The New Monsters: The Fresno Nightcrawler - Part Three

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1:06Look around, lemon-forward sodas, even lemon-forward songs. We ran the tracks, slowed them down, reversed them, and squeezed out the truth. Oh, hey, open the man! That's lemon propaganda right there. But now, seven up is fighting back with their new lime lemon soda. Showing the seven uprising, flip the set. Evio. There was a brief period in modern history when we believed cameras were going to just solve everything. And the idea made sense. For generations, unexplained phenomena had survived inside the convenient fog of eyewitness testimony. A lake foot appeared to be a hunter walking alone through the Pacific Northwest. A strange light hovered above a farmhouse after midnight. Something enormous disturbed the surface of a Scottish lake, while the nearest camera happened to be several miles away.

2:08Skeptics could reasonably ask why extraordinary encounters seemed so frequently allergic to quality photography. But then cameras became ubiquitous. By the opening years of the 21st century, surveillance systems were migrating from banks and government buildings onto ordinary American homes. Digital cameras were replacing film. Cell phones were beginning their transformation into portable recording devices. And the internet suddenly offered ordinary people somewhere to put whatever they captured. In 2005, three former PayPal employees launched a website called YouTube. Google purchased it the following year for $1.65 billion. By 2007, the year associated with the original Fresno Nightcrawler recording, researchers studying internet traffic described YouTube as the most successful short video sharing service on the web, and estimated that it represented roughly 10% of all internet traffic.

3:11Think about that timing. Thousands of years, we had folklore traveling at roughly the speed of human beings. Then radio accelerated it significantly. Then television accelerated it again. And by 2007, a strange piece of footage recorded in California could theoretically be watched anywhere on earth without a television network. Without a newspaper at it, a publisher, or even a folklorist deciding that anyone else deserved to see it. The gatekeepers vanished. And almost immediately, something with two legs and practically nothing else just wandered through that gate. Welcome back to The Devil Within. This is the new monsters. This is episode three of our series on the Fresno Nightcrawler. Proof of something. Over the past two episodes, we followed this wonderfully bizarre creature from the history of Fresno into the digital wilderness. We've examined the original recording, the later footage associated with the Yosemite region,

4:15attempts to reproduce the creature's peculiar movement, and the mythology that accumulated around it, including supposed connections to indigenous traditions for which convincing historical evidence has proven, let's say, elusive. Today, we're leaving the sightings themselves behind, because there's very little value in spending another episode getting you to stare at the same handful of pixels, and pretending that certainty will eventually emerge if you squint hard enough. No, instead, we're going to investigate why the Fresno Nightcrawler actually survived. And the question takes us directly into one of the most important technological transitions in the history of folklore. By the end of today's episode, we'll discover how the Nightcrawler became something that few cryptids before it could have been, a monster designed almost accidentally for the age of viral video. We'll look at what happened when skeptics began using the same digital tools that spread the mystery to dismantle it, why successful debunkings sometimes strengthen legends rather than destroy them,

5:17and how the Nightcrawler evolved from something frightening into something surprisingly beloved. Most importantly, we'll ask what happens to the very idea of photographic evidence when artificial intelligence makes seeing increasingly separate from believing, because the Fresno Nightcrawler arrived at precisely the moment when cameras seemed destined to settle our oldest arguments. Instead, they created entirely new ones. Now, before we continue, as always, if you're enjoying the new monsters, please make sure you're following the devil within wherever you're listening right now. Leave a rating, leave a review, share the episode, those small gestures, make an enormous difference for independent shows like mine. And if you're more of a YouTube person, all of these videos are available on the Evio Creative YouTube channel. Now let's return to 2007, because while Fresno was acquiring a monster, California was helping reinvent the way the entire world saw itself.

6:20Chapter 1. The Year Everyone Got a Camera California 2007 occupied a peculiar position between two technological errors. The old world remained completely recognizable. Facebook was only three years old and had opened beyond colleges the previous year. Twitter had barely begun. Instagram didn't exist. TikTok belonged to a future that nobody could have predicted. Most Americans still watched television according to schedules determined by networks. And the phrase, going viral, had only recently begun escaping the vocabulary of epidemiologists. Then on January 9th, 2007, the late great Steve Jobs walked onto a stage in San Francisco, and introduced the iPhone. The first model went on sale that June. It's difficult now to remember how radical that moment felt, because the smartphone, as we all know, has become indistinguishable for ordinary life. But the device helped accelerate a cultural transformation that was already underway.

7:22Cameras were becoming something people carried constantly. The internet was becoming something people inhabited rather than just occasionally dropped in on. The distinction between witnessing an event and broadcasting it was beginning to collapse. And the night crawler appeared directly inside that transition. Its timing becomes even more interesting when placed beside California's larger relationship with visual mythology. This was, after all, the state that America had spent the previous century teaching how to believe what appeared on a screen. Yeah, Hollywood transformed painted sets into ancient Rome. Desert back lots into distant planets and actors into creatures that haunted generations of children. California had already become maybe the world's greatest manufacturer of visual illusion. But then those tools began escaping Hollywood. Affordable editing software allowed ordinary users to manipulate photographs and video. Consumer cameras improved.

8:23Home computers became powerful enough to perform tasks once reserved for professional production facilities. And YouTube supplied distribution. The old distinction between people who made media and people who consumed it started to dissolve. And for folklore, the consequences were enormous. A monster no longer required a newspaper reporter willing to print the story. It no longer required a television producer willing to broadcast the footage. It could bypass the entire legacy media structure and travel directly from one screen to another, collecting interpretation with every step. And the same technology also gave skeptics unprecedented power. In 2012, the visual effects educator and professional skeptic known online as Captain Disillusion demonstrated one possible method for manufacturing a night crawler-like figure. He filmed himself walking while carrying a watermelon and digitally removed much of his upper body, producing something strikingly reminiscent of the creature.

9:26His demonstration didn't establish that the original Fresno footage had been created that way. It did prove something more limited and potentially more useful. And apparently impossible anatomy could be manufactured using accessible visual effects techniques. This should have been devastating for the legend of the night crawler, but it wasn't. And the reason why tells us something fundamental about modern folklore. Debunking requires answering a specific question. Demonstrating how an image could have been fabricated establishes possibility while audience is hungry for certainty they want provenance. Who created the original? What equipment did they use? Where are the raw files? Why did they do it? And until those questions receive satisfying answers, possibility competes indefinitely with possibility. The result is an unusual form of cultural immortality. Bigfoot enthusiasts, they can argue about footprints. UFO researchers can debate radar returns. Night crawler believers only need to point toward a few seconds of unresolved video and say, okay fine, then you tell me what it is.

10:34And the answer remains elusive because the original evidence is inadequate to support the weight that's been placed upon it. PBS's Monstrum describes the phenomenon as growing from a roughly 22nd 2007 clip into an internet legend sustained by speculation, later alleged sightings, debate, and eventually merchandise. The National Park Service, which has itself written about the night crawler as part of your Samarits collection of strange stories, notes that investigations into the footage remained inconclusive. That's almost the perfect recipe for folklore. Enough evidence to prevent dismissal, too little evidence to permit resolution, an endless distribution. Something else happened along the way that separates the night crawler from many monsters that preceded it. People again love the freaking thing. The creature softened as its legend spread. Artists transformed its unsettling silhouette into cartoons. Fans drew families of night crawlers wandering forests together.

11:36The smaller figure in the alleged Yosemite footage encouraged interpretations of adults traveling with children. Stickers, plush toys, t-shirts, and online illustrations gradually transformed an unnerving cryptid into something approaching a mascot. The monster had undergone another distinctly internet age mutation. It became cute, and that development matters because folklore has never required monsters to remain frightening. Dragons became hit kids movies. Vampires became romantic heroes. Ghosts became, you know, gasper. He's friendly. Once a creature enters popular culture, the audience kind of gains ownership over what it becomes. The Fresno Night Crawler may have begun as something strange walking across somebody's lawn. The internet just turned it into a character. And in doing so, it demonstrated the final stage in the creation of a new monster. First we see something, and then we argue about it, but then we name it, and then we share it.

12:40And eventually we forget that there was ever a time when the monster didn't exist at all. With Share My Trip from Uber, you can send your live trip location to the ones who matter most, like Dan and Hannah, who always wait up to make sure their daughter gets back to her college dorm room. Or Tiffany, who's running late as usual, and her friends are tracking her trip to make sure she's actually on her way. She's right there. She's three minutes away. Or Sam, who never goes anywhere without her roommate knowing exactly where she is. Some journeys are meant to be shared. Share your ride in real time with Share My Trip on Uber. One more way Uber is putting safety at every turn. Learn more on the Uber app. For the first time ever, Yamaha Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving away a new Rolex watch for every club Serrano Card tier. Play with your club Serrano Card and on September 20th, you could be one of five winners of a Rolex watch. Plus, all winners will advance to the finale at Palm's Casino Resort Las Vegas for a chance to take home a rarity. The second must-dang dark horse ever produced on September 26th. Two properties. Six winners. Only at Yamaha Resort and Casino. Your California to Vegas connection.

13:42Details at Yamaha.com must be 21 or older to enter participate. Please gamble responsibly. The Aleminati has spent decades keeping lemon on top and lime in the shadows. Their lemon agenda has infiltrated everything, even our music. That hits on named after the color of lemons, not a coincidence. Big lemon has been pulling strings in the industry for years. Think about it. But now, seven up is fighting back with their new lime lemon soda. Now lime comes first. Seven up. Flip this step. This episode is brought to you by Palm Olive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners. Sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palm Olive Ultra. Palm Olive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9% of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together.

14:43Shop now at Palm Olive.com. Chapter 2. The Monster We Adopted There's a peculiar moment in the life of a successful monster when fear begins surrendering to affection. As mentioned, it happened to vampires. They traveled an improbable cultural distance from bloated corpses clawing their way out of Eastern European graves to handsome immortals involved in complicated teenage relationships. Dragons eventually scape the villages they once terrorized and became children's companions like dogs or cats. Even Bigfoot, ostensibly an enormous unidentified primate capable of appearing without warning in the wilderness, sells beef jerky. The Fresno Nightcrawler made that transition very, very quickly. By the time its image had circulated through paranormal television and YouTube and forums and social media, artists had begun simplifying an already extraordinarily simple creature.

15:46Two long legs, tiny head, maybe a pair of eyes. The unsettling figure from the surveillance footage gradually became whimsical. Fan art portrayed nightcrawlers strolling together through forests and holding hands, wearing hats, or wandering beneath stars. Stickers and shirts and toys followed. Again, that PBS show described the creature as an unexpectedly endearing cryptid whose viral afterlife includes memes and fan art and collectible merchandise. And that reveals something important about all these new monsters. Older folklore arrived with instructions. Avoid the forest after sunsets, stay away from the water. Don't answer the voice calling your name from outside. The monster existed partly because it had an enforced boundary. The nightcrawler came with no instructions at all. It didn't appear to have ever heard anybody. It doesn't guard very treasure or punish immoral behavior. There's no established account of what it eats or where it sleeps, why it walks, what it might want, where it was going that night.

16:49Does it really like Yosemite? Was it only on vacation? Even folklorist Emily Zarka has observed that the nightcrawler lacks the clear purpose associated with many traditional monsters. And maybe that emptiness became its greatest advantage. Because the audience could fill it. This is where the Fresno nightcrawler becomes larger than the footage that created. The internet did more than distribute the legend. It participated in designing the creature. Thousands of people who never visited Fresno and never saw the original recording could nevertheless contribute something to the mythology. One person drew it. Another invented behavior for it. Someone created a mean. Someone else imagined a family of nightcrawlers wandering peacefully through the woods. The monster, like Slenderman, became collaborative. And eventually the Fresno nightcrawler achieved something even stranger than convincing people that it existed. It convinced people to care about it.

17:49And that may ultimately explain its longevity better than any paranormal theory. The original recording remains unresolved largely because the surviving public version is profoundly limited. PBS notes that what circulated was effectively a recording of the CCTV monitor and that the original footage was lost. The same program points out that later nightcrawler style videos include demonstrated or suspected hoaxes, including Captain Disillusions 2012 recreation, showing how easily the distinctive anatomy could be manufactured digitally. Yet none of that has killed the creature. By 2026, the nightcrawler remains recognizable enough to inspire new articles, new artwork, and continuing arguments about what happened in Fresno nearly two decades earlier. Which brings us to the uncomfortable future waiting beyond this story. The Fresno footage emerged during an era when a bad image was suspicious because it contained two little information.

18:51We're entering an era when a spectacular image may become suspicious because it contains too much. Artificial intelligence can now generate increasingly convincing photographs and moving images depicting events that never occurred. The central problem facing the next generation of folklore may therefore reverse the problem that sustained Bigfoot, Nessie, and the nightcrawler. Researchers have already spent years developing techniques to identify synthetic and manipulated imagery precisely because visual plausibility alone can no longer guarantee authenticity. Imagine the Fresno footage appearing for the first time today. Within minutes half the comments would accuse it of being AI. The monster would face an entirely new burden of proof. For most photographic history, believers struggle to convince us that an extraordinary image was genuine. The monster's coming next may struggle to convince us that anything is. And maybe that's the final lesson of the Fresno nightcrawler.

19:54Human beings once feared the things that cameras couldn't capture. Then we became fascinated by the things that cameras captured badly. Now we're approaching a world where cameras, software, and AI can produce images whose relationship with reality may be impossible for an ordinary viewer to determine. The devil within lies in that widening space between seeing and knowing. Technology keeps changing the evidence, while the ancient human desire beneath it remains remarkably stable. We still want to believe there are mysteries beyond the edge of our understanding. Sometimes all it takes is 20 seconds of video and two very long legs. I have no idea what walked across that property in Fresno. And after three episodes, I'm perfectly comfortable saying that. Maybe it was an ingenious hoax, maybe primitive surveillance technology transformed something mundane into something seemingly extraordinary. Maybe someone discovered the precise combination of fabric, movement, and camera angle necessary to accidentally create a monster.

21:01Whatever crossed the lawn, however, it's only half the story. The other half is what we did with it. We named it, we shared it, we investigated it, we debunked it, we drew it, we reimagined it, and eventually adopted it as one of the strangest little creatures in the American cryptid family. The Fresno Night Crawler may never have existed as an animal. As folklore, it is unquestionably alive. Our next new monster takes us somewhere very different and into another corner of the internet's ability to turn an image into a warning. This time, the creature's mythology carries consequences. People share the picture, they learn the story, then comes the disturbing suggestion that simply knowing what you've seen may have placed you in danger. Next time on the new monsters, another image escapes into the world and something follows it. That's next time on the new monsters from the Devil with it.

22:04The Devil with in is an evioproduction recorded live at Belar Studios in Los Angeles, California. For the Devil with it, I'm your writer and host, Brandon Morgan. On any journey using Uber, it helps to know you're getting into the right car. Pin verification adds an extra step to make sure your ride is your ride. Before the trip begins, your app gives you a unique pin. Just tell it to your driver and they'll enter it in their app before the ride can start. Hey, what'd you pin? Mm-hmm, 2538. That way, you know you're in the right car taking the right trip and your driver knows you're the right passenger. Make sure your ride is your ride with pin verification from Uber. One more way Uber is putting safety at every turn. Learn more on the Uber app. For the first time ever, Yamaha Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving away a new Rolex watch for every Club Serrano Card tier. Play with your Club Serrano Card and on September 20th, you could be one of five winners of a Rolex watch. Plus, all winners will advance to the finale at Palm's Casino Resort Las Vegas for a chance to take home a rarity. The second Mustang Dark Horse ever produced on September 26th, two properties, six winners, only at Yamaha Resort and Casino, your California to Vegas connection.

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