In eastern Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Virginias, no mythical or legendary creature is feared more than the terrible wampus cat. There have been many alleged sightings of the huge, panther-like creature, which according to reports, walks on two legs, has glowing yellow or red eyes, smells between a skunk and a wet dog, and screams like a woman in torment. The stories attribute different abilities and characteristics to the creature, but all have the same moral: Watch out for the wampus cat.
The most popular story surrounding the wampus cat centers on a beautiful young Indian woman. Seeing her husband leave for a hunting trip, she disguises herself in the skin of a mountain lion and follows the hunters. Curious, the woman sneaks close to their camp at night when they are sitting around a fire and telling sacred stories, which are not meant to be heard by women or anyone outside of their initiated group. Soon, the woman is discovered and against the pleadings of her husband, the medicine man punishes her, binding her with a covering and sentencing her to a tormented existence as half-woman, half-mountain lion. She is so ashamed and ridiculed that she flees and lives out her days in the deep woods, screaming in torment at her banishment and the loss of her family and husband.
Another story takes a more sinister tone. The wampus cat is often seen as a bad omen, as few other creatures were feared in the mountains like the mountain lion. Bears and wildcats were considered to be dangerous creatures, but rarely attacked humans outright if not provoked. Mountain lions, on the other hand, were known for stalking humans as prey as well as attacking and killing them. In the mountains, many legends surrounded the big cats, including the advice that if you ever heard one scream to start running, stripping off pieces of your clothing and dropping them so the beast would stop and tear them up as it pursued you, allowing time for you to hopefully get to a cabin or other protection. The wampus cat in some areas was seen as the embodiment of the spirit of death itself. Whenever the cry of the wampus cat was heard, the beast was on the hunt, and someone would die within three days.
In West Virginia, the wampus cat is believed to come from a different, but equally nefarious source. The creature is believed to be a witch who lived alone in the hills and transformed herself into a large cat to steal and kill livestock. Legend says that the townspeople set out to catch her in the act. When they caught her, she was not in the act of stealing livestock. Instead, she was partway through her transformation into a cat, which halted her metamorphosis and she remained a half woman, half cat monster forever, still terrorizing livestock and stalking the woods. In association with this legend, some say that reading the Bible aloud would drive off a wampus cat, as it reportedly would an evil spirit or demon.
The final legend of the origin of the wampus cat is the oldest and likely primary point of origin of the story. In the mountains of Georgia, North Carolina, and eastern Tennessee, the Cherokee people told many stories of spirits and demons that inhabited their territory. In the story of Ew’ah, a demon figure of the mountains known to be the spirit of madness, the Cherokee warrior Great Fellow sets out to destroy the demon but returns to the village in a crazed, broken state, having faced Ew’ah and been driven mad by looking into his eyes. His wife, Running Deer, effectively widowed because of her husband’s madness, dons the skin of a mountain lion and the wampus mask, a preserved wildcat’s face with magical properties, and takes off after the demon. Coming upon it, she faces the demon, who runs in terror at the beast it is faced with. Following this success, she takes on the responsibility of dealing with any forest demons that threaten her village. In one version of the legend, the wampus cat is the manifestation of her spirit, continuing to protect the territory of her people, while in another, it is the demon Ew’ah who was driven mad when his power was turned back on him by the power of the wampus mask when Running Deer surprised him.
The legend of the wampus cat has been around for more than a century, and as the subject of much mountain folklore around the traditional territory of the Cherokee, reports of sightings have been abundant, even into modern times near cities such as Chattanooga and Knoxville, Tennessee. The differences in the origin stories that exist for the wampus cat are interesting; in likely the oldest, the creature is a protector, while in the others, it is seen as a malevolent or evil being. Stories abound for the real origins of the creature, and over time as with any mountain story, they have been widely embellished and morphed to fit the storyteller’s intent. The tales have also migrated as people moved westward and thus they have been adapted to new environments.
In Fearsome Critters, Henry Tryon discusses an entire breed of wampus cats in Idaho, stating they hunt eagles with a forearm that resembles an extending tool that they keep folded up until needed. He also covers a wide range of beliefs about the cats: their practice of scratching false blazes on trails and starting forest fires on a full moon; that fish will not bite for seven days after one wades in a stream; that their cry can curdle sourdough; that the males are nearly indestructible; and that the females can only be killed with a crosscut saw. As with any tall tale, the obvious exaggerations add flavor and interest to the story as well as a bit of humor. The Idaho wampus cats seem to be less aggressive and quite a bit funnier than those in eastern Tennessee but are still creatures to be feared.
Many of the published accounts of the wampus cat tend to show up in collections of paranormal or ghost stories from different regions of Appalachia. There is a popular story of a man’s encounter with the wampus cat on a late night, his escape into his friend’s cabin, and the beast’s subsequent banishment by his reading the Bible, which has appeared in several collections, each time attributed to a different state or region. There have been sightings reported in many other states, even west of the Mississippi River, but most have been reported in areas adjacent to traditional Cherokee territory, such as Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, the Virginias, and Kentucky. This is likely due to the story being attributed to the Cherokee legend of Ew’ah and Running Deer’s banishment of the demon. As with most fantastic or legendary beasts, accounts differ from report to report, and descriptions change between regions, often relying heavily on what the individual likely heard from stories of other encounters, but the warning still remain: Beware of the wampus cat.
Jonathan Byrn
See also Axehandle Hound; Ball-Tailed Cat; Cactus Cat; Demon Cat; Fearsome Critters; Squonk; Tailypo
Further Reading
Bahr, Jeff, Troy Taylor, Loren Coleman, Mark Moran, and Mark Sceurman. 2007. “The Wampus Cat.” In Weird Virginia, 86–87. New York: Sterling.
Holland, Jeffrey Scott. 2008. “Legend of the Wampus Cat.” In Weird Kentucky, 92–93. New York: Sterling.
Tabler, Dave. 2014. “The Story of the Wampus Cat.” Appalachian History website. http://www.appalachianhistory.net/2014/10/story-of-wampus-cat.html. Accessed October 19, 2015.
Tryon, Henry L. 1939. Fearsome Critters. Cornwall, NY: Idlewild Press.