Hello ETSU, and welcome back to a new semester and a new line of cryptids!
While researching for new monsters to write about, I noticed that it was getting harder, article by article, to find local legends that I hadn’t already written about, and I asked myself why. Everyone who has lived in Northeast Tennessee for a year or so knows that these mountains are chock full of stories of the supernatural. It shouldn’t be hard to find writing about it.
However, after some thought, I think I understand why. While it may now be 2023, the age of digital, so much of our culture here is analog. Most legends take more than a simple internet search to find, and I think we’re the better for it. To me, nothing feels better than looking at my home’s culture, learning our history through the experiences of people who once lived here, even if it takes a little longer.
Since it’s the first article of the semester, instead of talking about a specific cryptid, I wanted to share a little insight about them.
Though it’s been a long time since, and I don’t know where to find it, I remember seeing a Tumblr post talking about categorization.
Something I think about often is that so many cryptids and supernatural beasts seem to be related to a known animal. For instance, everyone knows of the ever-famous Mothman. In the categorization of relation to existing animals, Mothman looks like a moth but is not one. This is true for most cryptids, which is why in descriptions the words “looks like…” can be found on any page about one.
But it’s a little bit harder than one simply looking like a cryptid. If that were true, the Not-Deer probably wouldn’t be as scary as they are.
The idea behind the Not-Deer is that at first glance, they look exactly like a deer. It’s when you look at them longer, one realizes that they are not a deer and maybe never were, my favorite kind of Cryptid.
Googling “Hello-Kitty-Senpai not-deer tumblr” will bring up a post that talks about just that, which I consider to be the basis for supernatural creature categorization. (Hello-Kitty-Senpai was the first user on the post chain, so I consider them to be the reference for the post, though it looks like they deactivated their account.)
These categories are “looks like something”, “is something, but not quite”, “is definitely not something” and “looks less like something the more you look at it and maybe never was”. The last one is my favorite.
Mothman looks like a moth, Unicorns are horses but not quite, Vampires are definitely not human and Not-Deer are the last category in relation to deer.
To put it differently, if you are a fan of Pokémon, you know that they are based off things from our world, and some range from basically the same thing to drastically different. Xerneas is kind of a deer, but not really, but Piplup is essentially a penguin.
