Laura Wright 
Deep in the Southern Appalachian forests, there are old stories about things that should not be followed.
A distant light.
A voice calling your name.
Music drifting through the trees.
And, in one particularly eerie tradition, a beautiful song coming from somewhere deeper in the forest.
The singer cannot be seen.
The farther the traveler follows the music, the farther he wanders from familiar ground.
Eventually he reaches whatever has been calling him.
And then he loses his mind.
The story sounds remarkably like the Sirens of Greek mythology, supernatural beings whose irresistible songs lured sailors toward destruction.
But Appalachia has its own traditions involving dangerous beings in the wilderness, including one particularly strange figure frequently identified as Ew’ah, the Spirit of Madness.
Over the years, these traditions appear to have mingled with other folklore, producing the image of an Appalachian forest siren: something beautiful enough to follow and terrible enough to regret finding.
The difficulty is determining how much of that story is genuinely old.
The Forest Has Always Been Alive
To understand Appalachian supernatural traditions, it helps to forget the modern idea of a forest as simply a collection of trees.
For generations, the mountains were places where the familiar world met something much older.
People entered the forest to hunt.
To gather plants.
To travel.
To hide.
To survive.
But the wilderness could also kill them.
A person who wandered from a trail might disappear into thousands of acres of mountainous country. Darkness arrived quickly beneath the canopy. Ravines and cliffs could be hidden by vegetation. Animals moved unseen through the undergrowth.
Sounds behaved strangely.
A voice could travel astonishing distances through a hollow.
Something heard nearby might actually be across a valley.
And sometimes a sound seemed to come from nowhere at all.
It is little wonder that the forests accumulated stories.
The Woman Who Sings
The version of the legend preserved in the original account describes a sinister woman inhabiting isolated portions of the Southern Appalachian forest.
Her weapon is not strength.
It is her voice.
She sings beautifully enough to attract anyone who hears her, particularly men. The victim follows the song through the woods until he finally discovers its source.
Then something happens.
He is driven mad.
Some versions make the encounter considerably more gruesome.
The forest woman not only destroys her victim’s sanity.
She takes his liver.
That peculiar detail may not be as random as it first appears.
Ew’ah, the Spirit of Madness
The original article connected the forest siren with a being called Ew’ah, usually described in modern retellings as a Cherokee spirit or demon associated with madness.
Ew’ah is said to inhabit the forest and possess an extraordinary ability:
Looking upon it can drive a person insane.
Some modern versions also say that Ew’ah feeds upon the dreams of children. The only thing it fears is a special wildcat or Wampus mask.
One popular version of the story concerns a Cherokee warrior variously called Great Fellow or Standing Bear.
His community is being terrorized by Ew’ah.
The warrior enters the forest intending to destroy it.
He eventually returns.
But something is terribly wrong.
He is screaming, clawing at his eyes and completely insane.
He has seen Ew’ah.
Running Deer
The warrior’s wife, usually called Running Deer, decides to confront the creature herself.
Rather than simply attempting to overpower it, she uses its own terror against it.
Running Deer obtains a special mask made from the face or hide of a wildcat. She conceals herself and searches the forest until she finds Ew’ah.
When the creature sees the wildcat mask, it is terrified.
Depending upon the version, Ew’ah flees, destroys itself, or has its power turned back upon it. Running Deer subsequently becomes associated with protecting her people from dangerous beings inhabiting the forest.
This story has also become entangled with the Appalachian legend of the Wampus Cat, a mysterious feline creature reported throughout portions of the mountains.
In some tellings, the Wampus is Running Deer’s protective spirit.
In others, Ew’ah itself somehow becomes connected with the creature.
The traditions have changed considerably in the telling.
And that raises an important problem.
How Old Is the Story?
Claims that a particular Appalachian monster comes directly from ancient Cherokee tradition should be treated carefully.
Many websites repeat the Ew’ah story as established Cherokee mythology, but the readily available versions tend to trace one another rather than providing early ethnographic documentation.
That is significant.
One of the most important collections of Cherokee tradition is James Mooney’s monumental Myths of the Cherokee, assembled during the nineteenth century from Cherokee informants.
Cherokee tradition certainly contains supernatural beings, dangerous creatures, witches, strange transformations and powerful forces associated with the wilderness.
But modern Internet folklore frequently combines those authentic traditions with considerably newer stories.
The Wampus Cat provides a particularly good example. Some versions presented today as ancient Cherokee mythology appear to have developed much later. Modern researchers have noted that certain familiar Wampus origin stories do not appear in early documentation and may have crystallized during the twentieth century.
That doesn’t make them worthless.
It makes them Appalachian folklore rather than reliably documented ancient Cherokee mythology.
There is a difference.
What About the Liver?
The strangest detail in the forest-siren story may actually have an intriguing cultural parallel.
Cherokee beliefs concerning the body placed considerable importance upon the liver. Anthropological material describing Cherokee concepts of illness and death identifies the liver with a vital physiological soul or life substance.
Even more remarkably, some beliefs held that witches could attack or consume this liver-soul, thereby producing illness and extending their own lives.
That does not establish that the forest-siren story is an authentic Cherokee legend.
But it does make the otherwise bizarre liver-stealing element considerably more interesting.
A supernatural being stealing someone’s liver sounds like random horror when removed from cultural context.
Within a belief system in which the liver could be associated with vital life force, the act has an entirely different significance.
The creature isn’t simply collecting an organ.
It may be taking life itself.
The Greek Siren Comparison
The similarities to Greek Sirens are obvious enough that later storytellers may have encouraged them.
But the classical Sirens weren’t originally the beautiful mermaids familiar from modern illustrations.
Ancient representations frequently depicted them as combinations of women and birds.
Their defining characteristic was their song.
In Homer’s Odyssey, the Sirens lure sailors with irresistible voices and forbidden knowledge. Odysseus survives only by ordering his crew to block their ears while he is tied to the mast.
The Appalachian forest version operates on a similar principle.
You hear something beautiful.
You know you shouldn’t follow it.
You follow anyway.
But resemblance doesn’t necessarily indicate a historical connection.
Human beings separated by enormous distances repeatedly create stories about danger disguised as beauty.
Perhaps that fear is universal.
Music Where Nobody Should Be
The singing itself may also have emerged from genuine experiences in the mountains.
Sound behaves strangely in Appalachian terrain.
Voices, music and animal calls can travel through valleys under particular atmospheric conditions. The listener may badly misjudge both distance and direction.
Someone singing on a distant porch might sound as though she were somewhere in the woods.
Wind can create tones.
Birds produce startlingly human sounds.
Streams generate rhythms that the brain can interpret as distant voices or music.
And once a person begins listening for a pattern, the mind becomes remarkably good at finding one.
There is also a simpler danger.
Following an unidentified sound into an Appalachian forest at night is a genuinely bad idea.
No supernatural creature is required.
The mountains can handle the rest.
Madness in the Wilderness
The association between wilderness and madness appears repeatedly in folklore.
Isolation changes perception.
A lost traveler becomes frightened.
Fear becomes panic.
Exhaustion sets in.
Dehydration and exposure follow.
Direction becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.
Someone wandering through unfamiliar mountains for hours could emerge confused, frightened and behaving very differently from the person who entered.
To earlier communities, a person returning from the wilderness in such a condition might appear to have encountered something there.
Perhaps they had.
The question was what.
A Legend Made From Other Legends
The Forest Siren may not be a single ancient creature at all.
It may be something more characteristically Appalachian.
A composite legend.
Cherokee traditions concerning dangerous forest beings and madness may have contributed something.
Beliefs surrounding witches and the liver may have contributed something else.
European stories of seductive supernatural women probably entered the mountains with settlers.
Classical education introduced the Sirens.
Generations of oral storytelling did what oral storytelling always does.
The pieces moved together.
Eventually the mountains had their own woman singing among the trees.
That doesn’t weaken the folklore.
In some ways, it makes it more interesting.
Appalachian culture itself developed through centuries of overlapping peoples, traditions and beliefs. Its supernatural folklore naturally did the same.
Don’t Follow the Singing
Whether anyone ever genuinely believed a supernatural woman lived in a particular Appalachian forest is difficult to establish.
The historical trail becomes thin quickly.
But the underlying warning is considerably older than the Internet pages that eventually recorded it.
The forest is beautiful.
The forest is dangerous.
Not everything beautiful should be pursued.
And not every voice calling from the darkness wants to help you.
Perhaps the song is merely a bird.
Perhaps it is music traveling unexpectedly from somewhere beyond the ridge.
Perhaps the entire Forest Siren emerged when European and Native traditions became tangled together through generations of storytelling.
That is probably explanation enough.
Probably.
But if you find yourself alone in the Southern Appalachian mountains after dark and hear a woman singing beautifully somewhere beyond the trees, there remains one piece of traditional advice that requires no belief in the supernatural whatsoever.
Don’t go looking for her.
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