NBC 33 Baton Rouge - "Berwick Monster" - December 2010
"Okay, you know how we asked you to send in your pics so we can put them on our newcast? We got a few, but one viewer claims he found at a hunting camp in Berwick...last weekend, his friend's family found one of his hunting cams destroyed, but the SIM card was still there along with this crazy image..."
A famous slice of internet horror and the progenitor of a solid decade and counting of pale, long-limbed beasties in pop culture - and progenitor of the "cryptid" known as the pale crawler (oft conflated with the creepypasta creature, the Rake) - this creature first appeared on local news as a mysterious image from a destroyed trailcam.
It was speculated to be Photoshop, and as was often the case in the 2010s, was explained away as viral marketing for the Playstation game Resistance 3, even though they only kinda resemble the monster from the game - who notably have more than two eyes - and nobody stepped forward to claim it. More than likely it was a prank.
But it's a delightful time capsule - from the earnest Facebook feedback segment to the anchor talking about looking at the photo while alone at midnight, it's the local news cryptid segment at peak performance
