Hicks Road

Hicks Road stretches from the edge of South San Jose through 10 miles of wilderness along Guadalupe Creek. During the day, it's a lovely winding drive through natural beauty. After dark, this isolated road has generated countless legends involving everything from religious cults to satanic rituals, from ghosts to UFOs.

Hicks Road winds for ten miles from the edge of South San Jose through the wilderness alongside Almaden Quicksilver County Park—a remote stretch that becomes one of the Bay Area's most unsettling drives after dark. The road passes the Guadalupe Reservoir and borders over 100 miles of abandoned mercury mine tunnels, some reaching 2,300 feet below the surface. Since the 1970s, this isolated route has spawned San Jose's most persistent and layered urban legend: the tale of the Blood Albinos.

According to stories passed from teenager to teenager in schoolyards and sleepovers throughout San Jose, a colony of pale, red-eyed beings inhabits the dead-end sections where the pavement gives way to dirt and forest closes in. Witnesses describe them as ghostly figures with skin so white it seems to glow, eyes so dark red they appear black at night, and bone-chilling shrieks that echo from Quicksilver Park to Old Almaden. They move with unnatural speed, emerging from the darkness to chase away anyone who ventures too close to their territory.

One chilling account describes a group who struck a deer with their car: "Moving quickly into the road, the headlights now showed 3 humans with pasty white skin and blood[-shot] eyes" who rapidly dragged the animal down a hillside and vanished into the blackness. Another witness was followed by a vehicle with high beams before the driver emerged "carrying a large object which in our retellings of the story has been everything from a shotgun to a fishing pole." The screams that followed haunted everyone present.

The legend has evolved over decades to include darker elements. Some versions claim the colony practices Satanic rituals—that their attacks are how they gather human sacrifices. A cursed bridge near Hicks Road supposedly grants death to anyone whose name is written upon it. Near the end of Hicks Road at Twin Creeks, where it meets Alamitos Road, paranormal investigators have documented strange noises and unexplained encounters in what locals call "Albino Camp."

Multiple theories attempt to explain the legend's origins. Some point to a Swedish community at the entrance of Uvas Canyon Park—fair-skinned immigrants who could have been mistaken for something more sinister. Others blame United Technologies Corporation on nearby Metcalf Road, a scientific research facility that fueled rumors of genetic experiments. The Holy City, a white supremacist cult founded in 1919 by "Father" William Riker in the Santa Cruz Mountains, is another proposed source. The most mundane theory: teenagers once encountered a particularly pale man while trespassing, and one said he looked "very white." The story grew with each retelling until an entire colony materialized.

Skeptics offer rational explanations. The sounds could be barn owls or coyotes—both produce unsettling nocturnal calls. The San Jose area has long hosted homeless encampments near Hicks Road, including "The Jungle," which housed over 300 people at its peak. Psychic investigators suggest another possibility: "They're not albinos, they're ghosts, and people see them as ectoplasm." One Harvard researcher studying paranormal phenomena proposed the entities might be "flesh-and-blood creatures from another dimension."

The San Hauntse podcast dedicated a three-part series to Hicks Road—host Manuel Ávalos even composed an original song—and interviewed local director Julian P. Flores, who created the 2009 Blair Witch-style student horror film "Hicks Road." Despite decades of investigation, no evidence has confirmed the colony's existence. Yet new witnesses continue to come forward, and the legend refuses to die. Whether the Blood Albinos are genetic anomalies, restless spirits of mercury miners, interdimensional beings, or simply the product of overactive imaginations on a dark and winding road, their story remains San Jose's most infamous tale of the unexplained.