Author Lillian Stone remembers the first time she met the Ozark Howler. She was browsing the shelves of her elementary school library as a child when, like a beacon amid Hardy Boys and Magic Treehouse editions, an illustrated book of local legends caught her eye. That introduction spawned a lifelong fascination with the cryptid, one that she explores in her essay “Beware the Howler” from her book, Everybody’s Favorite.
The Howler’s name comes from its long, mournful, blood-curdling cry. Beyond that, the details get murky. Some say it’s a massive cougar-like creature, others a combination of a wolf, goat, and cat. Stone pictures it as “a shaggy, giant hyena with big, glowing red eyes and also Beauty and the Beast–style curly horns.”
To skeptics, the Howler’s ambiguous description might be evidence that no one’s really seeing it at all. To Stone, that’s what makes this particular cryptid great. The Ozarks occupy a region between Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, where political views collide and geographical boundaries blur. “It’s a really complicated region with a lot of clashing sensibilities, which is part of what I love about it,” she says. “No one can decide if the region is the Midwest or the South or another third thing, so the Howler is the perfect beast for a really contradictory area.”
Though alleged encounters have become more frequent since the mid-twentieth century, some internet sleuths believe the legend of the Howler has been around since the late 1700s or early 1800s, when Daniel Boone spoke of killing a ten-foot-tall hairy creature called a Yahoo. Others think it could be derived from Indigenous folklore or brought over by Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century.
In any case, the Howler seems to resurface every few years. There was a string of sightings in Northeast Arkansas between 2005 and 2010. In 2015, the Springfield News-Leader received an image that looked more like a German shepherd puppy with horns than a fearsome beast.
In black bear country, it’s easy enough to mistake ursid for cryptid. The good news, according to Keith Stephens of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, which occasionally fields a Howler-related call, is that you’d treat a Howler exactly as you would a bear. “Just back away slowly,” he says. “Let them be.”
And if it is indeed the Howler you encounter, it might not have any intention of harm. “To my knowledge, there’s no lore about the Howler hurting anyone,” Stone says. The Howler is more like a guardian of the rugged Ozarkian landscape than a vicious beast. “It’s more about respecting the ecology of the region and making sure that you don’t step too far into the realm of nature,” she says. “You should fear it, and you should respect it, but it’s not there to hurt you.”
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