Ozark Howler

The Ozark howler also known as Ozark Black Howler is a legendary creature that is purported to live in remote areas in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas.The Ozark Howler got his name by the residents and hunters.It is said to roam the remote parts of Ozark mountains. The reports originate from a vast area that includes parts of Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.

Appearance:

The witnesses describe Ozark Howler as a bear-sized creature, with a thick body, stocky legs, black shaggy hair, a goat-like beard, glowing red eyes and having prominent horns protruding out of its head.The creature also has a tail, but one of the many things witnesses can't agree on is whether it has a short tail or a long tail.

Howl:

The most distinctive feature of the Ozark Howler is its unusual cry. Far more people have claimed to have heard the Ozark Howler than to have seen it. It's agreed upon by all witnesses that the creature has a terrifying howl, but what this howl sounds like varies wildly, perhaps even more so than its physical description.Its cry is often described as being a combination of a wolf's howl and an elk's bugle, witnesses have also described it as being similar to a hyena's laugh.

Origins:

The mysteries of the Ozarks are part of their charm. Folk tales of ghosts, monsters and strange creatures in the region date back hundreds of years. Unlike the well-known Arkansas Wild Man of the 19th century and the Boggy Creek and White River monsters of the 20th, the Ozark Howler mystery is complicated because eyewitnesses vary widely in their descriptions of what they have seen.

The origins of the Ozark Howler legend aren't very clear. Some sources claim that there have been sightings as far back as the early 1800s. In the 1950s, there was a supposed sighting where a black, goat-like creature was described as being the Ozark Howler, despite not matching the current common descriptions at all.

The idea that the Ozark Howler is a cat-like creature supposedly originates from a sighting in the early 1980s when a truck driver who had pulled off the road for the night described seeing a black, cat-like creature that had a long tail, shaggy fur, a stocky build, a beard, and red eyes.

There has been speculation that the Ozark Howler might merely be a misidentified big cat. The Arkansas Fish and Game Department does not recognize its existence as a previously unknown animal because no one has ever caught one or recovered a body. Instead, the agency says that these sightings are actually of pet panthers that have somehow escaped captivity.

There are similar elements to folklore about the ozark howler of America. First of all, there's the general size and shape of the animal: large, stocky, black fur and glowing eyes. Ozark "locals" describe the ozark howler as a "cat-like creature" three or four feet at the shoulder (much larger than any lynx, but also point out that the beast is supposed to have a rather stocky build. The difference between a stocky cat of such a size and a large dog is not so great as one might think, especially if they are seen at night. The ozark howler is reported to be a nocturnal beast.

Another theory on the identity of the Ozark Howler links it to the extinct saber-toothed cats (Smilodon), the idea here being that it may be a modern descendant of these animals. 

The most recent sightings of the ozark howler do not include the immediate death of the observer, but older reports and the resulting legends recorded by visiting university students and newspaper reporters include references to the belief that the ozark howler could cause the death of any human so unlucky as to catch its attention, merely by staring at the person.

It is important to remember that most of the oldest families of the Ozarks are of Irish, Scottish and English descent.In the cryptozoological community, it has been suggested that the Ozark Howler is related to the Black Dog of Death from British folklore, creatures often said to be associated with hellhounds or the devil. Some sources have claimed that the first sightings of the creature originated with settlers from Ireland, Scotland, and England, who would have brought the legend of the Black Dog of Death with them, and over time the legend evolved into its modern iteration.

Chad Arment asserts in his book Cryptozoology that the Ozark Howler myth is a hoax. According to Arment, he and many other cryptozoologists received email messages that made wild claims about Ozark Howler evidence. These messages were tracked down to a university student who had made a bet that he could fool the cryptozoological research community.However, many witnesses to seeing it in person in the region, prior to this hoax, show that Chad Arment's assertion was only correct in the one case, but not in the many cases of those who either haven't a computer, have seen the Howler prior to the hoax or have seen it without hearing of the legend.

Chronology:

Between 2005 and 2010, the Howler (also called the Black Howler or the Devil Cat) was spotted several times. A family living north of Van Buren in the Boston mountains of Crawford County set out trail cams after spotting what they believed was a cougar. The images they supplied to a Fort Smith television station appeared to show a big cat similar to a cougar (mountain lion).

At roughly the same time as the Crawford County sightings, similar reports originated from across the border in eastern Oklahoma. Those sightings revolved around large dark cats seen moving through the mountains.

Other reports from near Dardanelle in the Arkansas River Valley described strange 
sounds in the night similar to the laugh or bark of a hyena. From higher elevations, 
witnesses reported seeing what they described as a large "stocky" cat.

A sighting was reported in Newton County, Arkansas in 2011.Most recently a sighting of the Ozark Howler was reported after dark on Pump Station Road near Lake Springdale (at the line of Washington County, AR) in Benton County, Arkansas in 2016.