Why Oh Why, Waya Woman? Mountain Monsters Begins The Quest for the Spearfinger

The Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings (AIMS) team is back in West Virginia, taking the first step in their quest to unravel the mystery of the creature known as the Spearfinger.

Having been given a mission of sorts by a mysterious person who kidnapped Buck last season, the AIMS team must go on the hunt for a handful of strange cryptids, which will ultimately lead them to the big bad monster. They start with the Waya Woman, aka Queen of the Blood Wolves. Unlike the Woman of the Woods, the Waya Woman is a beast, a 7-foot-tall wolf creature that walks on its hind legs.

The team’s first stop is a corn farm where there has been strange activity; some animal has been out in the field screaming like a woman. Could it be the Waya Woman? Ancient astronaut theorists say... oh... sorry, wrong show. The boys go out to investigate and Buck tries a coyote call. And he gets a response, which shocks them.

I have several follow-up questions. One, who hunts coyotes that you would need to have a coyote call? Two, why does Buck carry a coyote call with him? And finally, I’m no zoologist, but wouldn’t it make sense that whatever answered a coyote call might be...oh, I don’t know... a coyote?

Then comes the first spring-loaded-cat moment of the episode, which sends our brave lads running for their lives through the corn — and straight into a corn-alter monument adorned with bloody dead chickens. So the Waya Woman doesn’t just eat raw meat, she likes to first set out an attractive meal display. She’s not a savage, you know.

As the team prepares for its first night investigation, Wild Bill reveals a t-shirt showing a cougar with his face on it. Cool Cat Cougar is the logo, and apparently Wild Bill’s high school mascot was a cougar — and “Cool Cat” was his high school nickname. I wonder if Bill’s gonna get bit by a lycanthropic cougar (off camera, of course) and have the team hunting a cougar with Bill’s head? But I digress...

The team then visits another nearby farm that has had reports of a woman screaming in the corn field like she’s being murdered. (First thoughts: Maybe a woman IS being murdered in your corn field? Did you check? Only this farmer also found a small crop  circle, around some sort of corn altar that “didn’t look like it was built by humans.” So was it a giant bird’s nest? A dam built by a hydrophobic beaver? No, when the farmer sees Buck’s photo, he saw something identical to that structure.

This monster hunt then finds itself becoming part ghost story, when the team comes across an old house. The original house had been burnt to the ground, killing everyone inside it. The new house had been built on the original foundation, and ever since that time it has been a scene of mysterious unsolved deaths. (Note: It’s considered bad luck to build a house on the foundation of a previous one. That’s just asking for your television to suck you in.)

Investigating the inside of the house, Buck notices one of the larger foundation stones has something carved on it: a triangle with a circle inside. He thinks it’s a Masonic mark, but Jeff disagrees. For one thing, it’s on the stone crooked. Rather than being the result of erosion of the stone, the crooked mark is meant to mean something. Using satellite telemetry and geospatial programming (I’m just joshing you, he winged it), Buck deduces that two points of the triangle make a bee-line for the two altars they found in the corn. Which is convenient, because the stone doesn’t look like it’s been moved at all since the house was built — they wanted it out in the middle of the floor like that — and using a convenient  spool of miles and miles of baling twine that was sitting there, they have Jeff hold one end to the point of the triangle and roll it straight out to the altar — where the animals they saw earlier. Guess they missed dinner.

After having checked two points and verifying they go where they guessed, Buck says they need to check out where that third point goes — after they go check on the trap Willy and Wild Bill are making. (Here’s a thought: Why not do both—find that third location and put the trap there?)

Wild Bill and Willy have built a cattle trap out of four-by-fours, and after testing that it works they bait it with raw chicken. Then it’s time to split up, with Willy and Bill investigating the house while the rest of the team goes tromping through the corn. Willy and Bill think they see something in the house, but there are no tracks. Then when they go in, they find the sandstone (wait... sandstone? What moron builds a foundation out of sandstone? Probably one who can’t put a level Masonic mark on it.)  They radio Buck immediately, because that mark now has blood on it — right precisely on that third corner and trickling off the edge.

Buck makes a command decision that they have to find the third point now, but they get distracted by noises out in the corn, something that took off running. They give chase and find yet another monument, this one decorated with Christmas rabbits drizzled with raspberry sauce. Buck says they must be at the third point. But then he realizes it is not — which means that the other two must have been coincidences, and that the mark means nothing. 

Then the team hears a wolf, and they all go running to the trap. Surely this time, after all these years of having expert trappers on the team, they’ll have caught something. But, alas, the trap has been tripped, the bate has been taken, and the four-by-fours have been bent by a powerful force. They underestimated the strength of the Waya Woman, and she escaped. But not to fear — Buck says they will continue going after the Waya Woman so they can get closer to solving the mystery of... Spearfinger!