#gowrow

A man from Little Rock, which had become the state capital about 77 years earlier, named William Miller had told Smithee about a wild confrontation with the creature. Miller was traveling through the Ozark Forest when he came through the tiny town of Blanco. Apparently livestock and pets had been found dead so Miller formed a group to track down the predator. They encountered a creature that was 20-ft. long with tusks and claws. The monster also had a row of horns along its back and tail ending in a blade-like point. The group supposedly slayed the beast but the body that Miller swore he shipped to the Smithsonian never arrived. Before Miller's group found the creature, an eerie scream sounding like "gowrow" was heard in the forest and thus the urban legend was named.

According to cryptozoologists, there was more than one Gowrow...

Gowrow: A Legendary Monster from Arkansas Folklore

The Gowrow is known for its terrifying "gowrow" noise, which it makes while slaughtering its prey, including humans, livestock, and pets.

According to the story, a businessman named William Miller encountered the gowrow while traveling in the Ozarks and formed a posse to hunt it down. They tracked the creature to its lair, a cave filled with animal and human remains, and killed it after a fierce battle. While lying in wait for the monster, the earth shook as it emerged from a nearby lake, and the posse fired several volleys at it, eventually killing it. Before its demise, the colossal creature, measuring twenty feet long, uprooted trees and severed the leg of one of the posse members.

An inspection of the remains unveiled a beast with two tusks, webbed feet with claws, a row of short horns along its back, and a long tail with a blade at the end. Despite Williams' assertion of sending the body to the Smithsonian Institution, it never reached the museum in Washington DC.

Folklore collector Vance Randolph provided additional details about the gowrow, suggesting it may have been reported as early as the 1880s. He described the gowrow as a species rather than a single creature, with young hatching from large eggs and the mother carrying them in a pouch.

Randolph also shared stories of encounters with the gowrow, including one involving a spelunker in Devil's Hole and another about a man who captured a gowrow by feeding it dried apples until it became too large to escape its burrow.

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Cryptid of the Day: Gowrow

Image accessed at Cryptid Wiki here

[The gowrow is yet another monster derived from a 19th century newspaper hoax--in this case, it appears to be something of a copycat of the hodag, moved from Wisconsin to Arkansas. Modern depictions of the gowrow are typically saner and more animalistic, making it look something like an alligator with a stinger and tusks, but I like this weird scaly monkey-walrus. Pathfinder RPG already has a gowrow, but it’s a dragon, and not a very creative one.

John LeMay, in Cowboys and Saurians, suggests a link between the gowrow, the hodag, and the underwater panther of the Great Lakes peoples. I can see the physical resemblance, as all three blend mammalian and reptilian attributes, have long tails and spiny backs, and the ears of the underwater panther could become horns or tusks with some imagination. But I have to wonder. How well known was the underwater panther in the 1890s? Especially for local businessmen and newspaper editors to borrow the image for publicity stunts?]

Gowrow CR 10 N Magical Beast This creature looks something like a scaled, spiny kangaroo, tall as a cottage. It has a drooping face with long tusks pointing downward, webbed and clawed hands and feet, and a long tail ending in a scythe-like blade.

A gowrow is a powerful predator of marshes and swamps. They are of animalistic intelligence, but cunning, and use their scything tails like axes to fell trees. They use these to dam rivers, making ponds and marshes like those of beavers, and then prey on creatures lured to the water source. If prevented from making these dams, or if prey becomes scarce, they will venture farther in search of food, often preying on livestock because of their convenient concentration. Gowrows do not go out of their way to prey on humanoids, but have no compunctions about doing so.

A gowrow attacks from ambush if it can—doing so typically requires the creature to be submerged, as they are massive and not particularly agile on land. They fight with their array of natural weapons, the most deadly of which is the bone blade that tips their tail. A gowrow can whip this tail around in a deadly frenzy, striking multiple opponents in quick succession, but doing so disorients the creature, and it rarely uses this attack unless surrounded. Its hair-trigger nerves also fire when the creature is knocked unconscious, so knowledgeable hunters take care to keep a safe distance from a gowrow before making a kill.

Gowrows hunt in the water, but typically lair in caves or burrows on drier ground. Despite their reptilian appearance, a gowrow is a mammal. The scales are made from compressed keratin, like those of a pangolin. Males compete for female attention by making seesawing, booming calls (this “gow-row” noise is the origin of their names). After mating, female gowrows lay a single leathery egg, about the shape and size of a pony keg, and then rear the young in a pouch on the underside as it matures. During this time, the mother must resort to land bound prey in order to keep her baby from drowning, until the juvenile reaches about half adult size, whereupon it leaves the pouch and can take care of itself while the mother hunts.

The gowrow is a cryptid famous in the State of Arkansas. It has been described as twenty feet in length, with large webbed feet, long claws, a thin tail ending in a blade, spines along its back and two prominent tusks. It is aquatic and carnivorous, and is named after its distinctive cry.

It was first reported in 1897, when it was blamed for several livestock and pet deaths in the Calf Creek Township. A lair full of animal and human remains was discovered, as too was a carcass, which was supposedly sent to the Smithsonian Institution, but never arrived.

Image source.

Monster master list.