elmore as much as the paranormal experiences did other agents, some of whom witnessed a faceless woman, others a small child in a white nightgown walking on a mountain ridge.  Still other agents spotted fresh footprints with their flashlights where none were present moments before, nor even the quietest sounds.

With his stark tone and descriptions, Elmore convinces readers that the Otay Mountains are spooky.  He tells of the Field Training Unit near the Otay Lakes where he and three other agents “developed a strong foreboding” after hearing a loud splash in the lake (135).  He later learned that the menacing creature they’d encountered walked on two feet “like a man,” was larger than a bear, and “its heat signature on the scope was massive” (140).  Perhaps it was a Bigfoot or Sasquatch.  Elmore stresses that these are credible events and “legitimate sightings” by credible people, but it’s up to readers to judge whether they qualify as supernatural (87).  Perhaps a cryptozoology skeptic at one time, Elmore admits that his opinion “about the possibility of Bigfoot creatures and what they really are changed drastically after that evening” (140).

Providing further validation to Elmore’s own accounts, as well as those of his fellow border agents, Out on Foot offers intriguing witness stories of border agents encountering groups of illegal aliens all spooked by their encounters with apparitions or monsters that they plead with the agents to kill. 

The stories of Luis A. Santiago, believed to have been murdered in the line of duty, present some of the more powerful moments in the book.  Several encounters and perhaps even an act of revenge are shared here.  In fact, Elmore details over eight encounters where witnesses believe they witnessed the spirit of Agent Santiago carrying out his border patrol duties.  Elmore and other agents suspect that Santiago’s spirit took care of his real-life killer when he plunged to his death.  At least the ridge sightings stopped after his death (200).  Elmore was issued Santiago’s flashlight after he died and credits Santiago as the inspiration for writing Out on Foot.  “I still have the flashlight to this day,” he shares.  “It was eerie how things concerning Santiago’s death kept coming back to me” (62). 

I’ve been interested in ufology and the paranormal – at a safe distance, anyway – since I was young.  Rocky Elmore’s chronicle of walking the U.S. border is a worthwhile read, especially if you’re interested in ghosts, the paranormal, and perhaps even the possibility of multiple dimensions.  There’s even one brief mention of a UFO sighting here.  Elmore’s book reveals the incredibly tasking job of patrolling the United States border in mysterious and isolated places.  It is a great read, one that presents a no-man’s land that has it all – including perils both traditional and perhaps supernatural.

– Kelly L. Goodridge

Works Cited

Elmore, Rocky.  Out on Foot: Nightly Patrols and Ghostly Tales of a U.S. Border Patrol Agent.

Los Angeles: Duffin Creative, 2015.