Mountain Monsters Season Six -- The Rise of Skinwalker

We spent two weeks hunting for the Waya Woman, an upright-walking wolf creature. We didn't find her, but we did stumble over an urban legend about a murdered family, resulting in some ghost sightings and the appearance of an old photograph. While the AIMS team is leaving that area behind now, the events still have a direct bearing on tonight's episode, as we enter Boone County, West Virginia to hunt a giant bear called the Silver Giant.

While Huck was in the closet of ghosts, he saw the women whose photograph he found -- the woman who murdered her family. She spoke to him, and he knew the langauge. In English, she was saying she was a "skinwalker," and the only way one can become a skinwalker is to perform a heinous act -- the murder of a family member.

But the Waya woman is gonig to have to wait, because the Silver Giant is on the radar, called such because of the silver streak that goes from his head down his back. He does not, apparently, wear an eyepatch the way he does in the artist's rendering Jeff has created for the guys.

We get an eyewitness account of having seen the Silver Giant, which sets Wild Bill off on a scat hunt. It's apparently another obsession he has. He gets out his magnifying glass like Sherlock Holmes Appalachian cousin, Redneck Holmes, and finds a giant track in the mud. Is it the Silver Giant -- or could it belong to a bigfoot? Wouldn't that be something if the team finally found a bigfoot now that they've given up looking for them?

On the first night investigation, the team finds some marks on a tree. Wild Bill measures them with his hands. "Holy Herbie Hancock, look at them bear claws." Not surprisingly, he had said the same thing earlier at a local Krispy Kreme before filming began for the day.

While they're checking things out, they hear a thump of metal on metal, followed by a bear grunt. They look about and find an overturned metal silo, inside which is a box of whitened cattle bones. Huckleberry officially declares what they're hunting to be a MOUNTAIN MONSTER -- and it's about damned time.

So it's time for Willy and Wild Bill to set about buidling another trap, while Bill wears his rhinestone-handled granny glasses. And out in the woods, the rest of the team finally comes up opon something they can capture -- poop. They scoop it up to bring to Wild Bill for "analysis" later on.

The team returns to the old silo in the daytime, and hear another loud noise. Looking out the other end of the corrugated metal tunnel, they see a man in black (following a gunslinger, perhaps), who disappears quickly into the woods. The cloaked man is new to the team, but he's old to the area. Another eyewitness recounts he came across two of them, two creatures who turned and seemed to glide over a hill. And like most people out in the woods, he recorded strange sounds. He plays it for them, and they hear something that sounds like a bear. And then...

...a tree knock! Yes! We have more classic bigfoot activity!

The trap is built, and Willy tests it, showing just how hair-trigger the thing is. So the next night, it's time to do a regular bigfoot hunt, by knocking on trees. Wild Bill shows off his technique, which involves using dead, decayed limbs that powder upon impact with a tree. Buck shows off his method, thankfully only once, because it involves twerking. Buck twerking. Get that out of your head if you can.

Fortunately, Willy actually knows how to hit a tree with a limb. And he gets a response. So they run back to the silo, and find where the bones were is now littered with the fresh remains of a dead cow -- and the remnants of a deli counter (unless cow guts are already tied into sausage links). Buck calls for the team to see the slaughter, but there's activity at the trap. The bait is gone, but the Interior Decorator of the Woods has gone to Hobby Lobby for more grape vine, and hung another Witch's Disco Ball for them in the trap -- just like happened when the team hunted the Waya Woman.

And then, blood is drawn!

Specifically, Buck's blood. When he steps on a nail. In the woods. He's bleeding out the top of his boot, so it went all the way through. Buck gets driven back to the trap so he can see the big grapevine ball, when the team spots the man in black gliding across the road. Then he disappears, forcing everyone but Buck out of the side-by-side to chase him -- so naturally the man appears behind Buck, scaring him to death before disappearing once more.

The team can't find the man in the cloak, until Jeff gets him on a thermal scope. They give chase after him, and make another Deep Woods Michael's Crafts discovery: apparently the Silver Giant must be a Game of Throne's fan, because he's made a giant circle of wood with a fire illuminating it. It looks like a stick version of the Iron Throne, put together with grapevine. And Huckleberry has seen one of these things before.

It's a skinwalker circle.

And we have our theme for the season. The monster's they've been tasked to hunt, to lead them to the Spearfinger, are all going to be skinwalkers. Near the circle there are also symbols painted in ash on a tree. Jeff recognizes them as Cherokee symbols, but he can't read what it says.

As the credits roll over the next day, Buck gets a phone call from someone to whom he has sent pictures of the symbols. He now knows what the message is, and he will tell the guys...and the rest of us...

...next week.