Cryptids

On Four Legs, Then Two: A 'Completely White' Figure in the Swedish Woods

A Reddit user says that a few summers ago, in a forest in central Sweden, a large white creature rose from all fours, stood on two legs and looked at them before vanishing into the trees. Replies range from crawler lore to mange and an albino moose.

By Dead of Night Dispatch

Location Central Sweden (exact location not given)

Illustration: a pale figure standing upright among dark spruce trees in a Scandinavian summer forest, soft midsummer light between the trunks

SWEDEN (Posted Oct. 20, 2026): It was the middle of summer, somewhere in the forests of central Sweden, a few years ago. The poster was in the woods, about 8 kilometers, they later wrote, from the nearest person or building. Then they saw something “unnaturally white” against the trees.

Where it started

The original social media post

  1. u/robbarox19 on Reddit

    The creature got up from all fours and stood on two legs. It turned and looked directly at me. After a few moments, it took a few steps, then lowered itself into a hunched position, closer to the ground. Within just a few steps, it was gone into the woods.

    Excerpt from a longer first-hand post.

    49 points · 47 comments as of Oct 24, 2026

    From the conversation

    See the full thread on Reddit → (opens in new tab)

Posts shown as originally published; we don’t verify individual comments. Retrieved . “Load the post here” fetches the original from Reddit, which may set cookies.

This week, the poster, robbarox19, asked r/cryptids whether anyone else in Scandinavia had seen it too.

What’s claimed

Accounts, testimony and theories, as told by the people who tell them.

  • The first sight. “I noticed a large, completely white creature on four legs. It was around human-sized or possibly larger, and what really stood out was how unnaturally white it looked against the forest around it.”
  • Then it stood. “The creature got up from all fours and stood on two legs. It turned and looked directly at me.” After a few steps, it “lowered itself into a hunched position, closer to the ground,” the poster writes, and was gone.
  • The details. Asked what it looked like, the poster replied that “it looked like it had short white hair, but it might have just been skin, almost like loose skin.” “Its eyes looked sunken into their sockets.” It “definitely had long arms and legs, but its torso was shorter in comparison to its limbs.”
  • The feeling. “I had the distinct feeling that I was being watched, almost as if it had been following me. I also remember hearing things that made the experience even more disturbing.” They don’t say what.
  • The place. In a reply, the poster says it was “in a forest area near a abandoned railway,” with some old huts nearby and possibly Viking ruins, though they aren’t sure.

What we know

On the record: documents, statements, dates and places. Sources below.

This is a single account of an event years old, posted anonymously, with no photo. The poster is open about the limits: “I might be wrong it was such a long time ago i can’t clearly describe it.” They say they’ll look for notes they wrote down that day. “I haven’t gone back to that area since.”

They’re also careful about what they’re claiming. “I’m not claiming that it was definitely a cryptid or anything supernatural. I genuinely don’t know what I saw.”

The post had 49 points and 47 comments when we read it on Oct. 24.

The replies

The thread split, roughly, into lore and biology.

The crawler. Several readers pointed to “crawlers,” pale, long-limbed humanoids in modern internet lore, often described as moving on all fours. rebb_hosar, writing from Norway, said such sightings “in Scandinavia are quite rare,” with “similar sightings more to the east, like Finland and Russia.” Another reader brought up the jötnar and trolls of Scandinavian legend.

Mange. The same reader, rebb_hosar, suggested starting with known large mammals affected by sarcoptic or notoedric mange, which, they wrote, “can drastically change their appearance.” Mange can strip an animal’s fur, leaving gray or pale skin that looks loose and wrinkled, and very sick animals can move strangely.

Albinism. GlazedTofo wrote that they’d seen something like this in Denmark and Sweden, and that in Sweden, when they approached, “it turned out to be a moose, or similar kind, with albino mutation.” White moose are real and well known in Sweden. A moose doesn’t stand on two legs, though, and that’s the detail the poster keeps coming back to.

The joke. And one reader, majsolle, offered: “That was just me on my evening walk! Sorry about being awkward.” The poster took it well.

What’s next

The most useful thing here would be the poster’s notes from that day, written before years of memory set in. If they turn up, we’ll update this story.

Sources

  1. Has anyone in Sweden or Scandinavia ever seen something like this in the woods? Large, completely white, humanoid-looking creature (opens in new tab) · Reddit, r/cryptids First-hand account posted Oct. 20, 2026, describing an encounter 'a few years ago.'