The wampus cat appeared in the American South, seemingly out of nowhere, on the flip of the twentieth century. In the newspapers of the day, the scary figment was, for many, nothing however a reputation related to feral violence.
In these early days of the 1900s, “wampus cat” was an epithet for the native ne’er do nicely in Fort Smith, Arkansas, a mascot for an novice baseball group exterior of Houston, and the moniker of the “meanest, wildest, hardest bucking outlaw horse” ever seen in Flagstaff, Arizona. (Fifty bucks stated nobody might journey him.) The bizarre phrase appeared to originate in Scottish English: “Wampish” was slang for waving one’s arms about, although that benign picture got here with a way of harmful unpredictability. In the United States, “cattywampus” had come to imply “askew,” typically absurdly so, however some within the mid-Nineteenth century additionally used it as a catchall for a mischievous, imaginary animal.
In Sherman, Texas, although, the beast turned actual. As the story went, “the great Wampus cat” had first been seen on the Oklahoma border round 1900, “the specter of some huge bobcat of past ages” that “shows up only on semi-moonlight nights in the summertime.”
It was actual, too, in Quitman, Mississippi, the place such a creature appeared after the floods in 1913, forsaking 102 canine skeletons, utterly stripped of fur and flesh.
And it was actual in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, the place a wampus cat terrorizing the neighborhood was lastly caught in 1914. “No longer is the name ‘Wampus Cat’ used in referring to a mythical catlike being with a wicked disposition, for, [sic] in the woods of Clark County has been found the original animal,” an nameless reporter wrote in an article printed all through the South and Midwest. The delusion of the wampus cat was turning into a actuality.
In Arkadelphia, the imaginary creature had been “more savage than a lion” with menacing claws and a nine-foot-long tail as highly effective as a kangaroo’s. This “real” wampus had the pinnacle and physique of a cat with lengthy black fur noticed with white. Its legs had been brief and stocky, with entrance toes that had been a cross between a bear’s and a badger’s, and again toes cloven like a deer’s. “The tail is long,” the reporter acknowledged, “but not of the great length described” by those that had beforehand noticed it.
There was nice curiosity on this odd cat, and the beast was exhibited within the city for 3 days earlier than it escaped. “The woods are now being scoured for it and its mate,” the reporter famous. The legend-come-to-life would terrorize the South, in varied guises, for the subsequent a number of a long time.
Writing within the Nineteen Fifties, Vince Randolph, a folklorist who studied the Ozark area, simply north of those early sightings, traced the start of the wampus cat—and its feline kin, the swimming gallywampus and the whistling wampus—to the demise of the North American cougar, “the most dangerous wild animal that ever really lived in the Ozarks.” Known as “panthers,” or “painters” within the native dialect, cougars had been the enemy of settlers all through the Nineteenth century, a relentless hazard to livestock and generally to kids. By 1900, they had been now not a risk—they’d been hunted to close extinction east of the Mississippi—however that worry had not dissipated. Once, an eerie caterwaul within the forest was a warning {that a} panther lay in wait, now it was proof of a wampus.
Not everybody accepted the creature’s existence. In truth, a “wampus” was normally one thing that another person—somebody far more gullible—believed in, however that didn’t reduce the panic when a wampus got here to Knoxville, Tennessee, and its suburbs in November of 1918.
Dogs had been dying within the Fountain City, their hearts and livers ripped out with one thing razor sharp. Then a mule was killed within the close by neighborhood of Whittle Springs and a few chickens met their finish in Inskip, crushed with their blood sucked out. Some locals reported listening to the bay of a wild canine, others noticed the tracks of a panther. Could it’s a lioness that had escaped from a touring carnival? When a zoologist from the University of Tennessee couldn’t definitively establish the attacker, the hunt for the wampus was on.
On Thanksgiving morning 1918, some 75 males armed with shotguns, rifles, and even a number of bow-and-arrows went looking for the animal, which had been described as grey with white spots and a protracted tail and capable of leap 12 toes “at least” within the air, in line with the Knoxville Sentinel. Others described it as “just the devil in the shape of a tiger, who had come here to scare some of the wicked folks into doing right.” No one claimed the $100 reward for a wampus carcass that day.
When a girl reported being attacked by an unidentified creature two days later, an area shopkeeper purchased her torn gown and put it on show. “Large crowds have been around the window,” the Sentinel reported. Businesses had already been buying and selling on the beast. In addition to the money reward supplied up by the newspaper, the person who killed the wampus would obtain a Kodak digital camera from Kulhman’s Drug Store, $5 in gold from J.E. Lutz & Co. Insurance, and a girl’s tailor-made coat swimsuit (“if a lady marksman kills the ‘varmint,’”) or a hat from Askin & Marine Co (if a person shot the creature).
The obsession lasted by way of Christmas—“Dear Mr. Santa…I want you to bring me a wagon and an auto [and] a gun so I can shoot the wampus”—however the sightings didn’t. By the brand new yr, Knoxville was laughing in regards to the hysteria.
Ninety miles down the street in Benton, Tennessee, although, the wampus was nonetheless actual. A bunch of hunters had cornered a mysterious creature in a cave alongside the Ocoee River and after “one of the biggest battles that ever took place in this section” of the state, in line with Polk County News, they caged the animal.
What had they caught? Several townsfolk went to see for themselves. “They all say that if it isn’t a sure enough Wampus, they don’t know what it is.”
