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Where We Left Off:
The cat detectives discovered that the neighborhood shrews were hiding their superpowers. Our research uncovered all that they can do.
Weirder New Jersey:
This case file came to us after we watched trailcam footage that shook our world! In the area of trailcam2 (the GardePro A3S), we’ve been getting incredible footage of the deer, free-roaming cats, and creatures of the night. When I saw the footage from November 12, 2023, I had to get Oliver and Gus involved immediately! Special thanks to Cassandra Yorgey for sharing our story with Exemplore!
This camera points to the edge of the property that borders the northern woodlands. It’s a hot spot of wildlife activity (and those aforementioned cats). During the daylight hours, The Stranger did indeed wander through. Gus made sure to give that entire area a thorough sweep. However, after the (stupid daylight savings time) sun went down and it was too dark for mere humans eyes to see, Gus was in his Batman role on the roof. He warned us that something suspicious was seen in the red maple tree area. The trailcam caught it!
We’ve had many observations of the local opossums, raccoons, and deer visiting at night. Even the occasional wolpertinger hops through in the dark now. We get rare glimpses of foxes scurrying through on their way to apparently very important appointments; they’re always in a hurry. On one occasion, the camera even captured a few seconds of a coyote! That was exciting, but not terrifying like the footage of November 11th at 8:19PM.
Gus looking for clues:
An opossum moved around in the foreground lit by the night mode setting in black and white. It kept is nose down in the grass searching for delicious insects. In the dark shadows of the trees, a pair of large eyes appear. There are some interesting things about those stark reflective eyes. The first, as I said, they were huge eyes. They moved completely around. When the eyes were clearly in front of a tree trunk, the body appears to disappear as if going invisible. Yet, when we later checked the area, there was nothing that could explain hiding the body while the eyes continued to move from right to left on the screen.
I admit, I am self-taught when it comes to digital video editing. My computer is also so slow that sound and images are garbled until I “produce” or render the video which takes about 25 minutes for a 4-minute video. Unlike on television cop shows, when you “zoom” in post-production, that loses quality since the camera itself is not zooming. You’re making the image larger, but not the same way as when you look through a camera and zoom in then focus. I also included the settings on the clips I altered trying to make it easier to see the Mysterious Creature of the Night, but I didn’t add any special effects to to those particular clips. I used a Wikicommons image of the Mothman for the title card. I added the sound of wind and colorized the first video clip of breath on the chilled night air that passed in front of the camera. I added the yellow lines and text obviously showing where to draw attention to see the Monster.
Crowdsourced Theories:
I posted a shorter version of the film to Instagram Reels which also shared to Facebook. These are some of the responses which vary from scientific to paranormal:
“It’s a reflection on the lense [sic] frm the refraction in the possums [sic] eyes. Of [sic] you watch carefully it moves exactly as the animal does but mirrored direction.”
- This one kind of makes sense except there’s a point when the opossum turns sideways to the left and the “ghost eyes” do disappear; however as the opossum turns back to face the camera, the “ghost eyes” are then in the top right of the woods not where they left off.
“A no thanks.”
“Seriously—what the hell!?!”
*ghost emoji, alien emoji, clown emoji”
“Ummmmmmmm nope”
“An owl walking up and down a fallen log is the only thing that makes sense in my mind *cry laughing emoji”
“A nightmare?”
A gif of Jonah Hill in bed praying: “Dear God, I’d like to pray to you for a second.”
“New Jersey Devil”
“Owl, maybe?”
“It’s moving exactly with the animal. Light refraction from its eyes and the IR light”
- This one I’ll say comes from my friend Meghan who is active in the paranormal research and investigation community.
*giant eyes emoji*
Scientifically speaking, it seems the two most likely explanations are that the infra-red light is bouncing off the opossum’s eyes and somehow using the woods as a projection screen; and that it’s an owl. On the night of November 16, 2023, there a Great Horned Owl whoo-whoo-whoooing close by. I used the Merlin app Sound ID twice to confirm.
None of the birds were willing to give us information. Not even the cardinals and they love us! The pileated woodpecker never lets us get close enough to even ask a question. We tried getting information from our confidential informants and they were too afraid to talk.
But this is the Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency! While we LOVE SCIENCE, we also love the strangest theories of any investigation!
Case Findings:
This may boil down to infra-red light bouncing from one place to another, but we’d love to hear your theories about the creature. Perhaps you didn’t know about the Musconetcong River’s Mantisoid cryptid. We’ve even been contacted by a top reporter to help us figure this out!
Case Status: Open