Where folklore meets fantasy

Ozarks Folktales & Legends

Where haints drift through the hollows, and the old tales find a new voice

The Possum Preacher - View All Folktales View All Folktales

From folksongs to Broadway, the folk tradition continues.

Illustration for Old Mister Dunderbeck Old Mister Dunderbeck

For more stories of magic, mayhem, and mirth — the Possum knows the way.

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Illustration for the Emma Stark story The Salvation of Emma Stark
Young woman character from Pursuing Daisy Garfield

An Excerpt from Pursuing Daisy Garfield

"Come here," she said to William, almost as if she were calling a dog. "Closer." He stepped so close to her he could feel her breath on his lips. "Touch the back of my neck," she said. William slipped his fingers under her hair. "Now touch my cheek." He stroked her cheek as gently as he killed her husband.

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Pursuing Daisy Garfield

"A rollicking novel that fuses the Ozarks folk tradition with meditations on beauty, suffering, and the meaning of it all."

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Published by Publerati, an independent publisher that donates books to developing countries.

Pursuing Daisy Garfield Book Cover

The Purple Knight of the Ozarks

The Nearly True Story of T. Allen McQuary

With accompanying links, photos, and articles

T. Allen McQuary

Illustrated portrait of T. Allen McQuary
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Sun., June 13, 1897, p. 40.

In 1897, a young Ozark newspaperman claimed a Little Rock plantation owner promised him $5,000 and his daughter's hand if he circumnavigated the globe dressed as the Purple Knight of the Ozarks. The quest was a lie. The girl never existed. But T. Allen McQuary's journey—traceable through newspaper archives from Missouri to Charleston to Oregon—was bizarrely real.

Follow the trail through actual newspaper clippings, court records, and a surviving promotional pamphlet. Watch as McQuary transforms from con artist to postmaster to embezzler, spinning increasingly grandiose tales in churches, schools, and Masonic halls across America until his tragic end in 1948.

T. Allen McQuary as the Purple Knight

Artist's rendering of the Purple Knight of the Ozarks

The Purple Knight in full regalia

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Start Reading the Purple Knight Chronicles

A serialized novel blending fact and fiction, with historical documentation

The Bulfinch Memoirs: Stories and Occasional Ruminations

Ozark Storyteller Enter the Story Circle

In Defense of the Little God: An Oration by Hank Sparrowhawk

April 4, 2026

Henry Sparrowhawk delivering his oration

At the Eureka Springs Folk Festival, Hank Sparrowhawk draws a distinction between the Little God—the God of the particular—and the Big God of the theologians, and asks which one we actually need.

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Ozarks Folklore and Folk Music Resources

Explore Authentic Ozark & American Folktales

Discover genuine folktales and folklore research from the Library of Congress, early academic journals, and other public domain sources. These archives preserve the authentic voices and stories that have shaped American folk tradition for generations.

Mary Celestia Parler Ozark Collections

University of Arkansas Special Collections 1949-1972

Over 4,000 songs and stories collected by folklorist Mary Celestia Parler throughout the Arkansas Ozarks, including ballads, tales, and oral histories.

Browse Collection

Journal of American Folklore Vol. 1-10

American Folklore Society 1888-1897

Early scholarly collection of American folk narratives, customs, and beliefs. These foundational volumes document oral traditions from across the United States before modernization changed rural communities.

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Ozark Folk Music and Tales

Missouri State University Special Collections 1950s-1970s

The Max Hunter Collection featuring over 1,600 Ozark folk songs and stories from Missouri and Arkansas. Hear authentic voices telling the tales that inspired generations of storytellers.

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Vance Randolph's Folktale Collections

Internet Archive 1940s-1970s

Multiple volumes of authentic Ozark folktales collected by the master folklorist, including 'Who Blowed Up the Church House?' and other classics.

Including: 'Who Blowed Up the Church House?', 'We Always Lie to Strangers', 'Ozark Magic and Folklore', and more

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WPA Slave Narratives: Arkansas & Missouri

Library of Congress 1936-1938

First-person accounts from formerly enslaved people in the Ozarks region, including folk stories, traditions, and cultural memories collected by the Federal Writers' Project.

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Ozark Folksong Collection

University of Arkansas Libraries 1949-1972

Mary Celestia Parler's extensive collection of Ozark folk songs, ballads, and oral histories. One of the most comprehensive collections of Southern mountain folklore ever assembled.

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Bulfinch's Theology: Meditations from the Mountains

The Possum Theologian

The Possum Apocalypse: Saving the World, One Heresy at a Time.

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Pursuing Daisy Garfield

A Novel by Otis Bulfinch

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Pursuing Daisy Garfield Book Cover
If Sheba MacPherson looked like a ham roughly carved and topped with an unpredictable tousle, well, Daisy Garfield was like unto an angel or a fantasy. William was first taken by her hair, "spun gold," or so he murmured to himself, though he had surely read such in a poem somewhere. She would put her hair up prior to housework, but soon enough curls and sprays of gold would come unhitched and dangle against her cheeks and fine jawline; so William observed when she stood framed in the roadward-facing window. Daisy had light brown eyes, closer to amber, with sparkles of green in the irises. Her skin was un-pitted and smooth, more like a persimmon than a lemon, not bone white but cream white, or better yet, peachy cream with hue of strawberries. But beauty is hard to capture, whether on canvas or in words. And, of course, beauty is everything. In the end we will be saved, if we are saved, by beauty.