Encounter Atlas

Creature index / Odd creatures

Wampus cat

Also called Wampus, Whistling wampus, Gallywampus, Catawampus, Wampus beast

An Appalachian monster cat with glowing eyes, sometimes said to have six legs.

The wampus cat is a big, dark cat of Appalachian and Ozark folklore with glowing green or yellow eyes and a scream like a cougar. Depending on who tells it, it is a spirit cat with strange powers, a six-legged cat that can run forever, or an amphibious panther that swims like a mink.

Some versions draw on older Cherokee stories, while others are plain lumber camp yarns. In the 1930s, newspapers in the North Carolina Piedmont blamed a wampus cat for killing livestock. Today it is a popular school mascot, from the Conway Wampus Cats in Arkansas to schools in Texas and Tennessee.

What witnesses report

  • A dark cat bigger than a panther
  • Glowing green or yellow eyes
  • Screams and whistles in the woods at night
  • Livestock and dogs killed

Famous cases

  1. 1936Knoxville paper describes a 15- to 20-foot wampus cat
    Knoxville, Tennessee

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Related

Ozark Howleraka Ozark Black Howler, HowlerA bear-sized, horned black cat with a howl that shakes the hollows.Hodagaka Rhinelander Hodag, Hodag of WisconsinWisconsin's grinning, horned, spiny-backed beast of the logging camps.Beast of Bladenboroaka Bladenboro Beast, Vampire Beast of BladenboroA dog-killing 'vampire beast' that drew hundreds of armed hunters in 1954.Beast of Bodmin Mooraka Beast of Bodmin, Bodmin beastA black panther-like cat blamed for killing sheep on a Cornish moor.