Viclore

In this post, I borrowed my friend Ren to ask about their encounters with the unexplained during their time working in the US. In this interview we discussed their experiences with three different creatures. This post starts us off with a discussion of Not Deer.

Vic:
Can you tell me about any any unexplained encounters that you had during your time in the US?

Ren:
Which of the three would you like to hear about first? The Not Deer, the Night Riders, or the Shadow People.

Vic:
Let’s start with the not deer.

Ren:
So not deer, I’ll go into a little bit of general folklore. Generally speaking, you find Not Deer in the Appalachians, not the Rockies, which is where I lived. But there have been more recent sightings. Some people claim this is because, you know, the the story of the not deer has spread so far within American myth culture, that people are starting to see them elsewhere. I only know what I have actually encountered, which is, usually speaking, Not Deer.

They’re called that because you look at them and you’re like, is that a deer? And then you see it move, or you notice some aspect of it, and you’re like, oh, that is not a deer. That’s the best way to describe it. They tend to have a variety of different attributes, depending on which kind you see. The most common one that like really freaks people out is the Not Deer with forward facing eyes, because deer are a prey species. Their eyes are on the side of their head, and as a result, if they look at you, they look at you from the sides, turning their heads so that they can get a clear view of you. When you see a deer that is looking directly at you and there is reflective light in its eyes as it’s looking at you: One, that means it has a reflective film in its eyes designed for seeing in low light, which is a predator thing. And two, it’s looking directly at you with both eyes forward facing. They don’t have those so that is, again, one of those moments of “is that a deer?”, and then it looks at you, and you’re like, oh, that’s not a deer.

Vic:
So was the one that you saw like that?

Ren:
I’ve seen a few. I have seen some like that. There are other ones where some of them have sharp, like canine or like predator teeth that you’ll see like, especially if they open their mouth, or whatever. Other ones are where they’ll just move wrong, like, you’ll see a deer, and it will move, and you’re like you’re not supposed to move like that. Your legs really shouldn’t be bending that way.

Generally speaking, you see them in ones or twos, but if you see them in a group, it’s a lot more dangerous. The group ones tend to be more of the predator focused design. That’s the best way I can describe that is that, if you see a group of them and they have either sharp teeth or forward facing eyes or some combination of the two, it’s dangerous avoid those.

The general consensus is, when you see one, get away from it, because either it’s actually a Not Deer, or it’s a deer that’s very, very sick. In both cases, that would be extremely dangerous.

I think my most vivid memory of one was I had seen a few here and there living up in Auburn, which is in California. It’s just below the snow line on the mountains into Tahoe. And you know, during the fall months, it gets extremely foggy there, like dangerously foggy, like “I can’t see five feet in front of me” foggy at times. So, you know, I was driving home from where I was working, across like the fields and all that. And at the time, that just meant it was like driving through a sea of fog. There was the road a little bit in front of me that I can see, and then fog, like a downwards fog, tilt across the fields on either side of me, so it looks like a raised platform running across a sea of fog.

When I get back home, up into the mountains, I go to park my car, and I get out and I notice there’s a bunch of deer across the road. I’m like, Oh, that’s interesting. Like, a bunch of deer nearby. They probably didn’t notice me because of the fog. But then I realised they were A looking at me, and B coming towards me, and again, my car lights were still on, so I could see the reflective tint in their eyes. And I’m like, Nope, I don’t like that. Not a fan of that. At which point I very quickly, while keeping an eye on them, went from my car, over up the steps into the house, opened the door, got in the house, and closed the door, and then locked it. And I let my roommate, at the time, know, and we looked out the window, and there were and then they were leaving, and they stopped to look back at us. Again, those eyes should not have been looking at us the way they were. That was, uh, very concerning.

Other small moments I’ve had are things like, you know, walking home from going down to like the gas station to grab something small or whatever, and seeing a deer, which turns out to be a Not Deer, just like off in the forest or somewhere nearby. I know one I saw- I looked at it like, oh, that’s a weird number of legs. Must be two deer. And then it walked away and it had like, six legs. And I’m like, cool, that’s a single deer with six legs. I don’t like that. Yeah. Again, that’s the experience of the Not Deers looking at it going, is that a deer? Nope, nope, that’s not deer.

Vic:
They sound really interesting.

Ren:
Yeah, like I said, you’re more likely to run into them in the Appalachians, that’s where a lot more of the lore is, and a much higher frequency of sightings, though, some people said maybe they’ve migrated over to the Rockies.

Vic:
So I’m not great on US geography. Appalachians is…

Ren:
East Coast, right? So basically, the US has two major fault line locations, the East Coast and the West Coast that created the the Rockies and the Appalachians. The Rockies on the west coast, the Appalachians are on the East Coast.

Vic:
Is it only the ones with the forward facing eyes that seem aggressive?

Ren:
You sometimes get ones that are just like malformed looking, though often people say that these are not actually Not Deer, but these are deer that have a certain kind of like, there’s a disease they can get from I think ticks which causes cancerous growths on the horns and face. And often people say that the ones that look funky are just diseased deer. It also affects their behavior.

Vic:
The ones where you had the pack of them outside your house, what time of year was this?

Ren:
That was fall, October-ish.

Vic:
How long ago would that have been?

Ren:
Let’s see, I’ve been here two years. So that would’ve been like three-ish, years ago.

Vic:
Okay, can you describe the physical appearance of them, other than the forward facing eyes? Were they just regular deer looking things?

Ren:
That’s the thing. For most intents and purposes, they look exactly like a deer. And then there is an aspect or two of them that you notice that’s very distinctly not a deer. It’s kind of the equivalent of seeing a dog and being like, “oh, is that a dog?” and turning around and seeing it has cat eyes, and you’re like, that is not supposed to be there.

Vic:
So they hung around outside the house, and you and your housemate both kind of stared at them to make sure they didn’t do anything.

Ren:
Yeah.

Vic:
Are there stories of them trying to enter houses?

Ren:
Yeah, mostly around the Appalachians is stuff like, if you’re home alone, people have had stated… I cannot obviously talk to the validity of it, yada yada yada. Stated that being followed by Not Deer, getting home, being alone, and then having it attempt to, like, break down the back door, stuff like that.

Vic:
That sounds like lots of fun.

Ren:
Yeah, deer are terrifying by the themselves. They’re very dangerous creatures. They can, like, really, fuck you up.

Vic:
You get quite big deer over there.

Ren:
Yeah, you don’t really get elk in the same region, but, like, elk are much bigger. And then up north in Canada, you get the moose, which is just a walking tank.

Vic
Did your housemate have anything to say about the matter?

Ren:
I mean, I had heard of not deer beforehand, and the flatmate, I was talking to him, like, you think that’s a Not Deer? And he’s like, that’s definitely a Not Deer. It was just a, like, cool, cool. That’s fun. He’d lived in the area for a lot longer than me, so he knew that there was like, experiences with weird deer in the area before.

Vic:
So there’s not a taboo about talking about them?

Ren:
It’s the same taboo with talking about, like, any kind of cryptid or strange creatures. You’re going to tell someone a story, and they’ll be like, “yeah, sure you did mate”.

Vic:
But it’s not like one of them ones where if you say the name, it like…

Ren:
No. Obviously, we do have those creatures in the area. I have never seen any. I’ve heard people talk about them, but I think a lot of people talking about them are getting them mixed up with the different Native American Legends, because Native American legends from that area don’t really fit with those kinds of creatures. There are specific Native American legends in the area, one of which I will be happy to talk about later, because one of them I did see, and that one is not a taboo one to talk about. It’s just, oh, how fun, to know that that exists.

Vic:
Was there anything unusual about the night that you saw them outside your house? Was it a full moon? Was it some kind of…

Ren:
It was foggy as hell, so I could not have told you

Vic:
Fair, okay.

Ren:
Again, extreme fog, that’s most often like- you mostly see them in low light visibility conditions, which, if they are predator species would make sense that they’d want concealment. Though again, people have seen them, especially around the Appalachians, they see them all year round.

Vic:
How did the interaction with the Not Deer that night make you feel?

Ren:
Unsettled. Honestly? I mean look, I have lived around enough deer in my life to know what a deer is like. When I lived down in Lafayette, we would get deer that would come down into our drive because we lived in a little house between a bunch of other houses. So there was a long driveway into where I place was, and there’s houses on all sides, basically. And occasionally you get deer that would wander down there and then eat food, and you’d come out in the morning and they’d be basically trapped inside the front garden area, and then they’d run past you and get out. Like, deer are skittish. They, generally speaking, want to fucking avoid you. So to have a deer that looks aggressive and has eyes in directions and places it shouldn’t look at you and then approach you, not a great feeling, that’s the opposite of all the behaviors that deer should be having.

Vic:
Has your interaction with the Not Deer that night had any lasting impact on you or changed the way you behave in the area?

Ren:
I mean, generally speaking, when I was living around that area, it was cool when it’s super foggy out… be more cautious. That’s about it. I mean, stick to bright lit areas, stuff where you’ve got significant visibility. I mean, that just seems like a fair thing to tell anyone to do regardless, but.

Vic:
why do you think that they don’t crop up on things like dash cams more often?

Ren:
Honestly, I don’t know. It’s one of those things of like… Again, they seem to show up in low visibility environments. And I’m willing to bet a lot of times, if someone would show you a dash cam footage of something in low light visibility, someone would say, oh, it’s just that it’s hard to see, and so you’re making stuff up in your mind. I mean, that seems like you know, if that’s the argument for any cryptid that people see, is that, oh, it happened in a time frame where it was hard to see, yada, yada, yada…

Vic:
Fair enough.

Next part: Getting Watched by the Shadow People: A Night in the Presidio