did-you-notice:

will-o-the-witch:

Anyone who spends decent amount of time in Appalachia knows the Not Deer. If you’ve gone on the Blue Ridge Parkway at night, you’ve probably seen him.

Now: keep in mind if you don’t live in an area with a lot of deer, deer are freaky bastards on their own. They’re really big, extremely agile, move surprisingly quietly, and are extremely durable. It’s not unheard of for someone to hit a deer and total their car. Once I heard a story of a man who hit a deer on accident and decided to take it home and least get some good meat out of a bad situation. On the drive home the deer woke up and absolutely shredded the inside of this man’s trunk. They’re very cute but you definitely don’t want to mess with one. Just keep that relationship in the back of your mind. 

Anyway, the Not Deer is more or less what I’d call a folk cryptid. Everybody has their story about it. They’re all somewhat similar. You’re in a car at night, in a rural, heavily wooded area, and probably a bit lost. It’s not wildly uncommon to see a opossum crossing the road, see blips of little animals with your headlights. You see a deer. So you/your friends go “Oh! Deer!” and slow down in case it leaps in front of you. 

Then you see it more clearly. There’s just something wrong about it. There’s something about its eyes. You feel your stomach get heavy like a rock, the hair on your neck raise. You sense intelligence that you shouldn’t. It doesn’t move like a deer, it moves like a… oh god, what is that thing? Whatever that thing is, it’s not a deer and we need to leave. You hit the gas and get the hell out of there.

A group of my friends got lost on the Parkway once and reemerged with a chilling story. They aren’t the kind of folks to lie or over exaggerate. Among other freaky stuff that happened, the driver claimed she saw a deer in the road. Then she noticed the deer was on two legs. 

I have a story about the Not Deer from two summers ago. I lived deep in the Appalachia mountains at the time, unlike the foothills I’m in now. I was wandering in the woods, probably two thirds of a mile from my house at that point, as one does when they live two miles down a twisting dirt road with the nearest town (and therefore things to do) thirty minutes away, when I heard brush moving. I knew it was probably a harmless animal- a possum, or a deer, maybe a particularly destructive rabbit, and I turned to look.

well. hm. it was a deer in the way that a graveyard is a playground. you can treat it as such, I guess, but it won’t feel the same.

it was about thirty feet away from me, staring. wild deer don’t stare at random people to begin with- they just run away. she was breathing hard and making a low rumbling sound. I didn’t really know what to do, and I hadn’t really thought about the dangers of going near wild animals even if they are “harmless” deer, so I went towards her.

I swear to god, this thing’s eyes blanked out and it took a couple jerking steps forward, moving really strangely? and I flinched, because what the hell, and then she ran off to the side while staring at me until she was about fifty feet away. it was deeply unsettling in a way that I can’t explain and I know that that thing was not quite a deer.

I sprinted all the way home.