Chills and Thrills with the EOA

This spooky season, turn to your local CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas for all your creeptacular needs!

Creepy-crawlies abound in Arkansas, from scorpions, tarantulas, and leeches to bats, snakes, and alligators.

Our folklore includes many monstrous tales, such as the Gowrow, the Heber Springs Water Panther, the Fouke Monster, the Snawfus, the Lake Conway Skunk Ape, and the White River Monster. Or maybe you prefer ghost stories or inexplicable lights, like the Crossett Light and the Gurdon Light.

Mysterious lights in the sky always remind me of UFO sightings, but the Ozark Mountain UFO Conference isn’t until April…

In the meantime, you could check out our entries on crop circles and cattle mutilations. Or you could see if some of the ghost legends are true and stay the night at the haunted Crescent Hotel.

If you like to read horror, be sure to check out Charlaine Harris, Laurell K. Hamilton, John Hornor Jacobs, and Ruby Jean Jenson (especially The Lake), all authors in the genre with Arkansas connections. There’s also Trailsman Number 391, Night Terror; the 1996 Prey; and Nate Powell’s Come Again. If you want monsters without the fear factor, try Mercer Mayer’s monsters for kids or Ayana Gray’s YA mythology-inspired creatures.

Maury Dexter was a director known for his low-budget horror films. Mary Martha Lambert directed the film adaptation of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. Kate Phillips was the screenwriter for The Blob and Julie Adams was the beauty next to the beast in Creature from the Black Lagoon. John Allen Nelson appeared in Killer Klowns from Outer Space and Stuart Greer was in The Walking Dead. Ketty Lester appeared in the cult classic Blacula.

Charles B. Pierce was an independent filmmaker who created horror flicks, from The Legend of Boggy Creek based on the Fouke Monster to The Town that Dreaded Sundown based on the Phantom Killer. The screenwriter on both, Earl E. Smith, also wrote and directed another horror film, Wishbone Cutter. Director Harry Thomason was responsible for So Sad About Gloria, The Day It Came To Earth, and Revenge of Bigfoot. David Gordon Green released a Halloween movie and an Exorcist reboot.

If you want to watch some lesser-known works, check out horror movie Mindcage with John Malkovich or blood-drenched dark comedy 12-Hour Shift with Angela Bettis. Or if you’d prefer to go low-budget, It’s Alive! was created by the same guy who brought us Mars Needs Women. Ghosts of the Ozarks was called “one of the most ambitious Arkansas-made independent feature films of the early 2020s.” But if, for some reason, your bloodlust can only be sated by sharks in Arkansas, you’re in for a double treat, because Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre and Ozark Sharks are equally toothy.

If you’d prefer a TV show to a movie, you’re in luck with these: a two-part episode of Murder, She Wrote called “Death Stalks the Big Top” and two episodes of The X-Files, in which a chicken plant reveals a cannibalistic cult (“Our Town”) and a virus is created at the Pine Bluff Arsenal (“Pine Bluff Variant”).

In the realm of true crime, Mary Lee Orsini, who seemed like a nice gal from Gravel Ridge (Pulaski County), was accused of murdering her third husband as well as the wife of her lawyer! The wrong man may have been executed for the murder of Ella Barham, and the murder of John Thurman McCool remains unsolved to this day. Ronald Gene Simmons went on a mass murdering spree. Meanwhile Connie Franklin was allegedly murdered only to turn up before his trial!

For even more creepiness, check out an installment of our new Exhibits feature: Spooky Season.

I hope I’ve demonstrated that the EOA is full of plenty of frights for your October nights—and beyond. Happy reading and Happy Halloween!

Jobe is the editorial assistant at the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas and programmer for the CALS Writing Circle.