Before I knew what Cryptozoology was, I was collecting stories about cougars in Appalachia. The southern mountains that straddle the state lines of North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee are both my ancestral homeland and my favorite subject for writing.

Two years ago I aired a round of my commentaries on our public radio affiliate, one of which was a quick, fun 4-minute peice on cougar sightings in the area. For months afterwards I started getting calls from people who had seen cougars, especially in the wild areas around Asheville and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

In the story I aired on the radio, I mentioned my own father's story of lying awake and terrified in bed, listening to cougars call to each other from one ridge to the other, all around the farmhouse at night. This was in the late forties and early fifties. Dad said it “sounded like a woman being murdered.”
This is a common phrase. I’ve talked to at least fifty people that have seen or heard what they thought were cougars, and many of them mentioned hearing their powerful screams at night. Unfailingly, they describe them like a woman in duress.

One person who I talked to, however, pointed out something very interesting. According to a local retired wildlife biologist, cougars don’t make a lot of noise in the wild outside of the breeding seaosn. He blamed the vocalizations on barred owls, or maybe bobcats.
A collection of cougar essays in my library (Shadow Cat, edited by Susan Ewing) back this up. Although Hollywood cougars are taught to make that raspy roar that we saw so much in Grizzy Adams reruns, wild cougars make few sounds at all, and definitely nothing like “a woman being murdered.”

It was looking at the print company’s moniker on the side of the book that made me wonder this morning. . . the company that printed Shadow Cat is Sasquatch Books. And I was reminded of one other North American mammal that might be said to scream like a woman being murdered.

If this is a theory to be swallowed, I can say that this opens up a world of possibilities in Appalachia. Many of the people around here, no matter their familiarity with the woods, have an almost Nathanial Hawthorne mentality. There’s woods devils in there. Strange sounds wouldn’t raise many eyebrows, not from the people of East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia and Western North Carolina. Not if they were coming from the wooded mountains at night.
In fact, a closer look at DeLorme’s North Carolina Atlas and Gazetteer or USGS topo maps will show many possible references to a local knowledge of animals like sasquatch. “Boogerman Trail” is my favorite, in the GSMNP, which straddles Boogerman Mountain, which is near Cataloochee.
It’s really too bad that local Indian lore doesn’t even mention a wild man, at least to my knowledge.

Not a wild-man, but a slant-eyed giant with a terrible roar: Judaculla

Get on the radio and urge folks to start taping those noises! Then, once you've got a few samples, play them over the radio and ask if others have heard anything like them. That'll bring in more feedback. Also, take the calls to wildlife experts & BF researchers (like BFRO) for their opinions. Also, get in contact with BFRO (or some local monkeyhunters group).

Reliance, very interesting posts.

Can you give us some more detail about the screams? Length of scream, interval between screams, was each scream identical (pitch, tone, volume, etc.). Did anything trigger the screams? etc.

Thanks

You might try going to findsounds.com and listening to the cougar screams they have recorded and even comparing them with some these people say they have heard.

Yep...cougar in captivity make some sounds but not a whole lot. They chirp and make little wailing sounds sometimes. And yes the calls are usually more so during mating season. But when we got our males fixed...they hardly make any noise at all. The male bobcat tho...whooeee scared the heck outa me one night with a call like that. But after he was fixed he didn't do it anymore either...we have a leopard that makes sounds like sawing wood...very interesting....

Owl do make some really weird calls...they can sound very metallic sometimes and loud. The only way to know is to identify what is making the sound....either from listening on the web or actually seeing the animal.

[QUOTE]

You got that one right, Sosha. Great horned owls in particular are capable of making an amazing range of weird sounds. You have to hear them because I can't begin to describe them adequately.

-Vern

Wow, somehow I totally missed this thread the first time around. I hope Reliance takes action and gets more info--I'd like to hear more about it.

reliance, I was interested in your dad's tale of cougars calling to one another from ridge to ridge? Do they do that? Call to one another? Since bigfoot seems to do that, if cougars don't....... Unfortunately, i've never heard a cougar call in the wild

Reliance said "A collection of cougar essays in my library (Shadow Cat, edited by Susan Ewing) back this up. Although Hollywood cougars are taught to make that raspy roar that we saw so much in Grizzy Adams reruns, wild cougars make few sounds at all, and definitely nothing like “a woman being murdered.” "

I disagree with someone telling you that, I've heard it myself in the desert of Southern New Mexico. When the female Cougar goes into heat, and can't find a male mate, she'll rip these screams off in an attempt to attract a male cougar from a long way off. The "Screaming" according to a number of sites online, will go on for weeks until a male cougar is attracted, or, the female goes out of heat.

You can hear it at this site, Female Cougar In Heat Scream

With another 3 cougar sounds available. Picture hearing that scream in the pitch dark, with the sound reverberating off surrounding canyon walls and rocks, and it will sound like a woman being murdered. In my imagination that's what it would sound like, I've never murdered a woman so can't say 100% positively this is what they sound like!

I grew up in Keith WVa this is in Boone Co. on Rt 3 and we use to have what we thought at the time was a wild cougar moving thru. In the spring it would move east on the mountain across the river. In the fall it would be moving west on the mountain that our house sat at the foot of. The fathers of the kids always told us kids to never go into the woods if we heard what sounded like a woman screaming or the sound of crying coming from the woods. One night in about 1960 it was warm so I would say it was late summer we heard this animal coming down the tram road that is a road that went up the mountain to where the coal seam was and then would follow that coal seam for miles. The tram road ended right at our house. We heard it coming down and my dad and mom and I stood on the porch and listened to it for about a half hour until it got to the garbage dump about 100yrds from the house. At this time a rooster we had that would not let anyone get near it came down out of the apple tree in our yard came up on the porch and stood right at my feet it scared the hell out of him. I said to dad lets get our guns and go shoot it but dad said he didn’t want anything to do with what ever was making all that noise. This was the first and only time I ever knew my dad to be scared of anything. He said he was in the outhouse and it screamed on the mountain across the river and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Now I wander what we really where hearing since reading this thread that big cats don’t make a lot of noise. Time has taken it’s toll on what the screams sounded like but I can tell you we could hear it when it rounded the mountain at the spot where it would have started down the hill and that was about a mile from the house so it was pretty loud. We experienced this every year that I remember as a kid we never heard of Bigfoot back then we just thought it was a wild animal and it more than likely was but I thought it should be shared. WVaNative

Here's a thought about cougars and the amount of noise they make. Is it possible that most cougars don't make much noise, but as cougars where thinned out to the point of them thought to be extinct, that maybe a lone cougar on the move looking for a mate in a region where it is maybe the only cougar might be more desperate for lack of better word, in whatever ways, and be a lot more vocal than a common cougar?
What about a female in heat in a region where it might be the lone cougar? Only some thoughts.