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The Slant-Eye Giant and the Raven Mocker in Print and Film

Two mythological beings in Cherokee folklore that have a rich tradition in both literature

and film are the Slant-Eyed Giant and the Raven Mocker. The Slant -Eyed Giant is “the lord of

game animals” (Norton, 113), and the Raven Mocker is “of all the Cherokee wizards or witches

the most dreaded… that robs the dying man of life” (Mooney, 401). In recent television shows

in which these beings have been researched, including Mountain Monsters and America

Unearthed, the Slant-Eyed Giant and the Raven Mocker have been associated with bigfoot-type

creatures, although an analysis of the primary sources in which their myths are housed

indicates their original uses do not explicitly link them to “bigfoot.” The endeavor of

deciphering the true history behind a myth is an inherently problematic task, as has recently

exampled through the discovery of the city of Troy, which was long thought to be purely

legend. Similarly, the Slant-Eye Giant is associated with archaeological sites that are researched

on the show America Unearthed which further complicate the authenticity of the legend. In

mythology, there is a clear psychological element, as well astronomical and pseudo-historical

undertones. In the legends of both the Slant-Eye Giant and the Raven Mocker, the stories

center around psychological dramas, such as coming of age stories, beauty and the beast

romances, and the death drive or vampirism. A major similarity between the two myths is the

role of the outsider and the community, as well as the family and the self. This paper attempts

to argue that the folklore of these creatures reveal crucial aspects of the life within and without

the community, and the literature and film depictions of these beings both blur the lines

between history and myth.

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Before a deep expose of the peculiarities of the various depictions in literature and film

of the Slant-Eyed Giant and the Raven Mocker can be furthered, a brief introduction to their

general stories as they are presented in Cherokee folklore is necessary. The story of the Slant-

Eyed Giant, also known as Tsul Kalu, Judaculla, and the misnomer used by Mountain Monsters

the Cherokee Devil, centers not around the Slant-Eyed Giant, but rather his wife. The story

begins with a widow urging her daughter to find “a good hunter for a husband” (Mooney, 338).

Then one night “a stranger” (Mooney, 338) came to court the girl, and she said that she could

only marry a good hunter, and to prove that he was a great hunter he brought them a deer, and

then two dears. This stranger was the Slant-Eyed Giant. The mother was pleased, but wished

that he brought wood, and because he “knew their thoughts” (Mooney, 338), he brought

wood. The Slant-Eyed Giant left every day before the mother could see him because he thought

she would be terrified by how he looks. One day he allowed her to see him, but although she

promised her daughter not to be afraid, she shrieked when she saw that he was “a great giant

with long slanting eyes” (Mooney, 338). This made the Slant-Eye Giant angry, and he said the

mother would never see him again. One day the girl had her period, and the mother through

her blood into the river. The Slant-Eyed Giant went down to the river, and found a worm which

turned into his (and his wives) baby. The girl’s brother wanted to meet him, but he would not

allow it and the new family left to their new home, crossing seven mountains, and making a

stop at a rock where the Slant-Eyed Giant left his seven fingered handprint. The rock is known

today as Judaculla rock. The Slant-Eyed Giant said the brother, and the community could see

him if they fasted, but one man broke the fast and because of that he declared they would

never see him and the game would be his.

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There is much to be extrapolated from this story, and in the book Seven Cherokee Myths

by G. Keith Parker, the author magnificently deconstructs this story from a Jungian perspective.

One aspect the author notes is the importance of the number seven in the text, which is

obviously manifest in the seven hills and the seven fingers, but also in more hidden ways as she

says:

“The story is a powerful drama with seven characters: the widow, the young girl, the husband hero son-in-law, the girl child, the older brother, the second child and the stranger. The number seven is a special number for the Cherokee, who have seven clans and see the number, as do many other cultures, as powerfully symbolic” (Parker, 114).

This possibly reveals an astronomical role in the myth, as the number in mythology often refers

to the seven planets and the seven days of the week, not to mention the seven chakras. If the

role of seven is in reference to planetary movements, or the cycle of the week, then it indicates

the myth is dealing with something fixed and cyclical. The number seven comes up again in the

Raven Mocker myth, as the Raven Mocker is said to die after seven days if it is seen.

Another revealing aspect of this myth derives from the interpersonal relationships in the

text themselves. Like the number seven, the characters in this myth are fairly ubiquitous in the

life of the Cherokee people at the time this myth was written, which further indicates the

archetypal function of this myth. As noted previously, two overarching storylines that come

across in this story are the coming of age story and the beauty and the beast story. In her

psychological deconstruction of this myth, Parker argues that the main dilemma of the story is

“a single mother and her daughter” (Parker, 118). Although the modern film references to this

myth focus on the Slant-Eyed Giant, in the myth the relationship between a single, overbearing

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mother and her coming of age daughter seeking to go out in the world is the real drama, as

Parker says:

“The initial characters include a dominant, widowed mother and her unmarried daughter. There is the absence of a father; one does not know his name or what happened to him. The mother rules, makes decisions and, like a queen in a fairy tale, can represent also those things in society that seem to dominate one’s existence” (Parker, 114).

Parker’s reference to the “queen in a fairy tale” further shows that this myth is rooted in the

same psychological elements of the myths from across the world. Like Cinderella, the daughter

is suppressed by the controlling forces of her mother. Parker goes on to note that in this story,

one of the biggest problems in this mother-daughter relationship is “the absence of the

masculine” (Parker, 114). The daughter has a masculine imbalance, and this imbalance is

rectified through her relationship with the Slant-Eyed Giant as “in this drama the absent figure

is replaced by an archetypal hero as a masculine figure” (Parker, 115). In this story, like in

Cinderella, the masculine imbalance in the relationship between a widowed mother and her

daughter is balanced by the marriage to a hero that fills the void of the missing father.

From the Slant-Eyed Giant’s perspective, his main insecurity, which becomes a driving

force of the family’s drama, is his hideous appearance. The Slant-Eyed Giant at first does not

want to be seen by his mother-in-law because “the sight would frighten her” (Mooney, 338).

The Slant-Eyed Giant is nowhere described explicitly as a bigfoot, but as his name makes clear

his distinguishing features are that he is a giant with slanted eyes. This horrifying appearance

makes him distant, or othered from the group, and as Parker points out “the classic Beauty and

the Beast” setting is presented” (Parker, 119). This is also the same scenario that plays out in

Shakespeare’s Othello, in which Othello’s insecurities derived from his role as a moor in a

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Caucasian society drive him to lunacy. After his mother-in-law is frightened by his appearance,

he leaves and eventually distances himself from the entire community. The Slant-Eyed Giant’s

own perceived inadequacies derived from his difference from others drives him to withdraw

himself from the community.

A last distinguishing feature of the Slant-Eyed Giant myth that is worthy to note is the

rock with claw marks mentioned toward the end. There are conflicting reports that center

around the mythology of how this rock, called Judaculla Rock, obtained the strange markings it

features. Parker says

“one unique and mysterious phenomenon is the Judaculla Rock located on Caney Fork, not so far from Tsunegun’yi as the crow flies… The Cherokee response recorded by Mooney at the end of the nineteenth century and still used today is that these marks are where Tsul Kalu, Judaculla, would jump and land in the valley from high in his mountain land above” (Parker, 121).

This quote would indicate that the mythological explanation for this would be from the Slant-

Eyed Giant leaped onto the rock, but in Mooney’s explanation contrary to what Parker claims,

the text reads: “he followed the trail along the stream into the mountains, and came to the

place where they had rested again, and this time were footprints of two children running all

about, and the footprints can be seen in the rock at that place” (Mooney, 339). This quote is in

reference to the Slant-Eyed Giant’s wife’s brother as he was tracking them. Furthermore, it says

that the footprints are made by two children, not the Slant-Eyed Giant. The fact that two

children are involved complicates the story even further as they had only one child together.

There are clearly some inconsistencies with the Judaculla Rock, but it does seem to have some

tie to the legend of the Slant-Eye Giant.

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The legend of the Raven Mocker, as it is recounted in Mooney’s Myths of the Cherokee,

a staple in Cherokee lore, is not so much a story as is the case of the Slant-Eye Giant, but rather

a description of what the Raven Mocker is, and how to defend against it. Myths of the Cherokee

does, however, provide an accompanying story. As noted previously, the defining characteristic

of the Raven Mocker is that they are “the most dreaded… wizards or witches… that robs the

dying man of life” (Mooney, 401). The Raven Mocker takes the lives of dying people, and uses

their life to add a life to their own. The Raven Mocker “flies through the air in fiery shape” and

“makes the cry like a raven when it “dives” in the air. It can be invisible, but a person who has

taken the correct “medicine” can identify the Raven Mocker, (Mooney, 402). If the Raven

Mocker is seen, it must die in seven days.

The accompanying story provided in Myths of the Cherokee details the account of a

young man’s encounter with the Raven Mocker. In the story, a man takes shelter in a house in

the woods as the sun goes down. Soon, he hears two raven cries, and two people, an old man

and an old woman, appear in the house, unaware of the man who is sleeping in the corner.

Later, the people, who are Raven Mockers, realize that the man is there, and the woman begins

to cry. The young man leaves and tells the people in his village that he saw Raven Mockers, and

the townsfolk go to kill them. They arrive seven days after the encounter, and find the Raven

Mockers dead.

The overarching features and the accompanying story provide a thorough basis through

which the Raven Mocker can be analyzed. The Raven Mocker is reported as being “of either

sex” (Mooney, 401), and in the story there is an old man and an old woman, both of which are

Raven Mockers. They have the ability to become invisible, but because they were unaware that

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they were in the presence of others, they were physically manifest, and because they were

seen they died. Like in the story of the Slant-Eyed Giant, the number seven occurs again. This

time seven days is the length the Raven Mocker takes to die after it is seen, the length of a

week. The sun plays a role in the story, as it is the driving factor that pushes the young man to

seek refuge in the house of the Raven Mockers. In Cherokee Myths and Legends: Thirty Tales

Retold, the Raven Mocker is described as “assuming the form of a star falling from a cloudless

heaven” (Norton, 102). It seems as though the Raven Mocker represents something celestial,

something astronomical. Perhaps the story of the Raven Mocker has something to do with the

sun and the week. The role of the Raven Mockers being described as an old man and an old

woman is important as well, as Mooney explains that “they usually look withered and old,

because they have added so many lives to their own” (Mooney, 401). It was evident that the

story of the Slant-Eyed Giant incorporated elements of the archetypes of Cinderella and the

Beauty and the Beast, and the fact that Raven Mockers steal lives to add to their own indicates

that perhaps this story involves a form of vampirism, as the Raven Mockers feed on others to

live. What is extremely curious in this story is that in the associated legends of the Raven

Mocker, there is no mention of it being a bigfoot creature of any regard. In the legend, the

Raven Mocker is reported as taking the form of old men and women, a raven, a shooting scar,

and invisibility, but there is never a mention of it taking any form near that of a bigfoot.

With a firm grasp of the myths surrounding the Slant-Eyed Giant and the Raven Mocker,

we may now move on to how they are represented in modern film adaptations through

Mountain Monsters and America Unearthed. The show Mountain Monsters centers around a

group of men in an organization they call the Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings,

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(A.I.M.S.). The AIMS team scours the Appalachian Mountains searching for mysterious, often

mythological creatures. They have made it their goal to prove the existence of bigfoot. In

regards to their mission statement, their website states

“some believe that the Appalachian Region is incredibly unique because it offers the perfect conditions for mysterious creatures. It is the window from our dimension into another dimension where these creatures exist. Whatever the explanation, there are regular sightings of these creatures and it is the job of the AIMS team to investigate these reports and help determine if they are real or if there is another explanation” (aimsa.org).

This statement from their website is mysterious, particularly in the claim that the Appalachians

are a window into another dimension. One of this paper’s arguments is that the portrayal of

these creatures on film and literature blur the lines between history and myth, between fiction

and reality, and this is exemplary of that argument. Are we to believe that the Slant-Eyed Giant

has the ability to read minds, and that the Raven Mocker is a witch? As the explanation of the

Mountain Monsters with these beings to follow will show, either the show is a farce, or perhaps

they are truly having inexplicable encounters. The distance of the viewer from the actual

events, as it is in film and literature, makes a true understanding of the entirety of the myths

almost ungraspable.

When the AIMS team goes on their search for the Slant-Eye Giant, they claim that they

are searching for “a legendary bigfoot, the Cherokee Devil” (Mountain Monsters: Bigfoot of

Ashe County). This statement is potentially duplicitly fallacious. First, the basis of this creature

being a bigfoot is unclear in the original folklore as the it is described as a giant, not a bigfoot.

Second, the term Cherokee Devil is a misnomer in itself. Parker points out that

“the historical naming of Judaculla’s judgement seat next to Pilot Knob as Devil’s Courthouse by sensational journalists and the by the National Park Service was not

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universally accepted by locals including the Cherokee. There was no Satan in their thinking, although there were evil forms or forces, expressed in other ways” (Parker, 136).

This quote indicates that the name Cherokee Devil is slightly derogatory, as its true name,

Judaculla, is a reference to its eyes and its size. It has nothing to do with the devil.

The encounters of the AIMS team in their two-part episode reads like the stories

involved with the Slant-Eye Giant, and the episodes will be recapped and analyzed to determine

their fidelity to the original texts in Myths of the Cherokee. In Mountain Monsters, the AIMS

team goes to Ashe County, North Carolina to investigate recent sightings of what is thought to

be the Slant-Eye Giant. The first eye witness they talk to reports seeing a tall creature with

glowing eyes. After she saw the eyes, her mind went completely blank, and she regained

consciousness several miles away, hours later. When the group goes on their first night hunt,

one of the group members goes off on his own, and he goes missing. When the rest of the AIMS

team find the rogue man, he is in a trancelike state in a shed. He later says that he saw the

Slant-Eyed Giant, that he was grabbed by him, and told to stay in the shed. He also says that the

being controlled his mind, and that he had no control over his actions.

Later on, several of the other group members search for the Slant-Eye Giant in daylight,

and one of the men says that he does not feel right. Moments later, the same men collapses

and falls down a hill. He too seems to be in an odd, trance like state, and at the bottom of his

fall they find a totem pole depicting the story of the Slant-Eyed Giant. The group members go to

meet up with other AIMS team members, and while they are driving the second man who

seemingly had his mind controlled, named Huckleberry, is clearly disheveled and claims he

knows who is going to die. When they meet up with the other team members, they leave

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Huckleberry alone in the car, and when they return to the car, he is missing. They search

through the forests and later find Huckleberry naked, in a trancelike state, holding the totem

pole. They dunk him in the lake he is next to, and he regains consciousness, claiming to not

know what happened to him. In this same sequence of events, the first man who saw the Slant-

Eyed Giant, Buck, went to the shed mentioned earlier, and reports seeing “a little Indian girl.”

That is where the first episode leaves off, and in the second episode they go back to

Ashe County. The AIMS team meets up with a bigfoot researcher who tells them that in the last

several years, 12 people have had encountered the Slant-Eye Giant, and of those 12, seven

have gone missing, never to be seen again. Furthermore, this bigfoot researcher claims that “in

Cherokee legend, the only way to get him to manifest out of the spirit form into a physical form

is to have somebody by themselves” (Mountain Monsters: AIMS Erupts). The group realizes that

they have to use one of themselves to capture the Slant-Eye Giant in its physical form.

Later on that night, the two men who encountered the Slant-Eye Giant, Huckleberry and

Buck, venture back to the shed where Buck was found, unbeknownst to the rest of the team.

On the walls of the shed, they find the words “help” and “leave.” Buck claims that he hears a

whisper, and that he hears the word that phonetically juice-key-naw, and that this word is the

Cherokee word for “devil.” The next day, the rest of the team goes to the shed again, and they

find it camouflaged in tall grass and leaves that had been planted in the ground. They return to

the shed one last time, and while they are there a strange man approaches them, and leaves

without them noticing.

They devise a plan to trap the Slant-Eyed Giant in a bridge trap, but Buck declares it will

not work because the Slant-Eye Giant knows their thoughts, and will not come because he

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knows it is a trap and he will not manifest himself to them all. In their final night hunt, Buck

decides to go off on his own and to meet the Slant-Eye Giant by himself on the bridge trap, in

hopes to catch him in his physical form. He first goes to the shed, where he hears a voice again,

which he interprets to be the little girl. He claims the girl said to him a word which sounds

phonetically as “ada-nas-di,” which he says is Cherokee for leave. Buck goes down to the trap,

and seemingly encounters the Slant-Eye Giant. In the next scene, he explains that the Slant-Eye

Giant grabbed him again, at which point he said the Cherokee word for leave, at which point

the Slant-Eye Giant did let go of him and leave.

In both the film and literature depictions of these beings, the ultimate truth behind the

legend is bled from the text because of the media it is presented in. In Mountain Monsters, this

is due to the fact that the viewer cannot know for sure if these men or actors, or if they are

having actual encounters. It is unclear how much, if any, of the show is staged. They present the

show under no pretenses that it is staged, but their encounters are so extraordinary that they

raise an eyebrow. In the original folklore of the Slant-Eye Giant and in Mountain Monsters,

there are distinct similarities, and there are also distinct differences. The AIMS team are clearly

familiar with the associated folklore, but the differences in their encounters further deepens

the mystery of what, if any, historical events the Slant-Eyed Giant may be associated with.

Other than the difference between the names Slant-Eye Giant and the Cherokee Devil,

as noted earlier, there are many other points of analysis between the show’s depiction and the

literary depiction. One noticeable similarity is that on the show, they claim that the Slant-Eye

Giant will only manifest to a single person. In the legend, the Slant-Eye Giant approaches his

wife after being reproached by his mother-in-law, and says “it seems you are alone” (Mooney,

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339). After the mother-in-law is horrified by how he looks, the Slant-Eye giant only appears to

people outside of his family by himself, and the community is disallowed the opportunity to see

him at the onset as he declares “now you can never see me” (Mooney, 341). There seems to be

credence, or at least textual fidelity, in the claim that the Slant-Eye Giant will only appear to

people when they are alone, as all 13 (including Buck) of the people who had manifest

encounters with the being were alone.

One major difference between the film and the folklore is that the wife and the mother-

in-law are entirely absent from the film. In the original folklore, the real center of the story is

the wife, and her relationship with her mother. When the AIMS team investigates this story,

they focus solely on the male in the group, the Slant-Eye Giant. They do, however, seemingly

encounter the child perhaps, as Buck reports seeing a little Indian girl, and that she told him the

password to get the Slant-Eyed Giant to leave. In this instance, the focus of the story shifts

away from the wife and her new husband to the husband and the child, with the wife missing

and no explanations given about her whereabouts.

One final vexing similarity between Mountain Monsters and the original folklore is the

notion that the Slant-Eye Giant has the ability to read people’s thoughts. The first eyewitness

they meet with echoes this as she says she saw what may be interpreted as the Slant-Eye Giant,

and lost her awareness and woke up hours later. Similarly, Buck and Huckleberry seemingly are

induced into trance like states by the Slant-Eye Giant. One must view the footage for

themselves to witness how irregular these men acted in this state. Again, they are either

actually having these encounters, or they are acting. The viewer, ultimately does not know

because of their spatio-temporal distance from the events themselves. In the end, Buck decides

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to try and encounter the Slant-Eye Giant alone, as he is convinced it can read their minds,

knows their plan to trap him, and will alone manifest to one of them alone. When Buck has his

final encounter, the camera cuts short when he seems to be grabbed by the Slant-Eye Giant, so

the viewer is left further in the dark to what actually happens.

In America Unearthed, the host Scott Wolter, a forensic geologist, travels to North

Carolina to investigate the Judaculla Rock. Wolter travels to Sylva, North Carolina where there is

a massive boulder with many strange markings engraved in it. In Cherokee Myths and Legends,

the author details the precise location of Judaculla Rock as she says:

“In the Great Balsam Mountains lies Cold Mountain, a summit between the east and west forks of the Pigeon River in Haywood County, North Carolina. The mountain today is part of Pigsah National Forest and is about fifteen miles southeast of Waynesville and about thirty-five southwest of Asheville. A rock at its base contains impressions that, according to the Cherokee, are the foot-prints made long ago by the children of Judaculla when he and his wife stopped to rest before arriving at his townhouse within Tanasee Bald” (Norton, 117).

Based on this quote, it would seem that the the rock Wolter is investigating matches the

location of the rock as it is reputed in folklore. The town of Asheville is mentioned, and Ashe

County is where the AIMS team was, so there is geographic symmetry.

Wolter visits the rock, which is a massive boulder standing alone in an open field at the

base of several mountains. There is a walkway and viewing ledge to look at the rock, with a

panel explaining the legend of Judaculla. What is striking about the rock is that there are not

just a few markings that look like feet, instead there are many, possibly hundreds, of markings

strewn throughout the rock. He notes that there is a notable seven fingered hand print as

legend suggests, but it at first strikes him that it may be a map, with a large line dissecting near

the middle that could possibly represent a river nearby, with other points protruding from that

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being other rivers and important sites. Wolter asserts that the boulder is soapstone and that

the markings seem to be man-made, and he goes further to suggest that the rock may also be a

star map as he says

“when I look at this, I see a star map, and the primary thing that tells me this is that there are hundreds of different sized holes here… the other thing is that we have what look like depictions of animals, or scenes or even human figures, and those could be constellations” (America Unearthed: The Appalachian Giant).

It is unclear if Wolter is correct in either of his theories, or both, but what is clear about the

Judaculla Rock is that there is some sort of intricate, purposeful design encoded within it, not

merely some haphazard footprints from a giant.

Just as an analysis of the Mountain Monsters encounter with the Slant-Eye Giant reads

similarly to the accompanying stories of the creature from folklore, the same holds true for the

AIMS investigation of the Raven Mocker. To investigate the Raven Mocker, the AIMS team went

to Lee County, Virginia. In their first night investigation, they hear a strange humming and an

eerie laugh that sounded like a woman. They also reported to find footprints that looked to

belong to a woman. Later, they heard a loud tree knock and a masculine scream. A tree knock is

reputed to be bigfoot behavior, but the yell sounded like it came from a man. Towards the end

of the night investigation, they come across a series of pentagonal structures hanging from the

trees which one team member remarked “looked like witchcraft” (Mountain Monsters: Raven

Mocker).

On their next night hunt, Huckeberry reports being touched twice, and when he turns

around no one is there. Later on, Huckleberry believes he hears Buck call for him to help him,

but then Buck walks up from behind him. Buck’s voice seemed to be coming from a different

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direction, and Buck claims he did not say Huckleberry’s name. They venture on to discover a

foot trap in the woods where the phantom voice was coming from, and it seems something was

trying to lure them into the trap.

At the end of the episode, they come upon a tee-pee type structure, again a reputed

marker of bigfoot behavior. One of the team members, Jeff, begins to scream and claims that a

face that looked like it had a fireball in his mouth jumped out in front of him. He says that he

may have caught it on his thermal camera, and they upload his camera to a computer to reveal

a video of a hooded figure that opens bellows a horrific screech. The first part of this two-part

episode concludes, and the AIMS members declare that they were searching for was

“supernatural” (Raven Mocker).

In the second episode, the AIMS team returns to Lee County. In the episode, they decide

that the Cherokee folklore details how to combat the Raven Mocker, and as each of the AIMS

members have Native heritage, they must embrace their Native ways to combat the Raven

Mocker. To do so, they perform a ritual in which they smoke tobacco, and wait in tents for the

Raven Mocker to present itself. Over the course of the night, Jeff, and old team member,

delivers touching soliloquies to the camera detailing his bigfoot quest. He calls for the Raven

Mocker to come to him, and he says he can feel the Raven Mocker’s presence. The viewer then

sees a dream catcher in the hut pop out towards Jeff, which startles him. The hut then caves in,

and the camera, which is being directed by a cameraman that is stuck from the cave in, shows

Jeff walking off with a cloaked figure. The rest of the team then catches up with the

cameraman, who explains what happened, and they find Jeff. Jeff says that the Raven Mocker

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took him off, and showed him how we would die, though he would not detail exactly what this

vision was. With this ended the AIMS investigation of the Raven Mocker.

Like the Slant-Eye Giant, there are certain similarities and differences between the

Raven Mocker in folklore and in Mountain Monsters. Once again, the AIMS team believes they

are investigating a bigfoot type creature when the folklore explicitly says that the Raven Mocker

is a witch or a wizard. Through their sightings, especially through the video of the strange

cloaked figure, it would certainly seem that whatever they were encountering was not a

bigfoot. This calls into question once again the key aspect of the depiction of these beings, as

the viewer is left completely unaware to if the video they present is doctored or if it is real. The

incredible nature of the encounter makes the sighting incredibly ambiguous from a removed

perspective.

An aspect of the Mountain Monsters investigation that is left completely unaccounted

for is the fact that in folklore, it is reported that if the Raven Mocker is seen, it will die in seven

days. Jeff actually sees the Raven Mocker twice, and the time interval of the sightings is not

explained. In the second episode, Jeff does take the necessary steps to view and conquer the

Raven Mocker, Jeff smokes tobacco, which is what they believed to be the medicine of folklore

it seems. Mountain Monsters does not mention this aspect of the legend, but according to the

folklore Jeff’s sighting should mean the death of that Raven Mocker. Furthermore, the Raven

Mocker is said to rob the old man of life, but instead of killing Jeff, Jeff says that he shows him

how he is going to die. There are many similarities between Mountain Monsters and the

Cherokee folklore of the Raven Mocker, but the truth of what they texts are actually detailing

remain altogether unattainable.

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In Cherokee folklore and modern television shows, the Slant-Eye Giant and the Raven

Mocker have a noted prevalence. The main similarity that links these types of media is that the

distinction between real and fiction are blurred because of the distance the viewer has from the

actual events that are detailed. In mythology, there are vast legends associated with these

beings that are backed up by vast cultural, geographic, and archaeological evidence. In the

myths however, there is a dumbfounding array of history, psychology and astronomical

influences that confuse what the ultimate truth behind the texts reveal. In Mountain Monsters,

the AIMS team focuses purely on capturing these creatures as if they are physical beings, in the

process of which they ignore aspects of the original folklore. There are similarities between the

two media, but the ulterior motive of the AIMS team, if there is any, remains veiled. In America

Unearthed, Scott Wolter demonstrates that the Judaculla Rock is home to what seems to be

sort of man-made map, not merely the indentations of giants from years ago. In the stories of

the Slant-Eye Giant and the Raven Mocker, there are aspects of familiar fairy tales such as

Cinderella, the Beauty and the Beast, and vampires. In the end, the truth behind the Slant-Eye

Giant and the Raven Mocker may only be as difficult to discern as their depiction in literature

and film itself.

Works Cited

Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. Print.

Mountain Monsters. "Mountain Monsters AIMS Erupts." YouTube. YouTube, 10 Apr. 2016.

Web. 03 May 2016.

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Daly

Mountain Monsters. "Mountain Monsters Bigfoot of Ashe County." YouTube. YouTube, 10 Apr.

2016. Web. 03 May 2016.

Mountain Monsters. "Mountain Monsters Raven Mocker." YouTube. YouTube, 17 Apr. 2016.

Web. 03 May 2016.

Mountain Monsters. "Mountain Monsters Raven Mocker: Back to Trapper." YouTube. YouTube,

16 Apr. 2016. Web. 03 May 2016.

Norton, Terry L. Cherokee Myths and Legends: Thirty Tales Retold. Jefferson, North Carolina:

McFarland & Company, 2014. Print.

Parker, G. Keith. Seven Cherokee Myths. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland &

Company, 2006. Print. unique because it offers the perfect co

“The Appalachian Giant.” America Unearthed. History Channel. 3 May 2016. Television. . It is

the window from our dimension into another dimension

where these creatures exist.  Whatever the explanation, there

are regular sightings of these creatures and it is the job of

the AIMS to investigate these reports and help determine if

they are

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