I heard repeated "screaming" sound from my woods just now...

I was sitting here at my computer, I had my window opened with the fan on...and....all of a sudden, I heard a loud screeching, like...screaming, high pitched, in the woods. It almost sounded like a cat being strangled or something, but it kept repeating the same tone....I'll try to type out what it sounded like "Ahhh...." "Arhhh" Really strange. I listened to it for about maybe 15 minutes, and the noise kept moving farther away into the woods, whatever it was, until it stopped making the repeated squealing, or yelping.....

I sort of live in the backcountry of New England, United States theres dense forests around my house...Wondering what kind of animal would make a sound like a cat being strangled? It almost sounded like a woman screaming repeatedly.

What animal is this??!!

Do any of your neighbors have pets or things? I live in PA and at my aunts house deer frequent her back yard. It might be one of your neighbors cats or something, or thier new HiDef TV

Well, it certainly wasn't a cat in heat..I know what that sounds like, as I have had many cats in my lifetime.....don't laugh, but the closest thing I can come to describing the noise this animal made sounded similar to a teradactyl (sp?)

So if anybody is familiar with the types of animals that are around new england that knows what kind of animal may have made this sound, your help would be greatly appreciated.

I have experienced "screaming" noises as well. I can't tell you exactly what type of animal it is, but I can tell you that I'm sure ( 100%) it is a rabid animal.

I have had the displeasure of waking up to screaming outside my bedroom window in my backyard. I soon discovered the animal behind the screaming was a perculiar acting fox. Right away I knew it had rabies mainly because of it's excessive salivatation.
So I hoped I helped you in someway.

Opossums make a hissng screaming sound sometimes..
I used to hear them all the time back east behind my house..
Very freaky, especially the first time I heard it..

Well, I live in 'Proper' England and I often hear screaming in the woods at the back of my house, it's usually kids playing a sick prank, it might not be an animal? Who knows?

I'll have to agree with the Raccoon theory. I've had a couple raccoons in a tree in my yard fighting before. They definately sound unnerving when they make those screaming noises....

I lived for a time in the woods of NY on a mountain. I woke one night to screaming so bone chilling I could not move. It sounded like a woman screaming, as if being murdered, but it went on way too long for anything being killed to have done it. There were people who had lived up there for decades and when I asked around about it their faces got strange and they all denied having a clue.

The next year it happened again, but this time it travelled through my property to the next one and at least three houses turned on their lights (in the middle of the night). The next day they all denied hearing it or waking up. This would happen every year about the same time. Whenever it did, all the domestic animals would exhibit bizzarre behavior before it occurred and for a few days afterwards. It was the oddest and scariest thing, but if anyone knew what it was no one was talking, so I will never know.

Bobcat, Mountain Lion or Canadian Lynx. What ever ya'll have in the woods.

A Mountain Lion scream will make you lose control of your bodily functions.

Originally posted by Relentless
I lived for a time in the woods of NY on a mountain. I woke one night to screaming so bone chilling I could not move. It sounded like a woman screaming, as if being murdered, but it went on way too long for anything being killed to have done it. There were people who had lived up there for decades and when I asked around about it their faces got strange and they all denied having a clue.

The next year it happened again, but this time it travelled through my property to the next one and at least three houses turned on their lights (in the middle of the night). The next day they all denied hearing it or waking up. This would happen every year about the same time. Whenever it did, all the domestic animals would exhibit bizzarre behavior before it occurred and for a few days afterwards. It was the oddest and scariest thing, but if anyone knew what it was no one was talking, so I will never know.

I would liek to knwo more aobu this?
'Can you start your own thread, maybe?

I was on holiday from British Colombia in the woods behind you house recently...and while killing a dog with my bare hands he bit my right foot, and boy i tell yah..i let out a yelp and crapped my self at the same time..and when you have hair like mine getting the crap out of your fur is way difficult......sorry if i scared you...

While being skeptical about bigfoot, I have heard audio clips on www.bfro.net of bigfoot screams. Check it out and see if they are similar.

Originally posted by Roper
Bobcat, Mountain Lion or Canadian Lynx. What ever ya'll have in the woods.

A Mountain Lion scream will make you lose control of your bodily functions.

That's it. I was going to say Bobcat last night when I saw this post, but wanted to see what other people said first. That's what Relentless heard too in the mountians. I'm pretty sure.

Bobcats sound like screaming women. You never get used to it. They extend all through the Appalachians from Canada/New England down through the mid Atlantic.

Proboly just some rednecks. They live across my woods and i always here em screaming.

Could be a death scream or a fear scream coming from a rabbit, feral pig, or some other prey that's being killed.

More than likely you heard an OWL. Some tend to make a screetching sound.

I have heard this sound too, when I lived and worked in a podunk mountain town here in Utah for a year or so.

I heard the owls, and yeah they made some pretty interesting sounds, but I don't think they were making the sound you and I heard. What I heard lasted for about an hour or so on several occasions, and yes, it sounded just like a woman screaming.

It wasn't someone or something being killed, because it lasted so long that anyone or anything would have died about 5 minutes into that.

So I'm pretty sure it's a racoon.

Nah - none of those. It's a partridge, or at least thats what I've heard them bring called. They are large birds in the woods that also flap around and scare the dickens out of you if you're out hiking. They are all over New Hampshire and other New England states and make these unbelieveable screams that sound like women being hacked to pieces in the woods. They sound oddly human - unlike raccoon or cat noises that are in between human and animal.

Originally posted by Roper
Bobcat, Mountain Lion or Canadian Lynx. What ever ya'll have in the woods.

That was my first thought.

All cats, domestic and their wild cousins, learn to vocalize from other cats. That's why so many people who's kitten was removed from the litter too early all say their cat 'meows funny'. It had no teacher. This also accounts for why housecat meows vary around the country -- regional dialects, so to speak (some researchers claim they can learn from hearing another cat on television). Wild cats (cougars, bobcat, etc) are the same. A mountain lion call in California may sound different from a mountain lion in Montana.

Another factor is sound propagation. Remember submarine movies where the sub dives below the thermal layer in the ocean to escape sonar? Sound partially reflects off the boundary layer between two layers of water, some passes through and distorts because of the different density. This occurs in air as well as water. At night, temperature inversions form low lying pockets of air that are a different temperature and density from the air above. As an animal call passes through the different layers of varying temperature and density, it distorts slightly. The stronger the inversion the greater the distortion. This has been offered as an explanation for so many of the 'sasquatch' recordings that cannot be identified. They're probably ordinary animals calls that went twisted.

I got all this from a grad course in forest ecology, from a researcher/lecturer whose specialty was cat sounds.

Originally posted by Relentless
I lived for a time in the woods of NY on a mountain. I woke one night to screaming so bone chilling I could not move. It sounded like a woman screaming, as if being murdered, but it went on way too long for anything being killed to have done it. There were people who had lived up there for decades and when I asked around about it their faces got strange and they all denied having a clue.

The next year it happened again, but this time it travelled through my property to the next one and at least three houses turned on their lights (in the middle of the night). The next day they all denied hearing it or waking up. This would happen every year about the same time. Whenever it did, all the domestic animals would exhibit bizzarre behavior before it occurred and for a few days afterwards. It was the oddest and scariest thing, but if anyone knew what it was no one was talking, so I will never know.

Rel, for you I would have to say someone is hiding something...dunno...maybe just pulling pranks on you






But anyways, I do remember one day driving back from my aunts house (well...I wasnt driving, my family was in the car and such) and there was a half dead possum eating itself or something... I thought I heard a scream kinda like that, but I had my cd player on so I couldnt tell