Glowing Eyes and Growls: Meet Appalachia’s Wildman
Hey again, everyone! Sorry for the absence this past month! I’m finally back on track now, so here we go again!
I have an all-new story for you this week, the legendary Tennessee Wildman from McNairy County in Southwestern Tennessee! Take a walk with me in the woods for a bit this evening as we take a look at one of the state’s most famous mysteries!
Through the valleys and hills of Eastern Tennessee stalks a humanoid figure said to be over 7 feet tall with dark ginger or dark grey hair and fierce, large red eyes. The creature has been mentioned in legends as early as the 1800s, and has reportedly been sighted as recently as 2012.
Did I mention that he also reportedly smells like a mix between skunk spray and rotten meat? No? Well, several unlucky eyewitnesses say it’s true!
The Tennessee Wildman is a staple of Appalachian folklore, but his story actually begins on the southwestern side of Tennessee in rural McNairy County, when a local newspaper reported that a very tall, very powerful human-like creature with extremely long hair and a beard down to his middle was known to run so fast that neither man nor dog could dare to catch him. And catch him the people of McNairy County wanted to do because, as another interesting tidbit of the newspaper tells us, the Wildman was said to be actively approaching "with wild and horrid screams of delight every woman who [was] unaccompanied by a man."
Eventually, the story of this woman-snatching, human-like creature melded into other stories of cryptid creatures found in the hills and hollers of Tennessee. Now, the Tennessee Wildman is regarded not so much like an actual man with a really long beard who is after our women, but more like something that resembles Bigfoot, another infamous creature we know of today. Ironically, our Tennessee cryptid is said to possibly be enemies with their more popular cousin due to territorial disputes.
Over 20 or so years ago, there was a famous sighting of the Tennessee Wildman in the late 1990s, which occurred in Elizabethton, TN. Robb Phillips and his cousin were on a night hike to Bee Cliffs. The forest had become completely silent, save for the rain coming down along the trail. That’s when they heard something terrifying through the gloom. A twig snapped nearby, and from somewhere in the darkness, the 2 men were accosted by a blood-curdling inhuman wail, unlike anything either of them had heard before. (Can you imagine? I’d be terrified!)
The men immediately took off in opposite directions (feet, don’t fail me now!) through the forest. Robb took refuge behind a tree, and that’s when he spied the creature clinging to a nearby tree about 15 feet away. He heard his cousin break for the hill, and he quickly followed suit. Phillips’s account of his encounter with the creature closely align with initial reports of the Tennessee Wildman. He described it as around 9 feet tall with dark red hair and red, beady eyes, with a set of sharpened claws on each hand. Both men also claimed that the creature had a horrible, pervasive stink often attributed to the Wildman.
If you would like to check out some more info on the Tennessee Wildman, look up the official wiki page at https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Tennessee_Wildman
There are also several other links to see while you’re browsing! Thank you to everyone supporting us on our journey into the unknown every week, please let me know if you have any favorite cryptids that you would like for us to check out, and feel free to leave us any thoughts that you have in the comments.
Also, don’t forget to follow us on social media, and remember, “Keep Seeking Truth in the Shadows!”
- Cody, East Tennessee Paranormal Project (ETPP)
