Ozark Howler

The Ozark Howler, also known as the Ozark Black Howler, is a legendary creature that is purported to live in remote areas in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas.

The Ozark Howler is typically described as being bear sized, with a thick body, stocky legs, black shaggy hair, and as sometimes having horns. Its cry is often described as being a combination of a wolf's howl and an elk's bugle. Anthropologists have speculated that the creature might be a misidentified or unrecognized big cat. Cryptozoologists have speculated that the creature might be a branching-off of the dark dogs of death found in British folklore.

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.

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.