Smoke Wolves: Wardens of the Wild Spaces

By: Lacey Williams

Mornings in Appalachia start slow. The steep hills and towering trees mean the sun takes its time waking up, stretching and yawning, breathing life into the forests at its own pace. Most mornings, the sun burns away the fog of the night. But other times, the fog fights back, refusing to reveal all the secrets it hides.

People in the mountains will tell you that the forests have their own ways of communicating. The caw of ravens, the rustling of wind through the trees, with the creatures that hide in the shadows, and sometimes with the shadows, themselves. That’s where the Smoke Wolves enter the narrative.

Smoke Wolves are animals said to live in the Appalachian Mountains. Their story starts in the 1900s in Tygart Valley, West Virginia. As cryptid stories go, theirs is rather modern. The local belief is they first began to be seen soon after wolves were eradicated from the area. But the sightings of Smoke Wolves have spread throughout the whole Appalachian region and are most often reported near areas of spiritual significance like burial grounds and forests.

The Smoke Wolves are said to be much larger than typical wolves. They have glowing red eyes and the head you could expect to see on a wolf, but then their bodies dissipate into long tendrils of smoke. Just as with typical wolves, Smoke Wolves also travel in packs.

Smoke Wolves have the ability to completely disappear into smoke on command, making it seemingly impossible to document or capture them. They also are very aggressive, some would say even malevolent, and kill for fun. Coyotes and livestock have been reported as being attacked by wolves that disappear when seen. The only way to scare off a Smoke Wolf is with the rattling of large chains.

The story of Smoke Wolves has been getting attention in pop culture with the rise of television shows like Travel Channel’s Mountain Monsters. The Appalachian Investigators of Mysterios Sightings (AIMS) first brought these creatures into the spotlight with their coverage and investigation.

Appalachia is a truly wild and wonderful ecosystem that is rich and teeming with diverse wildlife and flora. The woods are dense, and the mountains are vast. It would not be unheard of for creatures to live there that science has not been able to document, yet. (Ever heard of the Hellbender?) Maybe there really is a mystical wolf-like creature living in the forest that is made of shadows, smoke, and mountain magic.

Maybe it’s a story old folks tell as a way to make sure their children don’t go trapsing into the woods by themselves so they don’t get lost. Maybe it’s a booger tale locals like to tell each other around a fire, trying to be the one with the scariest story. In this case, though, I think who is telling the story matters more than the story itself. This tale isn’t about a wolf, it’s about the people who live in these mountains, and what they are trying to protect.

The Smoke Wolf story feels less like a fable, and more like a reminder that cryptid stories are not born in shopping mall parking lots. They are born in places where ancient salamanders slither through clear streams, bats streak across the skies, and rich, diverse ecosystems thrive in the face of a modern world hell-bent on destroying them in the name of progress.

I won’t ask you to decide whether or not Smoke Wolves are real. Stories like that of the Smoke Wolf don’t exist for us to prove or debunk them. They exist to remind us that we do not own this world we live in. We are guests here, and there are places we are not welcome.

Maybe the Smoke Wolves are not a cautionary tale meant to keep us safe, or meant to keep the forests safe by keeping us out. Maybe their whole existence, whether flesh or folklore, is just to remind us that our wild spaces are magical, mysterious, and worth defending.