Penelope – The Sierra Nevada Monster

What is lurking deep in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains? Legend says there is a tall, pale, woman with long messy black hair, a bony frame, claws for hands, and a ferocious appetite for flesh.

This ravenous creature is Penelope – the Sierra Nevada Monster. Urban legend says she was a distraught woman, lost in a blizzard, that came in contact with toxic sludge which transformed her into this vicious entity.

Others believe she could be a Pale Crawler. What do you think? Listen now.

Penelope – The Monster Of Sierra Nevada

What is lurking in the Sierra Nevada mountains?

Have you ever witnessed a skeletal, pale entity with sharp claws?

What would you do if you saw a creature like this dashing toward you?

What is up, Bizarros?! This week we dive into the tale of a monster who stalks the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. We’re going to learn about Penelope.

Sources: weird ca, journal news, phantoms and monsters, mysterious universe

What is the Sierra Nevada?

The Sierra Nevada is a mountain range in the western United States. It is between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin.

Most of the mountain range is inside California, although it does sneak into Nevada.

It’s about 400 miles north and south with a width of about 50 miles, which is pretty big. It’s like a huge chunk of central California.

It goes down by Bakersfield all the way up past Fresno, Sacramento, and up past Reno, Nevada. There are many forests inside of it, including the Tahoe national forest, Sierra National Forest, Sequoia National Forest, and Yosemite National Park.

So, this creature definitely has some space.

And just to mention it – it is a massive area that people might claim to see this thing.

So, what is Penelope?

What is Penelope?

Let’s set the scene.

You’re hiking the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It could be anywhere, let’s say, the Sierra National Forest.

The weather is warm, you are surrounded by mountain scenery and beautiful trees.

But the sun is setting. You got caught up looking at the scenery and choosing the perfect Instagram shot.

You thought you would have found a place to stop, but you’re still walking more and more.

Now, it’s dark. You’ve misjudged the sunset, and you find yourself a little bit lost and a little bit anxious.

You hear noises in the distance. Twigs snapping, rustling in bushes.

You quicken your pace, trying to escape the woods.

You hear one more large crack behind you, and you turn around and see it.

It’s this woman-like entity with long arms connected to razor-sharp claws.

It’s hard to see her face behind the long black hair, but you can tell this thing is pale white as bone. Other than her deep, blood-red eye sockets.

She shrieks, and you see these terrifying teeth, and she charges you.

You turn back around and sprint as fast as you can, hoping to escape her reach as you dash past the treeline of the woods.

Anyway, so what did you run into in those woods? Who is Penelope, the Sierra Nevada Monster?

While the Sierra Nevada has immense beauty and wonder, there is said to be a creature lurking deep in the woods.

That creature – is Penelope.

Penelope is said to be a very pale, very thin – borderline skeletal – woman that stands about 7 feet tall.

She often is either wearing tattered clothing or nothing at all, with freakishly long, gangly arms.

She is said to have a twisted, deformed, and terrifying face and very long, dirty, matted black hair.

Some folks have claimed she has eyes, while others say she has black or red holes where her eyes should be. Essentially, they are just sockets.

She behaves in a very feral and aggressive way, often baring her sharp teeth and claws.

Rumored to be lighting fast, with razor-sharp claws, she has supposedly disemboweled or decapitated her victims before they even realize she is there, moving so fast they have no time to react before she is upon them.

Urban Legends Of Where She Came From

There are reportedly a few different urban legends, but most were very short or inconsistent.

The story goes that at one point in time, Penelope was a normal human. She was traveling through the Sierra Nevada with her husband.

However, during their drive, they were hit by a massive snowstorm. The blizzard reduced visibility to almost zero.

Penelope panicked, swerving the car back and forth, fighting the wind, and hoping that she was staying on the road.

Unfortunately, their car violently slid off the road, leading to her husband’s death. Some stories say he was decapitated, others say the blow his head took on the dash of the car was enough to kill him.

Regardless, Penelope was scared, in shock, and didn’t know how to respond to the sight of her deceased husband.

With his blood on her, she dashed from the car into the raging snowstorm in a panic. Eventually, the storm subsided, but she was lost – without any clue where she was or the road.

But at this point, she didn’t care.

While wandering through the Sierra Nevada wilderness, she found herself in a delirious state of mind, mad with grief and living off of berries and insects.

Eventually, another snowstorm hit. Despite being mentally out of it, to say the least, she was aware enough to know that she needed to desperately seek shelter.

She ended up finding a large metal drum that contained a toxic, sludge-like waste. It wasn’t ideal, but it was her only means of escaping the blizzard’s bone-chilling elements.

So, she crawled into the container and spent the night uncomfortably stuffed inside the metallic barrel.

Apparently, this toxic sludge changed and morphed her into the Sierra Nevada monster that we know today.

Penelope emerged from her sleep, crawling from the metal drum, a bestial, savage, giant monster with a never-ending urge to eat meat.

Now equipped with fangs, claws, and a tangled mess of hair, she began her journey through the Sierra Nevada looking for prey.

Her sanity is now long gone; supposedly, she went on a murder spree throughout the area.

According to legend, she is responsible for derailing a train and eating its passengers, killing unsuspecting hikers, attacking campers, murdering park rangers, and even attacking a mobile home park where she killed many of the inhabitants.

As details of this creature spread, the urban legend says that local rangers heard the word of this terrifying entity that was attacking people and local wildlife.

So, they dispatched a hunting party to find this woman and either put her out of her misery or take her into custody.

When they found her, they discovered that their weapons had no impact on her. This left them defenseless as she easily killed and disemboweled all of the law enforcement.

Now let’s dive into some accounts from people who’ve had a run-in with Penelope.

Encounters with Penelope

There is a website called Phantoms and Monsters, it is awesome. People submit their stories, and it is run by a paranormal researcher and author named Lon Strickler.

Shout him out, and a few of these encounters came from submissions on his website.

1. L.R.

A few of these encounters were from the website Phantoms and Monsters, which is run by paranormal researcher Lon Strickler.

In 2023, a witness who anonymously goes by L.R. claimed that they were camping in an RV with their teenage son in the Sierra Nevada mountains near Tioga Lake.

They said it was late at night, around 12:30 am, and at this point, his son had gone to bed.

Preparing for the next day, L.R. was looking over some maps when he heard a very shrill, blood-curdling scream.

A quote from L R:

“At first, I thought it was a coyote, but it was a single scream and sounded more human–like a woman’s scream.

I opened the RV door and stood silent in its doorway.

Once again, the high-pitched scream started. This time, it woke my son.

We both stood at the door as the screams continued from the direction of the mountain.

After about 10 mins, the screams stopped – and we both went to bed. A little later, something startled me while I was sleeping because I woke in a panic.

I looked at my watch – it was 2:40 am.

Then all of a sudden, that same high-pitched scream erupted – right outside of the RV.

As it started, my son jumped out of his rack and fell to the floor. I grabbed my .44 just in case.

As we looked out through the windshield, the moonlight was bright enough to illuminate a tall thin creature with light-colored skin.

My son yelled, ‘Zombie!’ – it did look like a female human form, but the face and the rest of the body looked horrible.

It reminded me of an old witch – no clothes, deformed face, long light-colored hair, long arms, and legs. I figured it stood almost 7 ft. It was walking away from the RV toward the lake.

I had seen enough. I made sure everything was ready to go and drove out of there ASAP.

We ended up near Mono Lake. This is a bear country, and I know that there have been Bigfoot reports over the years. But what we saw was neither, as far as we can tell.

A few days later, I was able to talk to a ranger as he walked through the camping area. He was an older guy and pretty engaging.

I described what we witnessed – my son also verified what we had seen. The ranger got a serious look on his face and said that over the years, something similar had been reported a few times.

He said that they called it ‘Penelope,’ but he didn’t know why it had gotten that name. That’s all he knew.”

That is the end of L.R.’s encounter with Penelope.

2. Steve M

Another encounter that was detailed in Phantoms and Monsters is by Steve M.

His encounter took place on Labor Day Weekend in 2014.

At the time, Steve was camping in the Mono Lake area, and at around 5:30 p.m., he loaded up his gear into his car and prepared to head out to a nearby creek to go fishing.

As he drove along the dark road with his wife and stepson, Steve claims that he saw something thin and pale crawling along low to the ground, and it was so strange-looking that he slowed down to get a better look.

A quote:

“Now, the first odd thing that I couldn’t understand besides the way it was crawling so low to the ground.

Unlike a hunting cat, the legs were all wrong. Its knees seemed to be backward, but it was running on them.

My thought was that it was an escaped sheep or goat that had broken knees, and it was running for its life because it was moving fast.

As it came closer and closer to us, I could hardly take my eyes off its freaky legs.

To this day – I still lay awake at night, puzzled by how they were working. I’ve not seen any mammal move this way.

The closest thing would be a crab or insect; the front and back legs moved together in unison. There was no bouncing, swaying, galloping, or jumping like that of a mammal.

This creature’s torso, which was about 4 feet long, stayed straight, low to the ground as its legs/arms did all the work. To me, it looked like a puppet with a marionette moving it along.

By this time, my wife could only get out “What the hell…” as we saw it from maybe 50 yards away to about 20 yards.

You could see that it had no fur at all -just pale, sinewy stretched skin over long, skinny well-defined limbs.

Its “broken” knees were long skinny fingers or claws, a foot long or more.

The torso was maybe the size of a large goat, but it also had broad shoulders – very human.

Possibly like this thing normally walks upright. This is what my wife kept pointing out. The shoulders made it look human.

All this was freaky, but we both stared intensely as to figure out what it was. When as we got closer, the face became more and more defined.

The first second we laid eyes on it, the face and head did not make sense.

But I put my mind at ease by saying to myself, “well it looks strange now, but when you get face to face, you will see a familiar goat snout, or cat/canine nose, or jackrabbit face”

No.

This thing looked like it came out of a horror movie – like a space alien creature or humanoid monster.

The nose I was looking for was not there – just a flat opening with two nose holes high up on the face.

No ears! Just small holes on the side of its head with shaggy hair– but whatever they were they were smaller than a human’s for sure.

It had high brow ridge bones, but the skull did not have a huge human cranium, more like the size of a chimp. It had a large chin that protruded, maybe strong jawbones.

But this part I totally don’t get at all. The eyes. I saw these large eye sockets off in the distance, but they never reflected in the light.

As it came nearer and nearer, I saw the color red, not like a light that was glowing but maybe many veins.

The blood within was giving it the darkest color on this pale beast.

As we were within 10-15 yards away, I only saw sockets and no eyeball, like that of a blind cavefish.

Now this blew me away. I thought, how is this thing turning its head to glare at me with no eyes? Was it a ghost? But as it passed us and I came to a complete stop, I saw it zip into the chaparral and kick up dust.

This thing had been flesh and blood at least for the 15 to 20 seconds that we observed it.

Also, there was no smell or anything else odd that we noticed.

I should have taken pictures of the tracks but did not think to do it because I was very puzzled and thought maybe we had witnessed a ghost because of how unreal it appeared.

I was also with my family, which I am very protective of. Normally if I had been alone, I would be on the trail. What this thing was doing so close to a campground puzzles me.

My wife said, even though I was only thinking it, this thing seemed intelligent and was creeping into the dark – mad at us for discovering it.

The mouth was closed, but it had tight, closed lips that almost seemed to grin. I did not see any teeth, large canines, or flat herbivores.

Its skull was that of a predator – not prey – with eye sockets positioned on the front, not the sides.

I have seen a great many extraordinary things in my life, so I have learned to be a great eyewitness and not jumped to conclusions – only observe, make notes and evaluate later.

My wife is the biggest skeptic I have ever met, not fully believing the many extraordinary stories I have told.

She comes from a lifetime of cold, hard, harsh reality – no room for any stretch of the imagination.

Well, now she is a believer and is afraid to this day of what is walking around those Sierra Nevada mountains.”

3. ZD

A lot of anonymous, two-letter names going on here.

So, the same source, ZD, says that they were staying at a remote fishing lodge called Twin Lakes Resort with his wife.

This resort is located near Bridgeport, California.

Their encounter takes place early, early in the morning, when they were heading out to go fishing.

It was just before dawn, there was hardly any sunlight, so they had their headlights on.

As they were driving, something skeletal and very low to the ground crawled out in front of them, moving in a very irregular and disjointed way.

This actually freaks me out a bit, just based on things I’ve seen myself.

So, they see this thing moving and bending its limbs in weird ways, right?

Here is ZD’s quote:

“Now, when my lights came across the creature, it was crossing the road, and we got the feeling we totally surprised it.

As I turned on my high beams, it seemed to get very irritated as it turned its long human-like neck towards us and almost shook its head as it gave us a glare and started to double time along the road now in our direction.

We were getting closer, but instead of being able to more positively I.D. the creature, I was only more confused, mostly because this thing’s legs weren’t broken at all. It was running on them like that

Long lean limbs, but it was crawling! Creeping impossibly low to the ground. Its torso is no more than 5 inches from the ground!

Yet it was moving at a strangely incredible pace. I wondered first, with such long limbs, why it was so low.

And not running on the bottom of hooves or paws.

How could it run so fast? The order of the feet landing was completely wrong too, and if it was really trying to retreat quickly, it was not bounding or bouncing or swaying side to side. Its limbs moved in unison like a crab or spider.

It appeared to me to be a puppet being moved by a marionette; very bizarre.

Maybe because I was so puzzled and troubled that I could not classify this animal, it kept me from flipping out when we got close enough to see the facial features.

I should describe the features that I saw clearly and up close. As mentioned, a human-like torso about 4 feet long, no tail, and human-like haunches.

As we passed it, I saw it was not shaved at all; it was hairless and had pale skin. Its limbs were long.

Thin, very defined muscle, and sinewy.

Although it was crawling close to the ground, it had large, very human/ape shoulders. I’ve only seen such shoulders on upright walking animals.

It seemed to be running on its front knuckles or claws. Imagine a sloth but foot-long fingers or claws.

The neck was thin and long, holding a forward-gazing predator head. The skull had features closer to a human/ape than any canine, cat, or rodent.

The skull seemed to have a heavy protruding eye ridge with a flat curve leading to the nasal opening. Then even stranger, the mouth. There was no long snout.

This was a tight-lipped ‘human’ mouth with a large chin that almost seemed to grin.

But somehow, I knew that it was not a friendly grin, almost evil. But how would an animal have an evil grin, right? If that wasn’t enough to freak us out, then came the eyes.

So, at first sight, my headlight lit this weird thing up, and as with all nocturnal animals, the first noticeable thing is always the reflection of its eyes in the car lights.

Like all the rest of the many animals I had seen on this tiny stretch of road, their cover was blown instantly.

Well, that was not the case this time, and of all the troubling things I had observed, this probably is the most unexplainable.

I was driving right into it, and I could see the eyebrow ridge. I saw deep eye sockets, but no shiny large or tiny eyes, just the sockets.

As I was sure to peer deep into whatever animal it was, eyes as we came within 15 feet of it. Well, when the moment of truth came.

My wife and I were horrified when all we saw were deep RED sockets!

The thing had no eyes, or there was a red membrane over them.

Well, I just about drove off the road and tried to track the thing, but something told me I was better off just watching it run in a cloud of dust into the chaparral.

It turned its head to look at us, grinning all with just red eye sockets, and it just zips away, never breaking its creepy crawl. So that’s my sighting.

I never heard of or saw this thing again. And I have no idea what it could have been. Nothing adds up.

I really feel I was not supposed to see this thing.”

What Could Penelope Be?

Pale Crawler:

Great topic one day. A pale crawler is a thin, pale cryptid. Reminds me of the listener submission we got from Pennsylvania.

Some people think crawlers are not that dangerous, although they kill animals and give off negative energy.

On the other hand, some people think they are terrifying and could cause harm to you.

So, naturally, based on her bony, elongated, and pale appearance, you could see why some people think Penelope is a pale crawler.

Rake:

The rake is a creepypasta with a viral photo, so I don’t put a ton of weight on this – but it has been discussed, and we may talk about it sometime.

It is a super tall, hairless, pale, human-like creature. It crawls on all fours with immense speed.

It has no nose or typical mouth, but it has a hinged jaw that opens below its chin with razor-sharp teeth.

Alien:

Could this terrifying creature just be an alien?

What Is Penelope?

What do you think, Bizarros? What could this creepy monster be?

Is there really a monster lurking in the Sierra Nevada?

Could it be a woman that was in a horrible accident and now has an insatiable hunger for humans?

Let us know what you think.