261. The Moon Eyed People of the Appalachia

We’ve received our very first piece of haunted mail and it’s being shipped straight to Sabrina! Until then, we’re entertaining ourselves with tales of a lost colony of people deep within the Appalachian mountains. The Moon Eyed People. Their existence pre-dating many of the people who’ve since called this area home. Are these nocturnal cave dwellers an ancient people? A colony of aliens? Or perhaps a group of weary goblins?
Have ghost stories of your own? E-mail them to us at [e-mail]
Edited and produced by Jaimi Ryan, original music by Arms Akimbo!

[@miladyproductions]

You guys!!! I binged Hellier after your last episode and am hooked! Make Paranormal Great Again! 😎 love their approach along with yours refreshing!

[@kryztastrophe]

you guys SERIOUSLY HAVE TO collab with Let’s Get Haunted 😭 they covered this topic and many other similar ones too!!! and there’s soooo many similarities between you guys!!! i’m beggggging!!

[@20Eyes1974]

Really liking your podcast! You two are covering good subjects and not really the same old same old. Plus easy on the eyes! Keep it up, ladies!💯🔥

[@rugguer]

Hellier was awesome, I also love to watch Resident Alien, so funny. Thanks again for being the bright light with spooky happenings. Scary on.

[@switched178]

I have been listening for 2 years and this is the first first time I learn that encounters are on Thursday and reg. eps. are on Sunday. I listen in order and purposely don't check media😅

[@EmilyLMcArthur]

Hi, I'm a genealogist and my ancestors were the first white pioneers to Appalachian Virginia. Stories about witches in these mountains date to the 1700s, its a very big part of the folklore. They were believed to curse farm animals

[@allenamercks4056]

Love you guys keep up the good work as usual ❤

[@evelyncr09]

Hey there! I sent a DM on Insta with some pics of the wall and whatnot at Fort Mountain when I went a few yrs ago it was so cool! I had no idea about the moon eyed ppl before that! 😮

[@barbarabell8674]

This is giving me green children of wolfpit vibes.

[@northside5880]

I like Corrine’s turtleneck sweater

[@staroflight2982]

I don't know why after listening to this videos and you mentioned the haunted objects you got from your mail. I keep getting bad vibes about it and not really good ones since you got nightmares from it.

[@FallFlower_24]

Moon eyed, like crescent shaped? could they have been from present day Asia? Or they could have big round eyes, so that could be any ethnicity or alien.

[@isarose3136]

I have some things to add here. This particular subject is something I've had a conversation with Greg about, and he said he won't go down this path because it can be seen as cultural appropriation and it's not the place of white folks to tell Native stories. Mythology in America can be super tricky because it includes so many different cultures, many of which had everything taken from them by white people. I appreciate you using the word white-washing, because that's what this story is. This story has no evidence of where or when it came from because it was a myth perpetuated by white people, starting with Benjamin Smith Barton's book in 1797 (before the Cherokees were dispossessed) to de-legitimize Native people being on that land. John Haywood's 1823 The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, writes of "white people, who were extirpated in part, and in part were driven from" KY/TN. He is literally saying the Cherokee drove out the original white people. James Mooney (as much as he is revered for writing down the "Myths of the Cherokee") seems to be perpetuating and building on the myth by citing accounts from Cherokee individuals (unnamed), of a people..."one of these describes them as a 'very small people, perfectly white'". So Mooney is deepening the myth and flat out calling these mythical, dispossessed, diminutive original people "perfectly" white. There is no evidence because these are settler myths, that were also perpetuated later as tales that romanticize the very people they removed or slaughtered. It happened in Ireland, in the UK with the Romani, and in the Highlands with the Scots. If white people could say "when the Cherokees got here there were already other white people" it gives those white people grounds for "Manifest Destiny" (taking what they want). Note that this story is always framed and told by white people as "a myth or legend of the Cherokee." The Cherokee have their own words for certain ethereal/supernatural beings. That is heavy evidence that this is not a Cherokee story. AFAIK (I've studied the language and have Cherokee ancestors but did not grow up in the culture) they do not claim that myth nor have a word for those people. That statue is in a County museum, not in THE Cherokee museum. But maybe it was the Adena..I heard somewhere once that due to the heat in the South they worked their fields at night when it was cooler, under a full moon. That idea at least has a base in some sort of potential cultural fact. But it's also quite possible (and I had heard this from a tour guide at one of the mounds in GA) that the Cherokee/Creek did not know who had left the mounds, that those people were gone before they got there. Here's a link to a reddit post by someone explaining it better than I am... www.reddit.com/r/Cryptozoology/comments/12fvg14/comment/jfj5k1g/?context=3 Many Native cultures have stories about twins, which is much more likely what that statue is, and that statue was found "allegedly" in 1841 by a white settler. There is not even good information on where or when it was found, let alone who made it. It is also worth noting that the Mormons did the same thing in the west as they colonized Utah. The Book of Mormon literally says God cursed Lamanites (who Joseph Smith claimed were Native Americans) with dark skin so that they would be unattractive to the "white and delightsome" people. It was 1978 before they changed their policies towards people with brown skin. I said just recently that it would be fun to do a college thesis on the "Fake Mythology of America", because there is so much of it, and it at least in large part has a very ugly history behind it. I urge careful consideration in the future when choosing subjects that land you in the "It's said to be a myth of a Native tribe" because this perpetuates the further commodification and consumption of Native culture for and by white people.

[@MrChristianDT]

As someone whose specialty is more centered on Ohio, likely not Adena. There is a fairly strong concensus in the historical/ archaeological community here that the Adena just evolved directly into being the Hopewells, then the Fort Ancients. Only real dissent is whether they believe the Fort Ancients are the direct ancestors of the Shawnee, or whether they were Siouan. If Siouan, they pretty much got brutalized for some unknown reason by everyone around them in the 1600s, to the point where only a single, tiny group of them found living in Arkansas by the French were all that was left- the Mosopelea, who merged with the Tunica & Biloxi until there was nothing left of them by around the Civil War era. Iroquois do say that the Erie chased out a group of Mound Builders when they settled where they were, but that only applied to western PA & northeastern Ohio, which has an entirely unique mound building tradition. It's counted as Hopewell, but completely different styles from all other known burial mounds in the region. In fact, archaeology showed the Erie weren't even as big of a nation as they were originally reported by French explorers & about half of the territory said to belong to them belonged to a completely different, likely Algonquian speaking people we call the Whittlesey. That, & we could likely work out who the descendants of those particular Mound Builders were pretty easily- their mounds bear the most resplemblance to those excavated on Saponi territory in Virginia, who themselves claim to have come from Ohio a few hundred years before white contact. And, the traditional Saponi type dwelling is pretty much identical to those of the Monongahela Culture, a small group who lived opposite the Ohio River from the Erie when whites got here, who were also likely a Siouan people.

[@alexandraromero11]

I loveee HARRY POTTER ❤