167. Something’s Lurking In The Woods: Terrifying Tales of Crawlers

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That's B-Y-R-N-A, Burna.com. Purchase and shipping restrictions vary by state and municipality. Go to Burna.com to check availability at your location. Work when I get there. That's it. I gotta get T-Mobile. I don't even get reception in my apartment. This is why I'm mom's favorite. So many reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours at T-Mobile.com. Best mobile network in the U.S. based on analysis by Uclu Speed Test Intelligence data first half of 2026. With compatible device in most outdoor areas and select countries where you can see the sky. Included with experience beyond or $10 a month, auto renews monthly. Cancel anytime. High-speed data on select plans not for extended international use. Coverage not available in some areas. See plan for details. On July 31st of 2021, at around 11 p.m., a 911 call came into a dispatcher in Pender County, North Carolina, that would go on to baffle police. In it, a man said he was driving down a two-lane backcountry road when he saw something he didn't think was human. Pender County 911. 911. What's the address of your emergency? I'm driving on 210. I just crossed the Black River and I thought I saw a guy standing on the side of the road bleeding. Okay. Where are you at, sir? I'm on 210. I just crossed the Black River. I'm heading toward 3E. I just passed Patriot's Wine. Okay. So you're over near Morse Creek? Yes. And did you, you saw a man standing on the side of the road? What's up? What was that, sir? That's not human! Sir, are you okay, sir? There's something in the back of that truck! Okay. What's in the road? No, it's not in the road. It's in my truck! In the bed! There's something in the bed of your truck? Yes, ma'am. I just turned on my bed light for my truck and there's something in my bed. Okay, sir. When you say something, what do you mean? I just knocked it off of the bed of my truck and went over my roof. Okay. What was it? I just turned it off of the bed of my truck and went over my roof. Okay. What was it? the early evening, expecting to be back within an hour or two of searching and having our guns with us in case we found the animal still alive or came across another buck. It was steep in places, making the hike slower and more tedious than we had hoped. We followed the blood trail for maybe 20 minutes, and then it got really hard to track. The sun was getting close to setting at this point, and we knew going out would be just as long as getting in. We had just about decided to stop when we found a spot near a fallen tree that looked like it had been recently bedded down. There were spatters of fairly fresh blood trailing away from it, so we continued to follow the trail. When the sun had just about set and the light had faded from the trees, we removed the firing caps from our guns to make them now completely safe, as it was now illegal and irresponsible to hunt in the absence of light. My grandfather pulled out his large maglite flashlight from his pack, and I put in my headlamp to begin the hike back, using our GPS to find the trail ahead. About 10 minutes on the way back, we started to hear more movement among the trees. It was normal for animals to start moving now that the sun had gone down, as animals would likely be starting to head towards clearings for water or to graze in the safety of lower light. Small and distant sounds of crunching leaves, patterings of hooved animals, or small bits of movements in the trees from squirrels or birds were common and expected. We did not expect the deafening, disturbing sound that we heard next, which vaguely and initially reminded me of a coyote howl, but it seemed unidentifiable, frightening, and way too human-like. It started with what sounded like a person screaming, but then it got louder and more intense, with a screech to it. So unlike any coyote or animal we had ever heard, then was chittering that came in between the shrieks, and the movement in the trees that became almost calculated, and they were threatening. We stopped dead in our tracks, frozen as my grandfather started using the light to look around. I was far more freaked out than he was at this point. He just seemed perplexed, curious, and a little baffled at what could make that sound, because it sounded so human. We continued on after it mostly stopped, and it seemed like the other natural and distant sounds had almost gone silent. I listened intently to the sounds of my boots crunching with the dry aspen leaves underfoot, trying to tell myself that it was just some weird coyote. Maybe 20 minutes from the main trail that would lead us back to the truck, we heard the chittering sound again, and sounds of thumping against dead trees. Looking around with our lights, that's when we saw it. This episode is brought to you by Sejo. 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So what's yours? Do you go wild? Or get a little nostalgic? Do you like to cozy up indoors? Or kick it outdoors? Whatever you fall for, get shoes that get you. We've got the trend. You bring the vibes. DSW. Let us surprise you. 12 to 15 feet in front of us was a large human looking thing. It was almost hunched down with long slender arms and it was standing in front of an aspen. The aspen of course was pale white with the knots being dark brown and whatever this thing was had skin almost as pale. I caught a very brief glimpse of its face. It was round and the eyes were sunken and I could not tell you eye color other than a flash of reflection on the eye from my light and that its face seemed sunken and emaciated. It was bony, like an animal that hadn't eaten in a long time or that was seriously ill. I didn't see any fur or hair. I never felt like it looked right at me though. For a mere couple of seconds I caught a glimpse of it. But that was it. I looked down at the ground holding my eyes shut tight trying to imagine being safe and secure in the truck and my grandfather took a few stumbling steps backward after me. I heard the thing go off to our side, moving quickly and with purpose through the trees. It went to the side and then it dropped down behind us, I would assume according to the sound it made. Wherever it went, I just hoped it was in the opposite direction. I have never before and never since seen my grandfather so confused, baffled, horrified, curious, and in awe. I was crying at this point, ugly crying, and I asked him, "What was that?" Over and over and over again I asked. And he had no answer for me. He pulled his gun off of his shoulder, made it live, and then he carried it in front of his body in his arm. He pulled out another headlight and put it on himself. We started walking again towards the trail and he began talking to himself, listing things to prove to himself what it wasn't. Saying things like, "Couldn't have been a deer or an elk or a moose. It had arms. It was hunched. It stood upright." Or, "A bear? A very sick bear? It could have been a bear." "Was it the light?" We heard the sound, the screeching human howl, distantly once more before reaching the trail, which was dirt and gravel, but fairly flat and no deadfall. We practically jogged back to the truck. I locked the doors immediately and sobbed, and my grandfather turned on music as loud as possible to try to distract me on the way back to camp. I was a mess when we arrived back, and he went to talk with the others by the fire. He explained something to his friend, but I don't know exactly what he said. The next day, though, everyone was extra sweet to me, trying to comfort me and saying that it was probably a sick animal, and it just looked really scary in the dark. The deer the hunter shot was found the next day in the light, scavenged quite harshly by what I assume was coyotes. To this day, I have no idea what that creature was, nor what that sound was. The scientist in me, and in my grandfather, hopes and speculates that it was just a deformed and sick animal in scant light, or that it was a ghost. I still have no clue what that thing was, and I hope I never experience it again. The worst thought I had in all of this was, I've been in a search party for a couple of missing people in that same general area and region, and it terrifies me to think that something like that could have happened to people that have gone missing. The area I'm in and the surrounding area have a ton of caves too, and I've always wondered if that had happened to anyone. Now, the poster leaves us with this final question: Anybody have any ideas? Am I in the right place? Sorry again for the long story, but it helps me remember details if I tell the whole thing. Now, someone in the comments immediately says that it sounds like what this poster saw was a crawler, and they also say, quote, "the thought that they could be responsible for the number of missing people is terrifying." But then this commenter also brought something up that I thought was really interesting and I wanted to share with you all. They said, quote, "What the poster said about taking the bodies of missing people into the caves, well, have you seen the maps of areas where people have gone missing, and the area of the country where there is an unbelievably large, frighteningly widespread cave network? The two maps overlay each other almost identically. What if something is inhabiting these caves and is responsible for these incidents? I will attempt to find the maps and post them here so that you too can be scared out of your socks and have as many sleepless nights as I've had thinking about this possibility." This commenter then goes on to share that map, and if you're listening on audio only, I'm going to share it on our socials. That's @HeartStartsPounding. And in this map, you can see an overlay of clusters of missing people in America and the cave networks that run throughout this country. And at first glance, these maps really do seem to line up. But this got me thinking, is there really something like this out there? And who has seen it? And basically, what is the deal with it? So in classic "Hearts Are Pounding" fashion, I spent all night researching these creatures, and now I'm not so sure what's going on. So I wanna rewind a little bit, and I wanna start out by giving you a little more context on some of these sightings and the different types of crawlers that are said to exist. The way that the crawler is described in the first two stories is pretty standard for most crawler sightings. From a distance, they can look human, like in the first story that we heard, which is why sometimes people will approach them. But once you note their behavior, it's evident that something is wrong. First off, They crawl. That's their defining characteristic. They can crawl at extreme speeds, completely silently or nearly silent. They're also only ever seen at night, and they're believed to be nocturnal. But because these creatures have been seen all around the country, there seems to be different categories of them, even though they all share similar characteristics. So there's pale crawlers. This is the most commonly reported type. They're described as thin, humanoid creatures with translucent skin. They have long, gangly limbs with claws and large black eyes. Some reports note that they have white pupils that will glow in the dark. They stand at around six to eight feet tall when they're upright, and they typically move on all fours, but are capable of just moving on two. Reports describe them as incredibly fast, stealthy, and intelligent, sometimes with a wet sheen covering their bodies. Now there's also fleshgates. Tales of fleshgates were first shared on 4chan, which kind of adds an element of internet urban legend to them. Fleshgates possess a key distinguishing feature, though. They can shapeshift, and they also have mimicry abilities that allow them to take on the appearance and the voice of people. Unlike pale crawlers, fleshgates are associated with a strong coppery, or some describe it as blood, odor. Next, we have Appalachians. Appalachian crawlers. This is a regional variant concentrated in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, and the surrounding states. Appalachian crawlers appear in the heavily forested mountain regions. This is also potentially what that man who made the first 911 call saw. And then, last but not least, there is, from the depths of my nightmares, cave crawlers. This is potentially related to the cave disappearance idea. There's a theory that there is a subterranean. subterranean species of crawler. They have pale skin, which is supposed to be an adaptation to underground environments. It's basically what you see in the movie The Descent, if you've ever seen it. Reports of these crawlers cluster near caves and abandoned mines. Mount Shasta encounters mention creatures pulling people towards these caves. And then there's also folklore in Missouri that references, quote, human-like creatures living in absolute darkness. Now, if you know anything about the caves of Appalachia, you know that there is centuries of lore of creatures that live in those caves. I actually did an entire episode on creepy Appalachian caves and coal mine lore for subscribers. It's on our Patreon and Apple Podcasts. I'm going to link the episode in the description if you want to hear more. A lot of this lore talks about a specific creature called Tommyknockers. These are little dwarf-like creatures that live in the local caves and coal mines, and they actually knock on the walls right before there's a big collapse. And this comes from hundreds, if not thousands, thousands of coal miners that have said they heard these knocks right before disaster struck. I mean, maybe what they were hearing was the structure of the tunnels cracking before they crumbled. Maybe there's nothing weird or scary about caves. Though, as someone who did go spelunking one time, I refuse to believe that. If you're listening and you're a regular caver, I am begging you to prove to me that caves are super normal. Because others argue that Tommyknockers are just, at least, the tip of the iceberg of what lives in our cave system here in America. And that cave dwellers are responsible for a lot more disappearances than we'll ever know. But crawlers aren't just seen in caves. And they're also not just seen in the United States, though I know a lot of what we've talked about today is local to the U.S. And our next story that I want to share with you takes us a little bit further north into Canada. By our partner, Vistaprint. If you run a small business, you know that there's a moment where you go from just doing the thing you love to realizing you need stuff, like physical stuff. Custom merch for an event, branded apparel for your team, business cards that actually look professional. That was definitely me with Hearts, Hearts, Pounding. What started as a podcast I made in my closet turned into something that had merch, had mugs, had stickers, had all this stuff that I needed to get made. And Vistaprint made it so much less overwhelming. They are a true print expert. Premium quality products, fast turnaround, and design tools that actually make sense. I actually got custom mugs made from Vistaprint, and they are gorgeous and very, very good quality. 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Rated M for Mature. Now, I've mentioned this before. To me at least, Canada is one of the strangest and scariest places. We've covered Wendigos that live deep in the Boreal Forest, the Highway of Tears where indigenous people have disappeared in droves since the 1970s. And so it does make sense to me that this next story happened up there. It was posted on the subreddit, highstrangeness, four years ago, and it reads, "I need to clarify that while religious, I'm not particularly superstitious. I've never experienced or truly believed in anything paranormal or unexplainable. This story is the one and only experience I have that has made me even consider the possibility of otherworldly forces. And if I hadn't experienced this personally, I would assume with a great deal of certainty that it's a complete lie. So for some reason, I'd like to explore some context of the area I was in. My great uncle owns a lot of land in Northern Saskatchewan, Canada. Some of this was pasture that he used for cattle, but half of one of his largest properties is fenced off and the cows can't go in there. In this sectioned off lactose-free zone, the entire place is densely packed with foliage. A lot of the brush is too thick to get through without a machete. The ground itself is blotted with some small steep hills towards the entrance of the property. There is one main dirt road that goes from a Texas gate at the entrance all the way back to the farthest side of the property, coming off the road in the hilly area where we have a camp. The camp consists of a camperized ATCO trailer in front of the entrance, which is gated with barbed wire. My mom also has a pull-behind trailer that sits perpendicular to the ATCO, as well as a 14-foot pull-behind trailer that a family member gave to me so that I could have privacy at camp. Now, we have always had lots of wildlife, cats and bears that could harm people. So since I was young, I learned to recognize the sounds and the sights around me. While I'm cautious, I'm rarely afraid of anything out there, especially given that I'm usually armed when I'm not with multiple people. The summer before last, we had a remarkably calm experience there. There were hardly any critters that we had to deal with, and it seemed like the bears and pests were leaving us alone. There were no droppings. Many small game trails had grown in, and the camp that usually took two days to set up was exactly how we left it the previous trip. It was really peaceful. Now, since it was summer, I filled the days with woodworking, fishing trips, and the occasional hike looking for berries and setting traps for rabbits and other small game that could be prepared quickly over the fire with my family. Mostly, though, I came up unlucky. Regardless of the lack of disturbances, we always were careful at night to make sure to have a bright light and kept a lookout for anything. After the first week at camp, we began hearing noises around very late at night. I didn't think much of it, but they would drive the dog up the wall to the point where we just had to keep her inside. I would check it out, but I never saw anything. It almost felt like whatever it was was probing and checking out our camp nightly, but was always staying far enough away and hidden enough that we could never see it with our spotlights. Then one night, just like any other, I left my mom's camper a couple of hours after the daylight had disappeared with a lantern style LED light. And as a rarity, I didn't have anything to defend myself. No gun, no bear spray, not even a knife. So I was a little bit more cautious and observant than usual, given that I felt more vulnerable. As I walked from the exit of my mom's camper, I looked around for a minute, scanning the tree line, and then began the loop around to my door. I was about 20 feet away from it when I saw a naked, extremely pale, almost gray, lanky humanoid figure standing still, and directly facing me. As it caught my gaze, I felt my heart drop and immediately went cold. I probably only stared for three seconds at most, but it felt like several minutes as my brain processed what I was seeing. It stood somewhere between six and a half and seven and a half feet tall with low, slumped shoulders, and it had a frail, thin body with disproportionately long limbs. I couldn't see the legs fully, but what I could see looked like, sinew and skin stretched over the leanest and thinnest body I had ever seen. I know I might be sounding dramatic, but I couldn't describe the primal fear and shock that came over me. It was like a combination of the feeling you get being threatened at gunpoint and hearing something stalk you in the woods, but it was ramped up to the point where I could barely think. I couldn't make out many details of the face, but it was almost like Voldemort and Slenderman had a love child. I ran like my life depended on it the last few feet to my door. And once I was inside, I grabbed my shotgun, stuffed several shells in my pockets, loaded the gun and aimed it at the door. I sat in silence with the hammer cocked back, waiting for the doorknob to turn or the frosted glass to break. I sat and waited for hours into the early morning, expecting to see or hear something, but I never did. Not even any foliage or anything moving outside. Eventually, around 4:00 a.m., I lowered my guard, propped the shotgun next to my bed, and hesitantly went to sleep. When I woke up, I hardly believed in what I had seen the night before. I'm still not quite sure what to make of it, but I do have some ideas from what I witnessed. Given the fact that I believed it was stalking us and staking out our camp for several nights, along with positioning itself between me and my mother's camper, directly in front of the path that I took every night, it leads me to believe that this thing had some level of intelligence, comparable to how a person lays a trap or set something up in an area where they know there's activity. I mentioned I looked around after exiting my mother's camper and never heard anything, which tells me that it either was waiting there watching me or it was so incredibly quiet that I never even heard it. It also left as quietly as it appeared, which leaves three options. Either it went out of its way to use the same road entering the camp that a person would, for convenience. It silently crept out through the game trails, or it didn't leave until after I had lowered my guard and my adrenaline died down. I'm honestly not sure which option is the most likely or the most off-putting. I'm not really sure what I saw, but I know it wasn't human. The photos and drawings of these crawlers remind me a great deal of it, so I thought I would share. Maybe one of you could enlighten me as to what it could have been doing or its intent, or provide an explanation. I know it's not worth much online, but hand to God, I swear this isn't a piece of fanciful writing, and I would be happy to share any other details if anyone wants any more info or further clarification. Now, I was reading through some of the comments that people had written under this post, and one of them really jumped out at me because someone pointed out that they had heard of this type of creature before in this specific area because this is something that they've actually seen a video of. Turns out, a few years prior, a woman in Quebec pulled over to the side of the road, a small two-lane back road in the Canadian wilderness, not unlike the road that the first 911 call took place on. She had seen a moose grazing, and she wanted to take a video of it, which, side note, if you ever see a moose in the wilderness, definitely stay away. They are legitimately murderous psychos, and they will take you and your whole family out. But anyways, she captured this cute little video of the moose, and then she just went on her way. It wasn't until later, when she was showing that video to a friend, that she noticed there was something else in the frame. You can see it in the video, which, again, I'm gonna be sharing on our socials, but to the left of the moose, a figure emerges from the woods. It's pale, it's thin, it's human, but not exactly, and it appears to be moving on all fours. She posted the video to the internet, and it immediately went viral, leading many to wonder, could this have been what the poster of this Reddit post had seen as well? Okay, and finally for this episode, I wanna share with you what is probably the most famous crawler sighting, because there is one place in America that claims they have their own type of crawler, but one that looks very different than the others. It's the Fresno Night Crawler, located in central California, in and around Fresno. And according to those who have seen it, it looks like, and I can't believe I'm saying this, a pair of pants. The first sighting was on November 5th, 2007, when a man in Fresno named Jose woke to the sound of his dogs barking. Not fully awake, he looked at his home security camera that was pointed at his yard, and saw a specter walking across the frame. Whatever this thing was, it looked exactly like a white ghostly pair of pants. The clip of this, which is now just a recording of the recording, went absolutely viral. And people started coming forward with their own stories of seeing this strange ghostly pair of pants in their Fresno neighborhoods. And then, in 2011, another clip of this thing went viral. This time it was outside of Fresno, closer to Yosemite National Park. And this time there were two specters in the frame, one bigger and one smaller, almost like a mother and baby crawler, slowly walking. Fresno was really quick to embrace its cryptid, putting the Fresno Nightcrawler on T-shirts and bumper stickers pretty much right away. It was kind of a big joke to the tourism committee of the area. But the people who lived there kept coming forward with more stories, like this one that I want to read for you. This one was posted in the cryptid subreddit three years ago by userspecialisttip8341, and it reads: "I, 22 male, just recently got the opportunity to hike Half Dome in Yosemite, but near the end of my hike, I had a rather strange encounter. I was coming down the trail around 6:00 PM. It was still light out right after you crossed the Vernal Falls Bridge and had a clear view of the massive granite cliffs below Washburn Point, when all of a sudden I noticed an out-of-place object nestled in an alcove roughly halfway up the thousand-foot-tall cliffside. It was a bright white color, whiter than any of the naturally occurring patterns on the rock, and it was shaped like two big billowy pant legs. Think like MC Hammer pants. They were connected at the top with some sort of odd white shape where the legs came together. The object didn't appear to be made of any sort of fabric, however, as it didn't move or ripple in the high winds like you would expect a piece of fabric to. It's also worth noting that this was in September, so no snow anywhere on the mountainside. It was quite far away, but even so, I would estimate its height at around seven or eight feet tall. I stopped my descent to stare at it for a second when another hiker passed me and stopped to strike up a conversation. I asked her if she saw that thing up on the cliffside, and immediately she points up at the white object and goes, "Yeah, that thing that looks like a kid in a white bath towel. I was wondering if you were looking at the same thing when you stopped." Mind you, this mountain that we were looking at is huge, like big enough to fill your entire field of view from where we were standing huge. And out of all of that, she knew even before I had said anything exactly what I was looking at, the weird white pant thing up on the cliff. She described it as a child in a towel. I expect because the gap between the white pant legs made it look like a white object wrapped around a darker object. I asked her if she had ever heard of the Fresno Nightcrawler, which she hadn't. And as I explained to her what they looked like, she kept staring at the thing, at the thing on the cliffside and declared, "That's exactly what I'm looking at." I kept stopping to look back at it from different angles as we descended further down the trail. And each time the perspective shifted in such a way to confirm that it was some sort of solid object, not just markings on the granite. I have to believe that it's some sort of strange foreign object that was planted up there or optical illusion created by a particularly stark white piece of granite cliff. It was very eerie how neatly it appeared to match the Nightcrawler security cam/trip camp footage now is there really something hiding out in the north american backwoods living in national parks forests and some of the underground caves some people have mentioned that the fresno nightcrawler videos could be some sort of video manipulation maybe it's a real person walking around and their top half just got distorted somehow which made them look just like a pair of poltergeisty pants but what do you think you can leave a comment wherever you listen i absolutely love hearing from you all that's all i have for you today though i'm going to be back here next week with more scary stories for you guys this time i have a very fun collaboration that i cannot wait to share with you but that's all for next week join me back here and the rogue detecting society headquarters then and until then stay curious heart starts pounding is written and produced by me kayla moore heart starts pounding is also produced by matt brown our associate producer is juno hobbs sound design and mix by redrum creative special thanks to travis dunlap grayson jernigan and the team at wme have a heart pounding story or a case request check out hearts arts rounding dot com today's episode is brought to you by alma what if the small things actually felt small like getting out of bed when you said you would or replying to a text right when it came in therapy can help you bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be and alma can help you find a great therapist you can find a great therapist you can find a great therapist alma has a directory of over 26 000 therapists with different specialties life experiences and identities and 98 of them take insurance clients with insurance pay 20 on average and most people find their match on their first try get started now at helloalma.com that's helloalma.com