Comments on: Wampus: Mystery Cat, Swamp Monster, or Booger Bigfoot?

By: larrykat

larrykat — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:28:20 +0000

A ‘wampus’ terrorized our Boy Scout summer camp year after year in the early 1970s in mid-Wisconsin. They told us it was part wolf, part bat, and part bobcat. I can never forget the sound it made outside our tents in the middle of the night… we were about 12 years old at the time. One night we finally gave chase and caught up with the older scouts who were the ‘wampus’. Their noisemaker was a good one: an empty metal 3 lb coffee can with a piece of pine-sap coated string through a hole in the one end. When pulled through it made an unearthly screech or growl, depending on how fast you pulled it.

By: PoeticsOfBigfoot

PoeticsOfBigfoot — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 19:30:59 +0000

I went to college in Norman OK with a guy from there whose middle name was Wampus. He had bumper stickers made up that said “Phi Delta Wampus” and a bunch of us had them on our cars instead of the almost obligatory fraternity letters so common at OU. This was back in the mid to late 80s.

By: hoodoorocket

hoodoorocket — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 18:56:47 +0000

…also interesting is that while both the native american tales and the appalachian (german and scotts-irish) tales usually deal with half cat, half woman creatures, most of the modern tall tales of wampas encounters by hunters usually describe a very “bigfoot” like run-in… large, nocturnal, hairy, dog-hating beast that stinks and sometimes shrieks.

By: hoodoorocket

hoodoorocket — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 18:22:12 +0000

In the Appalachian region the term “wampus” and “catty wampus” is also a colloquial term for a woman’s private parts.

In this use, it is tied indirectly to the catty wampas cat creature, in that the earlier usage of the metaphor refers specifically to a toothed vagina. Tales of toothed vaginas represent a universal archetypical fear of castration, and are found in native american folk tales (as well as other areas of the world). In some areas the catty wampus animal has some human (female) features to lure the men to destruction.

The modern (toothless) derivative of the sexual usage of the term is usually described by women themselves to denote their level of sass or rebellion.

It would be interesting to go over some of the native american witch tales (toothed vagina stories) and see if there is a tenuous thread from the witch to catty wampus or cannibal giants or sasquatch, etc.

By: Bijan Biares via Facebook

Bijan Biares via Facebook — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 11:13:20 +0000

That picture is from “Van Helsing”. Awesome movie