NEWS

There are numerous legends about Lake Norman and its surrounding area, some of which have been around for over a century. The oldest of these concerns a semi-mythical creature called the wampus. According to an October 2023 article in Lake Norman Magazine, Mooresville historian Chris Stonestreet discovered newspaper reports going back to 1890 describing a catlike creature that killed livestock in Iredell and surrounding counties. The cat, sized smaller than a mountain lion and larger than a bobcat, came out only at night and killed chickens, goats, and sometimes dogs.

Many other sources picture it as having six legs. Its howls sounded like those of a woman in pain crossed with the cry of a mountain lion. According to Stonestreet, the tales may be tied to a centuries-old Cherokee legend in which a young Cherokee girl, disguised in a cougar skin, clandestinely watched a secret ceremony. As punishment, the shaman turned her into a wampus. This makes sense, as the legend of the wampus is common in the mountains of North Carolina.

Stonestreet speculated that the creature could be a jaguarundi, a wild cat native to Central and South America, “with a long, slender body, a flattened, triangular head with short, rounded ears, and a

long tail and short legs.”  News of the wampus first appeared in Joseph P. Caldwall’s Statesville Landmark in the fall of 1890, but there is some suspicion that Caldwell invented the creature to sell newspapers.

Stonestreet’s 2006 article in the online NCpedia, however, gives several different descriptions of the wampus, based on stories circulating the area in the 1930s. According to different accounts, the creature was either the size of a dog or a colt, colored silver or black, might or might not have a horn and big red eyes. His tracks were sometimes described as webbed; others said his front paws were like a lion’s and his back feet like a bear’s. Most observers agreed on one thing, however: “that it had a ‘keen holler,’ although descriptions of the sound it made ranged from that of ‘a hurt woman’ to that of ‘an elephant with his head in a rain barrel.’”  Whatever the truth, stories continued to spread, and parents continued to warn their children to come in at sunset before the wampus could get them.

The legend of the wampus cat is not unique to North Carolina. Many Southern states report a similar creature, and a number of schools, like Conway High School in Arkansas, feature the wampus as their mascot. Indeed, last November, Conway’s fearsome mascot was named the best in Arkansas. In the image, it is shown with six legs – reportedly four for running and two for fighting.