Wampus

I first met "Clyde" 10 years ago at a small diner in Christiansburg Virginia.

I had just graduated with a history degree and a minor in Appalachian studies from Radford University. Being a transplant from Michigan, I ended up falling in love with the New River Valley and chose to stay here after graduation. There's unfortunately not a lot of work in my field in this area so I worked for a landscape company and played historian in my spare time. My goal was to simulate what the Foxfire heritage organization had done, and create a collection of Appalachian knowledge, straight from the horses mouth, the only real difference being that it would have a distinct NRV flavor.

This brings me back to Clyde. While there are a few heritage sites and museums in the NRV, I've learned that the best knowledge of any area comes from the people that have lived there their entire lives. On my days off I'd scour the "Burgs" (Blacksburg, Christainsburg, Radford) area trying to find older folks so that I could ask them their stories. The day I walked into that diner in Christiansburg and overheard an older man telling anyone who would listen all about the "proper way" to press Sorghum, I knew I'd found a never ending fount of knowledge. I introduced myself and told him what I wanted to do, and I can honestly say I've never seen an old man light up the way Clyde did. That first day we talked for close to two hours. He dazzled me with stories of growing Sorghum, making salt rising bread, hunting and trapping alone at the age of 10 to provide for his family when times got hard, and all kinds of things you'd expect from an old man that had lived in Appalachia his whole life. I held up my now almost full notebook and thanked him for his time. "Same time next week?" he asked.

And so it was, for close to a year. We'd meet at the diner, drink coffee, and shoot the breeze. Our meetings always ended the same way, "same time next week?" I was gathering A LOT of information, and I realized I might actually be able to write a book based on just Clyde's stories. That thought alone fueled my fire, and I made it my mission to finish my Foxfire style book, to get it published, and to get as much information as I could about this area from Clyde.

My girlfriend, a nice country girl from a little map dot called Ft. Chiswell further south in the valley, was incredibly supportive and even suggested that I ask Clyde about some of the local myths, legends and ghosts, "see if you can get something deeper than the same tired Graham's Forge Mansion stories, I bet that would make a really good chapter," she told me one morning as I was getting ready to meet with Clyde.

"That's not a bad idea babe, he told me his family were some of the first settlers in the Valley, if anyone knows about the land, its that man."

I met Clyde at the same table we'd sat at every Saturday for the last year. "What'll it be this time son? I ever tell you 'bout when they dammed up the river and made Smith Mountain Lake?"

"No, you haven't," I said "but I actually wanted to ask you about the local myths and legends of this area."

Clyde's face changed, it was a look I'd never seen on his face before, was it... was it fear? "Cantcha just use the google for that? Aint no sense in me telling you a story you can read for yourself."

"Actually Clyde, I wanted to know the stories that your family passed down, you said y'all have been here since the 1670's. Tell me about that stuff."

Clyde lowered his voice, his usual smile gone. "I'll tell you one story, just one, and then we aint never gon' talk 'bout it again understand?" I nodded and swallowed hard. Something felt incredibly off.

I'll do my best to retell the story from the notes I took that day.

"This story is real old, passed down from my grand daddy's grand daddy's grand daddy, I forget how many great's that would be. Anyhow, back then there wasn't nothin here, just miles and miles of woods and ridgeline, grand daddy was part of the first scouting party that came down here. Damn near turned back home until they came up on the New River. They knew that with some work they could clear the land and grow crops here.

Grand daddy and 3 other men volunteered to stay and setup homesteads while the rest of the party went back east to tell the gov'ner bout what they found. It was another 6 month's 'fore their families made it out to them. Grand daddy told stories bout Indians and great big cats that stalked the homestead on all sides at night. Back then control of the valley was contested by the Cherokee, the Shawnee and the settlers, so its hard to say who or what was really in the woods.

Stories about the great big cats kept on for years, and near as I can tell, they always popped up shortly after the settlers had a skirmish with them savages. People would sometimes go missin' after a cat sightin' but that was the way of the frontier."

"So... what exactly was this big cat?" I asked him, kind of grinning.

"IS," he replied. "You said was, you mean what is. It's still out there, somewhere up on the ridge, its still there and its lookin' for blood."

For some reason I felt my blood run cold. I knew this was just a silly old story, but something about the way he said "lookin for blood" made me incredibly uneasy. "Ok, so what is it then?"

"The Cherokee call it Ew'ah, we always called it the Wampus Cat, its a demon of some sort, sposed to drive a man insane just by lookin at it. Way back 'fore whites ever stepped foot here, it used to hunt the Cherokee. Story goes, that after awhile the people got sick of it and sent their best and bravest warrior to fight it. Imagine that, one man against a demon, anyhow Standing Bear went out lookin for Ew'ah and was gone for weeks, and most had assumed he was dead until one night he come haulin ass into camp try'n'ta rip his own eyes out. His wife, I forget her name, vowed to get revenge on the demon that did this so she went to the village shaman.

The shaman gave her a mask made from a bobcats face and said if she could surprise the demon that the spirit of the bobcat could defeat it. So she heads out and finds the demon drinkin from the river. When she jumps out of the bushes to confront it, it turns and sees her mask and starts to tearin itself up, like it was gettin attacked by a bobcat. The demon begged the woman to stop the torment, and the woman struck a deal. She told the demon that if it stopped huntin' them and started protectin her people that she would let it go. Ew'ah agreed and the woman took her mask off, the demon now able to stand, turned itself into a giant bobcat and took off into the woods."

"So... this Wampus cat is the protector of the Cherokee?"

Clyde nodded.

"And its still up in the hills, looking for blood? Who's blood?"

"Mine." Clyde said with a small smile. "By the 1750's, we'd pushed the Cherokee out of the valley, damn near to North Carolina. You know Ft. Chiswell? Well it aint just a fancy name, used to be an actual fort, they built it round 1761. Well when we threw up the fort the Cherokee got real mad and sent a war party up to try and take it from us. We...massacred them. All but one of em. We sent him back to his tribe to send the message that the Valley was ours now. Story goes that he called out for Ew'ah to protect his people. Thats when the Wampus cat showed back up. Started draggin men into the woods, and the men in the fort had to listen to screams all night while ol' Wampus devoured them, or tortured them, or whatever he did, they was never seen again afterward. How it relates to me is this, one of my however many great's grand daddy's was there, he helped kill all them people. The way I understand it, the Wampus cat has been huntin' the familes of those responsible ever since. A lot of those men's families stayed in this area for years, shoot I told you my family's been here for forever. Anyway I'm the last one left. After Johnny Mcgee went missin on a huntin' trip back in '83, I'm the last descendant of the men responsible for the Ft. Chiswell massacre. I quit huntin after Johnny died, quit goin in the woods, and I'm glad I never had no kids, so when I'm gone its over."

"Come on Clyde, you really expect me to believe this?" I laughed.

"Believe it or don't!" Clyde snapped angrily, "It done took my daddy when I was 9, I seen it! Why do you think I had to provide for my family at 10? Dragged him straight out the deer blind and we never seen him again."

"I'm... I'm sorry Clyde," I offered in apology.

"Don't be, I know it sounds crazy. I just know its my time. Wont be long now 'fore it finds me and drags me to hell for the sins of my ancestors. Now if you'll excuse me, I best be gettin home." and with that Clyde threw $10 on the table to pay for his meal and walked towards the door.

"Same time next week?" I asked earnestly. Clyde turned and gave me a weary smile.

"See ya when I see ya kid."

The next Saturday I went to the diner but Clyde wasn't there. Two more weeks went by and I still hadn't seen Clyde and I decided to go to his house to check on him. He was an old man after all and I needed to make sure he was okay.

Clyde's old 1950's model Chevy wasn't in the driveway and his normally immaculate lawn was now wildly overgrown. I knocked on his door for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes of no response, I walked around the house trying to peak through the blinds. One blind was just broken enough that I could see in to Clydes bedroom. I saw his open gun safe, it was empty, and there were empty ammunition boxes scattered all over the room.

I kicked in his back door and rushed into the house, fully expecting to see that he'd taken his own life. Instead I found an empty house. As I was walking back out I noticed a note on the kitchen table that said "Knew you couldn't stay away, if you're reading this its because I lost my fight with a demon, the truck is yours if you want it, you'll find it in Jefferson National Forest. I immediately contacted the police and headed for JNF.

Clyde's disappearance kicked off a weeks long manhunt, the only things they found were 2 spent shotgun shells, blood that they determined belonged to Clyde, and giant sets of bobcat prints. One volunteer said that they were at least 3 times too large to be a bobcats. Clyde's body was never recovered.

Clyde's death put a halt on my book. How could I continue now? How could I include the story about the demon that killed my friend? It wasn't a bobcat that killed Clyde, it was an ancient evil living in the forests of the New River Valley.