The jury is still out on whether Mountain Monsters is really real, but the show is really entertaining.
“How real is reality television?” is a question that has plagued television fans since Candid Camera first premiered on American Television back in the 1940s.
It is also a question that has plagued many fans of the Appalachian-based cryptid-investigation show, Mountain Monsters.
Mountain Monsters follows the Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings (A.I.M.S) team, as they investigate and attempt to track down the creatures, legends, and various other monsters described in the area’s folklore.
Is Mountain Monsters really real?
Unsurprisingly, the show’s fringe nature has drawn in viewers ranging from skeptics to true believers and has also attracted quite a bit of criticism that it might be faked, staged or scripted in some way (of course, this criticism has only been exasperated by the members of Animal Planets cryptozoology show Finding Bigfoot, who have alleged that Mountain Monsters is fictional and scripted on various social media sites in the past).
However, while the existence of Bigfoot, Wolfman, Grassman, Devil Dogs and other kinds of mountain monsters are still up for debate – one things that viewers on both sides of the fake-real divide seem to agree on, is that Mountain Monsters is some seriously entertaining “reality” television.
Mountain Monsters in a nutshell
Of course, the best way to judge whether or not Mountain Monsters is really real, is to watch the show yourself. All the most important details for this show can be summarized as follows:
| Detail | Description |
| Series premiere | Season 1, episode 1: “Wolfman of Wolfe County” on June 22, 2013 |
| Most recent episode | Season 8, episode 10: “Bigfoot on Camera” on March 13, 2022 |
| Episodes (to date) | 79 |
| Seasons (to date) | 8 |
| Where to watch | Mountain Monsters has aired live on Travel Channel since 2019. The show is also available to stream on a variety of platforms, including Amazon Prime Video. |
The A.I.M.S team insists that the show is real
There truly is no way of verifying whether or not Mountain Monsters is staged or scripted in any way, outside of actually joining the show’s production team.
But what might shock you about the Mountain Monsters history, is the fact that the A.I.M.S. team had reportedly already begun investigating the various mysterious monsters of the Appalachian region – even before the show was greenlit by Destination America.
In fact, according to an interview that “Trapper” John Tice did with Kim Lemmon from Ohio’s Country Journal in 2014, the A.I.M.S. team had been operational since the mid-2000s and initially tried to “fly under the radar”, before deciding to give the show a shot.
This former A.I.M.S. team leader also confirmed during this interview that the show’s stars “have no scripted lines” and that all the entertainment in the show, simply boils down to “the funny stuff that old guys say and do”.
The lack of evidence
While Trapper always maintained that Mountain Monsters is as real as could possibly be (while he was still part of the show) – there is really just no denying that there has been a very obvious lack of real evidence over the course of the show’s eight seasons.
And, outside of the occasional blurry photograph, pixelated video footage, funny feeling or shadowy figure in the distance, the A.I.M.S team has really not found any significant proof for the existence of any of Appalachia’s feared mountain monsters, during any of their investigations.
Does it even really matter?
In the end, the debate over whether or not Mountain Monsters is fake, will likely end up out-lasting the show (especially if it does not return for the rumored season nine).
But, between all the possibly-faked scenes and possible CGI-generated proof – the one thing that is certain, is viewers’ love for the show.
On paper, Mountain Monsters has only drummed up 5.3 out of 10 stars on IMDb. However, by the time that the fourth season finale episode aired in 2016, Mountain Monsters had ranked as Destination America’s most popular telecast ever.
And, while critics of the show are quick to admit that they think pretty much every aspect of the show is faked to some extent, the reviews also include statements, such as
- “Mountain Monsters… awful, yet brilliant?”,
- “Entertaining if nothing else!”
- “This is a great show. Even if it’s real or not.”
- “This show is great entertainment. Surely everyone knows not to take It seriously.”
- and more.
In the end, it does not really matter if the show is real or fake – all that matters is whether it is enjoyable and entertaining to watch – and this decision is all up to you.
