Gowrow
rating: 0+x

Basic Information

The Gowrow is a fictional creature first reported in the January 31, 1897 issue of the Arkansas Gazette. It was supposed to be a "creature twenty feet in length with two tusks, large webbed feet ending in claws, a row of short horns along its back, and a long thin tail with a blade on the end", and a Little Rock businessman had allegedly formed a posse which hunted it down because it had preyed on local livestock. The name derived from the sounds it made. The editor of the Gazette reported it, but dismissed it as a hoax.

A later collector of folklore gathered more stories which claimed that the creature had been reported as early as the 1880s. These stories "suggested that the gowrow was a species of creatures" and that "the young hatched from soft-shelled eggs as large as beer kegs, and the mother carried newly hatched infants in a pouch". There is also one account of a con man who claimed that he had captured a gowrow by feeding it so many dried apples that they swelled within its stomach, making it immobile. He promised to show it for an "entrance fee", then made it appear that the creature had escaped, thus triggering a panic in the crowd.

Sources

Bibliography
1. Gowrow at The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture

Game and Story Use

  • Even though it was as made up as the rest of the story, the trick of getting the monster to eat highly swellable food items is a good one that should be remembered by monster hunters.
  • Was it made up? Combining reptillian, marsupial, scorpion, and dinosaur traits isn't something that happens normally, but maybe on another world
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License