Been following the Ozark cluster for about three years now and yeah, the uptick is noticeable. What I find interesting is the geographic spread - the older sightings were concentrated pretty tightly around the Arkansas/Missouri border but some of the more recent reports are coming out of Oklahoma which suggests either a range expansion or, more likely to my mind, something that moves in ways that don't map neatly onto conventional animal behaviour.
The red eyes thing is consistent across basically all the reports going back decades. That kind of cross-witness consistency is actually quite significant from an evidential standpoint and its the detail that keeps me from writing this off as misidentification.
Anyone got access to the raw sighting data from the last 18 months? I've seen some aggregated stuff floating around but I'd rather look at the primary reports myself. Also curious whether anyone's noted any correlation with local earth energy lines in the Ozarks - wouldn't be the first cryptid where that pattern showed up.