Ozark Howlers - Fact or Fiction?



Posted: Saturday, February 23, 2008

by
Kelly

As a fantasy novelist and screenwriter, I'm often accused of having a wild imagination. You're probably thinking that an Ozark Howler is another Big Foot or Loch Ness Monster and I can't say that I blame you.

 I was inspired to write my new novel, Tale of an Ozark Howler after hearing stories about black panthers or Howlers prowling around the Ozark Mountains. Talk to anyone in the Ozarks and chances are, you'll hear a bloodcurdling account about crossing paths with a Howler in the woods. I was skeptical, that is, until I spent some time in an isolated cabin in the heart of the Ozark Mountains a few months ago.

 Being an L.A. girl, my friends and family thought I was insane for trekking off into "hillbilly country" all by myself. But my curiosity got the better of me and I needed to investigate Howlers for myself.

 Stretching from Northern Arkansas into Southern Missouri, the Ozark region is a magical land alive with superstition and folklore. Imagine evenings aglow with glimmering fireflies and endless, green forests, so dense that they choke out most of the sunlight. Cell phone reception is sporadic and some of the back roads are so seldom traveled that you may come across vines as thick as logs stretching from one side of the blacktop to the other. There are no signs on the back roads and it's easy to get hopelessly lost. You have to take the hairpin turns slowly because deer, elk and armadillos will leap onto the road in front of your car. The Ozark Mountains are choked with deep, dark caves, wildlife and an abundance of road kill-a predator's paradise.

 I interviewed many locals and most had either encountered a black panther or knew someone who had. At first I thought they were just joking around until I began to notice a similar pattern among the stories. I even had dinner with a pair of Arkansas State Park Rangers who told me that hikers frequently reported seeing black panthers in the thick woods along the Buffalo River.

 With renewed curiosity, I drove deep into the forest and stopped at an isolated ranger station. The ranger on duty swore that Ozark Howlers were real. In fact, she'd recently seen one. "It was late at night and something big and black darted out in front of my vehicle," she said. "I stopped to get a closer look and couldn't believe what I saw-a huge black panther. It snarled at me before it disappeared into the woods." Although the ranger reported the incident to her superiors, she said that Arkansas Fish and Game refused to acknowledge the existence of the creatures because no one had ever caught one or recovered a carcass. Despite hundreds of sightings, Fish and Game determined that the legendary Ozark Howlers were "pet panthers" that had escaped captivity. But people in the Ozarks will tell you otherwise. "What I saw out there that night was no escaped pet," the ranger said. "Whether Fish and Game recognizes Howlers or not, I know what I saw."

 After numerous interviews with locals, I concluded that the legendary Ozark Howler is an elusive, but very real creature. So how come no one's ever captured one?  That's the premise of Tale of an Ozark Howler. Perhaps they're not animals at all, but something else entirely.

The comic book version of the novel titled, Tale of an Ozark Howler, the Journey of Doom is the story of a California surfer dude who is forced to move to the boondocks of Arkansas to take over his aunt's witch doctor practice. While there, he discovers that his real father was a shape-shifting ghoul known as an Ozark Howler. The limited edition comic book is being released by Howlin' Hillbilly Press at the Wizard World Comic Convention in Los Angeles on March 14, 2008 and the novel series will be released in 2009.
 
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