The world needs more stories from the Ozarks.

Ozarkers are a storytelling people. Sometimes those stories are cornpone comedies about silly hillbillies, but more often they’re dark in a way that befits our hills and hollers. We’ve even managed to create a minor literary sub-genre out of our dark stories. Fancy folks call them Ozark-noir. 

I always thought horror stories would be better if they were about Ozark haints.

There’s an abundance of horror stories, scary movies, and suspenseful TV shows out there, but there ain’t many with howlers, goatmen, spooklights, albino farms, MoMos, blue men, and the other sorts of haints we’ve got around here. And damn near none of the spooky stories that’ve been told’ve been told by Ozarkers for Ozarkers. Ain’t none of them written the way we tell old tales on the porch as the sun’s a-setting behind a ridge. The world’s the poorer for the absence, so I’m a-trying to remedy that. 

If you like the sound of all that, I reckon you oughta subscribe.

If you don’t like our dialect or think we’re all just a bunch of dumb hillbillies, then I reckon you oughtn’t. This newsletter will feature a lot of my fiction—mostly horror stories set in the Ozarks—and some my essays and non-fiction about Ozarks life and culture. I’d also be obliged if you were to read some of my other stories over at my regular website, MissouriOzarker.com. 

Anyhow, that’s why I’ve started this here substack newsletter. To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com. Now it’s time for a story.