TextSearch

“I should preface with two things. Number one. My father is one of the most rock solid people I know, and does not often show fear. His voice was trembling when he told me his account of the encounter. Number two. I have traveled extensively through United States. 44 states, with the exclusion of Wisconsin, Hawaii, Michigan, N. Carolina and S. Carolina. I lived in Alaska, and was a trek guide in the Rockies. I know wild animals, and have had encounters with mountain lions, bears, moose, and every kind of small game. But nothing has left me in the terror I had when I encountered something in the woods of my home state Missouri. I know the Ozark Howler was pronounced fake. An elaborate hoax by a college kid if I remember correctly. I don’t know what to call the thing my father described, so it is the Howler to me. Missouri, the Ozarks in particular is a historically rich and beautiful place. Mountains in the south east give way to river valleys in the south west where I lived. Our farm was 120 acres of woods and rolling fields. A large creek that would flood in the spring but run quietly the rest of the year bisected it. Being relatively poor we lived in a 100+ year old farm house that had it’s own list of strange occurrences but creaks and groans were expected from something that old so most of it was written off as old wood. And since we were poor we subsisted off of venison. Deer meat that is. So I spent a lot of time in the woods tracking and preparing game stands and watching for poachers. However the woods took on an odd atmosphere the Summer before my 16th birthday. Most people avoid the woods in Missouri through the Spring and Summer due to ticks, chiggers, and snakes. I love the woods. I would purposefully look for snakes, and for some reason ticks and chiggers seemed to leave me alone. I still remember that Summer, it was rainier than most. Usually we’d get a deluge in the Spring and then maybe a rainstorm once or twice a month in the Summer. But that season it seemed to rain every day. The woods were darker and cooler in the day due to this. Beautiful too. Thick carpets of moss covered the hills, and long thin fingers of grass would shoot up through it. In the southern portion of the woods there was an old pickup truck that had been burned up in the 50’s, it was normally rusty and bare but this year it too had grown a covering of moss. A couple trees had grown up through it over the years and the story goes that moonshiners had been brewing out there when a bad batch blew and killed a few of them. This is the hill country so it’s not hard to believe. I used the pickup as a marker while I was tracking. One day after starting at the Northern end, which was a large thicket of cedar trees, and then working my way south to the pickup truck I began getting the hunters instinct of being watched. This is normal for me. It’s a good indicator that something is out there that either A, is trying to avoid you, or B, is trying to stalk you. It’s a time to stop, take account of the situation, and begin counter stalking. This was later in the day and after a rain storm so fog was moving in. I ducked behind the truck slowly to avoid spooking what I had hoped was a nice buck. There had been so few deer on our land that year. I looked through the rusty window towards the direction that I thought my future kill was. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But still I had the feeling of being watched. More intense than I had ever felt it. The only thing I could liken it to was when I doing mountain treks in Wyoming. I felt the hair on my neck stand on end while I was going around a glacial lake and my mind said ‘there it is, turn around’. When I did there was the tail of a mountain lion slinking into the bushes. I trusted my senses then and now here I was on home ground feeling like ten lions were around me. I stayed put until I felt there was nothing there and then chalked it up to jitters. The woods felt different because of the extra rain. As I left the woods and crossed through the fog near the creek I felt it again. Not as intense but again my mind called out, ‘there it is, turn around’. At the edge of the woods was a man, dressed in dark mechanics pants and red and green flannel jacket. Poachers were a problem for a poor family. We hunted to support not only ourselves but others that couldn’t afford to by meat regularly so I began walking up to confront him. He turned and made for the woods. He made it to the fog bank at the forest edge and I yelled out for him to stop. He kept walking and just seemed to dissipate in the fog the further he got into it. By the time I caught up to where I last saw him there was nothing. No tracks, no disturbed foliage, nothing. I always thought it was odd that someone would wear flannel in the summer. When I returned home my mother told me that she had received calls from the neighbors. One, to the north of us, reported a wounded horse and a mutilated goat. The other, to the south, reported two calves and cow dead and mutilated. I went to see the neighbor with the horse. It had 4 long claw marks on either side of it’s rear haunches, like something had stalked up and tried to drag it down from behind. It reminded me of watching lions take down zebras on discovery. The summer continued and odd occurrences continued to happen in the woods. Neighbors all around us reporting dead dogs, cats, small farm animals and the occasional cow. All mutilated and chewed up. That constant feeling of being watched. I usually only carry a rifle in hunting season but I started carrying one constantly later that Summer. When fall hit I turned 16 and things just got worse. Tracks started showing up on our neighbors land that representatives from Fish and Game swore were grizzly bear. The only bears in Missouri are Black bears and all in the south east side near the mountains and swamps. Tracks showed up on our land to. Two big sets, front and back. The front seemed to be long like a dogs but wide near the front like a cats, and no claw marks told me that if it did have claw then they retracted. The rear paw marks were wider, like the animal had massive rear legs for pouncing, and the paws to support it. Still I kept stalking, kept tracking, kept watching. About 3 weeks before hunting season I went out early one morning to drop some apples for the deer and check for fresh tracks. Like the day where I ran into the man in flannel I started at the north end in the cedar thicket and moved south. The cedar thicket has always set me on nerve, but since that day I’ve avoided it altogether. Tall dark cedar trees close enough if you stand up straight you can’t see through lower boughs. So you have to bend at the waist and walk through crouched. The lowest boughs are dead from not receiving sunlight and smack you in the face if you’re not careful. I am tearing up as I remember this. I bent over and began walking through the cedars and my mind said, ‘there it is, turn around’. I looked left, to the east and near a thick patch cedars was a freshly killed deer. The thing behind it was huge and black. Crouched on all fours like some kind of big cat, but with big yellow eyes, bigger than I’ve ever seen, and a thick shaggy mane that flowed from just behind its head to the middle of its back. It wasn’t lion, or cougar, or bear. I’ve never seen it’s like since. I began walking sideways, determined not to take my eyes off of it. With each of my steps a guttural purr came from it. The purr would start low like a growl and then end on a high note. I slowly moved my rifle from the sling to my shoulder so I could pull up quick and shoot if I needed to. It was so big I don’t know if I would have done any damage. It didn’t move though. I kept moving side ways until I was at an angle from it and then backed up and out of the cedar thicket. I stayed bent so i could eyes on it until I moved out of site. It just laid there and turned it’s massive head. As I got out of eyesight I began to hear movement from the direction I had just come, and the intense feeling of being watched. It was stalking me now. Here I was, 16 years old, probably going to die. They’d find me later, or part of me. Gnawed on with giant claw marks through my body. I’m 25 now and in all my encounters with dangerous animals I have never run. I ran then and if it happened again today I would run. I never run. Never you understand? Bears, mountain lions, moose. Never. But that thing was not all natural. So I ran. I continued South to get into clear space. Two thoughts were in my head. Get a clear shot, get into open space so your body is easier to find. I made it to the old truck. The moss had dried up and was falling off. As I ran up to it the man in flannel stepped out from behind one of the trees that was growing through it and pointed towards the trail out of the woods. I turned immediately and sprinted as hard as I could. Whether it was in my mind or actually happening I felt like hot breath was hitting my back, and then when i broke the edge of the woods the most unearthly scream sounded out from behind me. Half human almost. I kept running until I felt I was clear and then turned. Nothing. Nothing had followed me out. A shadow on all fours stalked about 100 feet deep through the woods. I made for the house as quickly as I could. When I got back my Dad was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for me. He had been out chopping wood that morning while I was running from the Howler. He had heard the scream. He told me he had only heard it one other time. About 20 years before he was out chopping a tree down near the edge of the woods. On the north side, near the cedar grove. When he walked back to the truck to refill the chainsaw he heard the same scream. He turned and the black thing had jumped up on the tree he had just chopped down and stood there looking at him. Dad left the chainsaw in the truck bed, got in and drove away. That tree is still on the ground today. I don’t expect you to believe this, but a few things struck me while I was writing this. One, I feel the fear even today, and had to wipe away tears more than few times to get through this. Two, The Man in Flannel was wearing the same thing the second time I saw him, when he was guiding me out the woods. Moonshiners, even the dead ones, know the woods better than anyone. Third and lastly is this. Predatory big cats will mark their territory in a number of ways. One is to not hunt directly in the territory, but in the surrounding area. Much like the area surrounding our land. Needless to say I did not hunt that year.”

Unlock The Ozarks - Stories - Folklore, Legends, & Myths - Ozark Howler