Everybody raised in these mountains has one. A light on a ridge nobody could account for. Something at the edge of the road that was too tall, or stood wrong. A stretch of hollow your grandmother wouldn't walk after dark and wouldn't say why.
A haint is a ghost, mostly. The word is just "haunt" the way it gets said here. But people use it looser than that. A haint can be somebody dead who won't stay put, or it can be whatever is out there that nobody has a name for.
Haints is our collection of eight of them. Each is an extrait de parfum, and each is our impression of a niche fragrance we think fits the story. Some pairings are obvious once you know both halves. A couple we'd have to defend on a porch.
One note on geography before somebody writes in. Most of these came out of the hills of West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina and East Tennessee. The Bell Witch did not. Adams, Tennessee sits north of Nashville, a long way from the mountains. She's in here anyway. You can't make a collection of Tennessee haints and leave out the one said to have killed a man.
Mothman
Our impression of Marc-Antoine Barrois Ganymede Extrait
On November 15, 1966, two young couples drove into Point Pleasant, West Virginia and told police that something shaped like a man, with huge wings and glowing red eyes, had followed their car on the road north of town, out near the old World War II TNT plant. More reports came in over the following year. A wildlife biologist at West Virginia University said it was probably a sandhill crane blown off its migration route. The newspapers had already given it a name, and the name stuck better than the crane did.
Then on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River collapsed at rush hour and 46 people died. Engineers traced the failure to a crack in a single link of the bridge's chain. The sightings mostly stopped after that, and Point Pleasant has spent the decades since arguing over whether Mothman was a warning or a coincidence. The town settled it its own way. It built him a museum and throws him a festival.
Ganymede Extrait is the 2023 extrait of Marc-Antoine Barrois's Ganymede, built by perfumer Quentin Bisch. The house calls the original soft and mineral, and the extrait spicy, hot leather. It opens on frankincense, myrrh and mandarin, and leans hard on immortelle, a yellow flower that smells faintly of maple syrup and curry. Resin smoke and hot leather, for a thing first seen out by a plant full of old explosives.
Bell Witch
Our impression of Penhaligon's The Revenge of Lady Blanche
John and Lucy Bell brought their family from North Carolina to a farm on the Red River in 1804. A dozen or so years later the trouble started. Knocking in the walls. Covers pulled off beds while people slept. Family members slapped and pinched by something nobody could see. In time it learned to talk. It prayed, quoted Scripture, mimicked the neighbors, and made no secret that it wanted John Bell dead.
He died in December 1820. The story goes that a vial of unknown liquid was found by his bed, and it flared blue when somebody threw it in the fire. The spirit took credit. Andrew Jackson is supposed to have come out to see it for himself and left the next morning instead of staying the week, though that visit never made it into his own writings. The fullest account, M.V. Ingram's Authenticated History of the Bell Witch, wasn't published until 1894, seventy-some years after the funeral.
Penhaligon's released Lady Blanche in 2016 as part of its Portraits line, built by perfumer Daphné Bugey, and gave her a backstory: a London society beauty scheming to poison her husband. It's a green floral. Hyacinth and narcissus up top, then iris, angelica and ginger flower, with sandalwood underneath. Narcissus is the interesting one — green and bitter and a little narcotic, which is a strange thing to find in a perfume this well-mannered. Both stories end with a poisoned man. That was enough for us.
Brown Mountain Lights
Our impression of Amouage Search
Brown Mountain sits in Burke County, North Carolina, about twelve miles northwest of Morganton. For well over a century people have watched lights appear low over it after dark, swell, linger a few minutes, and fade. The Charlotte Daily Observer wrote them up in 1913. That October the U.S. Geological Survey sent a man, who said they were locomotive headlights. Then the great flood of 1916 stopped the trains, and people kept seeing the lights anyway.
The USGS came back in 1922 and tried again: trains, car headlights, brush fires. It's a reasonable answer. It has never fully closed the case.
Search came out in 2023 as part of Amouage's Odyssey collection, built by perfumer Alexis Grugeon, and the house's own shorthand for it is citrus inside burning woods. Lime, lemon and mandarin up top. Olibanum, elemi and black pepper through the middle. Then cade oil, guaiac and vetiver, which is where the smoke comes from — cade in particular is distilled from juniper wood and smells like it's been burnt. Bright lights over a brush fire. The USGS would approve.
Wampus Cat
Our impression of Frédéric Malle Musc Ravageur
The wampus cat depends on who's telling it. One version, usually told as a Cherokee story, is about a woman who hid under a mountain lion's skin to watch a ceremony she wasn't allowed to see, and was cursed to stay part cat. The settlers' versions got bigger and stranger. Some gave it six legs. In 1936 the Knoxville News-Sentinel described one with a body fifteen or twenty feet long and eyes like small moons.
It earned its keep, too. In 1918 the Greeneville Daily Sun reported that parents were having less trouble keeping children in after dark since word got around that the wampus had been seen nearby.
Maurice Roucel made Musc Ravageur for Frédéric Malle in 2000. It opens on lavender, bergamot, tangerine, coriander and neroli, turns to cinnamon, clove, orris, rose and osmanthus, and lands in musk, vanilla, tonka, amber, sandalwood, guaiac, cedar, patchouli and a frank animalic note. Ravageur means ravaging, more or less. It's warm, it wears close, and it's a little bit animal. Half woman, half cat.
Woodbooger
Our impression of Memo Paris Russian Leather
Around Norton, Virginia, Bigfoot goes by Woodbooger. After the television show Finding Bigfoot filmed an episode about sightings near High Knob in 2011, the Norton City Council did the sensible thing. In October 2014 it declared the city a sanctuary for the creature and welcomed anyone who wants to look for him, so long as they don't hurt him or tear up where he lives. A statue went up at Flag Rock in 2015. There's a festival every fall.
Alienor Massenet built Russian Leather for Memo Paris in 2016, around a cold Siberian forest. The list runs long and stays green most of the way: basil, rosemary, clary sage, mint, fern, lavender, coriander, pine, cedar needles, cypress, nutmeg, guaiac, patchouli, tonka, and a leather that doesn't show up until well into it. The mint is what makes it read cold. We moved it a few thousand miles south to High Knob. It fits fine.
White Thing
Our impression of Nasomatto Fantômas
West Virginia folklorist Ruth Ann Musick put the White Thing in print in 1965, in The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales. The story came to her from a student in her folklore class at Fairmont, who said it was common back home in Kanawha County. Accounts don't agree on its shape. A giant dog. A wolf. Something like a bear. They agree it's white and it has teeth, and several mention a scream. Musick had trouble filing it. Not quite a ghost, and not quite an animal.
Fantômas launched in 2020, named for the French pulp villain who was a master of disguise. Nasomatto doesn't publish formulas, so the note list is whatever the community has managed to agree on: melon, plastic, rubber, smoke, gunpowder, caramel, tropical fruit, earth, cashmeran and patchouli. That's a sweet fruit opening over something burnt, with a synthetic edge running under both. People argue hard about this one. That seemed right for a thing nobody describes the same way twice.
Sheepsquatch
Our impression of Creed Centaurus
Back to West Virginia. Sheepsquatch reports bunch up in the mid-1990s across Mason, Putnam, Kanawha and Boone counties: something the size of a bear, with long white wool, a pointed snout and horns like a ram. It goes on all fours or stands up, depending on the witness. Some accounts add a smell of sulfur. Some also treat Sheepsquatch and the White Thing as the same creature under two names. We made both. You can decide.
Creed released Centaurus in 2024 and named it for the constellation, which is named for a creature that's half one thing and half another. It opens on cinnamon, tobacco, cardamom and pink pepper, runs through sandalwood, patchouli, heliotrope, geranium and jasmine, and lands on bourbon vanilla, benzoin, tolu balsam, tonka and ambroxan. Spice up front, heavy sweet resin underneath. No sulfur. We checked.
Not-Deer
Our impression of Nasomatto Blamage
This is the youngest haint in the collection, and we won't dress it up. Nobody's grandmother told us about the Not-Deer. It took shape online, in Reddit threads and TikTok videos, from people across the Appalachians describing the same thing: a deer at the edge of the road that's wrong. Eyes set forward like a predator's. Legs that bend in one place too many. Sometimes it stands on its hind legs. It watches the car go by. The creature isn't really the scary part. The scary part is the second or two before your brain admits it isn't looking at a deer.
Blamage is German for disgrace, and Nasomatto describes the fragrance as a creation born of bad judgment. Its note list is four words long: birch, white woods, musk, leather. That's all anyone has. The opening reads metallic and a little sharp before it settles into something clean and woody and close to the skin. Close to familiar, and off. That's the Not-Deer.
Where to start
If you want one you can wear to work, start with Brown Mountain Lights or Bell Witch. Citrus and smoke, or a green floral.
For cold nights and close company, Wampus Cat or Sheepsquatch. Both run warm and sweet.
For leather, Woodbooger if you want it outdoors and herbal, Mothman if you want it hot and resinous.
For the strange ones, White Thing and Not-Deer. Both originals come from a house that makes a point of not explaining itself.