The light along the Greenway was low and polite that night, like neighbors nodding across a fence. I was halfway through my coffee and the world was the small, honest size it has before morning picks up its pace. Then someone on the porch said, soft as a secret, “You ever hear about the Wampus cat?”
That name keeps its claws hidden in the throat of a story. Wampus – a hiss and a hush stitched together. Folks will tell you it’s a thing of moonlight fur and wrong shadows, that it walks on two legs when it wants to be clever and on four when it wants to be a memory. Around here people point toward Mill Mountain, the river bends, the old logging roads that forget the wheels that once cut them. I went looking in the quiet places, mostly to keep my feet moving and my mind from fretting about small, human troubles.
I’ve seen bobcats in the scrub and once watched a fox practice magic with a chicken bone. Those are animals with a name and a ledger; the Wampus keeps a ledger but it writes in different ink. A neighbor told me about two pale shapes that blinked on the edge of the yard, tall and watching, and how the chickens grew uneasy for a week after. Another friend said she heard a song – not a howl, not a purr – a slow questioning that stopped when she answered with her own breath.
People laugh and say “tall tale,” and they’re right sometimes. But other times a laugh is a kind of apology for the part of ourselves that believes in things that belong to the dark.
If you stand where the city light thins and the pines stand like patient weather, you start to hear the country talk. It sounds like twig and wind and the distant clink of something settling. The Wampus lives in those sounds – or maybe it lives in the space that wants them to mean more. In my backyard camera footage long lost, there was a shape that moved like a heavy coat being shrugged on: too long-legged for a housecat, too smooth for a raccoon. The white of its eyes caught the tiny infrared like coins.
Stories change with the telling. Old-timers say the Wampus is the woman of the hills – part witch, part cat, part consequence. Schoolkids say it’s a genetic trick, something mixed up in the woods. Hunters say it’s a big black cat with a sense of self and a grudge. Me? I keep my door latched at night and my camera pointing toward the dark, because I like being polite to whatever’s passing through. I leave a little light on the back steps and a bowl of water when the summer is cruel. Maybe that’s superstition. Maybe it’s neighborly.
There’s magic in admitting you don’t know. It’s friendlier than pretending you’re not a little afraid. If the Wampus pads by one evening and sniffs my compost bin, I’ll be gentle in my surprise. I’ll take a picture with a steady hand and then sit with the image while the coffee goes cold. These are the kinds of stories that make our yards wider than property lines, that remind us the place is shared whether we like it or not.
If you’re in Roanoke and you hear something that sounds like a question in the trees, tip your head and answer back with the small things: a soft voice, a light on the porch, a courteous bowl of water. The Wampus – whatever it is – likes a place where people are careful.
#roanokeva #wampuscat #cryptid #backyardzoo
