Heritage/History

Selling Waynesville’s Monster and His Lonely Bride

Hillbillies as proud but poor, preindustrial innocents is a cultural and commercial construct, and one that was selling very well.”

Craig Payst, artist

The Business of Folklore

By Lauren Stepp

In postbellum Appalachia, Asheville and its surrounding communities boomed. Propelled by Victorian consumerist culture and Gilded Age prosperity, regional leaders peddled the mountains as a bucolic getaway with modern conveniences such as luxury hotels, hot springs and spas. Investors came in droves.

Among them was a man named S.C. Satterthwait. In 1900, Satterthwait developed the Eagle’s Nest Hotel in Waynesville. Positioned at 5,050 feet on a range he called The Junaluskas, Eagle’s Nest attracted elite families escaping the upcountry’s summer heat. But some guests, one in particular, stayed year-round.

They called him Boojum, and he was neither man nor beast. Some eight feet tall with unkempt hair, the creature was said to frequent the Balsam Mountains. He hoarded precious gems in discarded liquor jugs and liked to watch young women cool off in the crick. Most ladies took fright at the sight of Boojum, but one maiden named Annie was different. When she locked eyes with that brute, she saw the truth: that Boojum, like all folks, sought to love, not destroy. And so, with that single glance, their romance commenced.

Though Annie spurned her family to join Boojum in the deep woods, her darling often snuck away to hunt emeralds and rubies. Annie grew lonely during these escapades and is said to have developed a peculiar holler, a bit like a monkey and hooting owl, to beckon her lover back home. This earned her the endearment Hootin’ Annie, or so says the legend.

Craig Payst with NorthCarolinaGhosts.com charges the tale to just that: legend. Still, the story lends itself to a certain cultural whitewashing that occurred in WNC in the early 20th century. At that time, tourism was gaining a foothold in the area while a regional “hillbilly” identity was being constructed in popular culture. This identity, says Payst, rooted itself in the idea that mountaineers were an “isolated patch of pure, Anglo-Saxon stock, characterized by pride, self-sufficiency and poverty. Now, this is all an invention,” he continues. “It erases the history of early industrialization, the complexity and multi-ethnic settlement of the Appalachians, the centuries of interaction with and ultimate expulsion of Native Americans and the long, rich African American tradition in the area. Hillbillies as proud but poor, pre-industrial innocents is a cultural and commercial construct, and one that was selling very well.”

As such, Boojum surfaced as a business tactic—a piece of folklore Satterthwait’s guests could experience during cocktail hour.

“It’s a brilliant piece of storytelling,” says Payst. “It has a mysterious, but safe creature at its center, the possibility of discovering riches while hiking and even a hint of sexuality.”

A pastoral romance, the tale of Boojum and Hootin’ Annie also appeals to a very human desire to discover pure, timeless love. Even today, a century after the Eagle’s Nest Hotel’s untimely demise in a fire, it is said that the unlikely darlings still roam, and if you listen hard enough, you might just hear Annie hollering.

To learn more, visit NorthCarolinaGhosts.com.

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