Raven Mocker

Region/Culture: Cherokee, southern Appalachian region of the present-day United States
Mythos: Native American Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Undead/Cursed Beings
Mythical Attributes: A withered human witch who extends their own life by stealing the unspent years of the sick and dying.
Role in Mythos: The most feared of all Cherokee witches, dreaded by ordinary people and by other witches alike.
Relation to Humans: A Raven Mocker preys exclusively on humans, slipping into the rooms of the sick or dying to take their hearts and add the victim’s remaining years to its own. Only a Cherokee medicine man trained in the right knowledge can see one or drive one off.

The wind comes first, pressed low and traveling, the way a strong wind sounds when it has somewhere to be. Then the cry. It is a raven’s call, but the wrong one for that hour, and not the calm conversational kind a raven gives by day. It is the cry the bird makes mid-dive. A streak of fire passes overhead with sparks trailing behind it like the tail of a comet, and at the cabin below, the family of a sick man hears it and pulls their chairs closer to the bed.

This is how a Raven Mocker travels.

Among the Cherokee, the Raven Mocker, Kâ’lanû Ahkyeli’skï, is the worst kind of witch. Even other witches fear them, and avoid the houses where they have lately been. A Raven Mocker buys time, the most precious thing, with theft. When someone in the village lies dying, the witch comes for the years the dying man would have lived, had he lived. Whatever life is left in the victim is what the witch takes home.

In their daylight form they look like nothing of consequence, like the oldest people in the settlement. Withered, thin, shrivelled to the bone, men and women bent over walking sticks. The shape they take in flight is something else. Arms outstretched in place of wings, body wrapped in fire, sparks scattering behind them as they pass through the air. Only those with the right medicine can see them at all. To everyone else, a Raven Mocker is the noise and the streak in the sky.

The work itself is precise. The witch slips into the room where the dying person lies and frightens the family out, or drives them off into another part of the house, or shrinks down to nothing in a corner where no one looks. While the body still has breath in it, the witch cuts the heart out without opening the chest. The skin closes again. The body shows no wound. When the death finally comes a little later, no one suspects anything beyond the natural ending. The witch carries the heart home, roasts it, eats it, and adds the dead man’s unspent years to its own life.

The lonely cabin tale is the one most often told. A young hunter caught out at nightfall comes upon a small house in the woods and lets himself in to wait out the dark. He starts a fire, hangs his game, and lies down. Late in the night an old man and an old woman come in and pretend not to notice him. They talk in low voices about going to a sick man across the valley, and what they will bring back. A while later the woman roasts something over the coals. In the morning the old man is kind, gives the hunter a strand of beadwork as a parting gift, and warns him to say nothing of what he heard. The hunter takes the beads, walks a mile from the cabin, drops them in a stream, and goes straight to his village to tell what he saw. A week later, men sent from the village find the old man and the old woman dead inside their house. They burn the place down with the bodies in it.

The detail that does the work in that story is the beadwork, the offered gift, and the time it takes for the witches to die. Seven days. That is the rule. A Raven Mocker who is recognized in its true form, by anyone at all, is finished. The recognition itself is the wound. The witch cannot escape it, cannot undo it, cannot kill the one who saw. Within a week the death comes.

This is what made the medicine men of the old Cherokee feared and necessary. Only a medicine man trained in the right knowledge could see a Raven Mocker, and only he could keep one away from a dying relative. The ritual was specific. Four sharpened sticks driven into the ground at the four corners of the house. A pipe filled with Tsâl-agayû’nlï, the Old Tobacco kept for this work alone, wrapped in black cloth. Toward sundown the medicine man would smoke the pipe slowly around the outside of the house, sending the smoke out along each path by which the witch might come. When the Raven Mocker arrived at last, the sharpened stick on that side of the house would tear itself up out of the ground and drop on the witch’s head like an arrow, and the seven-day death would begin. There are names attached to this work. The stories remember one Gûñskäli’skï who hunted Raven Mockers in his day and killed several.

The body of the murdered man, by then, was already in the ground. No wound, no warning, no defense in the moment. The witch took the heart but left the body whole. That is what made the Raven Mocker the dread of every Cherokee household with a sick relative in it, and what made the medicine man’s pipe a thing worth more than gold the night a death came near.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Raven Mocker in Cherokee mythology?

A Raven Mocker is the most feared type of Cherokee witch, a human who extends their own life by stealing years from the sick and dying. The Cherokee name is Kâ’lanû Ahkyeli’skï. Raven Mockers fly at night in fiery form and take the heart of a dying person without leaving a wound on the body.

How does a Raven Mocker steal life?

The Raven Mocker enters the room of someone who is sick or dying, drives the family away, and removes the heart while the body still has breath in it. The skin closes again afterward and the body shows no mark, so the eventual death looks natural. The witch carries the heart home, roasts and eats it, and adds the victim’s unspent years to its own lifespan.

How can you kill a Raven Mocker?

A Raven Mocker dies if it is recognized in its true form. Within seven days of being seen, the witch will be dead, and no power can undo that recognition. A trained Cherokee medicine man can also drive one off and kill it using a pipe of Old Tobacco wrapped in black cloth and four sharpened sticks set into the corners of the house where a sick person lies.

What does a Raven Mocker look like?

By day a Raven Mocker appears as a withered, shrivelled old man or woman, often the oldest-looking person in the village. In flight it takes a fiery shape, with outstretched arms in place of wings and sparks streaming behind. Most people cannot see a Raven Mocker at all; only a medicine man with the right training can perceive one as more than a sound in the sky.

Why is the Raven Mocker called that?

The name comes from the cry the witch makes in flight, which mimics a raven but specifically the sharp call a raven gives mid-dive, not its everyday voice. The Cherokee name Kâ’lanû Ahkyeli’skï refers directly to that mimicked cry. The sound, together with a rushing wind, is the only warning most villagers ever receive that a Raven Mocker is approaching.