While history tells us that “Tailypo” has its origins in the Appalachian mountains, it was told to me as something that once took place in the Ozarks of Arkansas. Really, the story is vague enough that anywhere there’s poverty, anywhere the woods run so dark and deep that there’s no way you could explore them all, this story could have taken place.

The story goes like this…

An old man, abandoned by kith and kin, lived in a ramshackle cabin on the mountain with only his three bloodhound dogs for company. He would hunt and take the pelts down to the village to sell for supplies every few months, but this had been a rather miserable winter and his supplies were exhausted. Hunting was failing to turn up any game, and the man began to consider that his time might be better spent preparing a grave for himself.

After a fruitless hunting expedition one day, he was finally forced to turn around and go home when the weather turned foul, and a storm came out of nowhere. When the old man and his dogs made it back to the cabin, something else must have had the same idea as them, because the door was wide open and though the cabin was dark, a hulking shape could be seen moving about inside.

Bullets were expensive and the man didn’t want to risk hurting his dogs none, so he picked up an axe by the front door and crept inside, thinking maybe a deer had pushed its way inside, or, if he was really unlucky, maybe a bear.

Well the old man was unlucky, alright, but it weren’t no bear. It was big like a bear, with long claws and sharp teeth, but it had a face like an opossum and a long, hairless tail to match. It bared its teeth, got a good look at his dogs and made to run out the door. Quick as you please, the old man (who was almost starved at this point, to say nothing of his poor hounds) threw his axe, cutting the creature’s knobby tail off just before it disappeared out into the night, cursing and howling.

The man and his dogs ate stew that night, and if they didn’t know what kind of meat they were eating, well, it was still meat and it went down just fine. There was plenty to hold them over for a few days and bones for the dogs, besides, and they had their first good sleep in weeks.

As you might expect, though, the thing came back. It wanted what belonged to it, and it scratched and scrabbled at the windows, calling “Tailypo, tailypo…all I wants my tailypo!” There was nothing that could be given back at this point, though, and the man went out after the thing with his dogs. They never did find the creature, though, but worse was that when they came back to the cabin at dawn, one of the dogs was missing.

The same thing happened the next night, and the next. On the fourth night, the old man didn’t dare to leave his cabin, having exhausted bullets and bloodhounds. Instead, he sat in his bed and listened as the creature, emboldened, made its way up onto the roof and then, dreadfully, down the chimney.

The old man had been so exhausted by trying to hunt the creature by night and find his dogs by day that he hadn’t had time to make a fire, and now he listened as the creature moved about the room, sniffing at the empty stew pot and making its way over to the foot of his bed.

“Tailypo…tailypo…all I wants my tailypo.”

“Here!” the old man cried, throwing the last tailbone his dogs hadn’t chewed up at the thing at the foot of his bed. “Here’s all that’s left!”

When spring came that next year and the old man didn’t come down for supplies, a few of the village folk went to check on him. The man, his bloodhounds, and even his cabin were gone. All that was left was a ramshackle chimney, poking up straight from the earth like a knobby tail. And somewhere, just far enough out in the woods, there was a terrible, hissing laugh, and the words that came drifting in on the wind: “Tailypo…tailypo…I’ve got back my tailypo!”