A bizarre sighting in Huntington’s Ritter Park has the town buzzing and the internet scrambling for answers.
As reported by PEOPLE, footage of an unknown creature was captured by local Brittany Keller. The unknown creature can be seen meandering near a group of deer.
This peculiar sighting in West Virginia's second-largest city has thrown both residents and animal experts into a loop.
Keller, en route to work on the morning of October 24, spotted an unusual "strange-looking" animal characterized by its dark coat and distinctly long, curved tail.
“When I stopped to take a better look, I realized it was nothing I had ever seen here before,” she recounted to WSAZ 3News. The footage she managed to snag shows the creature, with a striking brown and white coat, navigating the park terrain, sparking intense curiosity and concern among the locals.
The community's reaction was a mix of astonishment and humor. As Keller showed the footage to passersby, one woman, caught off guard, could only exclaim: “Oh my gosh! But really, what is that?”
Conversations about the creature's identity ranged from guesses of a lemur to even a lion cub, adding to the growing intrigue around the unidentified animal.
This led Keller to share the video on social media, where the debate intensified. Some viewers were convinced they were looking at a lemur — a guess quickly debunked by Andy McKee from the Zoology Zone Science Center.
McKee explained, per the New York Post: "Lemurs are from Madagascar, on the island, so this would be very, very odd that there would be a lemur out in this area unless it was someone’s pet."
While the lemur theory was set aside, another suggestion was that the creature could be a fox suffering from mange. This condition, known for causing severe hair loss and scabbing in animals, could account for the creature’s unusual appearance.
McKee leaned towards this explanation, noting: “It looks more like a fox with mange or some type of issue than a lemur.”
After WSAZ 3News shared their news report on YouTube, social media users shared their thoughts.
"It kinda looks like a coatimundi, which people do get as pets. It's very skinny, though. Poor thing," one person commented.
"It's a Chupacabra," another added, referencing the terrifying legendary creature from Latin American folklore that is said to kill animals by sucking their blood.
A third agreed with McKee, writing: "That's a very thin fox y'all. Likely has mange, which would explain the thin tail."
"It's more like a hairless ant-eater to me," a fourth mused.
As the community and experts try to pinpoint exactly what Keller filmed that October morning, the mystery continues to captivate and puzzle.
Whether it's a common local wildlife with an uncommon affliction or something far more exotic... or even supernatural - the strange creature of Ritter Park remains the talk of Huntington, proving that sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.
