Wampus Cat — Cryptid Encyclopedia

In the Cherokee tradition, she was a woman. A wife who, suspicious of the secret rituals the men performed in the mountains, wrapped herself in the skin of a mountain lion and crept close to observe the sacred ceremonies. When the medicine men discovered her, they cursed her — binding her spirit to the cat skin forever. She became the Wampus Cat, trapped between human and animal, haunting the Appalachian Mountains for eternity.

The Wampus Cat is described as an enormous six-legged panther — or in some accounts, a cat-like creature that walks on two legs and has the face of a woman. Its eyes glow yellow-green. Its scream sounds like a woman crying. It is said to be incredibly fast, appearing and vanishing before witnesses can process what they've seen.

Throughout Appalachia — from the mountains of eastern Tennessee through the hollows of Virginia and West Virginia to the ridges of the Carolinas — reports of an enormous, unidentifiable cat-like predator have persisted for centuries. Livestock disappear. Dogs are found dead, untouched except for claw marks. Hikers hear screaming in the mountains at night — "not a cougar, not a bobcat, something else entirely" — and find nothing.

In the 1920s and 1930s, a series of livestock kills in rural Appalachian communities was attributed to the Wampus Cat. In the 1990s, reports of a large, dark panther-like animal in the mountains of western North Carolina sparked renewed interest, though wildlife officials insisted no large cat species inhabited the region.

The Cherokee story carries a deeper truth: the Wampus Cat is a warning about the consequences of violating sacred boundaries. But for those who live in the shadow of the Appalachians, the warning feels less symbolic on nights when something screams from the ridge and the dogs refuse to leave the porch.