Its latin name—tyto alba—simply means ‘white owl.’ The name gives no clue whatsoever of the terrors the barn owl has stirred up in the imaginations of mankind the world over (well, except in polar and desert regions, most of Indonesia, and the Pacific islands).

Look at just a few of the unnerving nicknames it has earned for itself: Death Owl, Hissing Owl, Church Owl. Where did these come from?

Perhaps because of their white, ghost-like, appearance or their preference to hunt in open areas that can include cemeteries, barn Owls have been associated with bad omens and even death. 

“The owl which popular belief has invested with supernatural power,” London writer Dutton Cook tells us in The Gentleman’s Magazine, April 1868, “is undoubtedly the barn, or screech-owl. The wild legend of the banshee, a legend not alone confined to the sister isle [Ireland], has probably originated in the cry of the useless and harmless barn-owl.”

I doubt farmers would call owls useless, and many a superstitious mountaineer would certainly not call them harmless! The barn owl and the screech owl are not the same, by the way. The barn owl is occasionally known as the ‘screech owl’ because of its call, but screech owls are in the Strigidae family and barn owls are of the family Tytonidae. But in both that piercing cry is key to understanding how dark Appalachian folklore surrounding owls first arose.

Listen for yourself:

The English writer Cook continues, “Sir John Richardson narrates the circumstances of a party of Scottish Highlanders who passed a long winter’s night of intense fear, in the depths of an American pine forest. They had made their bivouac fire from woods taken from an Indian tomb; all night long the shrieks of the Virginian owl [1] rang in their affrighted ears—cries which they at once judged came from the spirit of the old warrior bemoaning his desecrated resting-place.”

The Cherokee were just as rattled by owl cries as the Scots, and had their own banshee type stories. At times they associated birds with the negative aspects of the Under World, with the owl and its vocalizations and secretive, nocturnal habits being top of the list.

“Owls and other night-crying birds are believed to be the embodied ghosts or disguised witches, and their cry is dreaded as a sound of evil omen,” observed anthropologist James Mooney, who lived with the Cherokees on the Qualla Boundary (present-day Cherokee, NC) during the late 1880s. 

Barn owls don’t appear in any of the recorded Cherokee tales involving owls, though they are one of the five owl species to be found in the Southern Appalachian terrain the Cherokee inhabited. Only 3—great-horned owls, barred owls, and screech owls—are mentioned explicitly. 

The screech owl was often a messenger of future events. When on the war trail the Cherokee, a hyper-superstitious people, divined the future outcome of a conflict according to screech owl calls. If heard on the right or left, the call signified that the Cherokee would be victorious. If heard ahead or behind, the call signified defeat, in which instance they would cancel the expedition. Owl calls were also used as a means of communication by scouts at night. 

Likewise, Shawnee braves used owl calls to relay information when in enemy territory, day or night. The Bland County [VA] History Archives offers up this nugget about warrior messaging in that tribe:
“On October the first of 1789 Jenny Wiley had no idea that her life would be changed forever. Her brother in law John Borders was out working that day. All of a sudden he heard a hooting of an owl! He started thinking to himself that something couldn’t be right since it was day time, he shouldn’t be hearing owls. Then from all directions came the hooting, and that’s when he knew his instincts were right. It was a signal from a group of Shawnee Indians!”

[1] Richardson probably didn’t have enough firsthand knowledge to know that Virginia in fact has 8 species of owl: not only Barn Owls, but also Eastern Screech-owls, Great Horned Owls, Barred Owls, Northern Saw-whet Owls, Long-eared Owls, Short-eared owls, and sometimes Snowy Owls.

https://www.smokymountainnews.com/archives/item/27697-cherokee-had-high-regard-for-owls

http://www.blandcountyhistoryarchives.org/general%20history/jenny%20wiley.html

More articles on Appalachian bird superstitions:

Looks like the stork is visiting their house again(Opens in a new browser tab)

The Animals from the Wild Visit, and Ms. Cat Stays(Opens in a new browser tab)

The post Ghost owl, Hobgoblin owl, Demon owl. It’s all those. And more. appeared first on Appalachian History.