A woman was left spooked when she got her photos developed from a trip to the mountains.
Duffy Springfield went hiking with her boyfriend in Panther, West Virginia, in March and they were taken aback by one small detail in one of the shots.
"I like to do film photography, and my boyfriend and I were making a scrapbook of all the developed photos I took. I just kinda saw it—I'm not really sure how I even noticed it since it's such a small detail," Springfield told Newsweek.
"We both agreed it was weird and thought it even looked a little like a hand. Honestly, we were pretty excited when we saw it because of all the cryptids said to lurk in the West Virginian mountains. Even if it's not actually a hand, it's a fun story to have," Springfield, a full-time student at Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana, said.
A cryptid is a creature found in stories that some people believe are real or claim to have seen, such as the infamous Bigfoot.
West Virginia is known for its rich folklore of mysterious creatures, Hannah McNemar explained in her article titled The Wild, Wonderful, and Weird of West Virginia: Craziest Cryptids, published on Fairmont State University student news site The Columns.
Among the most famous is the Mothman, first reported in Point Pleasant in 1966, described as a man-sized creature with wings and glowing red eyes.
Another notable cryptid is the Flatwoods Monster, reportedly sighted in 1952, described as a tall humanoid with a red face and green body.
The Snarly Yow, a phantom dog-like creature with glowing eyes, has allegedly haunted the Blue Ridge Mountains since the 1700s.
Lesser-known cryptids include the Ogua, a massive snapping turtle-like creature, and the Vegetable Man, a plant-like humanoid with thorny fingers reported in 1968.
Springfield shared the spooky shot on Reddit in a thread called r/oddlyterrifying.
"We were the only ones there for the week and had been the first there in a while. I took this pic at the top of the mountain. Behind the pillar should have been nothing, a drop-off to the woods below. Are we bugging? That really looks like a hand," she wrote in the post, which garnered 25,000 upvotes.
Reddit users offered their verdicts in the comments section.
"Go back, it's the only way to be sure. It'd bother you for the rest of your life otherwise," said hyperimpossible.
"Perhaps the first genuinely oddly terrifying thing I've seen on here," wrote GTasker92.
"OP goes to the spot. There's nothing there. Feels a tap on his shoulder," added Imaginary_History985.
"Don't listen to him, OP! I'm a handonrockiologist, and I can tell from a glance that what you're looking at is a strange root. Forget about it. It's just a silly thing in your mind. Don't read the spoilers, OP. Move onto something else," joked Joevarny.
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