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Dash-Cam Footage Of Shadow Creature In Falmouth, Maine

Yithian

Yithian

Parish Watch
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This came up earlier via Coast to Coast A.M.

A curious piece of dashcam footage from a motorist in Maine appears to show some kind of shadow creature dart across a road. The eerie video was posted on Wednesday afternoon by the Facebook group 207 Paranormal, which specializes in reporting accounts of high strangeness in Maine. According to them, the footage was captured in the town of Falmouth "a few days ago" and that the anomaly was only noticed by the driver when he later revisited the video from their drive in the hopes of seeing a deer that had been spotted earlier in the trip.

Short Article & Video:
https://www.coasttocoastam.com/article/watch-shadow-creature-filmed-in-maine/

If you have difficulty with the video there, here's a direct link:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=312462176704491

2nd September 2020:
This was filmed in the Falmouth, Maine area a few days ago. The witness was reviewing dashcam footage to see if he had captured video of a deer that had run in front of him earlier. Well, that's no deer...
 
Yithian said:
This came up earlier via Coast to Coast A.M.

A curious piece of dashcam footage from a motorist in Maine appears to show some kind of shadow creature dart across a road. The eerie video was posted on Wednesday afternoon by the Facebook group 207 Paranormal, which specializes in reporting accounts of high strangeness in Maine. According to them, the footage was captured in the town of Falmouth "a few days ago" and that the anomaly was only noticed by the driver when he later revisited the video from their drive in the hopes of seeing a deer that had been spotted earlier in the trip.

Short Article & Video:
https://www.coasttocoastam.com/article/watch-shadow-creature-filmed-in-maine/

If you have difficulty with the video there, here's a direct link:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=312462176704491

2nd September 2020:
This was filmed in the Falmouth, Maine area a few days ago. The witness was reviewing dashcam footage to see if he had captured video of a deer that had run in front of him earlier. Well, that's no deer...
Click to expand...
Video doesn’t play on my iPad unfortunately. I mentioned a short while ago that, with the proliferation of dash cams, we should start seeing footage of some of these reported roadside cryptids, phantom hitchhikers and UFO’s
 
Tempest63 said:
Video doesn’t play on my iPad unfortunately. I mentioned a short while ago that, with the proliferation of dash cams, we should start seeing footage of some of these reported roadside cryptids, phantom hitchhikers and UFO’s
Click to expand...

Try this:

 
Yithian said:
This came up earlier via Coast to Coast A.M.

A curious piece of dashcam footage from a motorist in Maine appears to show some kind of shadow creature dart across a road. The eerie video was posted on Wednesday afternoon by the Facebook group 207 Paranormal, which specializes in reporting accounts of high strangeness in Maine. According to them, the footage was captured in the town of Falmouth "a few days ago" and that the anomaly was only noticed by the driver when he later revisited the video from their drive in the hopes of seeing a deer that had been spotted earlier in the trip.

Short Article & Video:
https://www.coasttocoastam.com/article/watch-shadow-creature-filmed-in-maine/

If you have difficulty with the video there, here's a direct link:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=312462176704491

2nd September 2020:
This was filmed in the Falmouth, Maine area a few days ago. The witness was reviewing dashcam footage to see if he had captured video of a deer that had run in front of him earlier. Well, that's no deer...
Click to expand...
Black wolf. Many of the wolves in Maine are black.
 
I've seen this before. Maybe last year or so, so I am doubting the claim that it is dash cam footage from Sep 2020.

As to what it is, I have no idea but I don't think it's actually anything running across the road. I think it may be something passing in front of the headlights but at close range. For eample, a bird flying over the road but at headlight level. We are seeing the shadow of whatever passes the headlights.
 
To me, whatever it is, it seems to move like a canine running but it appears to be a shadow. I don't see any light bouncing of it which you'd expect with a furred animal so something passing in front of the headlights at a closer range shouldn't be ruled out either. The un sensational way the footage has been uploaded also leans it away from being a deliberate fake.
 
Swifty said:
To me, whatever it is, it seems to move like a canine running but it appears to be a shadow. I don't see any light bouncing of it which you'd expect with a furred animal so something passing in front of the headlights at a closer range shouldn't be ruled out either. The un sensational way the footage has been uploaded also leans it away from being a deliberate fake.
Click to expand...
The movement definitely seemed dog-like, especially when the image was enlarged to full screen - like a long-haired black German Shepherd bounding across the road, The only problem is that it seems transparent! I wonder if this could be something to do with the camera - frame-rate, low light performance or something like that.
 
Whatever it was, it had enough sense to be heading for a gateway! Not quite enough sense to wait for the car to pass, though.

Doggie, probably. :dunno:
 
Perhaps it's running so close to the car lights and the hood only the shadow is visible in the distance.
 
It's running towards/up the driveway on the right. So, this is a logical place, as mentioned above as "a gate", where a dog, fox or cat would run. Wolves are not common so guessing a wolf over a normal dog is not all that reasonable. Coyotes and the foxes here are not this dark-colored because that would have been my first guess. What is most annoying is that you often don't get specifics. What road, what exact time?

It's typical to label these sightings as paranormal without any critical thinking whatsoever.

Edit: and typical for so called "paranormal investigators" to do no investigating whatsoever but go for the cheap clicks and hype.
 
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Sharon Hill said:
What is most annoying is that you often don't get specifics. What road, what exact time?
Click to expand...

Agreed.

I was discussing this with Mrs Yith a few days ago.

We often find ourselves driving home through fairly remote countryside after dark. If anything remotely anomalous occurred, we'd have it seriously documented while every detail was fresh.

But then in having a specific interest in the details draws you, me and most members apart from the majoroty.

I have to say, the raw speed of the movement suggests to me that we are seeing an image of something nearer and smaller somehow projected far in such a way that a small movement in the source results in a much more significant move in the shadow/reflection.

As to the mechanics of that, it's impossible to say.
 
I think we see a dog-like shape because we expect to see a dog-like shape, and we attribute dog-like movement to it.

If you stop the film and go forwards or backwards in small increments, there is no real shape to it.

I would say it is not a "shadow creature" but a "shadow that superficially resembles a creature".

My guess is a bend or junction somewhere behind the car with the dash cam. A car turns into or out of the junction, or rounds the bend, and as they move more or less from the dash cam car's right to left, the dash cam car's own shadow flits from left to right.

I consider myself an experienced road user. I drive a car, ride a motorbike, and cycle. I have often had a momentary impression of an "animal" running along the side of the road, or something flitting overhead, only to find it was a moving shadow, or a reflection of my own headlights from a puddle.
 
Mikefule said:
My guess is a bend or junction somewhere behind the car with the dash cam. A car turns into or out of the junction, or rounds the bend, and as they move more or less from the dash cam car's right to left, the dash cam car's own shadow flits from left to right.
Click to expand...
I think there is too wide a range for that. It runs right across the road and in through the gate at the other side. That would be a heck of a corner. It also keeps the same latitude on the road and is not affected by the car getting closer as it moves.
 
Min Bannister said:
I think there is too wide a range for that. It runs right across the road and in through the gate at the other side. That would be a heck of a corner. It also keeps the same latitude on the road and is not affected by the car getting closer as it moves.
Click to expand...
I agree. What would be SUPER HELPFUL is if the person recording it revealed where it happened. I've not been able to find anything besides the junk 207 Paranormal put up. In most cases, you can get a Google street view and pinpoint the exact spot and roughly match up some objects in daylight. That sure would help answer some questions.
 
I noticed something about the phantom figure relative to the painted stripes on the road.

The white stripes on the left and right margins of the pavement are much more reflective than the twin yellow lines in the road's center. This is typical for American back roads, even without considering the fact the center lines probably receive more wear and tear.

The shadow (whatever) completely occludes the left (white) margin line and the center (yellow) double lines as it crosses from left to right. During its crossing the object appears to be opaque relative to these two lines. However ...

The shadow does not occlude the right white margin line at all. In crossing the third (rightmost) line the object appears to be translucent. The object's full length transits across the rightmost line, but the line doesn't flicker or disappear for even an instant.

I don't think the object is an artifact of the dash cam's frame capture rate or some sort of transient residual burn-in. If it were, the object should exhibit at least some transient translucence when crossing all three lines.

By the same token, I don't believe the mystery shadow represents a solid object. If it were it should visibly occlude the third (rightmost) line it crosses.
 
To me it looks like the shadow of something flying overhead, although that would require another light source.
 
There's something odd about the viewing angle in the video. It appears that the dash cam isn't on the dash, but mounted somewhere higher up. The view of the road out front seems foreshortened, as if the camera is angled downward. Then there's the issue of seeing no hint of either a dashboard or a hood for the vehicle. It strikes me as being like what one would expect to see from a camera mounted internally in a snub-nosed vehicle like a large rear-engined bus or perhaps mounted externally on the vehicle's roof.
 
EnolaGaia said:
There's something odd about the viewing angle in the video. It appears that the dash cam isn't on the dash, but mounted somewhere higher up.
Click to expand...
This looks normal to me. My dash cam is mounted next to the rear view mirror with a suction cup and nothing but the road ahead appears in the footage, not even the front of the car. I had a look at videos of UK dash cam footage and it seems to be 50/50 whether any part of the car is in view.
 
EnolaGaia said:
I don't think the object is an artifact of the dash cam's frame capture rate or some sort of transient residual burn-in. If it were, the object should exhibit at least some transient translucence when crossing all three lines.
Click to expand...
I don't think that would be the case as the lighting is different across all three lines. For one thing the car is getting closer as the animal crosses, for another the headlights are tilted slightly to the right as they should be for a right-hand drive vehicle. So things are much darker on the left and the animal might easily appear opaque when not as well lit.
 
As I mentioned earlier, I am 100% sure that I have seen this footage before. It was part of a Youtube compilation of "Top 10 Weird Dashcams..." or something like that. Regardless of how it was labelled, I know that I saw it earlier this year or last year because I was going through a phase of watching loads of them.

Comments have been disabled so maybe others mentioned the same thing.
 
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