Fresno Nightcrawler, strange walking legs cryptid

[Travis]

This is a local cryptid. And one that has me sort of puzzled. I've tried to figure out how to fake it but came up with only a few mostly hairbrained ideas. One of them involves using a fishing line to suspend a rudimentary walking device inside something like a sheet.



As you can see it is a very odd thing. Almost like walking legs with no torso. But the gait is very.....not smooth.

Here is an earlier investigation of it.

 

[Megalodon]

The first part of the first video initially looks like some kids decided to pull their mother's sweatpants all the way up to their heads and make a video . After it starts looking like a helium balloon attached to a pair of pants, and those attached to some kind of moving devices (a pair of RC toys, maybe?)

The second part of the first video looks like the kids once more, this time on skates, then it looks like the balloon again.

I would go for a cleverish hoax.

 

[Apology]

It's a marionette.




You can see how similar the leg movement of the Fresno Nightcrawler is compared to the movement of these smaller, simpler puppets. Leave out the heads, make it bigger, and you have the Nightcrawler. It's convenient that it only comes out at night because that makes it harder to see the strings. The video is also blurry and badly pixelated which suggests possible image manipulation and also further obscures the mechanism involved in making the figures move. The occasional dragging of the feet is a dead giveaway to it being a marionette.

Fresno is a pretty boring town, it's not hard to imagine some extremely jaded people putting this much effort into a prank.

 

[Travis]

Ah, well a marionette would be in line with what I was thinking.

 

[Bell]

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=243653

 

[Travis]

Heh, so this has been discussed here before.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Heh, so this has been discussed here before.

and on 'Fact or Faked' (1st episode? Certainly one of the early ones)

 

[dlorde]

and on 'Fact or Faked' (1st episode? Certainly one of the early ones)

Yes, I saw that one. The video looked a little better on TV, but the figures still looked suspended from above somehow. Whatever, I don't see how any physical creature could walk with that structure.

 

[Mike!]

It looks like the driveway runs down hill. Maybe larger versions of the old gravity powered walking toys, perhaps with helium balloon assistance.

 

[Travis]

Yes, I saw that one. The video looked a little better on TV, but the figures still looked suspended from above somehow. Whatever, I don't see how any physical creature could walk with that structure.

First thing I thought when I saw it was "no way does evolution select for that kind of walking creature."

But I could be wrong.

I probably wouldn't be interested in this if it wasn't that I live right next to Yosemite.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

At about 1:28 on the very first video, they are transparent and it suggests complete fake.

 

[dlorde]

First thing I thought when I saw it was "no way does evolution select for that kind of walking creature."

Yes; I don't know of any remotely similar bipedal creature to whose lineage it might belong, and one wonders how such a clumsy creature could survive in any competitive ecosystem.

What mainly disturbed me is that it doesn't appear to be anatomically viable.

 

[Cavemonster]

The scale comparisons in the first video are wrong. They're pretty clearly on the grass a bit behind the driveway, not in the road space like in the overlay, so they're considerably taller than the baby carriage comparison makes them out to be. My guess is that they are similar in scale and the "smaller" one is just much farther away.

From the movement, my guess is that they're stilt walkers in costume. Look at where the leg bends and the very narrow "foot" that's exactly what a short stilt looks like. They're very clearly draped in fabric.



Check out the kids in stilts at about 20 seconds. Cover their head and arms and you've got your monster.

 

[Alareth]

Wait, there's more than one sighting of these things?

The footage in the op it's completely different from what has circulated for years.

It's obviously from a different camera at a different angle. The "creatures" are closer together too.

 

[Checkmite]

Wait a second; now I might be getting my woos crossed, but why have these been picked up as cryptids by the cryptozoology set rather than as some kind of ghosts/apparitions/demons by the ghostology set?

 

[Checkmite]

The scale comparisons in the first video are wrong. They're pretty clearly on the grass a bit behind the driveway, not in the road space like in the overlay, so they're considerably taller than the baby carriage comparison makes them out to be.

I've looked the video over about three times now with this in mind and I have to disagree; they've very obviously in the roadway, not the grass behind it.