Texas Stilt Walkers – [Cryptid/Urban Legend]

Description

Texas Stilt Walker. – [Cryptid?/Urban Legend/(Creepy Pasta.)] – aka: “Texas Stilt Walker, Strider, Forest Stilt Walker, “Galavant.” 

• About this Cryptid: The “Stilt Walker” or “Strider” is typically described as a gigantic, 15ft-18ft tall, lanky quadruped with a spindly stick-thin body and legs, it can scale cliffs with ease & move at improbably fast speeds. It allegedly has a canine like face which is covered in messy hair. – According to other contemporary descriptions: It allegedly ‘hunts animals and tears off their legs before feasting on their bodies & if a human decides to follow them, they will not stop until the person is dead.” – In particular, it is also said to go after people that have researched or looked into it. (Sorry Dear Reader We’re Doomed!) – Although, in the earliest sighting it kinda just stands there… menacingly...

• History: This creature was earliest allegedly witnessed (& originally illustrated) by Anonymous users on 4chan, on the 16th of October 2008. – Until recently, The original creepy pasta & threads full contents where more or less ‘lost media’ until i accidentally stumbled upon it on the Way Back Machine by sheer luck the other day! …Anyway, the initial thread went as follows:

>”Okay so I started a thread on /b/ about this and they said it was /x/ territory. I’ve never really been to this board so pardon any offenses I commit to /x/ customs. I know the reputation of anyone coming from /b/ to another board, but I hope you can look past that and give me some help here.

I live in the Texas hill country by a river in a small town and I had some coworkers over tonight. One of them hadn’t seen my river yet and I’d been telling her how awesome it was, but it was raining when they got here. It just stopped raining a little bit ago so we all walked down to the river in the moonlight to check it out. You have to walk down this tree-lined path off the road, which takes a turn and goes downhill to the river. There’s a bank on the other side covered with trees that goes back maybe 15 yards from the edge of the water until it reaches a cliff wall that goes up maybe 10 yards and is pretty steep. It’s dark but the moon is giving us some light because Texas weather can never make up its mind if it’s raining or clear and our eyes have adjusted at this point.

We brought a couple beers with us and we’re sitting on the rocks talking, my buddy jarrett is sitting across from me with his girlfriend and this new girl is sitting next to me. He’s in the middle of a sentence, looking between me and the girl next to me, when he looks back over both of our shoulders, widens his eyes and cuts off what he was saying with “holy fuck” in this really quiet voice.”

>”We turn around and I barely have time to register what I’m seeing because it was dark. There was something black about half as tall as the cliff, so 15 feet tall-ish, on these extremely spindly legs noiselessly sprinting through the trees on the opposite bank. I couldn’t make out the shape too well but my impression was that it was covered in long hair and its body and head were kind of like a dog looking down, but stretched longer. Most of its height was in its legs, which were really thin. Jarrett turned on the flashlight and shone it across the water at the thing and it stopped moving and turned to look at us. It had humongous eyes that reflected the light from the flashlight. After a split second of this it turned away from us and just scaled the cliff as easily as it was striding across the ground and disappeared from sight.

We stared for a second and then we just ran back to my house. We shat bricks over what we saw, and then they all just went home.

All four of us saw the thing and we all seemed to be in agreement on what it looked like. I think my heart rate finally went back to normal just before I started writing this, and now it’s back up. What happens now? Do I call animal control or something? I don’t know what this thing is, if it’s dangerous, or what. I don’t want to go outside or even look out my window at the trees. Also I didn’t score with the new girl and we left like 5 unopened beers on the bank of the river. What the fuck.

Everything after the first paragraph was copypasta’d from my /b/ thread.”

When the story was posted on /x/, a few further sightings came to light:

>”fuck man, i was at washington on the brazos not a month ago and saw something damn near the same. I was out on the nature trail, circling around, and way out in the field i looked and saw what I thought was a bunch of trees randomly placed. It was definitely dark, so i shined my flashlight out to it to see what kind of trees they were (i’m a bit of a nerd that way) and the think freaking moved. it had kinda a shaggy fur and was somewhat spotted it seems, but it was exactly like what you had described.”

Another sighting at an unknown location was also posted describing a shaggy, furry beast:

>”I’ve seen something similar several years ago. Thanks to you OP, I’m about to shit liquid bricks. I thought I imagined it back then. But I saw mine far from Texas, though. Fucking tall and thin-legged, seemed like it was covered in gray-ish fur. It wasn’t fast at all, just strolled lazyly across a tiny meadow and disappeared in the woods again. I thought then that it was elk and my eyes were just shitting with me.”

Another sighting of the strider comes from the Pacific Northwest near the Rockies, The exact date of the sighting is unknown:

>”Has anyone seen a forest strider? Any background on them? I ask because I have a friend who may have sighted one. He was on a hiking trip through the Pacific North West, in the Rocky’s. He said it was extremely tall (He compared its legs to street lamps) and moved surprisingly fast through the tree’s ahead of them.”

…Later sightings began to appear in 2013 onwards, and yet another “boom” of alleged ‘Strider/Stiltwalker‘ sightings where also reported on 4chan & other web sites. –BUT I feel that those are easily available via sites like the obscure urban legends wiki etc. – unlike the above which more or less where lost media (aside from being footnotes on those wikis.) so i wont get into them here today.

 • My Observations: The initial report of the Strider reminds me of a ‘far more competent’ version of the ‘Fearsome Critter’ known as the “Hugag” in both general shape, height (and plausibility) Though hugag’s are usually spotted a much further north (in the great lakes area.) the easiest solution to what a hugag actually is, is someone unfamiliar with it, saw a moose and made up a tall tale about it. (However tall you think a moose is, it’s twice as large.) – As the third post suggests; in all likeliness; what they saw was indeed most likely a misidentified “Elk.” – Of course, The internet did its thing and artists have had a lot of fun with this over the years. – Of course, the sighting also brings to mind other 4chan famous critters from the time such as the ‘slenderman’ , ‘the rake’ , ‘crawlers’ etc. Anyway, is this a ‘real cryptid?’ or where the 2000’s kids just having fun telling spooky stories online and making mountains out of molehills. – Who am I to say for sure? ~

Notably, in my research its pretty funny what a bad job the modern ‘creepy pasta wiki’s’ do at actually “copy pasta-ing” their own creepy pastas, they’re almost always paraphrased in an awkward manner rather than actually copy-pasted from the source!! a reminder to always double check. – I wouldn’t have found the original post as above, where it not for an outdated link which was thankfully still usable via the wayback machine, (which was shared 7+ years ago on tumblr!!!) – Anyway I’d suppose, because we’ve researched it thoroughly might mean I’m allegedly next on the creatures “list” (…at least according to ‘creepy pasta creatures‘ wiki… “Meow!!!!!!!!!”) Either way, Thankfully, i live nowhere near Texas so, yeah, ill probably be fine! :’D

As y’all know, i dont usually cover creepy pastas; (Of course, I do make exceptions for Japanese ones that are rarely if ever talked about on the English speaking internet.)— This one was specifically requested by good friend, patron & folklorist: Ryan Harmsen who is planning to write more about the Texas Stilt Walker in issue 2 of his bestiary; “We dare not go a huntin” he notes that “There’s nothing to suggest that its actually pre-internet, but Texas is a big place, so who knows, it might be based on regional oral folklore?” also that “Besides the Stiltwalker, Orthlocks, and a giant catfish called old Joe also call the brazos river their home. Maybe a few others too!” if you’re able to, Please do check it out his first issue! 🙂

…and as usual, if you guys enjoyed this & my art, please free to request s’more over on patron I’m always open to topic suggestions!

[Art sticker by @samkalensky part of my cryptozoology series of stickers. ]