Pale Crawlers are a phenomenon which usually involves enigmatic humanoid entities that appear at night, typically in abandoned buildings or in forests and other heavily wooded areas.
Description[]
They are humanoid creatures described as thin and pale, with long limbs with claws and large black eyes. Some sightings describe their eyes as having white pupils that glow in the dark. The sounds they make are usually described as screeching.
They are known to be incredibly fast, stealthy, and smart. While unconfirmed, it is likely that pale crawlers are hyper aggressive.
History[]
Allegedly, the Pale Crawlers occur in many of the indigenous Algonquin Tribe's teachings and mythologies, however, most evidence points that the Pale Crawlers are seemingly an internet folklore invention, much like the Black Stick Men, the Antarctic Spiders or the The Black Carpet.
While similar creatures existed before the internet, like the Wendigo or the Dover Demon, the Pale Crawler sightings and stories about encountering them started appearing for the first time in the 2000s with the advent of the internet, starting with the Rake creepypasta, and the creation of the infamous New Louisiana Swamp Monster image. The Pale Crawlers were also seemingly a source of inspiration for the famous SCP Foundation universe monster called SCP-096.
The Pale Crawlers gained a second wave of popularity during the late 2010s and the 2020s, with the advent of scary story videos on YouTube on channels such as Unit 522, Mr. Nightmare or Corpse Husband; Pale Crawlers are frequent antagonists in these scary story videos, typically called "unknown creatures" or "Skinwalkers" in them.
Sightings[]
Confirmed Sightings[]
- June 14th, 2008: Near a forested area in Higgins Lake, Michigan, in which two unnamed men were injured and one was killed. Police passed it off as a "bear attack" officially. The validity of the bear attack is unlikely, as video that has since been lost was shown to have disproved that theory.
- July 23rd, 2013: In upstate New York near Niagara, a crawler was seen by a park ranger who would lose his job due to "unruly conduct", "poor mental capability", and "an inability to distinguish reality from fiction." The crawler was caught on camera, but the ranger service confiscated it as "official evidence."
- April 19th, 2022: Near Elkhorn, Wisconsin a sighting of a possible crawler occurred on the intersection of Tel and Bray. Due to its location, it has been debated whether this was a Crawler, or the Beast of Bray Road.
Unconfirmed Sightings[]
- April 2nd, 1946: After returning home from Europe, Sergeant (Sgt.) McCay of the 4th infantry division in the US military claimed he saw an "unimaginable creature" that was "pale with hollow eyes" and that the eyes "saw him and pierced him." Whether this was a crawler is open to interpretation, as it happened so long ago. With Sgt. McCay's death in 2017, we may never know the truth, however, he remained adamant that what he saw was 100% real and that it was the cause of his PTSD.
- June 7th, 1988: Theo and Marty Cronk and Alexis Grace in Independence, Missouri were driving to their friend's house when they witnessed a large white creature that leaped over the guard rail of the bridge they were on and swung its hand at them. It was also seen in September of the same year by Dave Browning in Corning, Iowa who was driving his semi truck when he saw the creature crawling around outside the warehouse he worked at.