When New Hampshire resident Duke Smith first heard the cry of a Fisher cat he thought he heard a baby dying slowly. The shrieks were constant, high pitched and their resemblance to human voice was really eerie. Several nights and a few missing cat notices later other residents of the neighborhood confirmed that these were the sounds of a Fisher cat.
Fisher cats are ferocious predators belonging to the weasel family and are known for their eerie screams and liking for house cats.
The sound of a Fisher cat is very shrill and resembles someone calling for help. The shrillness lends a certain high pitch to the sound and makes it sound like a woman or a child. Most people who hear the Fisher cat call for the first time are fairly convinced that they are hearing a human calling out for help.
The Fisher cat is a nocturnal animal and the fisher cat cry is sometimes a hunting cry and at others the Fisher cat call is just a mating call. It is well established that the Fisher cat makes the sounds to mate and attract other Fisher cats but people have also noticed the Fisher cat animal scream out just before or after a kill.
There is a lot of eeriness associated with the Fisher cat call and most of it is to do with the ferociousness of the animal and the creepy sound of the Fisher cats screech, compounded by the fact that it is found in the wilderness and can be heard mainly during nights. For example picture yourself in the place of this family that are going through this lonely wooded area in the dark and hear this lady like screech in the distance.
Loading ...While you can’t be sure whether this is a person or the fisher cat animal, you can be sure that being in such environs and hearing such a scream will run a chill down your spine.
Fisher Cat sounds are usually constant and you can hear them at a regular interval like in this video
Loading ...In the video you can notice that the animal screams out every few seconds and the pitch and the volume is constant. While the animals do not prey in the day time they can still be spotted moving about. The sounds are much more prominent during the night and people have witnessed these animals screeching on for hours and hours together. More often than not the Fisher Cat sounds are going to be constant and it will become a haunting experience. The Fisher cat sounds especially weighs on the minds of people who have pets like rabbits or cats. This is because Fisher cats are really dangerous and have the reputation of pretty much killing all small animals in the surrounding areas that are not kept indoors. While much of this sound like old wives’ tales the incidents that happen every year across United States give real evidence that the animals are deadly predators.
Usually the one off sound means that the Fisher cat animal is either closing on a hunt or has already killed its victim.
Next time you hear these haunting sounds make sure that all your pets are indoors and that you comfort your children and not let them get too scared by the sound.
Are these sounds from a Fisher Cat or Red Fox screech?
Fisher cat screeches are often mistaken for red fox cries. Here are two different examples as pointed out from one of our readers:
These are fox calls or screams on this video
This is the possible sound of a Fisher Cat
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For your second YouTube video (sound at night), I can tell you that the first sound in the beginning were from a pair of Barred Owls. The next were a couple if raccoons having an argument. Nothing more. I have both in my backyard nightly and the would sound creepy to a person unfamiliar with them. And we also have fishers and red and gray foxes…
Absolutely NOTHING here sounds like the fisher cats in our neighborhood. Our house borders a wildlife preserve and the sounds we hear are INDEED clear and quite weird.
Heard a scream like kids or women screaming their heads off, but with pauses between screems, at 10pm last night in the woods behind our house in Shelburne, MA. The best recording I have heard of a fisher cat scream, the closest what I heard last night, is here:
None of the recordings you have hear have quite matched that “either there is a teanagers primal scream therapy session or a murder or animals in heat” eerie scream that we heard in our woods.
This is the exact sounds I’ve been hearing for the last two weeks behind my house,..none of the other videos and sounds I’ve listened to sound like this….this audio you have here is Identical to what I’ve been hearing,…especially the small grunt that sounds like an ape in between the screams sometimes….is this a fisher cat or a fox???….I have in my garden what looks to be fox tracks…
I am from the Connecticut Shoreline. Yesterday my neighbor told my family and I that they saw two Fisher Cats in their yard the day before at 10:00am. Last night I was woken up by a very LOUD and EXTREMELY STRANGE/SCARY noise that was SOOO LOUD it sounded like it was right outside my bedroom window. THIS WAS IT!!! But was even creeper and in longer intervals. SKEEETCH!!
It was probably Bigfoot.
i came yards from a fisher cat a week ago in my town and that was the exact noise that i heard but a lot louder like high pitched like a women screaming. I am 99.9% sure that is a fisher cat
I believe that is a fox You are hearing. Search You tube for Fox calls, think You’ll be surprised
In N.Calif. they use raw chicken to get tracks in a special container.. to count numbers.I heard one scream recently and I live way out in the hills.I hope now that the cherries are gone so are they. I have an open cat door and am going to be gone ..I lost a cat last year to a bob cat I thought.
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yer a dikshiit
Coon Dog: that is a fisher behind your house. I hear the same thing every night behind mine. I live in a residential area in a small town in northern Ontario and these things are all over the place killing every small animal they encounter. I hear it kill a small dog a few streets from my house the other night – that scream is something you won’t forget if you ever hear it.
the 2nd video , the 1 that u ask ” whats that sound”… its an owl
Thanks for the info. I thought I was hearing a Fishercat, he/she past through just last night. Washington, MA.
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We heard loud high-pitched screaming last night, pretty sure it was a fisher. But we also have racoons, owls, opossums, and grey fox. I wish i could capture it. I have several outdoor cats that I worry about.
Melissa
Windham Maine
I use to live in Windham off of Varney Mill Rd and awoke to the worst sounds you could imagine one summer morning.When we went outside we found our neighbors cat dead on their porch and a fisher cat taking off around the building so be careful it could happen.
Nice try, but sorry, not very convincing. The first video of the fisher sounds like a hawl or some sort of bird. Also, much of the fisher legend is just that. For one thing, they do not actively prey on cats, according to a study of fisher cats’ stomach contents, a study carried out by the New Hampshire Dept of Fish and Game, in 1994, I think it was. While a fisher may occasionally nab a cat, it is not its first choice of a meal, but keep an eye on your chickens, rabbits, trash cans, road kill, and any baby animals. There are many animals that shriek in the night & there are some people who claim that the fisher cat scream is a myth. I don;t know if it is or isn’t, but just try to find a video on Youtube that actually shows the fisher animal with the sound coming from its mouth. Good luck with that. Okay, so fishers mostly come out at night, but I have seen them in the daytime. And even at night, someone could use wildlife cameras that take nightshots to record the supposed fisher scream, I mean, if it even exists.
I meant to say it sounds like a “hawk”. Sorry.
A fisher killed my main coon cat last night. Bit it in the neck.
While living in Southwest WI, me and my friend heard what sounded like somebody calling for help one night, across the street down by the river. About 1-3 Am, small town of about 500 people. We even called the police and had them come check it out and they found nothing. None of these videos sounded anything like it. Any normal person can tell when something is an animal. Most of these videos just sounded like neighborhood cats fighting or something…. Out of curiousity, we decided to stay up all night out on the sidewalk again and wait for this thing.. it came, only this time it was not saying “help”, it literally sounded like a woman or banshee or something screaming it’s ass off, and it came right for us. This wasn’t a stopping every few seconds, this was a full blown “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah”, followed by another and then another. Almost like if a chick were to be a lead singer in a death metal band or something. Whatever this was, was huge too, as the screams were coming from higher above ground, and if it were a fox or something, it would have been lower to the ground. This was pretty level with our faces and began to get closer and closer.. yet we couldn’t see anything in front of us. Whatever it was, scared us so bad, that we darted back towards town, and we could still hear this thing following us, running at the same pace as we were, screaming it’s ass off, behind the buildings we were passing. The next morning, I drove past there, and there was no signs of anything. This happened to me when I was 17, and I am now 24. I’ve been up all night remembering these days and trying to find an “animal” that sounded even remotely close to this.. and sadly, I haven’t found any. Not a fisher cat, not a weasal, not a damn racoon, not a screech owl. Whatever I heard, had the lung capacity of a giant and was obviously either intimidating or going to attack me and my friend…. I dont think foxes attack humans do they? And we can rule the whole fox and cat thing out anyway, because it sounded nothing like. To this day I am still puzzled by it and still can’t get answers.
Strange and interesting fact, a year later, my friend that was with me that night, her brother mysterious got into a car accident and hit a light post, RIGHT where we were sitting and had heard these screams… but he didn’t die in the accident.. for some reason they found his body on the otherside of town with a bullet in his head.. They ruled it a suicide… Yet my friend swears up and down that her brother would’ve never killed himself. I found it quite coincidental, that his car was found wrecked, in the exact same location, that this “thing” was coming at us.
Anyway, thought I’d share my story. I’ve been telling myself all these years it had to be an animal, just so I can move on with life, but now I can proudly say, what I heard was definitely strange, and after checking these videos out and others, I am more convinced than ever that what I heard was not an animal.
You must be fun at campfire stories… I don’t think an animal carries a gun…
Obedient bye, considerate chum
The sound in the video is a fox in my opinion. I live in Greene RI and have two foxes living in my vicinity. Hear this sound alot and last week I was awakened in the night with the scream right outside my window. Looking out, there she was, the red fox. She just kept screaming so I opened the window and told her to go away and she barked at me! Exactly like a dog. They have different calls. The sound in the video is just like the sound she was making right in front of me.