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The Cryptid Dispatch
EVIDENCE REVIEW

Reader Submission Review: The Mastic Beach Backyard Photograph

A reader's motion-triggered flash photo shows, depending on whom you ask, an intruder, a bear that cannot be there, or a neighbor's inflatable decoration. The Evidence Desk runs it through the full protocol.

Deshawn Pruitt · Evidence & Archives · June 8, 2026 · 4 min read

R.C.'s floodlight frame: a tall matte figure at the fence line; raccoons unbothered

On the night of June 3, a motion-triggered floodlight camera belonging to a reader in Mastic Beach — identified at her request only as R.C. — captured a single frame of a large bipedal figure at the property line, partially behind a forsythia. R.C.'s submission note reads, in full: 'This is either him or I owe my neighbor Doug an apology.' This desk has now spent five days determining which.

Protocol findings

  • EXIF intact, single exposure, no compositing artifacts at 400 percent magnification. The photograph is real, whatever it is a photograph of.
  • Height against the fence line (1.83 m pickets, standard) computes to between 2.24 and 2.41 meters depending on posture assumptions. Doug is, by his own affidavit, 1.75 meters 'in boots.'
  • The figure's surface reads matte in direct flash. Inflatable decorations specularly highlight. We tested with Doug's actual Halloween inventory, which he was gracious about.
  • No footprints recoverable; R.C.'s lawn service had been through by the time of submission. The desk has issued its standing plea to all readers regarding Tuesday mowing.

The forsythia problem

What keeps this file open rather than celebrated is the forsythia. The figure is behind it. A 2.3-meter subject at that position should compress the upper branches or displace them; the branches are undisturbed in frame. Either the figure is closer and smaller than the fence-line math says — the skeptic reading — or it is exactly where the math says and simply did not touch the bush. Regular readers will know that 'large, silent, and did not touch the bush' is not the debunking it sounds like. It is, in fact, the profile.

Classification: CURIOUS, pending a return visit with cast kits on a week when the lawn survives until Thursday. The full frame, with measurement overlay, is posted to the evidence board for public comment. Doug has asked us to state that he was in Riverhead that night, and the desk confirms his alibi is solid. We never suspected you, Doug. You do not have the shoulders.

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