# The Ozark Howler, a bear-sized horned black “devil cat” said to prowl the Ozarks, is a real undiscovered animal, though its modern legend traces largely to a documented internet hoax

**No verdict.** There is no physical evidence, no specimen, no bones, and no verified photograph of an animal matching the Ozark Howler, so the claim that a distinct horned, bear-sized predator lives in the Ozarks is unproven. Two things are better documented than the creature. First, the Ozarks do carry a long, real folklore of large, howling black animals, layered on top of genuine regional predators, black bears, cougars, wolves and feral dogs, whose sounds and silhouettes seed monster stories. Second, the specific modern figure called the “Ozark Howler” was traced by cryptozoologists Chad Arment and Loren Coleman to a University of Arkansas student who admitted circulating it online as a hoax, on a bet that he could fool the cryptozoology community, and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission dismissed a widely shared 2015 photo set as fake. This file reports the folklore honestly and reports the hoax that shaped its modern spread, while keeping the verdict where the evidence leaves it: no such animal has been shown to exist.

Category: Cryptids & Monsters · Era: 1990s · First circulated: Older Ozark tales of large black “devil cats” and howling night animals are regional folklore of uncertain age; the named “Ozark Howler” as a distinct cryptid spread on the early internet in the late 1990s, through emails to cryptozoologists and a set of purpose-built websites · Believed by: A regional folklore and internet-cryptid legend rather than a mainstream belief. It is popular in Ozark tourism, cryptid culture, and online monster lore; taken seriously by very few researchers, and treated as a hoax-tainted legend by the cryptozoologists who investigated its modern origin.
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/ozark-howler

## Summary
The Ozark Howler, also called the Ozark Black Howler, the Hoo-Hoo, the Nightshade Bear, or the Devil Cat, is a creature of Ozark folklore said to roam remote parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. It is usually described as bear-sized, with a thick body, stocky legs, shaggy black hair, glowing eyes, and, most distinctively, a pair of horns, with a cry likened to a mix of a wolf's howl, an elk's bugle, and a hyena's laugh. This file separates two layers. One is the genuine folklore: the Ozarks really do have old stories of big, howling black animals, and real predators behind them. The other is the specific modern cryptid, whose spread was traced by cryptozoologists to a hoaxer who admitted inventing much of the online legend on a bet. There is no physical evidence for the animal, only the folklore and the hoax that gave it its current shape, and this file reports both.

## The claim
That a distinct, undiscovered animal, a large, horned, black cat-like or bear-like predator, lives in the remote Ozark highlands, is responsible for eerie howls heard across the hills, and has been sighted and photographed but never officially recognized because science and wildlife agencies refuse to take the reports seriously.

## Origin and timeline
- early 1800s (claimed): A frequently repeated origin story holds that frontiersman Daniel Boone encountered or hunted the creature in Missouri. No contemporaneous record supports this, and the tale appears to be part of the legend's later, constructed backstory rather than a documented early sighting.
- 19th–20th centuries: Ozark communities carry a real folklore of large black “devil cats” and unnerving night howls, entangled with sightings of genuine regional predators: black bears, cougars, wolves, and feral dogs. This diffuse tradition is the raw material the later cryptid draws on.
- late 1990s: A named creature called the “Ozark Howler” begins circulating on the early internet. Cryptozoologists, including Chad Arment and Loren Coleman, receive emails making dramatic claims about evidence for the animal, and a cluster of websites appears presenting it as a long-established legend.
- late 1990s: According to Arment and Coleman, the emails are tracked to a University of Arkansas student. He later says he began the effort after mocking, in a skeptics' chat room, how the chupacabra myth had spread online in the 1990s, and wondered whether he could get people to fall for an invented cryptid.
- late 1990s: Coleman reports tracing the originator and obtaining a confession describing how the hoax was built, including creating multiple websites to plant the impression that sightings reached far back in time. The stated aim was partly to win a bet and partly to undercut the credibility of monster tales like Bigfoot and the chupacabra.
- 2004: Chad Arment publishes Cryptozoology: Science & Speculation (Coachwhip Publications), summarizing the Ozark Howler episode (around pages 14–15) as a case study in how a modern cryptid can be manufactured and spread online.
- 2015-12: Arkansas television station 40/29 News reports that a viewer sent photographs said to show the creature, a dark, horned animal with glowing eyes behind trees. Contacted by the station, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission says it has had no such sighting reports and that the images are a hoax; a similar picture sent to Missouri's Springfield News-Leader looks more like a horned dog than a monster.
- 2020s: The Ozark Howler settles into a durable role in regional tourism and internet cryptid culture, with articles, merchandise, and social-media lore. Coverage such as a 2026 revisit by the Jefferson City News-Tribune continues to treat it as folklore whose evidence never materialized.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: A specific animal called the Ozark Howler has been reliably documented and photographed.
  Evidence: No verified specimen, remains, or authenticated photograph exists. The best-known photo set, aired by 40/29 News in December 2015, was dismissed as a hoax by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, which said it had received no matching sighting reports. Absence of a body is not proof of nonexistence, but for a bear-sized horned predator supposedly living near populated valleys, the complete lack of physical trace is telling.
- Claim: The legend is ancient, going back to Daniel Boone and generations of Ozark settlers.
  Evidence: The Ozarks genuinely have old folklore of large black animals and eerie howls. But the specific Ozark Howler as a named, horned cryptid has no clear paper trail before its late-1990s internet spread, and the Daniel Boone story lacks any contemporaneous source. Investigators say the hoaxer deliberately built websites to make the legend look older than it was, which is exactly the kind of manufactured backstory that makes a new invention feel traditional.
- Claim: Reputable cryptozoologists traced the modern legend to a confessed hoaxer.
  Evidence: This is the strongest documented part of the story. In Cryptozoology: Science & Speculation (2004), Chad Arment recounts that he and other researchers received emails hyping the creature and traced them to a University of Arkansas student. Loren Coleman reports obtaining a confession describing the hoax, including the fake websites and the motivation, a bet that he could fool the cryptozoology community after mocking chupacabra hysteria.
- Claim: The distinctive howl proves an unknown animal is out there.
  Evidence: The described cry, a blend of wolf howl, elk bugle, and hyena-like laugh, matches sounds real Ozark wildlife can make. Elk, reintroduced to parts of the Ozarks, bugle in ways many people find uncanny; coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and owls all produce startling night calls. An unfamiliar noise in dark woods is easily attributed to a monster, but it is weak evidence for a specific new species.
- Claim: The horns make it unlike any known American predator, so it must be a new species.
  Evidence: The horns are the least naturalistic feature and the hardest to reconcile with biology: no North American cat, bear, wolf, or dog grows horns. Rather than pointing to an undiscovered animal, the horns read as a storytelling flourish, part of the devil-cat imagery, and appear in hoaxed images where they are easy to add. A feature with no biological analogue is a mark of folklore, not of an unclassified mammal.
- Claim: Wildlife agencies ignore the reports, which is why the animal stays undiscovered.
  Evidence: The public record shows the opposite kind of engagement: when photos surfaced in 2015, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission did respond, and said plainly that the images were fake and that no credible sighting reports existed. Skeptics and biologists generally attribute Howler encounters to known animals, black bears, cougars, wolves, feral dogs, seen at a distance or in poor light, rather than to an agency cover-up.
- Claim: Even if some accounts are hoaxes, real sightings continue, so something is still out there.
  Evidence: Continued reports are consistent with a well-established legend rather than a hidden species. Once a vivid creature enters regional and online culture, sightings tend to follow expectation: ambiguous shapes and sounds get filed under the name people already know. That the legend persists and generates new stories is a fact about folklore and attention, not independent confirmation of an animal.

## Why people believe it
- The setting does the work. The Ozarks are genuinely wild in places, with deep hollows, dense timber, and real large predators, so a story about a big, howling black beast fits the landscape and feels plausible to anyone who has heard something strange in the dark.
- The howl is real even if the monster is not. People do hear haunting, hard-to-place sounds in these hills, elk bugles, coyote choruses, owls, and a memorable name gives that experience a shape. Attaching an unexplained noise to a named creature is deeply satisfying.
- It rides on older, authentic folklore. Ozark tales of devil cats and night beasts predate the internet, so the modern cryptid feels like an inheritance rather than an invention, which makes the manufactured parts harder to see.
- The hoax was built to be believed. Its originator, by his own account, created multiple websites specifically to make the legend look old and widespread, seeding exactly the sense of deep tradition that makes a new story persuasive.

## Open questions
- How much genuine pre-internet folklore underlies the name. The Ozarks clearly have older stories of large black animals and eerie howls, but how much of the specific Ozark Howler figure predates the late-1990s online push, versus being assembled from those pieces by the hoax, is not cleanly documented.
- What people are actually seeing and hearing. Individual encounters are real experiences even when no cryptid is involved; sorting how many trace to elk, black bears, cougars, wolves, or feral dogs, and how many to suggestion, would take field data that does not exist for a legend.
- How the hoax and the folklore feed each other now. Once a fabricated backstory circulates widely, it becomes part of the tradition it faked; the Howler is a live case of an internet-era invention hardening into regional lore.
- Why the Ozarks in particular keep generating this figure. The region's isolation, its storytelling culture, and its tourism appetite for a signature monster all sustain the legend, and disentangling those drivers from any residual belief in a literal animal is genuinely open.

## Sources
- Ozark Howler, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozark_Howler
- Cryptozoology: Science & Speculation, Chad Arment, Coachwhip Publications (via Google Books) (2004): https://books.google.com/books/about/Cryptozoology.html?id=5gHHl4tEBsoC
- Outing the Ozark Howler, CryptoZooNews (Loren Coleman): http://www.cryptozoonews.com/howler-redux/
- Meet the Ozark Howler, the South's Most Cryptic Cryptid, Garden & Gun: https://gardenandgun.com/articles/meet-the-ozark-howler-the-souths-most-cryptic-cryptid/
- Legend of Ozark Howler continues to echo through hills of Missouri, Jefferson City News-Tribune (2026): https://www.newstribune.com/news/2026/may/04/legend-of-ozark-howler-continues-to-echo-through/
- Ozark Howler, Only In Arkansas (Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism): https://onlyinark.com/culture/ozark-howler/
- The Ozark Howler - Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, ExploreSouthernHistory.com: https://exploresouthernhistory.com/ozarkhowler.html
- The Ozark Howler: A Legendary Creature of the Ozarks, North American Cryptids: https://northamericancryptids.com/ozark-howler/

Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/ozark-howler