Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 105 - The Wendigo and Not Deer

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

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Capella University is rethinking higher education. With their game-changing flex-path format, you can earn your degree on your schedule so you can fit education seamlessly into your life. Imagine your future differently at capella.edu. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Chilluminati Podcast, episode 105. As always, I'm one of your hosts, Mike Maranjo, and I'm my two co-hosts, Jesse Cox and Alex Fosyane,

the Ronto Wrap brothers themselves. You want to hear my Ronto Wrap? Oh, yeah. Can I get a Ronto Wrap from you, please? Yeah. A Ronto Wrap is the thing to eat, but when you want to contribute to a Patreon, go to patreon.com slash IlluminatiPod. It's not odd.

It's God-like, that is, to do it, because it keeps the lights on, dog. What do you think about it? No, I'm not. Somebody, you know what? You guys probably can't hear it, but somebody out there will put that to a beat and it'll blow your minds.

Your kids are going to love it. No, they won't. Especially the kids. Patreon.com slash IlluminatiPod. This is your cousin, patreon.com slash IlluminatiPod. You know that new goal you've been looking for? You can't see, but he's handing us the phone,

everybody. Thank you so much. Through the webcam, but it's not actually a phone. Don't be fooled, it's just my knuckles. Yeah, we're actually, like, seriously, if you guys are ever thinking about contributing, we're actually really close to our first big, major stretch goal of that 10,000 a month. Making me believe.

Yeah. Making Jesse believe and also getting, like, an actual ghost hunt set up at some point in the near future and getting that all taken care of, which would be super fun. Where are we going to go? Where are we hunting? I think ghost would be the easiest

because ghost is going to be the easy to get legal because I'm not going anywhere. We're not supposed to be like ghosts. What are you talking about? Like legal league, be able to go investigate a supposedly haunted house. There's a lot of haunted places that are like, if you'd like to do an investigation, please let us know.

We have to buy. We have to buy equipment. Well, I've got a good chunk of ghost. You know, you might just be on a podcast with some people who take this. Equipment. I do. I had I had some equipment from my like teen years.

Like a reader, obviously the tape record thing. I'll tell you, Jesse, that as a professional in your field, you too probably have some ghost hunting equipment in your very, very office. I have microphones and stuff, but no ghost hunting equipment. Bingo. You've got ghost hunting. I'm going to record an EVP.

I'm not going to. I'm not going to call it. It's not going to happen. I will gladly go into a room by myself and you know, what's going to happen is nothing's going to happen. And I'm going to come out and be like, I am Melzacor. You're going to be like, oh, no. I'm just kidding.

It's me. Well, we got that sick Ouija board as well, that we're going to have to use on the hunt as well. So it has such a like rugged, handmade, like badass. Like I want to drink whiskey off of it. Kind of quality to it. Ouija board. I did the Ouija board.

I retweeted that off the Chaluminati podcast account. It was great. Did you tweet it and did you say Mama Mia? I should have, but I did not. I did not. Uh, all right. Well, before we get into the topic, I just want to say, boys, today's episode almost didn't happen.

I almost derailed and this almost became an insane alien episode in the last minute, but we're going to save that for the mini so because did you see about the NFT being sold? This was a last week story, but the NFT being sold of the alien autopsy, supposed piece of 1943 actual film. We'll talk about it in the mini. So this sent me down such a huge, how is that an NFT?

Isn't that just the guy who has it? Ray Santilli has this stand for. He took a picture of his name is Ray Santilli's. Yeah. Is he in Rogue Squadron? Is it? No, but he shouldn't be. Ray Santilli's don't. Don't do this. Not now.

We'll do this in the mini. So but he's selling an NFT and he's going to give the person who buys it the actual film like physically shipped to them. And he's going to give them the alien liver. Come with me. The starting bid is like 100 ETH, like a million dollars. Son of a hundred. Ethereum for that.

Yeah, 450, I think was the starting bid. Oh, my God. That is. Yeah. Son of a. If you look at Jesse's lost to Star Wars right now, whoever buys that listens to this. They will talk about it because it's possible. Let me down the rabbit hole of the 2019 like memo leak that Robert Bischlow came across that apparently the CIA

completely believed that the film was real and all this shit. They will talk about it. That's what happened. But we're not doing that today. We're today. We're not doing the cult either. We need I need another week to prep for that or so. They were finally doing a cryptid that we've hinted at even touched on

in episode two, if you can remember all that all those years ago now at this point. Today, we're going to cover properly the Wendigo. Excellent. No. I know you two have a knowledge of what Wendigo's are simply for their appearance in until dawn. Obviously. Yes, we are Wendigo experts. Wendigo experts.

So I'm excited to cover this with you guys and all about cryptids that may or may not be attached to the Wendigo. If you have not played until dawn, do not have listened to what we just said. Right. Exactly. That checks out. It checks out. Yeah, that's right. It's old enough. It's old enough. You passed out. I thought to, you know, because, OK, anyway,

you pass it. It's not you. It's me test. It's fine. Exactly. The Wendigo, which comes the English word which actually comes from the and there's a lot of like like native names that I'm going to fuck wicked bad, really bad. So the English word comes from the Ojibwe word. Wendigo, also with the cow and Cree and Wetticoe and other languages is a terrifying being that exists both in the physical realm

and in the spiritual realm that exists to torture and to feed. The most common accepted version of the Wendigo is one that is neither spiritual or physical, but is able to possess the body of a living person. Once possessed, the now helpless victim is subjected to urges of insatiable hunger with an overwhelming desire to consume human flesh in particular.

The most recent pop culture depictions that I was able to find was obviously until dawn, like we just mentioned, but they're also in Fallout 76, where you can go find them out in the Appalachian Mountains, which we'll actually talk a little bit about later in the episode. If you haven't played it until dawn, go play it.

It's great. It's really good. That's not that big of a spoiler for the game. And also, if you read BPRD, there's a Wendigo in that too. That's the Hellboy. What's BPRD? It's the Hellboy verse.

Oh, okay, cool. I didn't know that there's a Hellboy verse, dude. Dude, Hellboy is the best. I don't want to get on a tangent right now, but if you didn't know and you have no fear of opening a comic book, you're in for some real shit if you go check out Hellboy.

And you can find it at patreon.com slash chilluminati.py. Astorist, no, no. So originating from the traditional belief system of a number of Algonquin-speaking peoples, including the Ojibwe, as we said, the Saltu, Cree, Noscopy, and the Inu, the physical description can vary a little bit, but the most common description

of their physical body is the following. Quote, the Wendigo has a gaunt to the point of emaciation. Its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion, the ash gray of death, and its eyes push back deep into their sockets. The Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently desintered from the grave.

What lips it had were tattered and bloody, unclean and suffering from separation of the flesh. The Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition of death and corruption. This sounds a little bit like me after Coachella. Like, the littlest bit. You've gone to Coachella? Oh yeah, I'm from here.

Yeah, I've never gone to Coachella. Probably surprising nobody. You should. You think I'm a Coachella guy? You think I could go to Coachella and be like, this is a good time? Aside from the overbearing capitalism, like Hollywood elite element of it,

it's almost like Burning Man. Like, there's that element. And if you don't like going to the bathroom in clean facilities, then you're going to love it. I've only ever been to two concerts in my entire life, so it would be an experience. Oh my god, yes it would. That's a no for me immediately.

This will be our movie about where we realize that our Halcyon days are behind us. And we just wrap it up and go home from Coachella early and have a better time golfing. Any bad bathroom situations. One time in Poland, I went to like a club. It was worse than Alex falling in the bathroom. You guys want to hear that story?

Oh my god, I like, how do you use the bathroom? The floor is covered in a layer of, I'm going to pray with water. It wasn't a number one situation, it was a number two. I was like bad all around. I had to hold my pants up so they didn't get in the like inch and a half of quote unquote water. And then I went to the toilet paper,

there was all toilet paper, so I had to waddle my ass around this bathroom. We're like drug dealers are moving in and out, like doing their thing. It was the worst thing. I got home that night, took the longest. I like scrubbed myself down, like I was in a hazmat situation.

I was like, oh no, no, no, no, thank you. It sucks, it sucks. That sounds not good. I couldn't do that. Never mind, I don't want to go to Coachella anymore. Yeah, no, I couldn't do that. You can tell we're old because our whole like, the way we relate to traveling around the world now

is just by what the bathrooms are like. McDonald's is a very nice bathroom. Oh my gosh, yes, the one on Manhattan Beach Boulevard, it's beautiful in there. They take good care of it. It's good American cheese. I don't care what you say, it's better than a rest at the McDonald's.

Okay, we're gonna continue to talk about the when to go gentlemen. So let's go. Yeah, right, right, right, right. This episode is brought to you by Dr. Teals. A bath is a great way to relax and recharge. Just lean back and soak in Dr. Teals pure Epsom salt to help relax the body.

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Whether you're upgrading or moving to a new home, smartmove.us is a quick, easy, and free way to compare packages. Explore all your options now at smartmove.us slash discover. The when to go or the person suffering from when to go possession as mentioned is insatiably hungry. However, this hunger serves a purpose

beyond destruction, fear, and cannibalism. You see, in some of the Algonquin speaking cultures, the belief is that the when to go also grows in size as it devours its meals, usually in proportion to the size of the meal that they just ate. In turn, a lot of when to go sightings are those that are of rather giant people compared to humans.

However, equally as thin and emaciated as ever, representing their never ending hunger for flesh. So the slender man thing isn't like a modern addition to the when to go look. That's like part of the vibe. Yeah, he's always been a little on the bigger side, always gone, you know, extremely tall. I always see him kind of like really long torso,

really long big floppy arms kind of thing, kind of like Jack Skellington vibes. That's a good idea to like in your mind how they look. Yeah. And in the when to go is foreseeably, and the when to go is foreseeably obviously tied to gluttony, greed and excess. Though perhaps, though perhaps surprisingly,

the when to go can also, amidst all of it, communicate. You see zombies from day of the dead when they like kind of start. I didn't wait. Zombies in day of the dead. They kind of like. Yeah.

They're like start to do things again. Yeah. Oh, okay. I knew that happened in the art. Have you guys seen army of the dead yet? No, no, I have not heard. It was not great, but I'd have fun. I'd watch it just for that crazy Tignitaro situation.

You got to watch the Conjuring three. I'm sold on that. I'm watching that for sure. It's so bad. It's great. Are the warrants in it again? Oh, yes. Okay.

It's now the warren like multiverse, basically. Like that's how. I hate that. Dude, she has like super powers. Like she can just like psychically see shit now. And they like make money off of those movies, right? Aren't they dead? They're both dead.

Are they? I'm pretty sure they are both dead now. Somebody let us know right in, Hey, the ones of you guys are alive. Right. Let us know you're still alive. Like a bunch of hack frauds anyway, but the movies are really good.

I can right now. Yeah, we're dead. Leave us alone, idiot. That's true. That's true. Dude, if they did though. What if though, dude, what if they did write us back? All right, I'm sorry.

I'm out. I'm all over the shop today. I don't know what's going on. This is a good time. So surprisingly though, the when to go in in lore can communicate not just in grunts and nods, but in full on use of language. And we've got a folkloric story here.

And this folkloric story was gathered by Lottie Chickaquah Marsden. I hope I pronounced that right. Who is an ethnographer or was an ethnographer of the Chippewas of Rama First Nation. And the when to go fully capable of this, this particular when to go in the story is also fully capable of using tools.

Let me give you a quick read of this. One time long ago, a big when to go stole an Indian boy, but the boy was too thin. So the when to go didn't eat him up right away, but he traveled with the Indian boy waiting for him till he got fat. The when to go had a knife and he'd cut the boy on the hand to see if he was fat enough to eat.

But the boy didn't get fat. They traveled too much. One day they came upon an Indian village and the when to go sent the boy to the Indian village to get some things for him to eat. He just gave the boy so much time to go there and back. The boy told the Indians that the when to go was near them and showed them his hand where the when to go cut him

to see if he was fat enough to eat. They heard the when to go calling the boy. He said to the boy, hurry up, don't tell lies to those Indians. All of these Indians went to where the when to go was and cut off his legs. They went back again to see if he was dead. He wasn't dead.

He was eating the juice, the marrow from inside the bones of his legs that were cut off. The Indians asked the when to go if there was any fat on them. He said, you bet there is. I have eaten lots of Indians. No wonder they are fat. The Indians then killed him and cut him into pieces.

The end of this giant when to go. And that's the whole morick story that was pulled. This guy seemed like pretty chill for like, he's like, are you here to kill me? Good cause I'm going to eat this. He's serving out the marrow of his own leg bones that while he was waiting for him. He's like, oh yeah.

That's that's some next level. Like I at that point, like, what are we doing? Like that's like when you're you think about like, am I out on the ocean? And I like if I'm stuck on a raft, like, can I just like keep peeing into a thing and filtering my own pee and just drink the pee over and over again?

Like, is that fine? I mean, if you have what you're talking about, like if you had a life straw, like one of the straws, you can talk about the movie Waterworld. Yes. OK, in the movie Waterworld, at least he has like a professor from Gilligan style apparatus that he like puts it. It comes out white at the end.

He's like, oh, it comes out white. Yeah. I've never seen Waterworld. Is it good? Waterworld is like a like a seven at a time. I don't know. I like I like it. But I think it's just because I think it's just because I was

a kid when I watched it and the stunt show is incredible at Universal Studios. Oh, man. Wild. OK. Well, good to know. I guess it's like Universal Studios to fine. Done. Yeah.

Done. I guess it's like, I mean, a similar similar idea. I mean, he's slurping up the fatty already eight through his own leg bone. Slurping up the fat. If you were a wet to go, had you were starved to death, would you eat yourself? I know I would.

I know I would. Well, what a callback to like the terrible sketch. Another guy's impression of another guy. Shout out to Will Ferrell and Harry Carey, you guys. Yeah, if you remember Harry Carey, I nailed it, nailed it. Somewhere there's a dad who's dying of laughter. He's like, he's like, I'm the Venn diagram for this joke. I like old SNL and cryptids.

All right, moving forward, gentlemen. So while while this creature is, you know, for the most part, except it is merely a folkloric creature, there are a couple of recorded cases of potential when to go possession with the potential cure to one who may become possessed when. So how do when to go? So I thought when it goes were monsters, not possession things.

It's like they are. They can do both. So they are physically existing creatures that can also possess people and then turn them into when it goes. It really depends on the story and kind of how you're applying them. They kind of move back and forth between spiritual and physical. I think the idea is like they just are a cycle of this, right? Like, more or less, this is their spirit.

That's evil, some kind of like analog. Trying to find like a demon. Yeah, like in my research and trying to find like the origin of these things beyond just the stories that they come from, they really are like they are their stories of these physical monsters and their stories of the possessions happening. They are they seem to be able to do both. So we're going to talk about some possession cases here.

Just a couple of their very quick blurbs. They're not like huge detail or anything. Although in many recorded cases, the individual has been killed to prevent cannibalism from resulting. Some Cree folklore recommends treatment by ingestion of fatty animal meats or drinking animal grease. Those treated may sometimes vomit ice as part of the curing process. That's what I was going to ask is, like, is there a snow?

Elements to the way they are associated with cold, famine, disease, death and a few other like gluttony, excess and whatnot. Because I don't know if it's like an American. I don't know if it's like, you know, an Americanization of it. But there's some sort of association between like a when to go and like abominable, like snowman, Yeti type creatures that accurate. Yeah, they are they are again, they are very much attached to cold. And I do wonder if that's because cold tends to bring famine

or tends to bring like less crops. It's brutal. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's very possible. Again, we don't really know. It's all it's all just folkloric stories that we really have. So here's a couple of recorded cases of this. One of the more famous cases of when to go possession report reported involved a plains creed trapper from Alberta named Swift Runner.

During the winter of 1878, Swift Runner and his family were starving and his eldest son had died 25 miles away from where emergency food supplies could be found at Hudson's Bay Company Post. Swift Runner butchered and ate his wife and five remaining children. Given that he resorted to cannibalism so near to food supplies and that he killed and consumed the remains of all those present, it was revealed that Swift Runners was was not a case of pure cannibalism as a last resort to avoid starvation, but rather a man with when to go possession.

He eventually confessed and was executed by authorities at Fort Saskatchewan. He confessed. He was like, I'm a Wendigo, you got me. Yeah, so they called it back then, Wendigo psychosis, but that's a word that is highly frowned upon for reasons we're going to go into after we read these things. OK. But yes, he admitted to Wendigo, Wendigo possession or Wendigo psychosis. What the hell? Yeah, we'll talk about that in a second.

Another well known case involving supposed when to go possession was that of Jack Fiddler, an OG Cree chief in Medicine Man known for his powers at defeating Wendigo's. In some cases, this entailed killing people with the when to go. As a result in 1907, Fiddler and his brother, Joseph, were arrested by the Canadian authorities for homicide. Jack committed suicide, but Joseph was tried and sentenced to life prison. He was ultimately he ultimately was granted a pardon,

but died three days later in jail before receiving the news of his pardon. So he was a cure. And like I said earlier, a lot of the ways that they tried to stop when to go possession is by killing the person before they could become cannibalistic. And so if someone was believed to be when to go possessed or was starting to show traits of it, whether they would like waited. So they could they just would kill them. So all right, let me just put this out there.

So someone who is starving to death, they're like, kill that guy. That's what you're telling me. Like if a dude is just like out in the wilderness and he's like trying to get by and he's not making it, they're like, kill that dude, that's going to be a win to go. Yeah, I can imagine a lot of it was like the witch trials where people would just be accused of it at some at some points. But yeah, it seemed like once you started possessing certain features,

they would start just taking you out prior to you eating anybody. Now, what those specific like check marks that you had to hit were. There's not really a list. We don't really know exactly what they were looking for. It's just that if you were believed to be likely, you were going to be killed or fed a lot of grease and like marrow and stuff. Throw up ice and hopefully you kind of vomit up some ice. And, you know, there goes the when to go.

Now, whether you believe in the when to go as an actual creature, not obviously is up to you, but there are about as many explanations to what, why and how this potential mythical creature was created as there are sightings up through modern day throughout the world. I would be remiss, however, not to talk about some of these explanations. And the first I'm going to address is that it's perhaps a form of mental illness once known as when to go psychosis. The reason this is horribly named and why some of the scientific community

just kind of pulled back on it immediately is because there's actually no scientific evidence. Obviously, such a disorder exists, but any of the no one has actually properly studied, quote unquote, when to go psychosis. This is a term that popped up in the 80s that people were really arguing about. And some people saw it as racist in a way, I agree, because it was specifically attached to indigenous people. And when it was kind of, you know, prescribed, it's a way to write off

their behavior, basically, right? Correct. Yes, it was a way in which they wrote off their people's behaviors and stuff. And it was just not a lot of people kind of like threw it out the window. And we'll talk to this a specific person and why they said so. But the term actually or this belief originated from the Jesuit relations, which was a book of chronicles of the Jesuit missions in New France that was printed in 1632, saying the following about this type of hunger, quote. What caused us greater concern was the news that met us upon entering the lake,

namely that the men deputed by our conductor for the purpose of summoning the nations to the North Sea and assigning them a rendezvous, which where they were to await our coming, had they met their deaths the previous winter in a very strange manner. Those poor men, according to the report given to us, were seized with an ailment unknown to us, but not very unusual among the people we were seeking. They are afflicted with neither lunacy, hypochondria, nor frenzy, but have a combination of all these species

of disease, which affects their imagination and causes them a more than canine hunger. This makes them so ravenous for human flesh that they pounce upon women, children, even upon men like veritable werewolves and devour them voraciously without being able to appease or glut their appetite, ever seeking fresh prey. And the more greedily the more they eat, this ailment attacks our deputies. And as death is the sole remedy among those simple people for checking such acts of murder, they were slain in order to stay the course of their madness. And, quote.

So that's the first mention of this kind of when to go like disease of these people being possessed of this almost zombie like kind of ravenous hunger. But again, these all he only got reports of this. He wasn't there to witness this. We don't have an eye witness to the accounts and the way he describes them of simple people and these people that we seek are all heavily colonizer overtones like throughout all of it. So it's hard to kind of take a lot of it seriously.

And in 2004, the treaties revenge of the Wendigo, which was about disorders and treatments of behavioral health and of the behavioral health industry in the U.S. and Canada that were specific to indigenous people. A man by the name of James Waldrum wrote the following. No actual cases of Wendigo psychosis have ever been studied. And Lou Morano's scathing critique in 1985 should have killed off the cannibal monster within the psychiatric anal anals. The Wendigo, however, continues to seek revenge for this attempted

scholarly execution by periodically duping unsuspectored passers-by like psychiatrists into believing that Wendigo psychosis not only exists, but that a psychiatrist could conceivably encounter a patient suffering from this disorder in his or her practice today. Wendigo psychosis may well be the most perfect example of the construction of an Aboriginal mental disorder by the scholarly professions and its persistence dramatically underscores how constructions of the Aboriginal by these professions have like Frankenstein's monster

taken on a life of their own. We fucking hates the fact that this thing exists. And in 2004, in his own paper, was just like this needs to go away. This isn't something that's that's even a thing. The fact that people are even being duped today is insane. Like there needs to be somebody needs to come forward and say, this shit doesn't exist. So Wendigo psychosis is not real.

Moving on to less scientific, the most popular theory, I believe, is likely that of your typical mythological creature and one that we would probably all agree with, there are a form of metaphor. As I said earlier, the Wendigo is almost always tied with cold, greed, gluttony, excess and so on. And some Native Americans understand the Wendigo as a concept and not necessarily a person. It's a person, idea or movement that seems driven from the ground up

towards self, a grandizing greed and excessive consumption. Things that create chaos and destruction, if left unchecked, are said to be Wendigo driven. One whose existence and spirit unravel the that or the ecological balance around them can also be considered possessed or driven by the Wendigo. So that's kind of like, I think, the most common belief is that green eye monster or something, basically. Yes, it's just something to represent something else, stories to tell your

children or others to warn against, you know, going against nature, finding the balance, you know, focusing on you and nobody else, that kind of thing. However, the explanation I would like to go for and the one I want to talk a little bit more about is my favorite and by far more fun. The third one is that the Wendigo do indeed exist to an extent, but not as we tell them in these stories, at least not fully, that perhaps the Wendigo, Skinwalker and other cryptids of similar ilk, including the ones I'm about to talk about, are all one in the same.

As across the world, we see interesting and similar descriptions of creatures just like these. Well, even here in the US, we have at least three different names and types of such things, Wendigo, Skinwalker and the not deer. Do you two know or have heard of the not deer at all? I've only ever heard of them in the context of Skinwalkers, making me look up a not deer. It's I'll keep going while you look it up.

Now, the not deer themselves are relatively small, in my opinion, on the cryptid list, as there's not a whole lot out there about them, unlike Wendigo's or Skinwalkers. And like you said, Alex, you probably have heard of them in conjunction with Skinwalkers. However, the descriptions are eerily similar, and plenty of people have said that they are one in the same in terms of like cryptid family.

The not deer are exactly as described, deer, but not. Most commonly, they're seen among actual deer. Usually only really noticeable if you take a minute to look. Their back legs bend backwards and their faces are not quite right, sometimes with horrifyingly disfigured mouths. If you notice one, you are supposed to look away and just pretend you didn't see it. If it notices you notice it, some say that's it.

You got to get out of there as fast as you can, but likely you're not going to make it out of the woods and nobody's ever going to see you again. Well, let me tell it. Let me let Tumblr user Willow the Witch explain it much better and much more entertainingly than I can. 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 them. 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, unless unless at least get some good meat

out of them out of a bad situation on the drive home, the deer woke up and absolutely shredded the inside of the 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, I was driving to back from Music Vestville one time, actually, and the other car that we were with, like, got completely, like, totaled off the road by a deer.

Like they were like, yeah, they had to wait like three. It's a miracle none of them died. How insane it looked like it was disturbing. Like it was like not chill. Yeah, the deer are huge and they can do a lot of damage and moose are even more so, man. Those things are fucking scary. 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. But Jesse's plopping some things out. Just another article on Reddit that's about the not deer, but someone's like making a fun little book. And so they made a little not deer illustration. I think it's very cute. Oh, that's cool.

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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 possum crossing the road. See blips of little animals with your headlights. You see a deer. So you and your friends go, oh, hey, a 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. If you feel your stomach get heavy like a rock, the hair on your neck rise. You sense intelligence that you shouldn't. It doesn't move like a deer and moves like a thing. Whatever that thing is, it's not a deer and we need to leave. So you hit the gas and get the hell out of there. A group of my friends got lost in the parkway once and reemerged with a chilling story.

They aren't the kind of folk to lie 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. Another terrifying encounter comes from only a few months ago from Reddit user ampersand.cs on a thread about not deer. This is another personal account. I lived in Waynesboro, Virginia for about five years, less than 10 miles to the BRP North entrance, Skyline Drive South entrance.

I used to take bike rides along the SD all the time and always kept a yearlong membership only in the day, though, just to frame the story. One night I was having a particularly hard time settling in for bed. So I decided to start up the bike and ride up the first overlook on Skyline, only about a mile inside the park. It was about 11 p.m. when I got up there and pitch black. I killed the bike and got immediately uncomfortable. I'm not a guy that gets spooked in the dark.

Truthfully, I prefer the dark in most situations. You can see people before they see you. You are practically invisible unless someone is looking for you. And I find the natural privacy comforting, not up there, though. It was a thick, oppressive dark, worse than anything I experienced outside of a cave and worse than any moonless moonless night in the Appalachian Trail. I immediately got hinked out big time. There's nothing up here besides wired life, I assured myself internally.

I had my 44 mag revolver from when I lived and hiked in the Pacific Northwest, Bear Country and all that jazz, tucked into my CCW holster. So I knew I definitely outmatched anything that could be up here. Two legged snakes included. So I sat in the dark, leaning against the bike for a while and looking at the few lights I could see in the valley below. I managed about 10 minutes before I physically felt the hair raise on the back of my neck. I only did 27 months in Iraq, but I remembered that precise feeling.

Someone was watching me. Something bad was coming. It was the same sensation I would get before IDF came in or the shooting started somewhere nearby. I'm no psychic or whatever, but it's a common thing among vets with any time under their belt. Ask them about it. You can feel hateful eyes on you. The overlook was a sheer drop or nearly so.

So I wasn't concerned about anything popping up in that direction. But the mountainside and thick untamed woods were behind me. I started thinking about methed out dudes creeped in the Appalachian trails, bears and the like. The AT is no stranger to random violence. Still feeling creeped out, I took up a seat on the waist high stone wall that marked the overlook ledge facing the woods. Again, I can't emphasize how dark it was. But gris, you might say, why not turn on the bike and use the lights?

It'll at least help you see what's close. True, but my bike is loud and the last thing I wanted was attention. Plus, the light would just would just night blind me to anything just out of view. And the noise would obscure any stealthy sounding creeping going on. So no, thanks. I'll watch and listen for a bit. I sat in the dark for another 10 minutes or so, anxiety getting worse and worse. I heard a few things, but nothing out of the ordinary for a night in the woods. I decided to head on home since the feeling wasn't going away.

Like I said, I had a big bore on me. So anything playing games would be in for a powerful surprise if the games got stupid. Hopping on my Suzuki, I started it up and rode off toward the gate. Now, anyone who lives in the country and rides a bike knows that wildlife is crazy active on the roads that aren't traveled often at night. Being nighttime and technically closed, I had to ride around the gate to get in. There were no other vehicles on the road at all. I hadn't seen a single other person since leaving Waynesboro proper.

The speed limit was 30, but I clipped along at a measly 15 to keep an eye out for deer and wildlife. It wouldn't do me any good to fuck myself up in a wreck, only to lay there all night until someone happened to cross me in the morning. That's when I saw it. The term of almost deer is really fitting, but not quite accurate. It was like a deer that someone who had never seen a deer before drew, but only after someone else described it to them. It stood on the left side of the road, the mountain side,

and I saw the eyes long before my headlight shown it fully. It was big, easily the easily the biggest deer I'd ever seen. And the lack of any horns that time in the year suggested that it was a doe. The head was almost bovine in shape, but fixed to a deer's frame. The legs seem too long in proportion to the body, think mained wolf proportions. The body was extremely barrel chested. I've always been creeped out by malformed wildlife, and this was no exception. Unfortunately, I had to get it to move or risk passing within a few feet of it.

I was not traveling another 30 plus miles up the road in the other direction to leave through the another gate in the middle of the night. And I wasn't getting close to it, dangers of it spooking and running into the side of my cruiser side. I didn't want to get near it at all. Stopping and putting my feet down about 30 feet away from it, I tried to frighten it away. I flashed my beams to low and back high, nothing. I revved the engine, nothing.

I honked the considerably loud horn, nada. Wrestling the bike on the kickstand, I left it idling and hopped off. I yelled at the thing and it still didn't budge. So I started to the side of the road to grab something to toss near the deer thing, hoping to spook it away. As soon as I crossed into the other lane, it rose up onto its hind legs. I froze, putting my hand on my gun. I wasn't about to get charged by an angry, confused, malformed dough.

It took two jerky, unnatural steps toward the center of the lane on two legs and froze again, staring directly at me. It suddenly shook its head wildly like a dog with a toy, took another short step and hopped on two legs several times until it disappeared into the darkness on the right side of the road. I stepped back to the bike, mounted it, kicked up the kickstand and turned the light toward the side on that road. On that side, there was a sheer drop off about 75 to 80 degrees

compared to the roadway, and the fucking thing's head was just peeking over the edge, still looking at me. Oh, God, God, that image of just the worst. All I can think of is that deer in adventure time that, like, pulls its hooves off like gloves. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The drop off was about 40 to 50 feet. So there's no way it was standing at the base of the mountainside.

I cracked the throttle and beat the hell out of there. Road wildlife be damned. I never went back up on Skyline Drive at night alone after that. One time was enough. There are things we don't we don't talk about. We don't talk about out there or things that just visit for a while. Whatever it was, it wasn't from around these parts in hill talk. It can go back to wherever it came from and stay there.

Now, that's now what's true is that a lot of people tend to forget is that deer are households in general, but that's where that particular story ends. Do you do you think like when you Google when to go? The image searches that appear, most of them are deer like creatures, not sort of like little, tiny, creepy golem creatures. They're all bloody looking, weird, awful deer. Is that because of this? Yes, I believe I think it's more probably because of skin walkers than not

deer skin walkers. I think I'm more portrayed that way. But I mean, I guess you're I guess it's weird that that, you know, that's the association is weird. Literally, the reason I even went to when to go is because I start. I discovered the not deer. And as I was researching the not deer, I kind of traced it back to when to go. And I thought maybe like the origins were there.

It might be. I don't know. It's weird because like, like, not if you Google and like to do research on not deer, there's not like a wealth of knowledge on them beyond. Not here are just like deer that looks strange. It's like a regional variant. Yeah. Yeah, it's an appellation thing. Big time, but when the appellation straight up are just like giant, terrifying, bipedal monsters with sort of like deer heads,

but like awful looking things. And then everyone's going to see like a little golem dude with a creepy smile. But most of the time they have antlers and most of the time they're awful looking. It's it's interesting. It's very, very interesting. And it's such a messy history as to where these things even kind of come. Yeah. There's just some I think, you know, like there's just some

version of this creature, any anywhere that the people had woods around them. Yeah, just because the woods are really scary and seeing things, even if there is no magic at all, right? Like, I don't want I don't want to think that way. But like, even if it's all completely logical, like seeing deer, deer are weird. Like they seem majestic in one sense.

But if you know deer for real, like they are just kind of these nasty like. Yeah, they're not super pleasant creatures overall. They're kind of scary and dangerous. Have you seen Sweet Tooth yet, either of you? No, but I've heard it's so good. I've not watched a show. No. It's it's it's super fun. But one of the like ongoing bits is Sweet Tooth is like the most innocent, sweetest, nicest child who ever lived

just like a cutie pie, but also half deer. And so at night in the woods, all you see are the creepiest. It looks like this devil child because he has deer eyes. And so his eyes are like at night glow and you see like the antlers and it's terrifying and everyone's like, oh, my God, that's the worst. Everyone knows how bad it is. But like, you know, deer are they're terrifying like ghosts. They're they're horrific.

If you want a fun little spooky hole to go into, go into Appalachian, like just the woods, like folklore and mythology out there, because like the not deer kind of come from Appalachia, like area, specifically the not deer. But out there as well is things like the kinds of stories that like people who live out there. And if anybody's who a fan of the show actually lived in an area, please tell us if we're right or wrong on the reddit or something.

I'm curious, but like some of the things out there is like, if you are ever in the you don't go out at night, never leave your house at night if you live out in Appalachia, like just you don't do it. If there's something in the car that you need to go get, you wait until morning. The other thing is like, if you hear your name or whistling or something in the woods at night calling for you, you just fucking ignore it. Never acknowledge it exists. Don't respond. Don't go looking for it.

Don't call out to it. Ignore it. The other one is the not deer. If you ever see a pack of deer and you just see some one of them in the pack that just looks wrong or off, we'll turn your head and move immediately. Pretend it's not there and ignore it. The other one, the last one that I remember is like, if you're walking at night and you feel somebody like breathing on your neck or like whispering just behind you and like the next on the hair go up, you do not turn around.

You do not change the pace that what you're walking. You continue when you ignore almost everything in that area is like ignore it, ignore it, ignore it. And you also have the very real concern of feral people who live out there. There's a whole that's a whole other like topic we could talk about one day of the feral people who live out in like national parks and the woods and stuff. Have I ever have I ever brought this up on this? I've ever brought this up on the show that years ago, senior of high school,

myself, my friend Brian and I, we Brian is probably listening. We went out to it was like us and these two girls went out camping and it was like, yeah, all right. We went out in the woods and as we like set up our tent, as night began to fall, this group of people, we were the only people in the area, by the way, this group of people just walked up out of the woods and we're like, oh, hey, y'all. We were like, uh, and then they just look this over and then we like went back

into the woods and I'm all I'm going to say is Brian, I stayed in the car, lights on all night, ready to like throw down. We were like, oh, hell no, I'm not going to go. The hills have eyes. It's not going to be my dad. I have not been camping since I was guys to so many groups of guys. Hey, what up? I'm like, it was, it was so weird.

It isn't like there was, there was no other cars around. They just walked up, looked at us and instead of continuing on, turned back into the forest. I was like, no, thank you, dude. Part of that, like again, going to that Appalachia hole that I was in, apparently there are parts of like that, that place that you just don't go to because they belong to certain families and they're fan, like very apparently like very like hard drug creation in that area too.

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But every time you try, it only lasts a few weeks. Well, guess what? It's not your fault because it's super hard. I'm Carl, the co-founder of Body, B-O-D-I dot com. Here's a secret, most workout programs and diets don't work long term because they're not designed to fit into your life long term. That's why I created Body and I want you to try it free for 14 days. With Body, it's not about how good you'll look in a month.

It's about how good you'll feel in a day. It's about giving you permission to enjoy your life while getting healthy and losing weight. Sound too good to be true? Don't say that to our millions of happy members. If you've struggled, I get it. But now it's your turn to succeed with Body, that's B-O-D-I dot com. See how changing your focus from how you want to look in one month to how good you can feel in one day can completely change everything.

Go to Body dot com, that's B-O-D-I dot com and try it free for 14 days. It's a fascinating extra little rabbit hole to go down. If anybody wants to scoop themselves out about that spot, it's creepy, dude. Oh, my God. I know, it's great. It was sort of, what's our fucked up, man? What the hell, man? It's in, yeah, yeah.

No, it's and that's the reason the people who listen to our 411 episodes hate us because we talk about this stuff. But we explain away 411 as like nature doing its thing. I mean, but think about it, right? That's even more trippy. Like, I think people who aren't impressed with nature's creepiness as an explanation aren't thinking about nature the right way. Like, think about trees and think about like that situation,

like remote treed forest and think about like the middle of the ocean and how more than just being scared for your safety, there's like an overwhelmingly just oppressive deadliness to the feeling, you know what I mean? Like, you don't want to be out there. That's the woods. It has the same feeling. You're right, because like you, it's so easy to get lost in the woods.

You don't know where it left from right north from south. I mean, it was literally swallowed by a whale this past week. Yeah, almost the same. I mean, like, are we talking about that in a mini so we should. I mean, OK, it's just crazy that that like nature's scary. All yeah, yeah, man, things are scary out there. It doesn't need to be like magical to be scary. Like there's plenty of fucked up shit out there.

You should be scared when you're in nature all the time. I'm going to scare you right now with what these possible not deer could be suffering people at least to a certain degree. So as I said, deer are typically assholes. And as the story said, you know, deer are just mean creatures a lot of the time, very territorial, very creepy and dirty and weird. But moreover, as deer acting strange can be the deer acting strange in that manner

can also be a sign of something not paranormal, but medical. Deer tend to suffer from something known as chronic wasting disease. I think you two probably know what they're at least have somewhat heard of chronic wasting disease, but that's the one with all the things that grow on the deer. No, that's something else. The symptoms are convincingly on par with not dear. Certain things don't fully line up.

But first, though, what chronic wasting disease is chronic wasting disease, sometimes called zombie, deer disease is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, TSE, affecting the deer. TSEs are a family of diseases thought to be caused by misfolded proteins called prions and include similar diseases such as BSE, mad cow disease and cattle, Crutsfeld Jacobs disease and humans and scrappy and sheep. In the US, CWD affects mule deer, white tail deer, red deer,

seca deer, elk, caribou and moose. Natural infection causing CWD affects members of the deer family. Experimental transmission of CWD to other species such as squirrel and monkeys, squirrel monkeys and genetically modified mice has also been shown. The symptoms include in most cases of CWD occur in adult animals. The youngest animal to exhibit clinical symptoms of the disease was 15 months.

The disease is progressive and always fatal. The first signs are difficulties in movement. The most obvious and consistent clinical sign of CWD is weight loss over time. Behavioral changes also occur in the majority of cases, including decreased interactions with other animals, listlessness, lowering of the head, tremors, repeat repetitive walking and set patterns and nervousness. Sounds like me.

Sounds like me trying to stay fit in covid. Excessive salivation and grinding of the teeth are also observed. Most deer show increased drinking and urination. The increased drinking and salivation may contribute to the spread of the disease as well. Loss of fear of humans and appearance of confusion is also common. So behavioral changes also include emaciation, weakness, ataxia, which is the loss of motor functions and twitchy movements, salivation, aspiration, ammonia and progressive death.

So when you look at chronic wasting to disease and put it up against not deer and the so on, there's a lot that falls in line. Well, the only thing that doesn't really fall in line is the backwards leg thing, the way that the legs aren't exactly right. And a lot of not deer are seen with all kinds of other deer. They're usually trying to blend in and camouflage with the pack. But we could also take that and say that might just be folkloric interpretations or stretches of the truth.

And in reality, chronic wasting disease could contribute and probably does contribute to a lot of, quote unquote, not deer sightings over the past. However long, because they move twitchily, they get confused. They're not afraid of humans anymore. All these things that lead to the supposed one on one, not deer encounters. And I think that's also important to put out there, because as Alex is also saying, like nature and science can be a lot fucking scarier than like. Or because chronic wasting disease, I think there's like something.

I remember reading on Twitter, a big thread about how it's potentially coming over to humans or there's a version of it in the humans. I don't know if that's Critzfield, Jacob disease or not. I didn't really do much checking on that. Really? Yeah. But like that's like a preon, a preon, a misfolded preon or whatever is not. That's something that's like across nature that is that that's happening. Now, there is no scientific evidence to show that like the deer can pass it to the human yet.

There's no there's been no recorded events of that happening. However, who fucking knows what what the future holds. Right. But that's scarier than anything else. But with that last scientific explanation, that's going to bring a close onto the Wendigo slash not dear chapter of this cryptid particular deep dive. As I said, like if you guys want to go out there and look in into Wendigo's

and not dear, there's a lot of fun stories out there. There's not a whole lot in terms of like factual, like where these things come from. Far the Wendigo's I particularly think I lean more in the metaphor world. But I do like the idea of like the not dear and the skin walkers and the Wendigo's all being kind of this one creature that people just see multiple of. There is something, man, like, I don't know. I don't know why I buy the not dear element.

I don't know why I buy the Wendigo, you know, the mythical element of it. I don't know. I don't know, like, what the truth is there. But like in terms of it being real, like culturally, I'm not trying to deny anybody's culture. I'm just saying, like, is it a real creature? I think maybe it is a real creature, but I don't know the origin of that creature. You know what I mean? I think maybe there is something that people see out in the woods that explains all these things, the bigfoots, the the the Wendigo's,

the not dears, the skin walkers. There's too many. It's it's all it's too similar out in dirt. I barely touched on this. But in my in my research out in Germany, there's something similar that are like seen as shape shifters. Yeah, that kind of like stalk the woods and, you know, maybe the answer is human brains. You know what I mean? I don't know.

Maybe, you know, maybe it's like something natural that we like, you know, part of our instincts in some way manifesting in our culture. But like, man, it is it is something about, especially the not deer, something about seeing a group of deer and seeing one of the deer, or just or just putting it past the deer to act weird like that. I see it. If you've ever run into a deer in real life, you can you know what I'm talking about. Deer are weird creatures and creepy to watch at night. Very creepy. They're too big to be that dumb.

You know what I mean? I guess they're just too big to be like dumb. Like people see him walking on two legs and stuff. And I'm like, what's up with that? What's going on there? They're not deer. That's why. Yeah, exactly. The thing that I walk away from this whole episode from is just that image of that guy's story of the deer's face just peering over the ledge

after doing fucking weird two-legged hops. And that's why those images, those those when you Google search, those are so creepy because they are always like tall on their hind legs. Like skinny demons. It's interesting. It is. Well, thank you, boys, for coming along with me on this cryptid deep dive. We got more coming in the next couple of weeks. I think are going to be Alex Focus and then we'll be doing our cult deep dive after that. So we got a lot of stuff coming up for you guys.

If you guys are interested in merch, head over to the eddy.com slash collection slash Luminati. We've got a brand new cryptid shirt about to hit the stores as well as all the posters being over there. And we've got a new pin that's being in the works. Grab what you can because they things tend to sell out really quickly once they hit. So if you want some merch, grab it.

And also, as Jesse tends to say, maybe think about keeping the end October if you're in the LA area or want to come to the LA area. It's getting real. Oh, maybe that last maybe that last week. It's getting real. Last week, maybe. Yeah, like, I don't know, like the 26th ish. Patriot. Maybe. Somewhere on the other side.

I can't wait. Thank you guys so much for doing this with us and coming along for this ride after over 100 episodes. We're off to go do a mini-sode for Patreon. So thank you guys so much for watching. We love you. Goodbye. Thanks. Anyway, me and my wife were sitting outside indulging on our porch one night,

enjoying ourselves. I needed to go to the bathroom, so I stepped back inside. And after a few moments, I hear my wife go, holy shit, get out here. So I quickly dash back outside. She's looking up at the sky in the fall. I look up to and there's a perfect line of dozen lights traveling across the sky. You want to get in better shape, lose weight and get healthy. But every time you try, it only lasts a few weeks.

Well, guess what? It's not your fault because it's super hard. I'm Carl, the co-founder of Body, B-O-D-I dot com. Here's a secret. Most workout programs and diets don't work long term because they're not designed to fit into your life long term. That's why I created Body and I want you to try it free for 14 days. With Body, it's not about how good you'll look in a month.

It's about how good you'll feel in a day. It's about giving you permission to enjoy your life while getting healthy and losing weight. Sound too good to be true? Don't say that to our millions of happy members. If you've struggled, I get it. But now it's your turn to succeed with Body. That's B-O-D-I dot com.

See how changing your focus from how you want to look in one month to how good you can feel in one day can completely change everything. Go to Body dot com. That's B-O-D-I dot com and try it free for 14 days.