For Halloween this year, I want to share with you a spooky Georgia tale many of you have never heard before — the tale of the Moon-Eyed People. 

Here in our state, there is physical evidence of a long-lost race of beings that today still lives in the legends of the Creek and Cherokee nations. The evidence can be seen with your eyes and felt with your own hands along the ridges that splay out from the mountain tops throughout the Southern Appalachians of North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and even into Alabama.

These ruins are beyond ancient, and according to oral history, were built by a race of people that occupied the high country even before the Cherokee, and with whom the Cherokee and perhaps even the Creek fought an ancient territorial war.

Evidence of this war is still there on the ground where it was fought. Some are reinforced natural rock formations, but others are entirely man-made. The most famous of these can be found within Fort Mountain State Park, where you can see the remains of an 850-foot long stone wall that varies in height from two to six feet that stretches along the top of the ridge.

It is believed they were built in the half-century after Christ walked the earth on the other side of the planet.

But just who built them, and who did the Cherokee and Creek go to war with for possession of the land they occupied? 

Before we discuss that, you need to know that the Cherokee do believe in other-wordly creatures, including things as the Yunwi Tsudi and the Nunnehi. Much like Irish leprechauns and Scottish fairies, while having some human characteristics, these beings are not human and only interact with humans when they choose.

However, according to Cherokee history, the beings these native tribes warred with were very much human. Small and slightly built, wearing long beards (viewed as extremely unusual by Native Americans) with large, almost luminous blue eyes, and pale, bone-white skin. In fact, their skin was so pale they seemed to avoid the brutal southern sun, their light-sensitive eyes working better to allow them to even tend their crops under the light of the moon — hence the name “Moon-Eyed” people.

Eventually, the Moon-Eyed people were defeated by either the Creek or Cherokee when they were exposed one night outside under a full moon. Attacked at their base near the towns of Murphy and Hiawassee, they were driven out of the highlands toward the south and west. Eventually, according to legend, the Moon-Eyed people were forced to live underground, where the relative darkness works to their advantage.

According to legend, it is there in caves across the south they live to this day.

So who were these people? Inexplicably, they may have been some of the first European visitors to our continent.

According to a 16th-century manuscript published by Welsh antiquarian Humphrey Llwyd, a Welshman by the name of Prince Madoc was believed to have sailed from Wales across the Atlantic and landed in what is now believed to be Mobile Bay, Alabama around the year 1171.

Legend has it that upon arriving, Madoc and his crew ventured north and east toward the mountains, but were never heard from again. 

Years later, early explorers discovered a unique tribe of Welsh-speaking Native Americans known as the Mandan, who, with lighter skin and a language reminiscent of Welsh, were believed to be direct descendants of the Madoc expedition.

If, in fact, the Madoc expedition did move from Mobile Bay toward the mountains, there is a distinct possibility they ventured through or at least near the region we call home.