Brent Swancer July 25, 2021

One very strange area of paranormal encounters that has been appearing more and more in recent years is that of what are known commonly as “Pale Crawlers.” These are tall, often gaunt and scrawny pale humanoids that look like something out of a surreal nightmare, appearing to startle witnesses before slinking off into the gloom. While many of these encounters occur in remote, rural areas, this seems to not always be the case, and whatever these bizarre entities are, they have also been spotted in suburban, residential areas.

A very bizarre report from the site Phantoms and Monsters comes to us from the historic French Quarter, of New Orleans, Louisiana. Also known as the Vieux Carré, it is the oldest neighborhood in the city, full of historic buildings from the 18th and early 19th centuries and known for its quaint streets and magnificent architecture. It typically would not be the sort of place one would expect to encounter a tall, pale humanoid monster in, but this is exactly what allegedly happened with a witness who says this occurred in 2005, during a trip she had taken to New Orleans with her now deceased ex-boyfriend. According to the witness, they had been taking a quiet evening stroll through the French Quarter when she says they noticed that everything had gone eerily quiet, the sounds of the night somewhat muted, and the witness says of what happened next:

I noticed it became eerily quiet. Not something that happens there especially as people stumble to their hotels. He (the boyfriend) also noticed something because he gripped my hand quite hard and picked up pace. He had a strange look to his face as I struggled to keep up, and he was taking odd routes. Finally, I caught what was making him act bizarre. I followed a split-second glance of his to a building. The best I could say, it looked like a dingy-pale, “spider man” going UP the side of a building. I remember him harshly whispering not to look. To just keep moving. He was taking us to Bourbon St where there would hopefully be more people. But this was off season and mid-week, so there were less people. And even less than I would’ve expected. Time seemed to stand eerily still, as if time had stopped except for us and it. I looked about 2 blocks later and it was on the roof – clearly tracking something that I prayed was not us. The silence was truly deafening, as my adrenaline was going and I think I tuned out more sounds trying to escape being prey.

This thin, humanoid, which was defying gravity, freaked us out bad. We made it to the hotel, with my last memory of a glide being just before the house where the supposed vampire brothers lived and disappeared from. I think it was the most harrowing experience I’ve ever had, and there’s been a few close calls in my life. I know it’s a quirky city with plenty of the fantastical, but this was like we were in another dimension that was the French Quarter send it’s something that is, to this day, still frightening to me. We were completely sober and just out for a romantic stroll, in a city we had a connection with. That thing – shudder I can’t escape it, even over time.

The witness says that it was enough to put her off of visiting New Orleans ever again, and we are left to wonder what this thing could have possibly been. There is no mention if anyone else saw it, although the witness does mention that there were other people out that night stumbling home after a night out drinking, even though they themselves are described as having both been sober. What was going on here? Who knows? Our next case takes us to Eastern Kentucky, where a group of teenaged witnesses saw something very strange in the yard of one of their residences. They had spent the day dirt biking nearby and then gone to buy fireworks to set off that evening, and then they all spent the night at one of the friend’s houses. This was where things would get weird. The witness says of what happened:

We had decided to sleep on the trampoline. But at around 10 PM, Jeff and I spotted some coyotes at a tree line across the road from us. We all went inside because I freaked out because I’m from a city and don’t like wild animals. Also it stunk really bad. It smelled like dead rabbit or deer, so we all go inside. After about an hour inside Sam tells us we forgot the bedding on the trampoline, and he wanted me and Jeff to go get it. I being terrified of the dark, beg Jeff to come with me. He agrees and we head out the back door onto the patio/porch. We go down the stairs and towards the trampoline. I am behind Jeff grabbing the back of his shirt and he has a flashlight pointing straight. I’m looking to the right towards past the road looking for the coyotes. But I hear a thud sound to our left. I look over there and there is a line of 4 trees parallel with us. They are shaped in a V starting at the base. I don’t see anything but I tell Jeff to point the flashlight over there and we don’t see anything. So he swings it straight and keeps walking. I hear the thud, but this time Jeff also hears it. It is much louder and still to our left.

Jeff swings the flashlight in between the 2nd and 3rd tree in the row and its walking straight with us, not at us, but towards the same direction we were going. As soon as the flashlights lands on it, its behind the 3rd tree now and it stands up in the middle of the V of the tree. It stood about 4 or 5 heads taller than me and I’m 5’9. It was incredibly skinny, as in I could see its ribs through its skin, which was a bright white. When the flashlight hit it, it definitely had a glow. Its eyes were the scariest part. 2 big reflective orbs that were dark grey/blackish. They were reflective in a sense, like the eyes illuminated the flashlight back at us. Also its hands were gigantic. The fingers wrapped around the tree trucks and were super long. Jeff looks over and I scream. He dropped the flashlight and we run. I still have his shirt in my hand and I yank him hard and he just takes off in front of me. I sprint past him and up the back porch stairs. He falls on the stairs. I run to the door and open it, waiting for him. As soon as he runs through, I slam it shut and lock the deadbolt. I shut the curtains and jumped back onto their couch. Sam and Bob had heard me scream my f*cking lungs out and were making their way outside. Jeff is standing on the couch and he starts babbling and tell them what he saw and I started hyperventilating. I have anxiety and asthma. I haven’t had an attack in years and I stopped carrying my emergency inhaler a long time ago. Sam is bewildered and I started crying while I was having my fit. I cried for almost an hour and didn’t fall asleep until almost 3 AM. I woke up and packed.

What in the world was going on here? Just as surreal is another report that seems to involve one of these pale entities materializing within a home. The witness says that when he was 10 years old his parents had taken him with them to go house hunting with a realtor he calls “M” in El Paso, Texas, where his father was stationed at a base. One house they were taken to was in pretty dire shape, described as “overgrown with bushes and ugly crabgrass, the sidewalk is uneven and jagged, and even missing in some places.” The inside of it was no better, depressing and decrepit, smelling like “something old and wet, yet fresh and rotting at the same time.” They looked around the disgusting living room and then headed to the garage, which is where he would have his odd experience. He says of what happened next:

There was no electricity and we would be seeing the house in the dark. The singular light bulb in the garage was glowing blue. Not a bright iridescent blue by any means but a sickly, dim blue that was just bright enough to illuminate the walls and floor and bathe the garage in the same shade of blue it was radiating. My parents and M both made a comment how that was weird, and maybe there was some sort of charge going to the light through the power lines. I couldn’t care less because what I was staring at was worse than any creepy light that was working when it shouldn’t have been. There was something inside the garage. It looked like a human, or maybe what used to be a human, but it appeared wet. Its skin kind of looked like if you grabbed it, it would just slip right off. I could see veins through the skin, which was so pale it seemed almost see through. This thing was emaciated. I could see all its ribs, I could see hip bones. Its arms and legs consisted of just enough fat in the thighs and upper arms that you could tell that’s what they were and not just sticks slapped on a lump of flesh. The neck was just long enough to appear proportionately weird, and the head was turned to look straight at me. If you could even say it was looking because where normal eyes would be there were just holes. There was stringy clumps of hair hanging from the tops and sides of its head. And I got the sick sense that it was happy to see me, almost as if it was thinking finally, I could tell if it stood up it would be tall. Almost ceiling height. So about 8 feet.

I watched this thing crawl on all fours (think hands, and very long feet; not hands and knees) from the center of the garage directly under the light bulb. It crossed in front of me and my family and M and disappear into the wall. It kept its head turned on me the whole time. And I followed it with my eyes the whole time. I don’t remember even feeling scared in the traditional sense. I felt invited. I felt intrigued, and more than anything I felt like it had been waiting on me. Just me. I felt like it was telling me, “Come in, make yourself at home. You’re welcome here.” My parents decided they were thoroughly creeped out though and without seeing the rest of the house, we left. They told M that they weren’t interested and that was that. We fired her shortly after because she made a habit of showing us abandoned houses in the pitch dark. I was the only person who saw the “thing.” But my parents after thinking I was asleep in the car on the way home started talking about how once they opened the garage door, they felt like they were trespassing, like someone was watching them. Also, that it felt colder all of a sudden than the rest of the house, smelled like rotted meat, and something just wasn’t right about that blue light.

It is interesting that the entity was not seen by the parents or realtor. Was it somehow cloaking itself from adults, or is this just the overactive imagination of a 10-year-old kid? It is hard to say. In yet another weird residential area report, we come to the streets of Detroit, Michigan, where we have a report of multiple pale humanoids terrorizing a couple of witnesses. At the time, the witness was at a friend’s house and they were with a large group of people having a bonfire party at the end of summer vacation, just before he was to graduate from high school. The house was in a residential area, with a yard that backed up against a wooded area, but it wasn’t a particularly rural area, with houses visible on the other side through the trees. According to the witness, they got the bonfire started, with no alcohol involved, and at around 10 PM people began going home until it was just him and four friends. They sat around chatting for around an hour before the other friends left leaving just two of them. As they sat there chatting quietly, their attention was drawn to some odd noises coming from out past the light of the fire, and the witness would explain of what happened next:

As my friend sat facing back towards the woods, and I with my back to the woods, we started hearing some noises. Sticks cracking on the ground, leaves being brushed through, those sorts of things. He laughed it off saying it was just the neighbor’s cat. As we sat and continued to shoot the sh*t, the noises continued and I continued to brush them off under the assumption it was just a cat. However, I was a little unnerved when we both heard what sounded like footsteps in the front yard. At first, we thought our friend had gotten back but realized it wasn’t him after a few minutes had gone by. Eventually our friend came back from dropping his girlfriend off at home and we started talking again like nothing had ever happened.

A couple minutes later however, the noises from the woods started up again, but this time they were closer. Much closer. I could see my friend was clearly unnerved by this and I reminded him he told me it was just the cat. He looked at me and told me that they didn’t have a cat, he just said that to reassure himself earlier that it was nothing. I quickly got up, moved to the other side of the fire, and sat down between my two friends so that we were all facing the woods. After using a few choice words towards my friend to express how I felt about him letting me sit with my back towards whatever was back there, things took a bit of a turn. We saw something move in the brush. It was slight, but noticeable. It looked fairly big too, about five feet tall. Kind of human-like. We tried to joke it off and convince ourselves it was nothing. This worked until a few moments later when we started to see more movement. This continued for a couple minutes until it got significantly closer and we decided to go inside. We hurried as we started to grab everything we needed to take in and put the lid on the fire pit (really just an old dome-shaped metal BBQ grill without the legs).

Throughout this time it continued to move closer to us. It almost seemed hesitant yet curious as we saw it dart about. Nonetheless, we rushed inside. We locked the door behind us and went to the windows. By this point it knew we were inside and was coming up to the house. It would dart by the windows as we ran between the windows in the house in hopes we could catch a glimpse of what had us so scared. We made out some basic details. It was about 4 to 5 feet tall when it was hunched over, humanoid and pale. Almost white but still a little gray kind of pale. This lasted for a good ten minutes until we heard the scratching of nails on the wooden deck connected to the house. Around this time, it seemed to shift its focus towards the fire as we apparently didn’t put the lid back on completely. Before I knew it, my friend was calling us over to the window that faced the fire. The lid was off and we could see the shape of it darting around the fire. We later found the lid about 10 feet away from the pit. Something had to have picked it up by the hot metal handle and thrown it over there. Around this time, we also noticed that it was around some of the other windows. It was then that we realized there wasn’t just one of whatever it was. There were multiple. If I had to guess, I’d say there were about 4 or 5.

The witness says that he decided to leave not long after that, while his friend went inside, and when he did so they felt something watching them from the gloom and could see the shapes of the things crouched down in the shadows. When he finally got into the car and headed out, he looked back and saw one of the entities peering through one of the house windows, while another one of them crossed the street. The friend whose window had been looked into would later confirm that this had happened, with the witness explaining:

My friend continued to update us on the events still unfolding at his house. Besides seeing the figures outside his window still, he claimed he saw a face in the window at one point. Pale skin and black eyes. He described them as almost being like holes in the face they were so dark. He also claimed at one point something had scratched the screen on his window.

It was all amazing enough that they decided to try and see the entities the following evening, setting up a fire just as they had done the night before in the hopes of this time perhaps getting some photographic evidence of what they had seen. They would not come away disappointed, and the witness tells of what happened that night:

The next night we were right back at it. We knew what we saw and we needed validation. This time we had another person stay with us so they could backup our claims. We needed evidence that was better than just our word. It was too dark to take pictures or video. We set the night up just like the previous. Everyone got to the house, we got a nice fire going, and we waited for things to start up. Once it got dark out, we started hearing the rustling in the brush again. An hour or so later the noises got closer and I switched sides so that all four of us were facing the wooded area. Within minutes, we saw whatever was out there moving through the brush again. There were probably about two or three at this point. We tried to hold out for a while, thinking we were hot sh*t and it wouldn’t come for us. This attitude changed within a matter of minutes as the pale figures got closer and started to go to the sides of us. They were surrounding us. We got up and calmly tried to put the lid back on the fire. We figured if we showed we were afraid, they might go for us. As soon as we finished getting the lid on the fire and grabbed everything we needed, we rushed inside. Before we knew it, they were darting past the windows again. At this point the fourth person, who hadn’t been with us during it all the night before, agreed that something was out there.

As time passed, we gathered up the courage to go back out and stand on the deck and try and get some kind of evidence. We stood out there as they got closer. There were more this time. Maybe five or six. We stood there in silence as we observed them. They almost seemed curious with a hint of mischief. Some watched us, some ran around. One even scratched the underside of the deck directly beneath my feet. I could feel it as its nail dragged across the wood. At one point a deer ran out of the wooded area just a bit further down the road. It was like it was running away from something, but definitely not us because it ran somewhat towards us. Not away from us. After all this, we hurried back into the house. The three of us left and, again, we saw whatever they were in the yard as we bolted to our cars. Almost a year has passed since those nights and the thought of it all still terrifies me to this day. What’s more, as I was out driving the other night, I decided to pass through his neighborhood to sort of reminisce about old times. As I was driving through, I saw those same pale figures, hunched over and moving about. There were about four or five of them.

Finally we have a report from a residential area in the Sacramento, CA area, with a witness who says that at the time she had just gotten off of work and pulled over to sit and relax in her car as she was not quite ready to head home. The area is described as a “a suburban neighborhood to the right, and fields and trees to the left,” and she just sort of sat back lost to her thoughts. At some point, movement caught her attention, and she explains of what transpired:

Multiple ‘Tall Pale Humanoid’ Sightings & Encounters Surface in Sacramen…

Lon Strickler

Real cryptid encounter reports, eyewitness experiences and paranormal investigations

As I was sitting there, I saw a figure come out of the neighborhood a little less than a 1/4 mile ahead of where I was parked, approximately where the neighborhood park (Roseview Park) is. It was hard to see from that distance, but it appeared tall (7 to 8 feet), super skinny and bony, hunched over, with long arms. It sprinted across the road at a speed faster than I’ve ever seen a human go (I couldn’t guess the speed, but it was fast enough to concern me). If it wasn’t for its speed, I probably would have just assumed it was human and ignored it. But anyways, it disappeared into the fields. Something calm came over me. I don’t know what it was but something was keeping me from panicking. I remember just feeling like “okay, it is time to leave now” and calmly driving home. It wasn’t until a few months later that I realized I had seen that and that it wasn’t normal.

This would apparently not be the last time she would see something like this in the vicinity, as on two other occasions she would have similar bizarre experiences. She explains of these:

Flash forward to a week ago. A friend and I were at that same park hanging out. As it got later into the night, we both started to feel more and more unwelcome there. We heard a inhuman guttural scream that sounded like it came from the area I saw that creature cross at. That’s not particularly incriminating, but as soon as I heard the scream, its apparent location made me think of the creature. I didn’t tell this to my friend as she is easily spooked, and I just tried to stay calm (didn’t want to let my fear get out of control). We finally started the trek back to the car. As we left, we faced a dark area with lots of bushes and trees across from the sidewalk we were taking to get to the car. As soon as I faced that dark spot, I had the feeling of looking at a face. I didn’t literally see a face, but it was the FEELING of seeing a face. And it didn’t feel like a human face. It felt like something that understood what I was but didn’t understand why I was there, and wasn’t quite hostile but had the attitude of like “get out of my home.” Once again, I didn’t tell my friend that I saw that, not until we got in the car. Ever since then, I have not been able to shake the feeling that that face belonged to the same creature I saw two years ago.

Also, similar story but not the same. Last night I was driving in a wooded area near Sacramento (Loomis), and I saw a tall burly figure in the woods with a white face. Not white as in Caucasian, white as in stark white. I thought it was wearing a green shirt but I only saw it for a split second. It gave me such a bad uneasy feeling. I told the guy I was with what I saw and he didn’t tell me until later but he said hes heard rumors of people seeing “white walkers” in these woods that are described as tall and having white faces and black hair. I don’t know if he meant skinwalkers or what, but that’s what he said. I also felt like something was watching me in those woods later.

With such completely outlandish cases it is hard to tell what we could be dealing with. Are these some sort of ghosts or spirits? Are they alien entities of some sort? Could they perhaps be interdimensional interlopers pushing through some thin spot in the veil that separates our realities, only to disappear back through? Or are these merely the constructs of overactive imaginations and creative, fictionalized accounts? There is no way to know, but such cases have become more frequent, and whatever they are seem to not be solely the denizens of remote wildernesses, but right among us in the places where we live.

MU*