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Mysterious 'home' spotted teetering on treacherous California cliff

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A precarious “home” constructed of driftwood and various other debris was recently spotted in drone footage teetering at the foot of a notorious California cliff, just above the cool spray of the Pacific Ocean — and a mysterious hermit may reside there.

The home — which looks like something out of The Swiss Family Robinson — is an impressive, though hastily-built, multi-storied structure that appears to have multiple rooms and walkways, with some parts even roofed by canvas or other materials, according to incredible footage posted on Youtube by aerial photographer @ParallaxEffect.

“We were hiking along the California coast in a spot familiar to us and I noticed something odd down on the cliffs,” the drone operator wrote in the caption, calling it “one of the most incredible human structures I’ve ever seen.”

A single chair blowing in the wind suggests that perhaps there was someone living in the home, or at least whoever built it would occasionally visit to relax by the ocean.

Samuel Casillas, president of the Pacifica Land Trust where the structure sits, told The San Francisco Chronicle that it has been there for at least 10 years.

Castillas said he’s never met the occupant, whom he described as a hermit, but believes he still lives on the site.

The structure is visible from a Google Earth image from 2022. Google Earth

“We were aware there was something down there, but we didn’t know whose it was or whose property it was on,” he told the paper. “It’s in a dangerous location that is really not accessible.”

Whoever built the structure, Castillas said, clearly wants to be left alone and his office has respected the stranger’s desire for extreme solitude.

“So we’ve done that,” he said. “We weren’t bothering a person who wants to be a hermit. We know someone’s been there, but we just don’t know who it is.”

“The dude,” he said, “should just be left alone.”

It’s not clear, however, if the home, which had also been captured on camera in Nov. 2022, was able to survive the harsh winds and waves of the Northern California winter.

The structure sits at the foot of the steep Devil’s Slide cliffs near Pacifica, south of San Francisco. Adobe Stock

YouTube users flooded the comments at the shocking sight reported by SFGate on Thursday — with some saying the structure, located at the edge of the treacherous Devils Slide cliffs near Pacifica, had been significantly damaged since the footage was taken.

“This shack has been there for many years, but it was almost completely destroyed during last year’s winter/rains,” user Dan Sullivan commented below. “This video was either taken before last winter, or the shack has been rebuilt over the past couple of months.”

Video poster @ParallaxEffect responded that he figured that it would be destroyed. They also don’t suspect that anyone lived there when they filmed it.

“First of all, there was no sign of someone being present from any of the footage. Second, the wind and waves in the winter would obliterate this. It may already be gone, the images I shot are almost a year old,” he wrote in the comments.

“Third, the resources needed to get all that material to that place, albeit driftwood and ocean debris, are not superficial, nor would the skill and effort required to build the structure,” he wrote. “I concluded, and still do unless shown otherwise, this was done as a project by someone, or a group, during the pandemic.”

The Post has reached out to @ParallaxEffect for more information.

Images from Google Maps from 2022 show the structure still apparently intact.

Tamas Holczer commented that the structure in the video is actually the second iteration of a home constructed by an artist named Boris.

It’s not clear how much of the structure survived the winter. Getty Images

Holczer said he had met Boris a few years ago and the artist created the home as a “get away spot” to paint whales.

Sullivan shared a similar encounter, writing that “A trail docent told me that some ‘crazy Russian hermit’ built it and lives there on and off.”

He wrote that he saw the man walk over the guard rail with a bunch of supplies and watched him make the 30-minute trek down to the shack — “and that’s probably much easier than going up.”

Not far from the mystery house, a suicidal doctor  Dharmesh Patel drove off a 250-foot cliff with his wife and two children in the car in January.

All four miraculously survived.

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Chauncey Koziol

Update: 2024-07-08