The Eastern Whippoorwill is a nightjar that inhabits open deciduous mixed woods across the eastern U.S. and central and southeastern Canada. As aerial foragers, they fly around and catch their food, consuming large quantities of moths, beetles, and other insects each night. While their beaks are quite small, they open up to a very large, gaping mouth perfect for scooping insects out of thin air. Whippoorwills are nocturnal and, like other nightjars, extremely well-camouflaged and difficult to spot. They are most active at dawn and dusk, and they are often more active during full moons. This bird’s name comes from its haunting call that sounds like “whip-poor-will.”

There is quite a lot of sinister lore surrounding these elusive birds. Whippoorwills appear in folklore from multiple sources as harbingers of death, or omens of ill fortune. Many of these tales originate from early settlements in New England. Whippoorwills are said to wait around outside homes where a person is dying in order to snatch their soul as it leaves. H.P. Lovecraft, who often incorporated authentic folklore into his work, wrote in The Dunwich Horror, “If they can catch the fleeing soul when it leaves the body, they instantly flutter away chittering in daemoniac laughter; but if they fail, they subside gradually into a disappointed silence.” Based on these tales of soul-snatching, people would worry if they heard a Whippoorwill calling outside their home, as they believed it meant someone in the house would soon die.

Strange goings-on associated with Whippoorwills appear to go back even further, as anthropologists have written about their significance in Mohegan culture. The Mohegan tribe believed that makiawisug, or magical forest-dwellers, were able to transform into Whippoorwills in order to travel through the woods. These little forest people also existed in Pequot culture. Considered to be mostly benevolent nature spirits, makiawisug were believed to have the power to make themselves invisible, and were very dangerous if disrespected. Additionally, the Mohegan word for Whippoorwill also meant “small boy.” Young boys in this culture were associated with the liminal space between life and death, and this tribe had a very high rate of child mortality.

The associations in native cultures may be slightly less sinister than the stories in New England folklore, but the fact that the Whippoorwill’s spooky reputation persists across time and cultures gives these strange birds a certain air of mystique that can’t be shaken.