Spooky Season

Arkansas is home to real creatures that tend to evoke feelings of dread in people, as well as legends aplenty about monsters that lurk in the woods or the rivers. In addition, a number of horror-themed movies and television episodes have been set in the state, while talent from Arkansas has contributed to the development of the horror genre in the wider world. Whether you are reading this close to Halloween or at some other time of the year, you can get your fill of the creepy and scary right here.

Featured Creatures

Yes, some of these could kill you, and all have been featured in scary stories across time, but these creatures play an important role in the ecology of Arkansas. Most of these will leave you alone if you leave them alone. If an important lesson to learn from horror movies is don’t split up, an important lesson right here is leave things be.

Striped Bark Scorpions

Legendary Monsters

Arkansas has allegedly been home to any number of mysterious creatures that walk the woods or prowl the lakes and rivers, although, rather conveniently, no genuine pictures of these monstrosities have ever emerged. Were they ever real, or were they just stories cooked up to keep certain people away? And why did the state legislature even create a refuge for one of these (the White River Monster)?

White stag standing in river with waterfall and mountains behind it

Heber Springs Water Panther

Mysterious Lights and Incidents

Have you seen the light? The Gurdon Light is probably the most famous mysterious illumination in Arkansas, although other communities report the presence of ghostly lights. And then there are the aliens, of course, and the things that aliens (allegedly) get up to, such as mutilating cattle or creating intricate designs to trouble Arkansas farmers.

Ozark Mountain UFO Conference

Recreational Organizations

Headline "Mutilated Stock May Indicate Witchcraft in NW Arkansas"

Cattle Mutilations

Crop Circles

Folk Art

Ghosts and Hauntings

Every place, it seems, has some story of hauntings attached to it. Some of these stories are generic, the kind that show up across the country, while others are specific to a particular place. In Arkansas, probably the most famous supposedly haunted place is the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs.

Three-story ornate white house with red round towers and columns with an iron fence

Ghost Legends

Folktales and Songs

Hand tinted photograph hillside town with large hotel on peak

Crescent Hotel

Attractions (Historic and Current)

Writers

Arkansas has given rise to a number of people writing within the broader genre of horror, from screenwriter Kate Phillips, who wrote the screenplay for the movie classic The Blob, to novelist Ruby Jean Jensen, who was part of what has been dubbed the “golden age of horror.” Although graphic novelist Nate Powell does not work strictly within the genre, many of his works are infused with its broader trappings.

White woman with curly hair smiling in red top with bead necklace

Charlaine Harris (1951–)

Fiction

White woman with long wavy hair in black leather jacket

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963–)

Fiction

White man with beard and glasses wearing a dark button-down shirt

John Hornor Jacobs (1971–)

Fiction

Ruby Jean Jensen (1927–2010)

Fiction

White woman with neck length hair wearing pointed hat and coat

Kate Phillips (1913–2008)

Actors and Filmmakers

Book cover picturing a blond child holding an assault rifle while standing in water

Nate Powell (1978–)

Fiction, Print Media

Books, Movies, and TV Shows

A number of horror-themed books, movies, and television episodes have been set in the state of Arkansas. Not all of them have been quite accurate to local geography, which is perhaps to be expected, especially when a story features sharks in the Ozarks.

The Day It Came to Earth

The Legend of Boggy Creek

Films

Mindcage

Films

Oval portrait white woman braided hair next to book title above white man dressed in western outfit and hat riding horse through creek pointing gun at shadowy figure holding machete emerging from woods text "Death waits in the dark"

Night Terror (The Trailsman No. 391)

Fiction

Our Town [X-Files Episode]

Television and Streaming

Movie poster featuring woman trying to climb aboard a dock as a shark emerges from water behind her

Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre

Films

Man in hood with eye holes and town on movie poster

Town That Dreaded Sundown, The

Actors and Directors

Arkansas has not only contributed a lot to Hollywood in general, but many Arkansans, both in front of and behind the camera, have either dabbled or specialized in the horror genre, while Joe Bob Briggs rose to fame as a television host of horror movies.

White woman with long hair smiling in pearl necklace

Julie Adams (1926–2019)

Actors and Filmmakers

Young white woman in black leather jacket

Lisa Suzanne Blount (1957–2010)

Actors and Filmmakers

Joe Bob Briggs (1953–)

Journalists, Television and Streaming

Young white man sitting in long sleeved denim shirt

David Gordon Green (1975–)

Actors and Filmmakers

Stuart Greer (1959–)

Actors and Filmmakers, Television and Streaming

Maury Dexter (1927–2017)

Actors and Filmmakers, Television and Streaming

African American woman wearing strapless white evening gown

Ketty Lester (1934–)

Television and Streaming

Text "Stephen King's Pet Sematary sometimes dead is better" above close up of pale man with heterochromia above separate image cat in woodland cemetery facing camera text "Based on the best selling thriller"

Mary Martha Lambert (1951–)

Actors and Filmmakers

Poster with globe spinning on the finger of a clown

John Allen Nelson (1959–)

Actors and Filmmakers

Charles Bryant Pierce (1938–2010)

Actors and Filmmakers

White man standing with arms crossed in sweater and pants

Harry Z. Thomason (1940–)

Actors and Filmmakers

Infernal Regions

“Hellfire and brimstone” usually refers to a particular kind of sermon you might hear on a Sunday morning—not a place you might see on the map. But there are exceptions with these two places. Tread lightly, and watch out for holes leading downward…