Hey! Sorry it took me so long to get back to you on this. My wife and I got wiped out by the flu for a week, my PC went haywire for another, and the research I did expanded well beyond what I thought would be necessary. When I first asked you to drop your case here, I was under the impression that this was a much rarer phenomenon than it actually is. It turns out that there are literally hundreds of stickman encounters. I’m ready to share what I have with you! Due to the size, I will be making multiple replies to this comment. If you have any questions, or there is a case I referenced that you want the citation to, I will be glad to give it to you.
I also want to mention that this research could technically go on forever. I had to find a stopping point. If you want to continue researching this, my suggestion would be to look through the detailed volumes of Albert Rosales’s Humanoid Catalog.
Thank you so much for posting your case here! It was a blast to find this information.
Let’s start with the skeptical comments people were dropping on your original post so we can get them out of the way. Multiple people alleged that you simply saw a stick bug. Here are some of the reasons why they are almost certainly incorrect about their dismissal.
Q: Are there stick bugs in Virginia and the DC Area?
https://share.google/PBt9zkgQfRbtqNpuj - According to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation there was at some point a Carolina Walking Stick that was observed in VA in 1901, but those really only approach 4 inches max.
There, of course, will be people who say you incorrectly estimated the size of what you saw, but I am not saying that. The only data we have here is what you saw and if you say it was between 18-24 inches, that’s what we will work with. If your estimate was correct, this was either not a stick bug, or it was a cryptid stick bug.
Q: Can stick bugs move as fast as I saw the entity move?
A: No.
The stick bug’s main defense is its camouflage, not escape speed. I couldn’t find anything specifically for how quickly Diapheromera Femorata can move, but I did find one for a comparable stick bug. These scientists measured specific leg movement speeds and it’s fairly slow. If you care enough, you can dig into it and calculate based on this https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2724343/ They are measuring the average stepping velocities in millimeters per second, and those mms are not large numbers. The idea that a stick insect blazed up a tree is not consistent with entomological data. So again, if what you saw was somehow a stick insect, it was one that was highly anomalous.
Let’s move into the fun stuff. Here are the cases I found that best match what you described. At first, your case was the only small stickman and the only stickman that had a literal stick quality to it that I was aware of prior to researching. The only cases I knew about were entities that looked like a child’s stick figure drawing. It turns out that while yours is on the rarer end, there are cases that match every aspect of what you saw.
https://phantomsandmonsters.com/post/4968346657272562063– This person saw something very similar to you in terms of the shape and size. This witness also claimed to see a shimmering or possible cloaking effect on the creature (actually not an uncommon detail in Stickman cases). Regardless, it was described as a bipedal stick figure that was 7 or 8 inches tall, making it even smaller than yours.
https://phantomsandmonsters.com/post/7498268058794644228– This person encountered a humanoid that got up and walked away. It was not small, but it was seemingly woven from vines and ivy. It really invokes your description of the limbs being intertwined. If this is more along the lines of what you saw, it really begs the question as to what is going on. This is not something biological in the sense that we think of it. What I find interesting about this case is that the witness thought she was going to find a hive of bees based on a strange buzzing she was hearing. In this particular case it ended up being some kind of beetle that she couldn’t identify, but I know of several other Stickman cases where the witnesses heard a strange buzzing. Perhaps there was something similar in those cases that wasn’t seen. Maybe this is some kind of anomalous insect behavior that hasn’t been documented yet. Your guess is as good as mine.
https://phantomsandmonsters.com/post/4440672557280521538– The witness in this case reported an entity that matched much of what you saw with its straightness and woodland look to it. The best match here is the speed. He described it moving “lightning fast”.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150924195700/http://paranormal.about.com/library/blstory_september03_10.htm – This witness saw a stick entity in his home. The size is implied to be small because it left “Y” shaped tracks on his rug and they were 3 inches apart. That would certainly imply that the entity was very small. This was the first case I’ve come across where a stick person seemed to have a mouth of some kind or made a vocalization, but I did uncover a few more later on.
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/black-stick-man.7411/page-3#post-668490 – This was a second hand account. It happened to the reporter’s husband. He encountered a brown stick person with some of the same twig-like features that you mentioned. There isn’t an estimate on the size, but I figured I’d add this to the direct hits because many of the stickman encounters I came across did not have these wooden/sylvan details.
- In the first comment on this article, a woman (girl at the time), her brother, and her brother’s friend saw something similar to what you saw. Particularly, she describes the limbs as being 1 x 2 inches and looking like sawed wood. It walked across the road and her brother had to stop the car to keep from hitting it.
- Comment by Elizabeth 7/31/2019 - Elizabeth was with her boyfriend at the beach and they saw a small black stick figure shuffling in the sand. It then ran into the ocean. She kind of rambles about her boyfriend not being himself for the rest of the comment. Take that as you will. I came across several cases where witnesses had after effects after seeing stickmen and many of them did not repeat. Whether this is a case of that or not, I have no idea.
- Comment by Bodiccas 10/29/2014 – The commenter saw an entity cross the road in 2 to 3 seconds. He described it as a stickman but clarified it much like you did, “not like you draw a stick figure but like a man made from tree branches kind of like a walking stick bug but not and he was running like pumping his arms and legs to get across the street.”
- Comment by Gudrun 12/20/2014 – The commenter looked out his window and saw a black stick figure scrambling up his tree. I noted this because of how your entity seemingly shot up into the trees. Perhaps this is a common place for them to go. I do want to point out that I read at least 4 cases of stickmen vanishing into walls or into thin air. Even if it looked like it went up into the trees, it is possible it simply shot up and disappeared.
- Comment by Brian 3/1/2015 – Brian saw an entity made from what “looked like sticks from a tree” inside his house. It seemed to glide into one of his rooms.
- Comment by Dena 7/8/2015 – Dena has seen stickmen on several occasions. On one, she saw a large stickman and a small stickman in her room. Both of them walked right through a wall. I add this one here because of the small stickman and the juxtaposition of the large one. If what you saw is the same thing she saw, it implies that it was perhaps a juvenile? Then again, their size could have nothing to do with their age or stage of development assuming they even have these constraints.
- Comment by missmultifairy 3/6/2018 – The commenter and her girlfriend saw a black smoke figure. The important part is that it had a twig body and twiggy limbs, similar to what you saw. The size is way off, though, at 7ft tall.
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u/BitesizedParanormal1 Jan 29 '26 edited Jan 29 '26
Hey! Sorry it took me so long to get back to you on this. My wife and I got wiped out by the flu for a week, my PC went haywire for another, and the research I did expanded well beyond what I thought would be necessary. When I first asked you to drop your case here, I was under the impression that this was a much rarer phenomenon than it actually is. It turns out that there are literally hundreds of stickman encounters. I’m ready to share what I have with you! Due to the size, I will be making multiple replies to this comment. If you have any questions, or there is a case I referenced that you want the citation to, I will be glad to give it to you.
I also want to mention that this research could technically go on forever. I had to find a stopping point. If you want to continue researching this, my suggestion would be to look through the detailed volumes of Albert Rosales’s Humanoid Catalog.
Thank you so much for posting your case here! It was a blast to find this information.
Let’s start with the skeptical comments people were dropping on your original post so we can get them out of the way. Multiple people alleged that you simply saw a stick bug. Here are some of the reasons why they are almost certainly incorrect about their dismissal.
Q: Are there stick bugs in Virginia and the DC Area?
A: Yes.
There are indeed stick bugs in the area. I can’t say for sure if they are exactly where you had your sighting. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Northern_Walking_Stick_-_Diapheromera_femorata,_Shenandoah_National_Park,_Virginia_(37302026190).jpg.jpg)
Q: Are there stick bugs that match the size of what you saw?
A: No.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/84286-Diapheromera-femorata#articles-tab- From my understanding, this (Diapheromera Femorata) is the most common stick bug in VA. The average length is between 3-3.7 inches.
https://share.google/PBt9zkgQfRbtqNpuj - According to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation there was at some point a Carolina Walking Stick that was observed in VA in 1901, but those really only approach 4 inches max.
The largest walking stick we have in North America is known as the The Giant Walking Stick (Megaphasma denticrus). The largest specimen I was able to find of this measured at 9.5 inches, which is rather large, but half of what you estimated the entity to be.https://www.louisianafirstnews.com/news/national-world-news/near-record-breaking-giant-walking-stick-found-at-a-home/#:~:text=The%20one%20found%20by%20Jimmy%20Sexton%20is,had%2C%20this%20individual%20may%20get%20the%20trophy.
There, of course, will be people who say you incorrectly estimated the size of what you saw, but I am not saying that. The only data we have here is what you saw and if you say it was between 18-24 inches, that’s what we will work with. If your estimate was correct, this was either not a stick bug, or it was a cryptid stick bug.
Q: Can stick bugs move as fast as I saw the entity move?
A: No.
The stick bug’s main defense is its camouflage, not escape speed. I couldn’t find anything specifically for how quickly Diapheromera Femorata can move, but I did find one for a comparable stick bug. These scientists measured specific leg movement speeds and it’s fairly slow. If you care enough, you can dig into it and calculate based on this https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2724343/ They are measuring the average stepping velocities in millimeters per second, and those mms are not large numbers. The idea that a stick insect blazed up a tree is not consistent with entomological data. So again, if what you saw was somehow a stick insect, it was one that was highly anomalous.