Before the internet, before television, before telephones and radio, even before newspapers came to be, storytelling was one of the best forms of entertainment. Folks would huddle together on the front porch, around the fire place, near the pot belly stove in grocery stores, at the grist mill, or anywhere a few could conger to hear someone tell a tale. Story telling has been recorded throughout the world, but nowhere does it have a more colorful and entertaining history than here in the Appalachian Mountains.

My great grandma, Rebecca Regan, must have been the queen of story tellers in her day as her reputation for such and her stories have stood the test of time and are still told today. Maw Regan died before I was born, so I only know her from what my mother and grandmother have told me, a few pictures and her "tales". It seems that Maw Regan and other family and neighbors would gather every evening around the fire place or on the porch and she would tell tales. Tales of bears, witches, warlocks, hants, mad dogs, wild Indians, and wampus cats. Tales so frightening they would make the hair raise on the back of your neck, or in my mother's case as a child, make her too afraid to step outside to get a drink of water.

I have heard these tales told all my life by my mother, grandmother and various family members and they always begin the same way, and it's not "once upon a time". Whoever is telling it would start "Maw Regan said". A few years before she died, I convinced my Mom to write down some of Maw Regan's stories. Today, I'll share the story of the "Big Mean Bear" the way it was told to me (note the spelling).

A man, his wife and two little children lived in a little one roomed cabin way up yonder in the mountains. Their little cabin had a dirt floor and a sleepin loft, a fireplace where she’d cook the meat he brought home and a door that only had a blanket hung across it, don't you know. There wernt another soul around anywhers. The man would go off hunten near every day and leave his wife alone with the little children. She was afeared to let them play outside, afeared the big mean bear that roamed the mountain would get them and eat them up. If they did go out to play she would stand in the door and watch after them. One day her husband went off to hunt. It was a purty day and she let the children go outside. She was watching them but turned her back for just a minute to get her sewing. Just then she heard the children screaming. She looked and shorenuff here comes that big mean bear straight toward their cabin. She grabs them two babies and runs inside. She ups them on the ladder to the loft, grabs the ax and climbs up after them. She pulled that ladder up after her and they huddle as fur back in the corner as they can get, don't you know. Now stay quite children she says. That old bear comes inside a thrashing and a growling. He rears up to the loft and sees them in the corner and starts to climbing up to the loft. She grabs that ax, gives it a swing and chops off his paw and runs back to the corner. They hear that old bear just a moaning for the longest time. Then, all of a sudden he rears up again and starts to pull his self up with one paw. She grabs that ax and swings it and chops off his other paw and runs back to the children in the corner. They can hear that old bear moaning and going on for the longest time. Then it’s quiet…….she’s near afeared to, but looks down and the bear is gone, but they stayed up in that loft till her husband gets home. He knowed something was wrong when he saw the blanket down off the door. Then he saw all the blood on the floor and it near scared him to death. She told him what happened and he grabs his gun and goes after that old bear. He tracks him by the trail of blood he leaves. Comes up on him in a thicket, draws back and shoots that mean thang. He skins that old bear and they have bear stew fur supper, don't you know. Now you'd think that'd be the end of that old bear......but NO! Any day or night yore out in them woods on the mountain by yore self, listen close and beware, you can hear that old bear rustling through the woods and moaning, looking for his paws!