Wampus Cat

The first look usually says mountain lion. The animal is long through the body, heavy in the shoulders, and low enough to the ground that witnesses misjudge its size until it stands beside a fence, crosses a backroad, or steps into a field. Color varies by telling. Tawny, gray, and black have all been reported. Then there are the legs. Some witnesses count four. Others insist on six, with four for running and two for fighting. The extra pair may sit near the chest, farther back along the body, or nowhere anyone can agree on after the animal starts moving. The Bureau does not correct the count for neatness. The four-legged version carries its own difficulty. In those reports, the Wampus Cat rises onto its hind legs and stays there long enough to look around, cross open ground, or watch a person watching it. A mountain lion can rear. Witnesses know this. They report something that stood. The eyes are yellow or green and glow back in the light. A few accounts give the face a human cast. Those remain in the file.

The scream comes first. It may sound like a woman hurt somewhere out in the woods, a mountain lion too close to the house, or both sounds laid over one another. People who step outside to place it seldom stay out long. The dogs usually make their decision sooner. A dog that will carry on at anything may go quiet, crawl under the porch, or refuse to cross the yard. Dogs sent after the sound have come back without the thing they were sent to find. Some have not come back. When the Wampus Cat shows itself, it comes close. It crosses backroads, walks the far side of a field, keeps pace with a vehicle, or waits just inside the woods while the stock crowds the gate. By morning, something is missing or dead. The cry carries another meaning in older family warnings. Heard close to the house, it is notice that death or hard trouble is coming. No fixed number of days belongs to every telling. Nobody who grew up with the warning needs the Bureau to settle the schedule.

Appalachian reports center on East Tennessee and western North Carolina, with related Wampus Cat traditions across the Carolinas and the wider South. The animal is reported along backroads, in fields bordered by woods, and in second-growth timber where brush has come in thick beneath the trees. It is also heard behind houses, barns, and chicken yards, close enough that people step onto the porch before deciding against the rest of the trip. Proximity to occupied property is consistent across the file. People hear it while bringing animals in, leaving for work before daylight, or coming home after dark.

The file contains more kills than feeding observations. Chickens, hogs, sheep, calves, mules, and dogs have all been laid at the Wampus Cat's feet. Some are carried off. Some are left where they fell. The condition of the remains changes with the county and the teller. The Bureau has no confirmed dietary profile. It has a long list of missing animals. Bring stock in before dark when reports are active, and do not leave a carcass out to improve the evidence.

The earliest dated print record located for a creature called a Wampus Cat appeared in the American Dialect Society's Dialect Notes in 1913. The entry came from a Maine logging-camp word list, not Appalachia, and called the animal imaginary. In November 1918, the Knoxville Sentinel used the name for an animal blamed for dead dogs, a mule, and chickens around Fountain City, Whittle Springs, and Inskip. On Thanksgiving morning, about seventy-five armed searchers went looking for it. A cash reward and several business prizes were offered for a carcass. None was produced. That winter, the Polk County News reported that hunters near the Ocoee River had cornered and caged an unidentified animal after a fight. Townspeople who saw it called it a Wampus. The description changed from place to place but the name stayed. In May 1964, the Goldsboro News-Argus reported that more than five hundred residents near Princeton, North Carolina, were searching the woods of Johnston County for a Wampus Cat. The county sheriff later declared the matter a prank. The search had already drawn a larger crowd than Knoxville managed in 1918.

The Wampus Cat is heard before it is seen. The cry is usually described as a woman hurt somewhere in the woods, a mountain lion too close to the house, or both sounds laid over one another. If it sounds close, bring people and animals inside and wait for daylight.

The count depends on the report. Some witnesses see four legs, some insist on six, and others describe a four-legged animal that rises and stands. The Bureau keeps all three versions; the scream is a better identifier than the anatomy.

“We had brought the milk cow in, and every dog run up under the porch and went still at once. Then a woman screamed from the field. Daddy took the lantern as far as the gate, but he never opened it. In the morning the fence wire was down and there were cat tracks on the muddy side, big as his hand.”

“I caught it in the headlights on a backroad past the house. At first I thought somebody's calf had gotten loose. Then it turned sideways and I saw the tail. I counted four legs when it crossed and six when it ran for the woods. You can write down whichever number you can make sense of.”

“My grandson said it was a woman hollering over yonder and started off the porch. The old dog flattened himself against the door and would not go with him. That is what stopped us. The scream came again from behind the chicken house, then from farther up the field without anything passing between. We shut the door. Two hens were gone by morning.”