Destination America's "Mountain Monsters" series features the AIMS team - a group of West Virginia native sons who go after mysterious creatures that are said to inhabit the remote hills and forests of the Mountain State. And although this is an entertaining show, with a colorful cast, how much monster hunting in reality TV is too much. Or is this show, with its formula reality format, simply too much?

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Did you know that there's a huge flying reptile in Preston County, W.Va.?

The thing is 800 pounds, has a 20- or 30-foot wingspan, and comes with talons six inches long. It has a horrid scream - such an ear-piercing noise that it rivals a locomotive whistle's blast.

According to a team of trappers and hunters, all billed as "West Virginia native sons," who comprise the cast of Destination America's Mountain Monsters, this beast, which according to a graphic regularly flashed across the screen during this particular feature of this creature, appears to be a pterodactyl left over from prehistoric times, and it's been flapping its wings around Preston County, W.Va., for a long time, feeding on both domesticated and wild animals.

"Teddy Roosevelt had it on his list of big game," says Jeff, the white-bearded, massive, mountain man (Jeff would look very much like Santa Claus in a that red Yuletide getup) who serves as the historian and researcher of the crew.

Mountain Monsters follows a strict formula, and in the opening scene of every episode (where the crew is riding to a destination somewhere in the Mountain State, or on rare occasions, in southeastern Ohio), Jeff gives the Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings (AIMS) team cramped inside an SUV a history lesson about the monster they've chosen to track down, as they ride to their latest adventure.

Jeff says there have been "sighting after sighting after sightings" of the Snallygaster in Preston County. There are strange cryptic stars on the barns of this Appalachian, rural, remote area, and the camera pans onto a few of the barns they pass while Jeff informs the crew the strange-looking emblems grace the barns "to keep Snallygasters away."

Jeff goes on to say that the Snallygaster was first discovered in the mid-1700s by German immigrants in the Maryland-West Virginia area, and these new arrivals to this remote region gave the winged monster its name.

The guys, a rough-looking lot, with most appearing to be Civil War soldier lookalikes, quickly meet their first eyewitness, a guy named Bubba, who spends a lot of time in the woods and hills catching coyotes. Bubba tells the crew, where the six men stand within a copse - and with a valley's steep wall reaching up into the horizon in the distance - that he was checking his traps one day for coyotes and he heard a loud shriek that echoed through the hills.

"I saw something take a critter out of a trap. It had an immense wingspan and a long beak. The thing flew and grabbed this coyote in a trap, pulling the trap's stake right out of the ground and it flew up over that mountain. It had an 18- to 20-foot wingspan," Bubba says, pointing to the steep cliff in the distance.

The cast of Mountain Monsters consists of Trapper, the team leader, who does a lot of colorful narration for the show and often sprinkles the dialogue with a few 'choice' words; Buck, the adventurous rookie, who adds a lot of color by 'leading the charge' of night investigations into the creepy unknown; Huckleberry, the crew's security guy -- a massive monster of a mountain man; along with Willy and Wild Bill, the crew's trap builders, who always devise and build a trap in which to catch each monster of every show. Some of the traps they build are so far-fetched, weird, and crazy that every viewer realizes after a while that it's just reality-show theatrics; but some of the traps actually show genius ingenuity. And Willy and Wild Bill are adroit tradesmen, whether they're welding a metal frame together or hammering away at some wooden configuration they're creating to catch some wild, monstrous, Appalachian beast.

There are always two night patrols, where the crew goes out and hunts for beasts. These are big guys, and some are rotund heavyweights. Most of them have bushy wild beards. And they always tote rifles around, pointing them straight ahead while they listen for any little crackle of a branch or wild howls in the darkness of the wilderness. Thermal-imaging cameras catch heat-emitting animals out there in the wild darkness, and although it's quite speculative about whether anything in the hilly woods these mountain men trek is actually a monster, it never gets boring and is great entertainment, if, of course, you like this sort of thing.

With the five brandishing those nasty looking rifles, it's amazing that none of these guys ends up accidentally shooting one of their mates during these nocturnal adventures in the dark woods and the forested and brush-infested steep hills in the night's blackness.

It's formula reality-show stuff, and the same series of events -- different scenes, dissimilar circumstances and varied counties, of course -- always prevail. Along with another monster for every show, of course -- but it's the same formatting pattern in each episode. Eyewitnesses the hunters and trappers talk to show videos of creatures they've captured digitally, or the howls and noises these creatures make that were caught on some kind of recording device. And the five hunters and trappers, circled around the video or recording machine, always jump back in bewilderment and anxiety when they collectively view, or hear, the monster, on whatever kind of electronic device their "eyewitness" is holding in his hands.

Sometimes, at the end of a show, a monster breaks out of the trap, as in the case of the Ohio Grassman, an 11-foot-tall, shaggy haired, 1,200-pound bigfoot that, legend has it, roams throughout rural and remote Perry County, Ohio. In one of two episodes of the Ohio Grassman, Wild Bill and Willie visit Wild Bill's Uncle Lee Roy's junkyard, find a dilapidated old van, and turn the thing into a trap by welding plate steel over its windows, making the thing a snug "bigfoot-catching apparatus." But in the end, after a crazed night in the woods hunting for the Grassman, a large hole is discovered that was torn through the side of the trap by this monster. And the boys are left wondering in awe and histrionic desperation about the creature's incredible strength. Yes, the TV viewer wonders not only if the monsters are made up and fictional, but if the show is, as well.

Is it true or is it just a hoax? Well, a lot of what occurs on Mountain Monsters is as corny and hokey as all get out, but it's great entertainment, that is, if you enjoy watching this sort of thing. The mountain men are all about the business of monster catching and they never give any political, religious or even an athletic opinion of any type. There's a lot of hooting and hollering about seeing a monster in the dark and in the Snallygaster episode, the trappers and hunters end the show inside a cabin deep in the woods with their rifles drawn. The only other inhabitant of the spartan structure is a little bird shivering in the rafter. There's all sorts of commotion going on outside and it sounds as if a herd of buffalo, maybe even a family of African elephants, are trying to break down the cabin's walls. After a few minutes of this cacophonous bedlam, Trapper, Buck, Huckleberry, Jeff, Willy and Wild Bill flee the cabin, running through the woods, with their rifles still pointed straight ahead - and they're all screaming wildly, and running around like crazy people trying to get somewhere. They're frantically trying to get to their vehicle, to jump in and cart them away from these horrors, I guess....

"Man that was luck," Trapper says in the darkness at the close of the show. "All the way down, these things were attacking us," he says of the Snallygaster attack.

"The safety of the team became more important than continuing the hunt. The Snallygasters kicked our asses tonight," Trapper says as the credits roll and the show fades to black.

Every episode sees a different critter of yore and lore, and a different county in West Virginia (or at times, southeastern Ohio Appalachia) featured. One of these episodes is focused around something called a "Cave Creature" of Greenbrier County, W.Va., which looks remarkably a lot like the alien in the movie Alien. This aggressive critter can move around with "stealth and speed," according to Trapper, and is a diabolical monster inhabiting the big network of derelict coal caves around Greenbrier County's underground never-never lands. Another show features the "Bloodless Howler" of Harrison County, W.Va., a nasty thing that the boys claim has killed livestock by slitting the throats of cattle and swine, then sucked down the blood. From Jeff's and Trapper's accounts, this thing's about the size of a lion or tiger. It has the head of a male lion and the body of a very large dog. It's a lean, mean, blood-extracting machine, this much is certain!

Another show features "Hogzilla," a large pig said to be terrorizing Ohio's Hocking Hills area, and at the end of this show, a massive 800-pound swine is caught in the trap that Wild Bill and Willie create. Although the legend has it that "Hogzilla" is actually a few feet longer, about a foot or so taller, and a few hundred pounds heavier, Trapper insists that the AIMS team caught the real "Hogzilla" monster and that the delirious and preposterous way in which folklore is spread accounts for why the actual beast they trapped is a wee bit smaller than the monster of legend.

I sent an email to U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin on July 8, asking him how he felt about Mountain Monsters, letting him know that it wasn't going to be a hard-as-nails hardcopy story, but more of an oddball feature, a colorful account of this very unusual Destination America series. I got no response, however. The previous day in which I sent the email to Sen. Manchin, I also sent an email to the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce in Charleston, asking them if they feel Mountain Monsters has given West Virginia a positive or negative image, along with other questions like "do you think this show is good or bad for business in the Mountain State?" Again, no response. During the same time frame, I sent emails to the West Virginia State Troopers, the Preston County Sheriff's office, along with a few other law enforcement departments in West Virginia, asking these police organizations if they had any experience, or ever took any kind of reports on any of these mountain monsters that the AIMS hunters and trappers are involved in tracking down, and hopefully, catching in one of Wild Bill and Willie's traps. Again, no response whatsoever. I wasn't going to telephone anyone on this list, fearing either the men in blue, or worse, the men in white, may knock on my door and take me away. I was hoping beyond all hope that if nothing else, these officials I queried might just write the whole email experience off to spamming, if they decided not to respond. Luckily for me, neither the guys in blue suits, nor the guys in white scrubs, came calling to force me from my abode and into an institution of some kind.

I even sent emails to the Psychology Department of West Virginia University and Marshall University, West Virginia's two largest institutions of higher learning, asking for a response, but nothing doing -- there was no return of my queries here, either. I wanted to get some kind of response, in psychology terms, of why shows about monsters, folklore, paranormal experiences, and the unexplained and mysterious are so popular and prevalent today. They're all over the cable offerings currently, and have been a staple for a good number of years now.

Although I don't think all the reality shows, and real-life documentaries about forest creatures, ghosts, haunted houses, and sundry other paranormal and strange and mysterious phenomenon fall into the blockbuster category for TV watching, they must do pretty well, all things considered. Why else would cable TV have so many of them gracing the networks?

Many watch them for entertainment value, it's quite apparent, but there's also the concept of the shock and fear factors that come with such shows. In the days of having 500 channels with nothing on, maybe it's a last-ditch alternative to at least try to see something bizarre on the boob tube. A good scare is great as a cheap thrill, costs a lot less than a bottle of Jack Daniels, and some even get high off fear.

Luckily, there are a few explanations from academics about why monsters have always intrigued us, on a few online websites. I fished around the Internet for an answer - by some academic types - and though I'd rather have a real live source, I guess these quotes fit a bit. Enjoy -

In what looks to be a webzine titled Monster Culture, Patricia Donovan writes: "Monster narratives help us share an experience of horror and address our real anxieties, from wars and economic disasters, to insane political situations, climatic ruin and other issues in the news, according to David Schmid, associate professor in the Department of English and author of several books on the "monsters" living among us, both real and imagined. (See: http://www.buffalo.edu/home/feature_story/monster-culture.html.)

"Monster tales tell us the 'truth' about things--evil is afoot, you can't trust what you see, the future is grim, you're going to die. In a narrative, that permits resolution or catharsis," Donovan writes. (See ibid: http://www.buffalo.edu/home/feature_story/monster-culture.html.)

"Schmid says the concept of "monster" has been used in many historical, geographical and ideological contexts to dismiss and demonize that which is considered marginal, deviant and abject," Donovan continues. (See ibid: http://www.buffalo.edu/home/feature_story/monster-culture.html.)

In another essay online titled "The Science of Monsters", Matt Kaplan, a science writer, explains: "At their most basic level, monsters represent fears held by society, fears associated with dangers perceived in the surrounding world. These fears have a powerful evolutionary history by encouraging people to flee instead of fighting suicidal battles." (See: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/07/08/3795976.htm.)

"When ancient hunters encountered a saber-toothed tiger by accident, they ran. When the human ancestor Homo erectus caught angry cave bears by surprise, it ran. When chimpanzees and bonobos, the nearest genetic relatives to modern humans, encounter large predators in the wild, they run," Kaplan writes. (See ibid: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/07/08/3795976.htm.)

Kaplan continues, "While Hollywood heroes have made running away distinctly unpopular on the silver screen, every single actor who has ever portrayed a hero who stood his or her ground against some abominable terror comes from a long genetic lineage of cowards who fled in the face of danger. That is why they are here to act today. If their ancestors had fought against monsters far more powerful than themselves, as Hollywood heroes do all the time, their lineage would have been destroyed by predators long ago. Fear, in short, keeps people alive. But fear can also go too far." (See ibid: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/07/08/3795976.htm.)

"Recent work in animal behavior has revealed something fascinating: There are personality types in animals. Among fish in a single species, there are adventurous individuals, ready and willing to take risks, and there are more cautious and timid individuals, fearful of doing anything that could put them in danger," he adds. (See ibid: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/07/08/3795976.htm.)

As for me, count me in the more timid type. I'll let Trapper, Buck, Huckleberry, Jeff, Willy and Wild Bill be adventurous while I follow their adventures behind a television set. That's adventure enough.

Authors Bio:

Samuel Vargo worked as a full-time reporter and editor for more than 20 years at a number of daily newspapers and business journals. He was also an adjunct English professor at colleges and universities in Ohio, West Virginia, Mississippi and Florida for about a decade. He holds a B.A. in Political Science and an M.A. in English (both degrees were awarded by Youngstown State University).