In which this cryptid has legs for days.

I've heard a lot about the Fresno Nightcrawler but actually know nothing about the lore surrounding it. It's a classically popular cryptid, though, so I'm excited to share its story with all of you!

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TIMELINE

November 2007 - the first recording is captured

March 2011 - Yosemite sighting

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LOCATION

Fresno, California

Yosemite National Park, California

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DESCRIPTION

Fresno Nightcrawlers are littler than most cryptids, said to stand at only about a meter and a half tall. They're fun-sized cryptids! As I said, they do, in fact, have legs for days -- most of their bodies are pure leg, with small stilt-like feet. They have very small upper halves, as you can see in the picture above. It's extremely thin and totally white. The cryptid wiki describes it as being humanoid and...yeah, I guess it has two legs that it walks on like us, but for god's sake, the thing is a meter and a half tall and is albino white, with no arms or discernable facial features! You're pushing the envelope of "humanoid" at that point. The Nightcrawlers spotted in Yosemite also apparently had webbing connecting its knees to its torso.

People usually claim that Fresno Nightcrawlers travel in pairs, although, as I'll explain later on, there aren't really very many sightings of them at all, and in Jose's video, you can see one creature walking alone. It gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling though -- the cryptids have buddies!

Overall, the Fresno Nightcrawler closely resembles another cryptid called the Carmel Area Creature that you'll see earlier in this book. They are thought, however, to be two distinctly different creatures.

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FIRST SIGHTING

We start our tale with a man named Jose and his barking dog. Jose lived in Fresno and had a surveillance system watching over his property. When his dog started losing his mind around midnight one night, Jose checked the cameras to see what the dog was barking at. That's when he got what was probably the surprise of his life: he saw the Fresno Nightcrawler strolling across his yard. The picture at the beginning of the chapter is supposedly taken from that video surveillance, as is the video below.

Now, I don't know about you, but this would scare the ever-living hell out of me. I don't care how fun-sized this thing is or how terrible the video quality is, watching that thing long-leg its way across the yard genuinely creeped me out. No me gusta.

The family, in fact, doesn't seem to have faked this. Jose called the police after viewing the footage, but unfortunately, they couldn't figure out what the hell was going on, either. When he took the video to Univision, a local television station, in the hopes of public identification, he and his family asked to remain anonymous to avoid the limelight and out of fear of whatever the creatures may have been. It all points to this cryptid being more legit, although I don't know how we could have missed what looks like a pair of possessed pants wandering around California for all these years.

https://youtu.be/fMv85lRAmuk

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FOLLOWING SIGHTINGS

Now, this is the weirdest cryptid I've researched thus far because there aren't in-person sightings. I mean, there are, but most if not all of them are disregarded even by cryptozoologists, who think there are four-foot-tall mutants skipping around California. If they find a place to draw the line, you know something's really silly.

Really, the only two sightings are in Jose's home video and the sighting explained below. That's weird, right? I'm not the only one who thinks that's weird? Most cryptids have dozens of supposed sightings "supporting" their existence, but not these little guys. We've got two videos and that's about it.

Yosemite

In 2011, Yosemite workers installed cameras in previously unsupervised areas with the intention of catching some recent vandals in the act. They got...a bit more than they bargained for.

This time, video surveillance captured two of the creatures strolling through the famous national park. One was incredibly short, less than half a meter high, and both of them had clearly defined feet and webbing connecting their knees to their torsos, as I mentioned above. See, this feels better to me. This feels more right. Keep your creepy cryptids in federally protected land where they belong! There's no telling what sort of trouble they could get up to when they wander into residential areas, especially itty-bitty cryptids like this one. Save our cryptids!

A motorist gets spooked

Okay, so I know I said there were only two sightings, and that's because there are -- of the California monster. But a veeeery similar cryptid has been observed all the way over in the rolling cornfields of the midwest -- more specifically, Manchester, Indiana. In 2004, a seventeen-year-old drove past a creature that matched the Fresno Nightcrawler's description except for one key detail: this thing was over six feet tall.

Oh my god. That's terrifying. I don't - I don't even know what I'd do if I saw that just strolling down the road. Probably admit myself to an insane asylum to the rest of my life because I cannot deal with a reality where a six-foot-tall pair of legs is just hopping around.

Anyway, an elderly couple also drove past the creature and both the teenager and the couple pulled over afterward and conferred about what the hell they just witnessed. The trio agreed that there was no way that creature had been human and then escorted one another out of the area. Those poor, poor people.

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MAJOR MEDIA APPEARANCES

Syfy's "Fact or Faked: Paranormal Sightings"

Now, while I rarely trust television for anything, this show genuinely attempted to recreate the Fresno Nightcrawler videos and failed. I'm not saying that means anything. I'm not saying that proves their existence. But, I mean, come on. Isn't that strange? A team of professionals whose show is based around figuring out if something is fact or fiction couldn't recreate these videos. These little guys are officially starting to creep me out.

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POSSIBLE HISTORICAL SOURCE

Because this is a relatively new cryptid that has thus far mostly been caught on camera, there isn't really a trail of mythology to follow. This creature seems wholly unique to its recent sightings, other than the Carmel Area Creature.

Native American mythology

These claims are floating all over the Internet with no substance or support. People just tend to point to the nearest native tribe, it seems, whenever something spooky happens. Listen, people. Just because Native Americans have some of the dopest mythology under the sun doesn't mean you can pin every cryptid on them. Just the coolest ones.

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MEME

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FURTHER READING

Again...not much out there about these little fellas.

"Fresno Nightcrawler," cryptidz.fandom.com