Been looking into this one on and off for a couple of years and the consistency does stand out. When you actually map the sightings geographically rather than just reading them as isolated anecdotes, there's a clear clustering pattern across the Ozark plateau that doesn't feel random. The glowing eyes detail in particular keeps coming up across reports that have no obvious connection to each other, different counties, different decades.
What I find interesting is how the behaviour descriptions align too. It's not just appearance, witnesses describe similar movement patterns, the way it supposedly retreats rather than approaches. That kind of behavioural consistency is harder to fake or misremember than a visual detail.
I know a lot of people write it off as black bear misidentification but the vocalisations described really dont match any known animal in that region. Anyone here done any serious fieldwork in Arkansas or Missouri and come across anything worth documenting? Would be genuinely interested to compare notes on the geographical distribution of reports if anyone has mapped them more rigorously than I have.