Have you ever been out late at night, and had the irrational feeling something… was
out there?
After all, who knows what lurks in the darkness beyond our senses…These dudes.
These dudes are out there lurking.
But, okay, what are these things supposed to be?
What ‘evidence’ for their existence is allegedly out there?
And if one fell over — could it get back up?
All these vital questions and more shall be answered, in this entry into the Archive.
Our story begins in 2007, when an unknown individual living in Fresno, California checked
their backyard security camera and allegedly, discovered… this.
What looks like a pair of pants, just going for a stroll.
This blurry video was the internet’s first glance at the unusual and frankly hilarious
cryptid now known as the Fresno Nightcrawler.
For those of you who don’t know, the term cryptid refers to any organism whose existence
hasn’t been proven by science.
As you can imagine, the sheer strangeness of these supposed cryptids compared to the
more familiar ones, like, say the loch ness monster, has captured the imagination of many
individuals on the internet — and might I just say, that I completely understand.
Allegedly, Nightcrawlers stand at around three feet tall, with a white body and disproportionately
long legs.
Most portrayals of the creature created in reaction to the footage portray the being
with two black eyes, which can’t be discerned in the original video due to poor quality.
But this blurry movie isn’t the only evidence of the supposed organism.
We also have… this other blurry video!
Allegedly captured in Yosemite National Park a few years later, the video shows what seems
to be two similar creatures… just taking a stroll.
Their overall gait looks even stranger than in the first one, and their bodies appear
even more fabric like.
In this footage, we can also see one Fresno Nightcrawler appears much bigger than the
other.
This is a pattern consistent across many other sightings and eyewitness testimony.
There’s something about the dynamic which almost seems like a parent and child… a
bizarre concept, but I admit I find it strangely wholesome.
And the most recent footage of these alleged beings comes from Montana, holding the special
distinction of being the blurriest video of them all.
Here, we can barely make out what seems like a single Fresno Nightcrawler sort of shimmy
into view… and then shimmy back into the darkness outside of the camera’s radius.
According to a dubious report attached to the footage, a deer carcass was found nearby
the next morning, with the implication being the Fresno Nightcrawler… somehow hunted
it down.
Although likely intended to be frightening, I find this addition really amusing — as
it makes me wonder how the creature was supposedly able to kill a deer using nothing but its
spindly legs.
It’s an image that’s going to stay with me for sure.
And that’s all the major pieces of footage we have, although scattered eyewitness accounts
have also cropped up over the years.
Thinking about all three of these supposed pieces of ‘documentation,’ one thing in
particular I like about these alleged beings is that they don’t seem to be camera shy.
Most historic cryptids like bigfoot are usually portrayed as being scared of being caught
on film — or at least skittish around humans in general, which lends some credibility to
the idea that’s why we’ve never found one.
But in all the ‘footage’ we have, these little dudes seem like they couldn’t care
less if someone is watching.
They just stroll about wherever they please.
In the footage from 2007, you can even hear a dog barking and a car passing, but the Fresno
Nightcralwer just keeps on rolling, not a care in the world.
So, looking at all this so-called ‘evidence,’ what’s the most likely explanation behind
this footage?
Well, as much as I’d like to say there’s nothing about this footage at all that seems
like a hoax… that’s pretty clearly what this is.
Everything from the suspiciously blurry footage, to the fact it’s difficult to confirm where
any of these videos actually originate from, to the blunt fact the creatures in the video
move an awful lot like puppets with the wires edited out is enough to raise a few eyebrows,
at the very least.
But it’s a very fun idea for a hoax, and one which I’m glad has produced so many
great interpretations.
Still, it’s my duty as an archivist to assert that the hoax-theory is by far the most reasonable
conclusion to draw from these videos.
But, that’s no fun, so I’m going to take a moment to talk about less likely, but far
more entertaining theories which have emerged regarding what it is we’re seeing in this
footage.
And prepare yourself: some of these get wild.
Perhaps most convincingly, I’ve heard theories that although the videos are obviously faked,
some eyewitnesses might have actually seen something real.
Not a cryptid, but a type of crane, which they mistook for a skinny, two-legged otherworldly
being.
At first, this explanation seemed odd to me, but the more footage I looked at — the more
I could see how late at night someone might mistake the outline of a crane as something
nightcrawler-shaped.
Getting into weirder territory, one of the more common theories you can find is that
these little dudes are, in fact, visitors from the vast expanse of the stars above.
I would argue it seems, uh….
unusual that aliens advanced enough for interplanetary space travel would touch down only to take
a leisurely stroll.
I’m not an alien so I can’t be certain (hey, maybe they enjoy a nice walk just like
we do?), but I wouldn’t exactly call any of this footage… hard proof of extra-terrestrials.
Beyond aliens, another relatively common theory is that the Fresno Nightcrawlers are a hereby
undiscovered species of animal.
It’s true that in the natural world, many strange forms of life exist, but a mouthless,
armless, torso-less land animal herby unknown to science despite moving at roughly 2 miles
an hour seems unlikely to say the least.
Another biological explanation I’ve heard put forward is that what we are seeing is
some sort of undiscovered species of fungus.
A cool idea!
I’m not an expert on fungus, but I don’t feel I’m overstepping when I say I doubt
any strain of mushroom, no matter how fantastical, is likely to go on a midnight walk.
Although I wish they would, that would be great.
And the final theory I’d like to touch on — and my personal favorite — is that what
we’re seeing in this footage looks like pairs of pants because… that’s what they
are.
Ghost pants, that is.
Why would ethereal pants walk through the mortal realm?
Who can say.
Maybe they weren’t machine washable and yet someone threw them in anyways, and now
they haunt the streets they used to walk when they were attached to a human’s legs?
Maybe not the most likely theory, but definitely the one I think is most fun, and most creative.
In the end, regardless of their true authenticity, Fresno Nightcrawlers can be real in our hearts.
These little dudes might not look much like real organisms, or real in general, but they
do look wonderful.
Thanks for watching.
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