First of all, thank you for sending this our way! I am both thrilled and humbled every time someone makes the decision to share their experience with us. It is not an easy thing to do, especially when there are so many who are quick on the trigger to judge and make fun of. To us though, this act is a huge sign of trust, and we are grateful you trust us enough to share your story with the world! So, with that said, lets get into what we think your sighting was.

Right out of the gate, lets make it known that ghoulish humanoid sightings of any kind are extremely hard to categorize. Reason being is that they are the easiest ones to hoax. Now, I am not saying at all that your sighting was the result of a hoax, I am just putting it out there as a sort of disclaimer as everyone should always have it in the back of their mind when dealing with creatures/beings/sightings such as this.

I will admit that I am not sure what kind of “thing” you saw that day, but that doesn’t stop a few ideas from popping into my head. The first thought that comes to mind is the classic image of the Wendigo. The “creature” of Native American legend that is said to be a disturbingly thin and gaunt individual that has ice in its veins and forever craves the taste of human flesh. The legend was/is rooted firmly within the upper Midwest region of North America well until the mid 1900's when it slowly began to fade out into obscurity. But over the past few years, the Wendigo has found itself in a bit of a resurgence, although it has been skewed a great bit from what it originally was thought to be.

The history and background story of the Wendigo is long and extremely detailed, so much so that if I were to explain it here, this would be a new profile piece. So if you would enjoy reading into the legend of this classic Native American monster, you can check out a past piece we did on it here. The Wendigo.

Now, I am not saying what you saw is truly a Wendigo, that's just the first thing that came to mind. Due to the quickness of the sighting and the location in which it took place (within and around a tree), it could truly be anything at this moment.

Now, if we are going for a fantasy creature here, the one that pops into my head right away would be The Rake. Essentially a creepypasta version of the Wendigo. Fiction stories involving the Rake describe it as being a thin, gaunt humanoid thing that stalks people and feeds on fear, if I remember correctly. This thing is a true internet creation that gets its roots from a 4chan board back in late 2005. While some will claim that is has official references and documentation that goes as far back as the 1600’s, this is all false. This backstory of the creature has slowly been crafted over time through different stories written by multiple people. But, as with most current legends and cryptid's though, the waters have been muddied so much due to poor research and selective facts that people truly believe it is real. But even though we know it's fake, the description you provided made it appear in my mind.

Finally, lets go with a creature that we here at The PBI hope it is. We personally feel that it would be amazing if this ghoulish creature was somehow related to The Lanky Night Walker. Now, we know that would be a huge stretch, but how cool would it be to imagine that what you saw is the same kind of creature/ghoul/monster that was seen marching through Wisconsin back in the early 1900’s! You could have just had a brush with a true Midwestern icon of fear!

Thanks again Evelyn! We hope at least some of the information provided helped lead your search in a direction towards resolution.

-The Pine Barrens Institute

Image Credit: Google