What do you mean by That's Not A Deer in the mountains near you????
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.
So this has gotten quite popular so let me add a few clarifying bullet points:
The term “everyone in Appalachia” was an expressive, hyperbolic statement that I thought people would pick up on. I did not mean literally everyone in Appalachia. In my real-life circles at the time, most people could pick up on/understand what I meant by the “Not Deer” even if they had never heard it called that before. “Oh yeah that thing.” I am not expecting All or even Most people to know it (My mom grew up in West Virginia and only just learned what the Mothman was two weeks ago… so like. Nothing is universal.)
I have not and never will claim that the Not Deer as it’s forming now is an uber traditional established piece of Ancient Appalachian Folklore. (I’ve seen some people in the notes try to say that’s what I’m doing here and like… no?)
That said- I didn’t invent the idea of a Not Deer, I just gave it a name. Honestly I thought the idea of it was more well-known than it turned out to be/that people would be able to intuit the meaning of Not Deer like my other Appalachian friends could.
I didn’t mean for this to get this big, but I’m happy to accidentally stike something that people really resonate with.
Yes, a lot of people’s testimonies could be explained by Chronic Wasting Disease. I didn’t know about that when I wrote this and I find it very interesting, but I also really enjoy people’s testimonies that don’t line up with CWD and defy a scientific explanation. Folklore is a conversation between the spiritual, the scientific, and the unexplainable. We’re watching it develop in real time and that’s awesome.
This has blown up and is completely out of my hands now. I’ve seen people make art about the Not Deer, Not Deer fursonas, NotDeerKin, posts on monsterfucking accounts, more art, creative writing, TikToks and Reddit posts, features on podcasts, maybe in 10 years it’ll be totally forgotten about, or it’ll be in the Big Leagues. Who knows.
Stop conflating the Not Deer with w3ndi—s. It’s disrespectful and inappropriate.
