Here is what I dug up on a quick google session...
Northern California is famous for Bigfoot sightings.
8 sightings of a sea serpent in San Francisco Bay during the period 1985-87
And there's:
The Elizabeth Lake monster
There are at least ten different Elizabeth Lakes in California. This one is in LA County near Palmdale and is perhaps the oldest one in the state. Legend states that the Devil himself created the lake and placed one of his own pets inside it. If you swim deep enough, eventually you will find a secret passage direct to the underworld which isn't entirely far fetched, as the lake lies directly over the San Andres fault line. From this lake a horrible monster came to be.
Tessie
Much like Loch Ness, Lake Tahoe has its own water monster and it's called Tahoe Tessie. About half a dozen sightings occur every year. This has led to a museum and even a phone hot line to be established in the area. Local Indian legends have long spoke of monsters in the lake and some other theories point to a giant sturgeon perhaps inhabiting the dark areas of the water.
Lake Tahoe is an extremely deep body of water, getting to 1,645 feet, thus making it the perfect place for sea monsters to lurk and hide. The reports of Tessie are mostly of the sixty foot serpentine variety although several claim Tessie to be a giant fish, hence the sturgeon theory. The first rumors of the sea creature came from the Indians that lived in the area - the Washoe and Paiute Tribes.
Jacques Cousteau, French Oceanographer, explored the depths of Lake Tahoe in the 1970s. Cousteau apparently encountered something so horrible, that he claimed the world was not ready for what was at the bottom of the lake. He subsequently refused to release any of his underwater footage or any of his data.
Cave Rock is a large rock formation along the southeastern shore of the lake. It is easily visible from most of the lake. Once part of a volcanic vent, the caves were created by the constant pounding of the lake's shoreline crashing against the rock walls. This happened about three million years ago when the lake was much higher in elevation of course. Cave Rock has been reported to be sacred to the Washoe Indians. Rumors of the tribe throwing their deceased off the rock have circulated and this has led to ghost stories about Cave Rock mostly concerning several spirits performing tribal rituals. Supposedly you can also see a lady pictured in the rock formation. Called the Lady of the Lake she is gazing out at the lake and is best viewed from north of the rock, in the morning or early afternoon hours. Lastly Cave Rock is suppose to be situated above the underwater lair of Tahoe Tessie.
Lake Tahoe seems to have its share of ghosts. Periodically, there are even reports of a young woman dressed in fine clothing from the late 1800's floating just below the surface of the water.
The Billiwhak Monster
This is one of those stories that so far I can only attribute to local urban legend dating back from World War II. As the story goes a tall muscular apelike humanoid with long claws and ram-like horns on the top of its head lurks around the area of Santa Paula in Ventura County. It calls the area known as the Camulos Ranch its home. Specifically it has been encountered on Aliso Canyon Road and occasionally the Wheeler Canyon Road near what once was the Billiwhack Dairy and Ranch.
Referred to as the Billiwhack Monster, the creature has tormented mostly high school students from the Santa Paula High School. These teenagers are the primary people who have encountered the half goat / half man humanoid creature. It has thrown large fifty pound rocks at their cars and even pounded on the hoods of their automobiles leaving dents. It has also been reported to carry around a large club. In the fifties, a nine year old boy reported being attacked and clawed by a weird animal near the Billiwhack Dairy. He had scratches across his arms and back. Another reference to the creature was in 1964 when it terrorized several hikers for several hours and thus made headlines in a local newspaper. Which newspaper I’m unsure of.
The Billiwhack Dairy according to the legend is a decrepit ruin of what once was a state of the art, very advanced and modern dairy farm. It apparently contains underground rooms and tunnels, but is also rumored to be missing walls, etc, which could be attributed to the many decades of un-use.
The dairy was started up and run by an August Rubel who moved to Ventura County in 1922 and established the dairy in 1924. Rubel was once a native of Zurich, Switzerland. He served in the American Field Service in France from 1917 to 1919. The urban legend connects him to the Office of Strategic Services or the OSS. The OSS was the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency. If the legend is true, the OSS had Ruben performing experiments beneath the dairy, including trying to make a super soldier. The Billiwhack Monster is apparently a product of this research and experimentation that escaped to haunt the local area.
The OSS was started by William “Wild Bill” Donovan who was made the Coordinator of Information or COI in 1941. This office eventually became the OSS. The OSS was responsible for much of the espionage and sabotage in Europe and Asia. The OSS was disbanded after World War II, but a proposal by Donovan eventually led to the formation of the present day CIA.
As the urban legend goes, Rubel, after performing experiments in Ventura County, was eventually sent over seas and died mysteriously doing secret work for the OSS in 1943. According to a historical account, August Rubel actually died in Tunisia, when he returned to service and the ambulance he was driving hit a German land mine.
Although most accounts of the urban legend state that the dairy and ranch were abandoned leaving the monster to its own devices, other accounts state that Rubel’s wife, Mary Colgate McIsaac remarried in 1946 to an Edwin Burger. Mary died in 1968 and Burger continued managing and living on the ranch that August Rubel helped build and manage.
Most recently, on May 5th, 2001, Rancho Camulos was awareded a National Historic Landmark. The plaque for the landmark states:
Ygnacio del Valle established Rancho Camulos in 1853, on part of a Mexican land grant of former mission lands. Rancho Camulos was the setting for "Ramona," an 1884 novel that generated national interest in the history of Hispanic settlement in California. August Rubel purchased the property in 1924 and preserved the significant historic features of the site.
Shirley Rubel Lorenz, daughter of August Rubel and President of Rancho Camulos Museum Board of Directors was present to accept the plaque. She had been born and raised at Rancho Camulos and stated that her father, August Rubel, had “instilled in her a sense of trust and stewardship over Rancho Camulos”.
So if there is really a half goat / half man monster lurking in the depths of Santa Paula, there’s a lot of questions regarding what it’s doing there and how it got there. Although there’s little to no evidence of its existence, some cryptozoologists believe it might be related to or actually a Bigfoot, granted a deformed or disfigured Bigfoot.
Ironically, the Billiwhack Monster is not the only creature sighted in the area. In 1939, several people reported seeing a strange half monkey, half man in Ojai, a small town about fifteen miles west of the Billiwhack Dairy. Reports described the creature as the size of a twelve year old boy with gangly long arms and black fur. Mrs. Catherine Loughboro complained that the monkey creature stole two of her chickens from her henhouse and a few weeks later, Mrs. Tom Richards saw the creature eating her corn. Could this be an earlier experiment of Rubel?
Sadly, the urban legend detailing Ruben’s involvement with the OSS remains very suspect and one also has to be skeptical about the creature when combined with the fact that much of Ruben’s family remained on the land after he died during World War II. Wouldn't members of his family have reported the rampaging monster by now? Was August Ruben really a mad scientist who worked for the OSS creating super soldiers? Was he really involved in espionage over in Africa when he disappeared mysteriously during World War II? Is there really a half goat / half man monster lurking in the dark depths of Ventura County? Regardless, it’s probably best just to be on the safe side to be careful when driving down Aliso Canyon Road and watch out for goat headed monsters.
A few more interesting stories here
I am sure if you popped onto a search engine you would find more questions then answers...