The Winter Rounds of the Wampus Cat

By Lacey Williams

Frost sparkles on barbed wire fence; a lone whippoorwill’s chirps echo off snow covered hills around you. The first sharp November winds blow, rustling through the mass of skeleton trees ahead of you, when suddenly, everything stops. The cold sound of silence rings in your ears, and the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.

You realize you’ve been holding your breath in anticipation of... something, but what exactly? You start to exhale just as a violent scream rips through the night, reverberating all around you. A big cat? But no. It is definitely big, and it is definitely close, but that was no regular bobcat.

That... was the Wampus Cat

That scream in the dark and the eyes you can feel watching you in the moonlight have a name. All across the Appalachian Mountains, people have whispered for over a century about a big cat that is more than a big cat. It is a cryptid to some, a folk tale to others, and to the rest- a warning as old as the mountains themselves.

Reported descriptions of the creature surely warrant the unease surrounding them. They are said to be panther-like with the head and body of a large wild cat, a 9ft long tail as strong as a kangaroo’s, with front feet a cross between a bear and badger, and back feet cloven like deer.  They have long, black fur with white spots and can jump 12ft in the air with ease. They sometimes even walk upright, have screeching 2-beat howls, and leave unnaturally large prints behind in the snow.

It’s no wonder locals fear the beasts.

When there’s news that the Wampus Cat is in the area, hens stir without cause; dogs bark into the dark nothingness of the woods, and livestock are attacked and eaten by silent predators. It is even thought by some folklorists to be the cause of the demise of the North American cougar, along with its supposed Ozark relations, the Whistling Wampus and the Swimming Gallywampus.

There is no way to know the true origin of the tale of the Wampus Cat, but the first documented report was in 1899, when a hunting party had an unfortunate run-in with the creature in the woods. The Wampus name is thought to originate from the Scottish-English term “wampish” which loosely refers to something being unpredictable, and from the American term “cattywampus”, meaning askew or sometimes mischievous. There are also scholars who believe the origins could be traced back to the native Cherokee legend of the Ew’ah, though those stories portray that creature as somewhat of a protector, whereas those that live in the area tend to see it as a predator.

One newspaper article from 1918 called it “...a devil in the shape of a tiger who had come here to scare some of the wicked folks into doing right.”

Winter in Appalachia is cold, dark, and isolating, When the wild border grows thin and humans spend more time inside huddling around their hearth for warmth, the Wampus Cat thrives in their absence. Most sightings are reported throughout the mountain region, mainly in Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia, but there have been sightings reported even in the neighboring midwestern states.

While it is possible these animals could survive in the region and mostly go unseen, the Appalachian woods run deep, after all, it is also possible these stories could have a more functional truth to them rather than biological. The winter nights in the area are incredibly long, with darkness lasting about 14 hours at its peak.

Once snow settles into the region, the blanketed hills and bare trees create the perfect acoustic setting for sounds from the woods to travel and bounce across the hollers. Fewer meal opportunities for hungry animals, and fewer humans outside to intervene, mean animals like bobcats have more opportunities to come closer to homesteads and take advantage of penned livestock for their meals, and they would leave large prints behind them in the snow.

Even on the best of days, the Appalachian woods are dangerous, especially for children. When you add in long nights of darkness with freezing temperatures and hungry predators, it would make sense adults would want to scare even the most adventurous children into staying inside the home.

These stories didn’t stay confined to the woods, however.

The Wampus Cat padded proudly into the rest of the world.

In modern times, it has even trickled down into the lives of the children it was potentially designed to scare. There has been a baseball team near Houston, Texas who adopted the ferocious feline as their team's mascot, as well as a high school who did the same. Even the worldwide fandom of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter adopted the Wampus Cat as the American School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Livermorny’s mascot.

Old timers call it a “booger tale,” but even if they laugh when they tell it, no one laughs at the woods when night comes.

One thing, though, is certain: whether it’s spooky tales in winter, or baseball jerseys in spring; the Wampus Cat is alive and well both in the hills of Appalachia, and in our collective consciousness.

Personally, I think it belongs in both. Have you ever seen a Wampus Cat?