EDITOR’S NOTE: Strangeville explores the curious and unexplained stories that have long defined Asheville and Western North Carolina. The region is full of unanswered questions, from old folklore and local legends to eerie encounters, unsolved moments in history, and the true-crime mysteries that still leave people wondering. Each week, we look back with an open mind and a sense of curiosity, trying to understand why some stories take hold and why some can never be explained.

POLK COUNTY, N.C. (828newsNOW.com) — They say the Whang Doodle moaneth, and the Doodle Bug whineth. That’s what young Alex White heard one night as shadows danced across the walls of his childhood bedroom and the figwood smoke from the hearth hung thick in the air. Then came the scream.

Ye-e-e-ow-ow-ow!

Something was in the woods and it was coming closer.

One of Western North Carolina’s strangest creatures once terrified a Lynn farming family in the dead of night. Described as a shaggy, long-bodied beast with glowing green eyes, mule-like ears, and a scream that could wake the dead, the Whang Doodle was no ordinary mountain tale.

That night, the family’s hogs squealed and a shotgun cracked the air. A lantern swung wildly, lighting up two blazing eyes at the edge of the pigpen. What young Alex saw next stayed with him for the rest of his life — a creature leaping over the fence in a single bound, vanishing back into the woods with a scream that didn’t sound entirely animal.

He never saw it again, but he never forgot the sound or the song his father sang by the fire.

Whang Doodle holler, and Whang Doodle squall
Look out chillun, do he git you all

The tale comes to us from the Federal Writers’ Project, a New Deal-era initiative created in the 1930s to document American culture and history during the Great Depression. As part of the project, folklorists interviewed everyday people about their lives and local legends. One of those interviews was with Alex White, the youngest son of an African American farming family in Polk County.

The name “Whang Doodle” appears in other corners of American folklore, often describing an undefined or imaginary beast. But in the hills of Polk County, it took on a more personal form with glowing eyes, a leaping body, and screams in the dark. It became something real for one family.

Today, the Whang Doodle survives not as a cryptid sighting or tourist myth, but as a rare and vivid account of Appalachian folklore told from the perspective of a Black Southern child during a time when few such voices were preserved in public record.

In the shadows of Polk County’s forests, the “Whang Doodle” scream still echoes, one of many mysteries the Appalachian Mountains keep close.

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