Caught on Camera? LOL JK
Cryptids are the imaginary friends of the adult world — creatures that allegedly exist but somehow manage to avoid every camera, drone, microscope, satellite, and scientific investigation ever launched.
Bigfoot. The Chupacabra. Mothman. The Jersey Devil. You name it. If it sounds like something that would’ve been cut from an early draft of Pokémon, there’s probably a blurry photograph and a breathless eyewitness report to back it up.
The term “cryptid” was invented to make people who believe in mythical beasts sound more scholarly. It’s a word designed to add a patina of respectability to the embarrassing business of mistaking shadows, raccoons, and tree stumps for groundbreaking biological discoveries. It’s the equivalent of wearing a lab coat while insisting that the Tooth Fairy is real because you once found a quarter under your pillow.
Cryptid lore almost always follows the same tedious pattern: a fleeting glimpse in the dark, an oversized footprint conveniently found next to a tourist trail, a blurry photo taken by a man who somehow owns a $1200 iPhone but still can’t hold it still long enough to focus. And every time an expedition sets out to find these elusive beasts — complete with night-vision goggles, thermal cameras, and enough beef jerky to stock a fallout shelter — they return with… nothing. Not a bone. Not a hair. Not a verifiable photograph. Just new excuses and an expanded merchandise line.
Believers will tell you cryptids are simply “too elusive,” as if stealth is a genetic trait bestowed upon imaginary creatures but somehow not possessed by every actual endangered species we’ve already cataloged. They’ll explain that the creatures live in the “deep wilderness,” ignoring the fact that hunters, hikers, trail cameras, and bored teenagers seem perfectly capable of finding every other living thing that moves out there — except, conveniently, for the one thing that would prove them right.
Cryptids don’t prove that nature is still full of mystery. They prove that human gullibility is alive and thriving, snapping selfies at the edge of the woods and calling it science. If your best evidence for the existence of a prehistoric monster is a shaky GoPro clip and the enthusiastic testimony of a guy named Earl who’s been banned from three separate national parks, maybe — just maybe — it’s time to rethink your fieldwork.