You are now listening to cryptid cocktail party Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Cryptic Cocktail Party Show, where we have a few drinks, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown. I'm your host, Dave, joined as always by my wonderful co -host, Sarge. How's it going, Sarge? Woo! Okay. Feeling good today. All right. And we're also joined today by comedian Rob Crean. How's it going, man? Great. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for being here.
Rob, real quick before we dive in. Are you like a cryptids guy, paranormal guy? Is this something that you've ever delved into? Absolutely, yeah. I love this stuff. I'm from cryptid country myself. I'm from the Bridgewater Triangle. And I've never really had any experience with cryptids, but I love the idea, and I hope to someday have cryptid
experiences. That's our goal. just before any litigation happens i want to say bridgewater triangle that is the intellectual property of everyone's favorite cryptozoologist lauren coleman so we can't gotta make sure that we put the credit where credit is due i sent you guys uh sean donovan's uh benefit right so good that was so funny so fucking good so funny I wish I was a monster. I was living in New Hampshire when that happened. I wish I went to that. It would have been so
fucking funny. That museum is great, by the way. Is it? Is it? I mean, it's I like it, I guess. Maybe great is the wrong term. I love that he has like pictures of celebrities. And it's so funny because it's like the Bigfoot Museum. Like a New York deli. But no, but like all the pictures are blurry. Some people believe this is Wyatt Cenac, but it's hard to tell. Oh, man. Well, yeah, I just had to make sure we credited him before he fucking... I'm not even kidding. Sarge
had the problem. Did he actually contact you guys? Yeah, like, it was... It sounded like it was coming from someone else, but I can't imagine that there were that many people in that community. I don't think so. And he wasn't mad that we made fun of him. He was just mad that we didn't credit him with some of the source material we used in the show notes. Like, we said it was his, but he wanted the link in the show notes. Yeah.
I was like, all right. All right, guys. Well, today, I think I have a pretty good episode for you today. It's kind of different. It's a little bit weirder than what we normally do. It's still a cryptid, but in a sense that it may not be. How could it be weirder than what we normally do? We talked about robot flowers. Isn't the whole point of a cryptid is that it may not be a cryptid? Like, that's the point. Yeah. I guess technically a cryptid is just an animal that
hasn't been confirmed by science. But this goes beyond that. Okay. You'll figure it out. Anyway, so this week, gentlemen, we are going to be heading to the birthplace of every nightmare you've ever had. The Appalachian region, a place we have come to know of very familiar with. And as we know, there's than me. My nightmares are exclusively I'm on the train and I'm late for work. I mean, I've had many nightmares on the T2, but it wasn't actually a nightmare. It was just a really rough
Tuesday. Yeah. I'm just looking at my phone being like, ah, I'm going to be late. And then like looking at it a few minutes later and being like, ah, maybe if I run, I can make it. And also I, I, I should, it's, it's Appalachian. Oh, whatever, man. You can't even pronounce your own last name. You're gonna tell me how to pronounce Appalachian. Come on. From Appalachia. And she said, if you don't say Appalachia, we'll throw an Appalachia. Well, okay. I don't know her. So I think I'm
safe. I was having a debate with someone about this and I looked it up. And apparently Appalachian is the correct pronunciation, like all the way through. But it's just a regional thing up here that we call them the Appalachian. All right. So as we know, the Appalachian region of the good old US of A is home to more weird shit than anywhere else in the country. You got the Mothman, the Flatwoods Monster, the Grafton Monster, Sheep
Squatch. There are more cryptids in the Appalachian region than there are divorced dads at any given Steely Dan concert. So there's quite a few. But one of those creatures over the past few years has become increasingly popular on the paranormal side of TikTok and Reddit. And that is the not deer. Are either of you familiar with the not
deer? No. This sounds like... And it's spelled not, like N -O -T... deer okay like it's not like a k and it's not like a tied up deer or anything like that joke what do you call a deer with no eyes what's that no idea that only works from new england i feel like because we're the only place that puts an r at the end it's the only place we add an r yeah yeah we take away ours at the end but then we'll add them where they don't belong for for you two as well for
those like listening who may be unfamiliar you're probably asking yourself What the fuck is a not deer? Well, for starters, it's not a deer. Thank you for clearing that up. I might be a not deer. I'm also not a deer. Yeah, so what isn't a not deer? Well, the easy answer to that is a deer. So did that clear anything up for you guys? Nope. No. But that's usually how we start the show. The knot deer is pretty much exactly what it
sounds like. In Appalachian lore, the knot deer appears to be just an ordinary deer at first glance, but if you give it more than just a passing glance, something about it just seems... So it's like looking at like an AI photo and you're like, oh, man, that's Tom Hanks kissing Ghislaine Maxwell. But then you realize they both have eight fingers
on each hand. Yeah. So like unlike other cryptids like we've covered, which for the most part are entirely fantastical, the not deer is defined more by its distortion of a familiar animal. It resembles a common deer, but is not one. So did that help at all? Yeah, I think so. Yes, actually, that helped me a lot. A little bit? Okay. So like I said, the defining trait of a knot deer is that at first glance, it could be mistaken for a normal white -tailed deer. We're
all from New England. We know what a deer looks
like. But a closer look reveals something. off it's like it's like if bambi was done in the same animation style as tom hanks from the polar express it's like that uncanny valley effect that just fills you with dread as soon as you see it it's not really catching hell on this episode you brought up him i i will i if i had known that you were going to reference him later yeah also i have nephews and they love the polar express they really love it that's crazy yeah
I love it too, but it's only because it haunts me. It's like a horror movie. Now, physically, in terms of general size and coloration, it's just a normal white -tailed deer, but with some anomalies that range from subtle to very fucking dramatic. So first off, the eyes. Now, unlike real deer, which have those large, adorable eyelashed eyes set on the side of their head, a not -deer is often described as having forward -facing
eyes like a predator. Not great. And this is usually one of the first signs that something isn't right. Then there's its body. The proportions are just kind of off. Reports of the not deer mention things like legs that are too long or oddly jointed, sometimes described as double jointed or bending in impossible ways. The torso might be barrel chested or disproportionate and the neck too long or the head too large or misshapen. Moving from the torso back up to the head, let's
talk about the mouth. While a normal deer has a fairly small and gentile mouth, like to eat plants and stuff like that, not deer are said to bear pointed teeth or fangs when they open their mouths, and witnesses have described seeing, quote -unquote, too many teeth or an almost carnivorous grin. All bad. So now you know what to look for physically if you think you're in the presence of a not deer, but maybe you're still unsure. Well, if the upsetting visuals isn't enough,
let's talk about how it behaves. Normal deer, they're skittish around humans. They freeze or flee at the slightest sound or jump out from the woods and smash their own bodies into your car because they're fucking morons. And that has happened to more than one of my friends and or family members. No. Yep. A not deer, by contrast, they'll stand their ground and stare right back
at you. Many who have encountered it describe a feeling that the creature is oddly intelligent, watching them in a way that no ordinary animal would. The not deer, in conjunction with looking like a PlayStation glitch, it also moves like one. It's said to move in a jerky, unnatural way, described like an adult deer with the awkward gait of a newborn fawn. The knot deer also stands
as well as walks on its hind legs. And instead of gracefully bounding away at the slightest hint of danger like a real deer would, the knot deer might twitch, jerk its head, or even approach in a disjointed, almost stop motion kind of walk. This could just be a deer that found like a meth.
lab right also i just say dave while you're describing all this your video is glitching in exactly the ways you're describing that sounds about right yeah no yeah that's right i mean the good news is it glitches for the both of us but it records solid so we'll be okay yeah but yeah dave kind of looks like a not deer right now i hate that or or a photo of bigfoot yeah or wyatt snack at the at the Before we move on, how are we feeling
about the not deer? Has this cleared up at all what a not deer actually is and what you should be looking for? I think I have a pretty good idea, yeah. Okay. I'm kind of disappointed that the best they could come up with was not deer. Like just meth deer would have been fine. It describes it perfectly. I think so. It describes almost everything perfectly with the exception of deers. True. Now that we covered what it looks like and how it acts, let's talk about some of
the encounters. Now, it seems as though that there's like a recurring theme or like narrative pattern when it comes to the sightings of the not dear. So you got the setting. Almost every story takes place in or near the woods, often on a quiet back road or hiking trail in the Appalachian region. It's usually dusk or night. Appalachian. Appalachian. Fuck you. All right. It's usually dusk or night or at least a time when visibility is like poor, foggy, like that kind of stuff.
Now, the witness is typically alone or with one other person. invoking the liminal feelings of isolation. Common locales include stretches of the Blue Ridge Parkway, secluded hollows in the mountains, or rural country roads where deer are normally plentiful. And then you have the initial sighting. The person notices what they think is a deer by the side of the road or among the trees, and at first nothing seems amiss.
They might slow down their car to avoid hitting it or quietly observe it from a distance while hiking, like we all would when we see a deer out in nature. The creature is often stationary or moving slowly at this point. And then the next is usually like the uneasy feeling. As the observer watches a little longer, an inexplicable sense of dread or quote unquote wrongness sense in. Many report that before they consciously see anything wrong, they felt something was off.
And this gut feeling is... Pretty much the hallmark of a not deer encounter. It's kind of like a prey instinct kicking in for the human, which is something we don't feel very often. So it's not a great feeling. And then there's like the revelation. The witness then notices a specific detail that shatters the illusion that this is now no longer a deer. Perhaps the headlights catch the animal's face and the eyes shine back in a predator forward gaze instead of like the
normal side reflection of a deer. or the creature steps into a beam of light and its proportions are off. Maybe it bends a leg in an impossible way as it moves, or it turns its head too far around. And in some stories, the witness notes the animal is on two legs or that it has no tail when it should, or an oddly twisted neck. And this is the, it's not a deer moment kicking in. And then there's the aftermath. Typically at that moment of realization, the witness is overcome
with fear. And in many tales, the person slowly backs away or drives off while the not deer stares intensely at them. Sometimes the creature will then move towards the witness, prompting a panicked escape. In a few more dramatic accounts, the not deer gives chase, like, for example, chasing a car for a short distance or running after a hunter who disturbed it. But more often than not, it simply disappears into the dark woods
after. staring you down almost as if it was like it's like acknowledging that it's been found out and witnesses often describe being deeply shaken convinced they saw something unnatural which they undoubtedly did because that's all horrendous and i hate it it's a ballsy move for a deer to chase a car yeah it's not great no no that's the last thing i'd want imagine chasing a guy who has a gun Like going after the hunter. Yeah. Yeah. That's nuts. But the hunter has that
feeling of being prey in that moment. Yeah. That's fucking wild. Imagine being so scared that you have a loaded weapon and you're running away from a fucking deer. Dude, imagine being at York's Wild Animal Kingdom. And you're in the deer enclosure part and one of the deer is just fucking like.
just all like walking at you like a new metal guitarist all fucking herky jerky like I don't need that I'm fucking set dude all right I know I know that we cut shit out all the time but I have to tell you guys the funniest thing about York's wild kingdom so is it that one day I really hope that they all break free onto the boardwalk of York's wild of York because that'd be fucking great I mean I that would be amazing too but my dad went and they had like a tiger yeah and
it uh it sprayed him Just pissed right on my dad. Like lifted his tail. Like how a cat does it? Like how a cat does it, yeah. That's great. And all he did was give my dad a free t -shirt. Didn't refund the ticket, just gave him a free t -shirt. Dude, I can't imagine. I've been in houses where cats have sprayed and it's not great. Yeah, it smells so bad. This has been family lore since I was a baby. My mother brings this up whenever she can. This is in Maine? Yeah.
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yes, York, Maine. I've never been there. Oh, it's fine. York Beach. Oh, it's great. The last time I went, I took a bunch of ecstasy, and then I stared at the three -toed sloth for far too long, and then it was all... The sloth breaks out some glow sticks. It was like 110 degrees outside, which is like the worst conditions you could ever take any sort of ecstasy in. And I was I thought I was going to die. And then they had the water
slide thing. So I went on that and I was perfectly as bright as rain. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time in Maine, but I've never been. I mean, I live like a mile from a zoo that I also. Now, one of the more widely shared encounters of the not dear comes from a Reddit user who claimed he was riding his motorcycle one night in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Appalachian region. I think I forget where it was. I think it was like West Virginia or North Carolina. It's who
cares. They're all the same state to me. I know I've spent time in the Blue Ridge area in like in eastern Tennessee, like western Virginia. OK, my friend of the club down there called the Blue Ridge Comedy Club in Tennessee, right across the street from. Bristol, Virginia, which is a great comedy club. So it could be there. Could be there. It's all those places probably now
when he encountered. Yeah, so he was riding his motorcycle one night in the Blue Ridge Mountains when he encountered what he called a quote unquote almost deer blocking the road. As he described it, quote, it was like a deer. We've got a new species. Calm down, Sarge. I like the idea of there being like in the cryptic community, some people that like are really for the term not deer and others that are like, no, almost deer.
The infighting that happens. I want it to be as much of a fight as like a UFO and an AEP, you know? Oh yeah, right. Now, as he described it, quote, it was like a deer that someone who had never seen a deer drew after someone else described it to them. I saw the eyes before my headlight showed it fully. It was big, easily the biggest deer I've ever seen. The head was almost bovine in shape, but fixed to a deer's frame. The legs seemed too long. The body extremely
barrel chested end quote. Now the creature did not budge even after flashing his high beams or revving his engine, but determined to get this quote unquote deer out of the way. The dude got off his bike. and started shouting at it to scare it off. Instead, what happened was, quote, as soon as I crossed to the other lane,
it rose up on its hind legs. It took two jerky, unnatural steps toward the center lane on two legs, froze again, stared directly at me, then hopped on two legs several times until it disappeared into the darkness. End quote. What the fuck? Yeah, not great. It's all bad. And there are hundreds of other accounts just like this across the Internet, mostly on social media sites like Reddit, TikTok, Tumblr, those sorts of places.
Some are worse, like the woman in North Carolina who almost hit a deer on a foggy road only to realize that the animal had, quote unquote, too many eyes and was, quote unquote, heavily foaming at the mouth, which is, again, not great. I hate it. Yeah, I mean. Anytime you encounter an animal that's foaming at the mouth, you're in trouble. But when they have extra eyes, it's extra bad. Yeah, see, I was thinking of it the other way. It's like, oh, man, coming across an animal with
extra eyes is crazy. But also it has rabies? Oh, come on, man. That's it. I'm leaving. It's one or the other. You can't have both. All right? I can deal with an animal with an extra eye. We've seen The Simpsons. There's that gold, you know, like. Yeah. I'm fine with the fish. Give it extra eyes. I loved that fish. I feel like the foaming mouth is the real terrifying part. But that's just me. I'm a sucker for animals with deformities. I don't know why. Yeah. I used
to have a three -legged cat. All about it. So a multi -eyed deer, I'm fine with that too. I'd hate to see what's in Dave's basement. It's mostly cases of Narragansett and my laundry. And three headless cats. Why headless? Why are they going to be headless? You were just talking about deformed animals. Yeah, that's not deformed. That's dead. That's a serial killer. Oh. Well, I mean, if it's still moving around, that's what's really disturbing. So it's almost deformed. That's bad.
Yeah. It's like that chicken that cut the head off and it still lived for whatever. He fed it with an eyedropper, which is super fucked up. Just kill that poor animal. Jesus Christ. Yeah. All right. Gentlemen, fellows, my inspirations. So we've talked about what a not deer is and the telltale signs you may you may want to look out for when you're face to face with one. But let's talk about what a not deer isn't. This is getting very confusing. So people sometimes
lump the not deer in. So this is kind of real quick. This is more like the serious part of the episode, I guess. All right. So it's not a Wendigo. People sometimes lump the not deer in with other lore, specifically Native American lore like the Wendigo or the Skinwalker, but it is further from those two things than anything could be. A Wendigo is Algonquin folklore. It's an evil spirit oftentimes associated with cannibalism
in the winter. In pop culture, it's sometimes depicted with a deer skull head or antlers, which is why some people try to lump the two together.
But traditionally, descriptions of the Wendigo make it out to look more like... a zombie from the walking dead rather than what you would see the wendigo as we're not helping perpetuate that stereotype by having it in our cover art for the podcast but it's a sick imagery if you can't deny that it's pretty awesome yeah yeah and if you want to know more about the one to go you can check out uh i did an episode on the one to go way back um and the skinwalker is from
navajo traditions and this is a real dumbed down version of what they are it's a witch that can shape shift into animal forms Like a deer. The knot deer legend, while superficially similar in that it's a creature that looks like a warped deer, does not carry the cultural context or
taboos of those other legends. In fact, native writers and folklorists caution that equating the knot deer with figures like the skinwalker or the wendigo shows a lack of respect and understanding of those cultures, which I 100 % agree with. Yeah. The not deer is a separate distinct phenomenon and it doesn't come with like the spiritual baggage of a skin Walker or the moral cautionary role of a Wendigo. So if it's not a native American legend, as some seem to think it is, where does
this legend originate? Any guesses? Do you guys have any idea where the not deer came from? A meth lab. You know, it's just like, I think so much of this, you know, whether it be cryptids
or, or. ghosts or aliens is all just like we like psychic like you know psychic interference you know it's something is is causing our brains to perceive things in a specific way that are and you know whether it's through outside interference or it's just coming from our own brains i don't know but okay i actually like that interpretation you're kind of correct it does come from something that uh is warping our brains um well despite being famed as an appalachian folklore legend
The NotDeer's documented history is surprisingly recent. Folklorists and internet historians have found no evidence of a NotDeer tale in traditional native or Appalachian mythology before the late 2010s. In fact, the concept seems to have originated in 2019 when Tumblr user WillOfTheWitch made a viral post describing a creature called the quote -unquote NotDeer, claiming everyone in Appalachia knows about it. This is a creepypasta,
basically. She later clarified that she herself had learned of the knot deer as a local story from around Boone, North Carolina, but it was
not a widely known legend beyond the area. In other words, before the Tumblr post, the knot deer was at most... an obscure tale if even that and not a wide widely spread Appalachian tradition honestly this sounds like something a dad told his kid to keep the kid from going out at night yeah now will the witch's post struck a chord you know amongst the community and the idea of a quote -unquote not quite a deer quickly went from local lore probably made this shit up to
full -on modern cryptid. By 2020, discussions of NotDeer sightings popped up on forums like 4chan and Reddit, and by 2021, the hashtag NotDeer had tens of millions of views on TikTok. And this rapid spread led many to assume that the NotDeer must be a long -standing Appalachian legend, when in reality, it's more accurately described as modern folklore or quote -unquote fake lore, which I love that. I love that term.
Yeah. Which is a legend created or popularized in modern times, but set in traditional context, much like the Slenderman or like the Black Eyed Kids. Yeah. And the Appalachian setting gave the story an air of authenticity since the region is already filled with monsters and ghouls. Like what's one more, right? Now in Appalachian communities, people swap stories of witches and monster cats. And the Not Deer fits right in in spirit, even
if it is like a newcomer by origin. The legend has since been treated as an Appalachian legend since, and in countless posts and articles showing once again how internet culture can invent a new myth and graft it into regional folklore. Because even if the Not Deer is a modern folktale, Appalachia is still one of... Those places where, as one folklorist put it, quote unquote, a landscape full of hidden things where you might see something that looks like a deer but doesn't move like
a deer, end quote. And that, my friends, is the end of our episode. That is the story of the not deer. Rob, starting with you, how are we feeling about the not deer? Thoughts? Yeah. Questions, concern? It's fun. You know, I like that. It's
such an internet. thing obviously uh it comes from the internet but i really like when i was picturing it i was picturing it being like digital era you know like you know because yeah to like you know playstation glitching yeah like i imagine it being like yeah like or like ai where everything's slightly off but i think it's fun and creepy it is fun and creepy but the thing is like i before researching this episode i had no idea that it started on tumblr i assumed that it was
an actual appalachian like folklore i even assumed it was native american because it does kind of sound like a legend you would think that would come from a native tribe i mean not to equate the two but like the skinwalker the wendigo they're kind of i could see how people would put those together and try and make sense of it but knowing now that it's from tumblr and people are trying to equate is kind of super fucked up yeah it's annoying but also it shows it goes to show that
like social media is terrible and we should just abolish it except for our fans we love you yeah yeah yeah follow us on instagram at cryptic cocktail um sarge how you feeling about the not dear all right i gotta i gotta say a thing don't you edit me um i gotta say a thing uh i am super frustrated with everyone just throwing shit at um appalachia i'm so annoyed with it i was watching um sense though it's a fucking nightmare i know and like i get it creepy woods kind of scary sometimes
depending on where you are but at the same time like there's this i was watching this will encapsulate how i feel i was watching an instagram video and this fucking jackass has a camera At like a glass door and it's a dog like scratching at the door to get in. Oh, that's just the skinwalker of the video. I know you're talking about. I'm like, okay, first of all, skinwalkers aren't fucking from here. That's not our shit. True. That's not our legend. No, that's very far away.
So why are they, what are they crossing the Mississippi to hang out in fucking Tennessee? Are you kidding? Like, stop saying everything's a fucking skinwalker. Maybe you left the window open and your dog jumped out to chase a rabbit and then was like, oh shit, I'm stuck outside now. And then she's like, people in Appalachia don't go outside at night. Fuck you, they don't. I feel like they're mostly outside at night. I feel like that's like their thing.
Yeah, you go out and you go out and you have a fire in your backyard. You go for walks in the woods at night when like the moon's really high so that you can like walk around and see. I've been hiking at night. In the Appalachian mountains. Like, yeah, shut the fuck up. She's clearly not from here. You go out there, you fucking clean your stills, make sure that the copper is good. Make sure that the mash is set
right. She's got to be from fucking Kansas or something where they don't even have mountains. Yeah. I feel like I definitely have walked around the Appalachian trail at night, but most of my Appalachian experience is in Maine. So it's like not what people think of when they think of. Oh, so that's right. That's the, that's the white man's version of the Appalachian. I don't know. You don't get much whiter than the Appalachian
Mountains in West Virginia. Yeah, but in West Virginia, you can't stop off trail to get a lobster roll and get a pair of Sperry's. Well, you're talking about a different kind of white. That's fair. Remember that song by Blood for Blood? Yeah, I do remember that song. I ain't your kind
of white, buddy. Oh, yeah. But to go off where you're talking about, the Skinwalker thing, the past five episodes, I promoted episodes that I did without Sarge, but I did a whole Skinwalker episode because my thing is that I didn't get onto TikTok until fairly recently. And when I went on there, I was obviously on the paranormal side, cryptic side, and everything was a skinwalker. Oh, this dog has a fucking weird grin skinwalker. This weird deer is a skinwalker. And it's like,
first of all, you're in Michigan. That deer is
not a skinwalker. Second of all. skinwalkers are witches that have perfected the art of transforming into animals they don't half -ass it they're not gonna yeah they're not gonna turn into a deer and be like fucking like a homunculus like yeah they're gonna be a deer they're not gonna be But also that means that your dog that you think is a skinwalker, that means your dog is dead because skinwalkers can only transform into an animal that they have the pelt and or the
feather of. So that means your dog had to have been skinned. Yeah, birds get off easy in this scenario. They do. But that means that the skinwalker, quote unquote, has the skin of your dog. Yeah, they're supposed to, when they're animals, they're
supposed to look good. compelling like skinwalker videos obviously you know where it's like far away and it's like a person walking and then they like become an animal and like run away like those ones are yeah but that's cool but even then they kind of also make it look like the cover of an animorphs book like it's not no i i agree i get really frustrated when people like steal shit from native american lore and and turn it into some like hokey bullshit and
you're just like like uh like Anytime they tell a ghost story, it's like, oh, it's a house built on a Native American burial ground. It's like, why does it have to be that? Why can't it just be a regular fucking cemetery? Well, that's one of the things that we do on our show is that whenever we cover Native American folklore or a cryptid or something like that, I always, you've heard me do it at the beginning of all those episodes ago. This is not a cryptid. This is
a very. real thing that's deep -seated in their culture and you should stop calling it that and then exactly we spend less time talking about the actual entity and more time talking about how everyone is fucking wrong about it yeah i i think that it's just that ancient stuff is creepy like it's just when something's ancient it's creepy so like i think that there's a that's why people tend to take from uh you know from pre -european indigenous traditions because it's
just from a time that we can't really fully understand but i feel this way about like i love any horror movie that's about like the catholic church like i because the catholic church is creepy for inherently reasons it's creepy too but it's like one of the main reasons just that it's old it's really old and that's creepy you know yeah i just think it like it gets so disrespectful because it's like yeah Well, yeah, your house was built on a Native American burial ground because you fucking
stole the land. I'm pretty sure all of our houses are built on Native American burial grounds. I don't think there's one that isn't. I feel like the only story that hasn't been completely tainted is the story of the Pukwudgies. And I'm fine with that. I love those little guys. I hope they don't change. Never change, Pukwudgies. Never change. I feel like this is just – this topic is something that I think is just – we're going to see more and more of this type of thing
where it's like digital error in real life. I think it's just – because that's just so much of what we're seeing on the internet now. And it's creepy on the internet. But when you imagine like seeing like an AI image in real life and it – just those ways that it's slightly off, it's so creepy. And then you also like – you
think about like the concept of a tulpa. you know when you kind of believe in something and then it comes to life yeah well it's kind of i mean that would i mean it's not even like the the uncanniness of it it's that like people are like this is like the not deers now technically kind of like appalachian folklore like they've kind of adopted it into their whole thing and people are shitting on it because oh well it's it started on the internet same way as like slenderman
or whatever but like This is how folklore starts. Exactly. In 40 years, no one is going to know that Tumblr user Will of the Witch came up with the knot deer. In 40 years, this is going to be another actual cryptid or another folklore
tale. it's it's this word of like we don't do word of mouth stories anymore we don't do like that's the thing about like modern stuff as opposed to old stuff like it's really like the catholic church is ridiculous but it's so old that you're like i guess maybe this could have happened this could be real we don't know whereas like you know like the you know the the book of mormon is like a lot easier to critique because it's from not because it's not that old so there's
lots of records of like yeah yeah i agree and i feel like that's uh i think it kind of in a way makes it uh tougher for folklore to really take a foothold because true you can trace back where it comes from but also you know easier because it's just really easy to but when you also think about like how many social media uh platforms go go dark you know like like myspace something could have started on myspace then myspace blipped out of existence and now we got
this fucking thing we can't trace who knows what culture we got from friendster I forgot about friends. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, you know, I think so much of my core beliefs come from angel fire. I learned everything I know from geo cities. Yeah. So, but the other thing too, is that like, we're not helping this at all, but because over time, like when you go into like this, like if I were to Google, not dear 10 bucks says, the original Tumblr post isn't
the first page. It's not the second page. It's going to be the fourth page. And how many people go fourth page on Google? You know what I mean? Like never once. Exactly. Like you have to really dig to, I have to really be. So I just saw Kevin McDonald do a one man show sort of thing. We're not one man show, but he didn't a rock opera. And he talked about the story, but when he, him
and, and Dave Foley were on. the Joan Rivers show when he was in the kids in the hall and they got really drunk, just really drunk on the show. And I was like trying to find a clip of that. And I went four pages deep and could not find it, but it only has to be, it has to be something that I can't find, you know, from that. But that's what I'm saying is like, people are going to try and look up the origins of the not
to hear. And the thing is like the first few pages are going to be like cryptid pages or pages like our podcast where. We didn't talk about it until we were 20 minutes in that it was fake. You know what I mean? And also a search algorithm isn't going to listen to the show and tell you what we're talking about. They're going to see not deer is like over time, even if we can trace the origins as we can with really anything, because if you give it, give it enough time over the
years, like the. The internet's flooded with so much information. A lot of people think this is real. It happened with Slender Man. I mean, we all know it started as a Photoshop Friday, but those two girls believed it was real. And then she fucking murdered that one chick or tried to, you know what I mean? Like, did you watch that documentary about, well, that was a good
documentary. It was intense. But as I'm saying is that like over time, like if the internet's still going to exist, but it's going to be harder and harder to find the original source material for what people are talking about. So yeah, a
digital age folklore story. now we think it's fucking goofy as shit but it's kind of fun but people are actually holding holding on to this and they they do believe that not deer are real there are people i mean yeah maybe some of the reddit posts and tiktoks are just people chasing clout but there are some people that post that think that they actually saw not deer and over time it's gonna get all muddled and messy and then even if people find the original template
post they're gonna think like oh this is Just another post that was made about the not deer. Well, and also like to play devil's advocate too. Like that was the first time that it was, it was written down in someplace we can trace. But like you said that the person who originally posted that said, even though they kind of exaggerated that it was popular around there in Appalachia,
they like, it was more localized than that. uh but but like you said that they were contacted afterwards and they were like oh it's mainly local but people did talk about it so like maybe that it was a little thing i mean like or that person could be making it up you don't really or maybe we've willed it into existence like a tulpa i feel like sarge really wants to do an episode on tulpas so i think we might have to do that at some point that would be i would
oh my god i would have so much fun with that freddy krueger tulpa yeah tulpa yeah yeah especially a new nightmare Oh, that was so good. Yeah, that was so good. That was great. Rob, before we sign off, this has been a great episode. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Is there anything you want to plug? Anything you want to... This episode's coming out tomorrow, so if you have anything happening between tomorrow
and the infinity... Yeah, I mean, I have albums that you can listen to on the internet, so I have a couple albums. Sadly, Sacrigen is the one that I like the most. Uh, you need to listen to that wherever you listen to audio on the internet. You know, most people tend to listen to it on Spotify. I don't know why I, every week I get a, a notification from Apple music and that, that between zero and four people have listened to my album that month or that week or whatever.
Um, so I don't know why people don't seem to listen to it any place except for, uh, Spotify, but you can listen to it wherever you listen to audio stuff. And if, uh, if, if they want to find you on, Social media, where can they find you? I'm going to put links to all this in the episode description, but better for them to hear it from the horse's mouth. Yeah, I'm just at Rob Crean everywhere. Last name is Crean, C -R -E -A -N. That's a weird name. Sounds like
so many words and is none of them. All right, and Sarge, you got anything? What's up? I'm on the internet and you can find Sarge the Destroyer. it's that's that's what i use on everything so that's how you find me um and if you find me on x first i'm probably just gonna block you um i got uh i got a coloring book sarge's supernormal
.com it's uh it's a coloring and activity book to help you take out your frustrations on the goddamn hellscape that we currently live in and i starting to think that maybe i created a tulpa you might have willed this into existence Yeah, I might have done. That might be my fault. So maybe just buy a bunch of them and then burn them to release the spell. Yeah, or pretty soon you might just need them for fuel to heat your house. I'd have to start eating the paper. Yeah,
that'll feed the tapeworms. Excellent. So... Hey! A couple things. First off... We were featured in two magazines recently, Scars Zine and also Parahouse Magazine. Both you can order online. Just go to Parahouse Magazine. Google it. I don't know the exact website. I think they sold out of the print edition, but you can still get the digital version. Luckily, Scars Zine, that's print on demand. You just order that and it should.
ships to your house so that's pretty cool but how badass is it that we were in a sold out magazine that's pretty awesome i love that um you can also if you want to follow us you follow us on instagram at cryptic cocktail follow us on tiktok cryptic cocktail party we also have a what's it called oh patreon we have patreon yep three dollars a month that's just general support for the show or for seven dollars a month you can see unedited video episodes uh so you this episode's
almost an hour it'll probably be way shorter than that audio wise but all right so with that out of the way normally sarge would say goodbye and i love it to the audience but rob do you undo the honors of saying goodbye and i love you to the audience sure uh goodbye everyone that's listening and i and both of these guys love you