Ghostly image spotted rustling in brush is a ‘very uncommon’ creature, SC experts say
A “very uncommon” ghostly creature was caught on camera wandering outside of a South Carolina home.
The video of the mysterious creature was captured by Kristina Frost, who told McClatchy News she took it from the balcony of her home in Mt. Pleasant in the early-morning hours of Dec. 9.
The video shows the animal, a rare albino deer, moving through the tall brush like a pale specter on the other side of a pond in the family’s front yard.
“I’m used to seeing deer a lot but I’m pretty sure if I walked outside to let the dogs out in the middle of the night or something and saw that thing I would definitely be taken aback,” Frost said.
But she says she was expecting to see the deer this time.
Her husband had seen it a few weeks earlier, but she missed it. Then, on Dec. 9, he saw the deer again when he was leaving for work and sent Frost a picture. But she said she thought it would run off before she had the chance to see it.
“I jumped up and ran out there, and there it was,” she said.
She had seen similar deer before but not one that was all white and never one in the area she lives in now, she said.
The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources shared Frost’s video on its Facebook page on Tuesday along with some information about it.
Albino deer have an all-white coat and pink eyes and hooves and are “very uncommon,” according to the department. These deer have a “genetic issue” in which they completely lack melanin, a dark skin pigment, according to the department.
Albinism occurs in only about one in 30,000 deer, according to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.
Another rare type of deer are melanistic deer, which are the opposite of albino, the department says. These deer are “virtually black” due to having higher levels of melanin.
A more common “genetic color anomaly” in deer is piebaldism, which is when white shows up on the deer more than normal or when the deer is “almost completely white,” the department says.
“It is likely that all of these genetic anomalies are caused by uncommon recessive genes in a seemingly normal male and female,” the department says. “When a pair has the recessive genes and mate, there’s a chance that characteristic would appear in a particular offspring.”
Frost said the deer was “really unique” to see but that for her it “brought to light the sad fact of over-breeding and over-population.”
“But other than that it was a beautiful thing to see and kind of rare,” she said. “I’m glad I got the chance to see it.”
