There's no denying that the photo
above is absolutely preposterous looking. A shot of a Fiji Island
mermaid clumsily slapped into an overexposed picture of spilled
popcorn. But the tale behind this composite piece is quite
eerie. In short, the photo above is a visual representation of
Crawlin' Joe. The name of
"Crawlin' Joe" has only been around for a short time. In
fact, I coined the term in May 2001. The creature that the name
represents however, has been in existence for some time.
Allow me to interject ample
exposition. For a period of my theatre manager life, I was a
"transition manager." Anytime another location would need
me for some reason (like for filling in the gap between the firing of one
manager and the hiring of another), I'd go there and do what was
needed. In December 2000, a manager named Taylor had been terminated
from Village Eight for stealing from the safe so he could buy
Christmas presents for coworkers. I went in to help out during the
transition period.
One evening, a middle-aged Asian woman
came out of her theatre and asked for a manager. She said that she'd
been watching a movie with her children when a small, black man crawled
underneath the theatre seats, passing her isle on his way to the back of
the theatre. She said he then straightened up and began staring at
her and her children. For some reason, she was quite adamant that
this man wanted to hurt her and her children. I went into the
theatre with her and an usher to investigate. The man was no where
in sight. The woman calmed down and finished her film. Nothing
else strange occurred.
Cut to May 2001. I was at the
Village Eight again, filling in for Tami, the general manager, while she
was out on maternity leave. I was working in concession after a busy
Saturday rush when a young brunette walked up and told me that some crazy
man was trying to get her children. I got the police officer and we
went in with flashlights to see what was going on. The woman's
mother greeted us as we entered and told us that the man was gone.
We escorted mother, daughter and two children into the lobby to find out
what happened.
The woman claimed that they had been
watching the film when she felt like someone was watching her.
Several rows ahead of her was the silhouette of a head, allegedly of a
black man. Somehow, she sensed that his head was not facing the
screen, but her instead. She drew her attention away from him for
about a minute. When she glanced back, he was gone. She looked
around the theatre and was shocked to spot him in the back of the theatre,
still looking at her. His face was so dark that she couldn't make
out any distinguishing features, yet she was sure that he was staring at
her and smiling. She found this extremely unnerving, because she
hadn't seen him change seats. She concluded that he'd crawled on the
floor, under the seats, to the back (since she was on an isle seat and
claimed that she would have seen him crawling down the isle if that were
the case). Then she got the gut reaction that he was after her
children. She asked her mother to keep an eye on the kids while she
got a manager to do something about it.
AS I said before, when we got to the
theatre, the man was gone. The mother insisted that he had not
exited through the fire exit at the front of the theatre and must have
left out the back. I knew this could not be the case, because the
officer and I had been standing right by the theatre in question when the
woman came out to complain. Logically, the man had to still be in the
theatre. Yet no one of that description was present. He had
simply vanished. So I gave the family refunds and they left, still noticeably
upset from the incident.
Now the sensation of déjà vu didn't
hit me until a half hour later when the incident from December entered my
mind. Both were remarkably similar. Two women with children
reporting that a small, black man was crawling underneath the seats, was
after their children and managed to move about and disappear
mysteriously. It was too much of a coincidence. I mentioned
this to my assistant manager Craig. HE got a look like he'd seen a
ghost and told me that he'd had not two, but three incidents like that in
the past year. Now I knew I was on to something.
Over the next few days, I talked to
Tami, my assistants and many of the former Village managers (old theatre
managers are easy to track down - they never change avocations, just
locations). I was able to "confirm" thirty-two incidents
in the last nine years. Every single case dealt with a man who
possessed the ability to slither underneath the theatre seats. He
seemed to go primarily after women (only two reports of him were from
men). The majority of the cases also involved children (all but
eight). No manager had ever spotted and/or caught him. He
would simply vanish without a trace before a manager could show
up.
Now, what are we looking at
here? I've considered the possibility of a man doing all this.
After all, there was the nefarious "Pantless Poker," a plague of
the theatre at the time. He was a short-statured black man who would
lie down on the floor in an isle behind a woman, take off his pants, grab
at her gams and gratify himself. However, he was caught on more than
one occasion and his exits were always accounted for. No, this was
something, for lack of a better word, supernatural.
First of all, Crawlin' Joe (as he's
come to be known) defies human physical limitations. Most theatre
seats sit approximately four inches off of the ground. That's so
low, a toddler can't squeeze its head underneath. Furthermore, there
are tales that add to the defiance of physical ability, like one which my
assistant Matt told me about. He said a woman came screaming into
the lobby. She was hysterical because a thin, black man who had been
sitting in the isle directly in front of her turned around to face
her. He didn't shift in his seat or get up. It was as it his
upper torso rotated 180 degrees. He then leaned over in a sideways
manner and slid through the adjacent seat, passing between the back
cushion and the seat cushion. The woman was with her boyfriend, but
the boyfriend hadn't seen a single thing and didn't remember the man ever
sitting in front of them. The girl swore up and down she wasn't
crazy and knew what she had seen.
Secondly, Crawlin' Joe instills an
irrational fear into people. This is something you read about quite
often in unexplainable cases. The infamous "Zone of Fear"
in Point Pleasant, WV. was so tangible during the mothman sightings that
is could almost be measured down to the foot. Over half of the
Crawlin' Joe cases I heard about involved women who felt that he was after
their children. Why? Obviously a primal fear for any mother
would be of something happening to her offspring.
Finally, he seems to appear and
disappear without a trace. Numerous witnesses can't track his
movement. Security cameras in the lobby fail to record anyone
matching a near description entering the theatre. He just comes and
goes as he pleases. So what's my whole take? I honestly don't
know.
It's obvious that Crawlin' Joe
currently lacks a rational explanation. I've even theorized that
he'd not even black. Possibly it's too dark for witnesses to make
out his skin color, or perhaps he exists only in silhouette. What I
do know is this: there is something in those theatres that defies human
ability. There is no person small enough to perform the physical contortions
he does. And why almost always appears around women with children is
also a mystery. Perhaps he's a mischievous ghost or a tulpa formed
from shared, subconscious fears or maybe he's some unidentifiable species
that roams about, snacking on discarded concessions. Whatever the
verdict, I believe Crawlin' Joe will remain a cryptozoological mystery for
some time. But until he's caught on film or by a wily manager, I can
only present my interpretation of him to you through the composite photo
above, formed from the numerous accounts of eyewitnesses.
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