If you hear a blood-chilling howl in the Ozark hills it’s time to head inside.
Hiking through the Ozarks will lead to breathtaking views and comforting silence. But when the silence if broken by the eerie call of the Ozark Howler, you’ll find yourself running for safety. This story is for anyone who has caught sight of something out of the corner of their eye... and everything in them tells them to run.
This is an REI Co-op Production
You’re walking along a narrow trail in the fading light of evening. All the shapes around you are beginning to blend into the darkness-- movement is the only thing that stands out. You jump when a little creature darts in front of you, then rustles away through the bushes. You take a breath, smile at yourself, and think how nice it will be getting out of the gathering night and into the warmth and comfort that you’re heading to.
You turn a sharp bend in the trail and another movement catches your eye. Not a small creature, this time. Your mind stops a step before your body does-- and rejects the terrifying shape your eyes are tracing in the very last of the disappearing light. What you think you see can’t be.
You’re frozen, mind and body... until the thing begins to move. Quickly. Toward you. Then all at once you’re running faster than you ever have before, crashing through the underbrush, blindly-- all your senses overwhelmed by the sound of the thing behind you… gaining… getting closer…
Can you imagine anything more frightening? Yes you can. And you will. Because when we round the bend in tonight’s story you’ll freeze, and the fear will come over you but… you won’t see any creature at all. You’ll just hear it, feel it coming toward you, the sounds of it running after you… without being able to see… anything.
Welcome to the Camp Monsters podcast.
[Music]
Every part of the country has its own legends about that strange cry that seemed to circle around your tent one night, or what made that sudden rustle in the bushes as you walked by. So every week we’ll be in a different part of the country, sitting around the campfire and trying scare each other with stories about the things that live... just beyond the firelight.
And as you listen to these stories, remember: these are just stories, just something to tell around the campfire. Some of them are based on the testimony of people who claim they encountered these creatures, but it’s up to you how much you believe… and how to explain away what you don’t. Come closer to the fire. Let’s hear tonight’s tale.
[Sound of coyotes yapping and howling]
Easy… easy now… I swear, Red, I have never seen a dog more scared of the woods than you. If you crawled any closer you’d be in the fire. What can I do to make you feel better, huh? How ‘bout a story? These Ozark Mountains seem to collect stories-- comb them out of the clouds and stretch them across every valley, distill them down in the streams. This valley we’re in has a very particular story of its own. Hearing me tell it might soothe you, Red… but only because you can’t understand what I’m saying. The rest of you folks aren’t so lucky.
Strangely enough, the story involves two people camping out with their dogs, in a little cabin not far from here. If you’ve ever been to the Ozarks then you know what the country is like: wooded mountains and valleys spotted with old cabins in little, hard-earned clearings. Small towns scattered among parks and preserves. Roads that wind you back into the hills before narrowing, then turning to gravel, then disappearing altogether. The cabin where all this happened is right at the end of one of those little roads-- a few miles past the point where you’d probably stop calling it a road at all. But you can drive it, if you don’t care too much about your car’s shocks-- and you’re rewarded with a very snug cabin in its own little clearing, a great view of the valley, and a beautiful slice of seclusion.
[Coyotes howling]
Easy, Red… easy… Boy, those coyotes… Did you ever notice how different one pack of coyotes can sound from another? Some yip, some howl, some laugh almost like hyenas. It must have been a strange-sounding pack of coyotes-- or something-- that gave rise to one of the legends of these mountains: the legend of the Ozark Howler.
The Howler is a creature that seems to feed on fear and turmoil. The first tales of it come down to us from the days of the Civil War. There may have been older stories-- if there were they’ve been lost. A lot of things got lost in this part of the country in those dark times. A lot of people got lost too. These mountains were too good a hideout for gangs and partisans from all sides of the conflict-- people riding and robbing for a cause, or for themselves. And the Ozark Howler… maybe it was just a story made up to warn the unwary away from these mountains. Or maybe the local people had seen so much of the monstrosity of men that they wanted an actual monster to blame things on.
Maybe that’s why no one can decide exactly what the Ozark Howler sounds or looks like. It’s cry is some terrible combination of a coyote’s yowl and a wolf’s howl and an elk’s bugle. Some say it looks like a big shaggy gray bear with a wolf’s head, or a pure-black mountain lion with a bear’s head. Some swear it has horns, and that its eyes glow red even when there’s no firelight for them to reflect. Well, that all sounds pretty scary. But the Howler story from this valley paints an even more frightening picture than any of those descriptions.
Maretta and Jeanine had rented the cabin at the head of this valley. They bounced to a stop outside it one sunny day in early fall, opened their car doors and let their grateful dogs out to explore. The big black and white mutt they called Wrangle: friendly and clumsy and loyal. The little one was the bravest, as is usually the case-- a tan and white ball of terrier and mischief they’d named Pox because that’s what she said when she barked. The dogs got to work right away with their noses, running this way and that around the clearing while their owners stretched and drank in the view. Behind them the woods continued up a hill so big it could almost dream of being a mountain-- below them the clearing sloped away for a hundred yards or so and gave them a view over the valley treetops that were just beginning to be kissed with yellow and orange.
The cabin was right in the middle of the clearing. It wasn’t much, just a little box of a building with modern roof and siding tacked over old split-log walls. As Maretta fumbled with the key Wrangle pushed in beside her, pawing at the crack of the door in his eagerness to continue sniffing inside. Maretta shoved him back, but the well-worn scratches at the corner of the door and the faintly doggy smell of the interior reassured her that the cabin was indeed pet friendly. Flo opened the windows to air the place as the dogs ran from room to room to room, exploring.
They had come to hike-- with the cabin as a base they could ramble the trails up and down the valley, over the ridges, around the hill, and always have a cozy spot to rest their heads at night. As that first evening deepened and grew cool they lit a fire in the little stove and warmed up their dinner on top of it. There was a bookshelf in the cabin filled with tired old books-- creased and greasy paperbacks mostly-- but Jeanine was a bookhound and couldn’t help herself. Maretta and the dogs drifted off to bed, leaving Jeanine at the table reading by lantern-light.
Sometimes dogs sleep restlessly in an unfamiliar place. Sometimes people do too. Whatever the reason, Maretta felt like she was waking up every time one of the dogs moved, and they seemed to take turns moving every few minutes. She didn’t feel uneasy at all-- the cabin was very comfortable, more cozy than she’d expected, and so warm from the stove in the next room that she kept the window above her cracked open a little bit. Catching breaths of the crisp autumn night on her face made her feel so snug and sleepy, she was surprised each time she found herself back on the edge of wakefulness.
Time slipped away from her, as it does in that state, and it was much later when she was driven fully awake by a tremendous noise. Her heart raced and she gasped and opened her eyes to darkness. She clawed at her brain to determine where she was, what she was doing, what the noise was. Before she had time to decide, something jumped on her: it was little Pox, and the noise that filled the room was the full-throated barking and growling of the two dogs. Pox scrambled over her and stood on the pillow with her forefeet on the windowsill, sticking her snout through the open crack of the window, staring and sniffing and barking. Then all at once Pox whined and started back, hesitated, then whined again and jumped to the floor. Maretta heard her scrambling under the bed, and felt big Wrangle bump the frame as he tried his best to follow.
Maretta sat up and looked out the window. There was a bright moon, and the downhill side of the clearing was plainly visible all the way to the woods. Maretta squinted her eyes, searching, not quite trusting the strange filtered moonlight. Nothing but the wind in the tall grass, down to the fractured blackness of the woods. Then in the sudden silence that the dogs had left there rose another sound, so close that Maretta turned her head in the first assumption that it was the dogs again. But they were quiet, hiding under the bed without a whimper. And the sound… as it grew louder it became something that no dog could ever make. It was a howl, but-- deeper and higher, longer and… more desolate than anything she’d ever heard before. And it was close. Maretta bent her head down to the level of the crack in the window, staring outside. It must be right out there, a coyote or a red wolf or something, hiding in the grass just beyond the shadow that the house cast in the moonlight. Or was it down in that shadow? Was it right beneath the window?
Maretta reached up to close the window and as she did she got that panic feeling, like when you walk face-first into a spider web. She couldn’t close the window fast enough-- something was going to reach up and stick long grey fingers into the crack and stop her, something was going to force the frame back up in her hands, she knew it-- and then the window was closed and latched, and the howl had died away, and she was staring out at quiet, moonlit nothing. And then there came a sound behind her and something grabbed her shoulder.
She cringed away and made a sound, and turned to face the touch-- and burst out laughing to find Jeanine standing there. All of the tension, all the fear fled away and the cabin seemed wonderfully cozy to Maretta again. She was a little embarrassed that Jeanine had seen her so frightened of that coyote or whatever it was, so it was gratifying when Jeanine sat down on the bed in the moonlight and her face looked as scared as Maretta had been. Even more scared, in fact. Maretta laughed the whole thing off, and Jeanine tried to-- but the dogs stayed quiet under the bed and the two women remained awake for the rest of the night, until faint light in the sky across the valley gave them an excuse to start the coffee.
[Coyotes yapping]
Quiet now, Red. I suppose it’s natural for dogs to get a little nervous when they hear that. I’d be a little nervous too if I could hear my wild ancestors howling in the woods every night. But that’s a story for another campfire. Where were we? Oh yes, well, the dogs Wrangle and Pox acted funny that whole next morning. They didn’t get up early wanting to go outside, they didn’t even come out to beg at the breakfast table-- behaviour so strange that Jeanine went in to check on them: she peeked under the bed and found four wakeful, watchful eyes staring back at her. She tried to coax them out but to no avail. When it was broad daylight and everything was packed and ready for the day’s hike, Maretta opened the front door-- and Pox barked suddenly from under the bed, then ran over and stood in the bedroom doorway, looking at Maretta. When she moved to step outside, Pox barked again and skittered out the door in front of her, with Wrangle following dubiously behind.
Normally they’d just do their dog business and come back inside for their breakfast. But that morning, as soon as they got outside they were nose to the ground, running circles that widened from under Maretta’s bedroom window. Maretta laughed at them and said something about how interesting coyotes must smell, but Jeanine just watched them silently. Pox eventually sniffed her way over to the edge of a little thicket of brush that grew along the driveway about 30 yards from the cabin. There the dog stopped and started growling, then broke into a fury of barking and began jumping around in a semi-circle with the thicket at its center. Wrangle stood back, hesitant. Then for no apparent reason Pox stumbled and yelped and fell, then struggled up and ran like a shot back to the cabin and through the open door, with Wrangle at her heels. Maretta laughed but Jeanine hurried her into the house and shut the door. Poor Pox was shaking and refused to eat.
Jeanine was worried-- about Pox, she said-- and suggested they stay in that day and keep an eye on her. But after awhile Pox calmed down and Maretta got restless. So they all went out hiking after all. They took a long, pleasant trail down through the valley and along the creek... and nothing unusual happened to them. The end. Ha ha. Almost.
The trail had taken them well down the valley, and it brought them home over the top of the big hill behind the cabin. It was a long hard climb, but as the sun sank lower and lower the dogs began to set a grueling pace, dragging Jeanine and Maretta onward relentlessly. Maretta thought they must be hungry, especially Pox after skipping breakfast. So when they reached the summit of the hill with its beautiful view across the entire valley, and Maretta saw the promise of an incredible sunset just beginning to color the sky, she took pity on the dogs and pulled out the cans of their food that she’d carried with her just in case.
As she sat down and opened the cans, Jeanine and the dogs stood on the trail looking at her, taking a moment to comprehend what was going on. Then Pox started straining at her leash-- not in the direction of the food, but down the trail toward the cabin. Even Wrangle, who was always a chow hound, just stood where he was. Then Jeanine began talking rapidly. They’d better move on, she said, they were losing the light, the dogs could wait for dinner, it would be dark soon, she didn’t need a rest, she didn’t like hiking at night. Maretta listened to this unmoved, still seated, giving Jeanine a scornful smile. And then the truth began to come out.
Jeanine had found something, in the bookcase the night before. Someone’s idea of a joke, she guessed, but… it was a journal, five or six notebooks worth, of a woman who had lived in the cabin. She’d lived there a long time, apparently-- the occasional entries spanned a couple decades. She was an artist: most of her early entries were about her life, and painting, and the beauty of the valley. But over time she started to write about her idea... the idea that something else lived in the valley with her. Something that... she couldn’t see.
She thought she heard a scratching at the windows at night, but when she looked through the curtains there was nothing. Large but indistinct footmarks began appearing in the dust around the cabin… and sometimes there was a howling at night different from that of the coyotes. At first she thought it was just hallucination-- she’d read that most people living in isolation experience them. But over time her “encounters” with the invisible thing became more vivid, more frequent, and… more frightening.
One evening in the woods she heard a noise behind her, turned and saw the undergrowth bent back and trampled by something large that-- that she couldn’t see. It was heading right for her, she heard it chasing her as she began to run, she didn’t know how she’d made it safely inside the cabin but once there she watched in horror as a window that she’d left cracked slowly opened itself wider and wider. She had run to it, tried to close it, felt something fighting against her, even seen its breath fog the pane-- and staring out the window as she struggled she could see nothing but the valley stretching away in the moonlight.
She got that window closed, and she continued to live in the cabin, for years in fact, but by a strict set of rules. She learned that there were times when the creature wasn’t in the valley, but whenever she began to hear “that terrible howl,” always distantly at first, she would be sure to come in before sundown and keep all the doors and windows locked. She found that the thing didn’t trouble the cabin as much, once it was sure she wouldn’t come out and it couldn’t get in. But the howling… she said that no matter how many times she heard it, the howling always froze her blood.
Jeanine tumbled this story out, brokenly, as the sun sank lower and lower on the horizon. Maretta kept the skeptical smile on her face, but… she put her pack back on just the same.
If they could have walked down the smooth, autumn-colored carpet of the treetops they would have reached the cabin long before the sun finished setting. But under the trees the trail turned tortuous and difficult, winding its way over gnarled roots and around old sandstone ledges and rockfalls. Then darkness fell and slowed them further. Night comes quickly under the trees, and a hurried rummage through the backpacks revealed that they’d left their headlamps at the cabin. The moon soon rose and helped them find their way-- but the patterned shadows that it cast through the trees seemed to scrawl an ugly prophecy on their path.
Finally they saw the clearing up ahead, bathed in moonlight that seemed as bright as day to their forest-darkened eyes. In relief still tinged with fear they quickened their pace-- Maretta was almost jogging when she reached the edge of the woods and nearly killed herself tripping over Pox. The dog had stopped dead, and Maretta had almost found the words for her frustration when a strong grab from Jeanine’s hand restrained her. Pox, Wrangle, and Jeanine were all standing perfectly still in the last shadow of the forest, looking out on the clearing. With a barely perceptible movement of her fingers, Jeanine pointed where Maretta should look.
But there was nothing to see in the moon-filled meadow in front of them. The cabin, with its windows dark and lifeless; the black line of the woods on the far side; the wind stirring the tall grass. Maretta glanced a question at Jeanine, and Jeanine stared back at her until the answer came: the wind in the tall grass. The wind… there was no wind. Not a leaf stirred around them, and the grass… the grass only stirred in one spot, and that spot was moving steadily across the clearing.
Moving steadily… away from them. It was hard to tell in the strange light that the moon cast, but after long seconds frozen in staring horror it looked like… yes… yes, it was just possible to trace the track that the thing had left through the tall grass. It had come out of the woods just to their right, just before they had reached the clearing, and now it was moving down past the cabin. There was an eerie moment when it left the cover of the grass to cross the driveway: nothing crossed that bright white strip of moonlit dirt, and then a dark void opened in the grass on the other side of the drive, opened wide enough for a large, long nothing to pass through before the stalks closed loosely again as the Thing moved on toward the far woods.
Eventually it passed beyond where they could see the stirring grass, but still they stood and waited. It was hard to venture out into the same light that was shining through that… thing. But they knew they had to make it to the cabin-- they’d be safe in the cabin. They were just waiting for someone to start, for something to happen.
And then the howl began. Even louder, somehow, than it had been the night before. Harsher, colder, far more torn and threatening. It stretched out, lingered over them, danced and tensed and tingled down their spines. It quavered down to a final choking growl... until the short silence that followed was broken by a single sound: “Pox!”
The little dog’s bark was like a starter’s gun, and the only thing they heard after it was their own breathing as they sprinted toward the cabin. Halfway there Maretta tripped on something in the grass, fell and rolled and slid, struggled out of her backpack and jumped up running. She saw something then, across the clearing in the moonlight: a black path being crushed rapidly through the tall grass, something moving towards her at frightening speed, too fast: she’d never make the cabin. The dark path was veering toward her, cutting her off from the front door that Flo had just thrown open. She ducked low as she ran, bracing herself for an impact with the Thing.
And then there was a terrible explosion of sound in front of her, and the grass all around began to flail and flatten in a chaos of screaming growls. She didn’t stop to think-- she didn’t stop for anything, and nothing stopped her. Jeanine was shouting something past her as she lunged in the door; Jeanine was turning to her with tears streaming down her face as the door, the door, the door was still open!
Maretta slammed it shut and locked it, and the cabin was plunged into darkness. There were sounds in the room-- furniture knocked over, Jeanine saying something in a shouting sob, Wrangle barking. Was there something else? Then Maretta found the little electric lantern, and the light quieted everything down and untangled the sounds: Wrangle pacing up and down whining and growling, the furniture Maretta had knocked over on her way to the lantern, and Jeanine crying quietly now. “Pox!” she sobbed, and suddenly Maretta remembered all the things she hadn’t had time to see: the little dog like a streak from the doorway, running and leaping at that empty space where something terrible must have been-- and then the growling struggle, and the grass flattening, and Maretta’s escape.
She didn’t say anything to Jeanine. What was there to say? Besides, she was trying hard to remember something else, something desperately important: her bedroom window. Had she closed it this morning? Or had she left it open just a crack? Had she--
Thin rays of light from the lantern barely cleared the bedroom door before falling exhausted on the bed. And in that feeble light Maretta saw something on the bed… something moving… something coming toward them from the direction of the window…
And she laughed then, and cried then, when little Pox trotted through the doorway from the bedroom. The dog must have snuck inside in the instant when Jeanine left the door open and turned her back, before Maretta slammed it shut. Maretta ran to Pox and scooped her shaking body up, then looked over at the bedroom window: closed and locked. And a good thing, too, because just then the howling began, close outside. It went on all night.
There’s nothing wrong with renting out a haunted cabin. That sort of thing seems to attract more people than it drives away, and every old hotel or bed & breakfast in the country claims to have at least once spook that you might see, if you’re lucky. Well, if you rent that cabin up the valley, I guarantee that you won’t see the Ozark Howler. You won’t see anything at all… but before she left Jeanine set the old journals out on the table, so that future guests might be able to correctly identify what they didn’t see.
This fire is about done. And our own little howlers have stopped, I hear. That’s alright with you, isn’t it Red? Good dog. It’s alright with me too... as long as they didn’t stop because something bigger came along. Something they can only see with their noses. You’ll tell us if you smell anything, won’t you Red?
Camp Monsters podcast is a part of the REI podcast network. It is written and performed by yours truly, Weston Davis, and recorded and edited by Nick Patri in the very cozy and campfire-like confines of Cloud Studios in Seattle, Washington.
Be sure to listen to the next episode of Camp Monsters, when we’ll learn about rock climbing and how not to re-decorate your barn in rural Maryland.
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