Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
[mysterious music]
NARRATOR: It was a quiet night for two
lovers looking to get away.
A full moon had risen, giving light to their hideaway
on a deserted back road.
They were all alone, just like they wanted it.
But before these enamored youngsters
got too ahead of themselves, something
interrupted their night.
[distant screeching]
Despite her wishes, he gets out to see
what could have made the sound, leaving her alone in the car.
As the minutes tick slowly by, she
begins to wonder what could be keeping him for so long.
[splatter]
[muffled scream]
As she turned around to see what had happened,
she could hear the steps of whatever it was approaching.
[dramatic music]
As it stepped into the light, she couldn't believe
the horror she saw there.
But then, looking down, she saw the worst thing of all.
[dramatic music]
[ominous music]
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: For as long as there have been
humans, there have been stories.
Stories meant to make sense of the chaos of the world
and give meaning to some of its worst elements.
Gods and heroes arise from these tales,
giving character to the weather, the trees,
and even our deepest desires.
Few of these stories persist to this day.
Science having replaced the old gods.
Yet, even still, anomalies bleed through the fabric
of our modern narratives.
Bigfoot, Dogman, the chupacabra, these creatures
that haunt our nightmares come and go
as they please, seemingly with no explanation,
as either flesh and blood or something else.
There are few stories that capture the imagination,
like that of the Goatman, with the upper body of a man
and the head of a goat.
The creature stalks the halls of American folklore, lurking
on dark backroads, waiting to attack hapless victims
who venture down Lovers' lanes.
So prolific are his deeds that the Goatman has been seen
in virtually every state, waiting for his chance
to strike from his hiding place, leaving
a bloody mess in his wake.
[muffled roaring]
The half-man, half-goat beast has many alleged origin stories,
but none more encompassing than that of the Goatman of Prince
George's County, Maryland.
The Maryland Goatman is a figure
that was first discovered, quote unquote, in the 1970s--
I want to say 1971--
when a reporter ran across a paper that had been filed
with The Maryland Folklore Archive
that talked about a Goatman figure
that occupied an area around Prince's County, Maryland.
[ominous music]
You know the different iterations of the Goatman
itself, its origins and so forth, were pretty varied.
But essentially, you had a Goatman
in that area that had been blamed for the death
and dismemberment of dogs, would often
terrorize couples that had been parked
in a Lovers' Lane-type area.
And over time, different origin stories were
proposed for this creature.
The most popular revolves around a place known
as the Beltsville agricultural Research Center,
which is a facility about 10 miles from Fletchertown Road,
where, allegedly, they do different types
of experimentation and development
of new types of livestock breeds, different types
of cows and pigs and so forth.
And so there's a story that there was a mad scientist there
who was either experimenting with combining human and goat
DNA, or there was some type of horrible accident
to which this scientist actually evolved into one
of these goat-like creatures.
The Maryland goat man is an interesting case,
because it's one of those goat man urban legend stories
that has a variety of explanations for it.
Most of these Goatman stories have some kind of myth
that seems to be at the root of them,
trying to explain where they came from
and how they got started.
And the Maryland Goatman is one that has different explanations,
depending on who you ask and what the version of the story is
And that, to me, is what sticks out about this case, the most,
because you have the version where
it was a circus sideshow attraction that
escaped from its confinement.
In some versions, after lightning struck its cage.
There's the theory that it could be
the result of a goat farmer crossbreeding
with one of his own goats.
[goat bleating]
The really interesting version to me is that--
A doctor, Steven Fletcher, was experimenting with the DNA
of an assistant, along with goats,
and there was a terrible accident that caused him to be
transformed into this human-goat hybrid creature that has
since terrorized the locals around
Beltsville and Bowie, Maryland.
AARON DEESE: The interesting thing about this one
is that the USDA actually had to make a public statement
saying, this is factually not true,
because the rumors had spread so far
and the story had picked up so much traction.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: Though
clouded in various science fiction origin stories,
to residents of Bowie, the Maryland Goatman was very real.
Just one week following the initial article breaking
the story of the Goatman, three teens
heard strange noises coming from the woods near their homes.
[distant roaring]
One even reported seeing the animal,
describing it as six feet tall, covered in hair,
and standing on two legs.
It made a high-pitched sound.
[distant screeching]
The following morning, they discovered
their puppy was missing.
After searching, they found her body near some railroad tracks,
with the head laying a few yards away.
The story spread like wildfire, and soon teens
all over Prince George's County were traveling to Fletchertown
Road in an attempt to have an encounter
with the Goatman of Bowie.
So great was the pandemonium throughout the county,
the story began to grow outside the state,
and soon, everyone knew the Maryland Goatman.
As the story spread, people attributed
more and more incidents to the goat-like entity.
There was a young couple in Maryland who were recently
married, and they were driving home late one night
and they had a flat tire.
So the husband steps out and tells the wife,
please wait here.
I'm just going to go get a tire, get help.
I'll be right back.
Hours go by, and nothing.
Next thing you know, she leans out of the window
and sees a seven-foot-tall Goatman
standing on the car, bent over, and staring
down into the window.
She rolls up the window, terrified, starts screaming,
and just eventually the Goatman walks away.
She passes out out of exhaustion and fear,
wakes up the next morning, still no husband.
But it's daylight out, so she decides
that she's going to go for a walk
and see if she can track down her husband.
She got about 40 feet away from the car
and found the remains of her husband.
Head had been completely ripped off, most of the limbs
were severely mangled.
I've tried really, really hard to dig
up irrefutable proof on this.
I've yet to be able to find any actual police reports on this.
And this is a troublesome part when it comes to Goatman,
is there's a lot of stories, but they're usually
told from person to person.
There's not really a whole lot of actual documentation on it.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: The presence of Goatman stories,
like the one previously shared, do not exist in a vacuum.
Commonly referred to as Lovers' Lane Stories, these tales
take place in areas where people go
to be intimate with each other in a semi-public setting,
and there is certainly no shortage of them.
It's usually some remote parking spot
on the outskirts of town, down by the railroad tracks,
under the bridge, someplace where they can have
a limited amount of privacy.
Also, of course, people go to drink and tell stories.
The most famous legends besides the Goatman legend
is the dead boyfriend legend, where, of course,
the teenage couple are getting intimate in a car,
there's a noise.
The boyfriend goes out to investigate
and he doesn't come back.
The girlfriend goes to check what happened,
and he's usually hung from a tree limb above the car.
And then, of course, there's the hookman
legend, that's the other famous Lovers' Lane legend.
MARK MATZKE: A couple parked out on a Lovers' Lane.
The radio is still on, and there's a special bulletin
that's made about an escaped convict who
is menacing the neighborhood, in which
this couple finds themselves.
And about the same time, there's a loud scratching that's
heard on the side of the vehicle on the-- typically,
the guy is driving, then the gal is in the other seat,
and it's on her side of the car.
And some detail that comes through on the radio.
Is that the escaped convict in question
has one hook for a hand.
And this is all too much for both of them,
they freak out and drive away at a fast rate of speed.
Getting back to her home, where she's safely
deposited back in the friendly confines.
But assuming that he's at least somewhat of a gentleman,
he comes around the other side of the car to open it for her,
and there, hanging on the handle of the car door,
is a disembodied hook.
So making it that the sound that they heard was evidently this
escaped convict scratching at the car, trying to get in.
JOHN KILLIAN: I think we have to consider the possibility
that we sometimes have a confluence of different types
of urban legends or campfire tales that come together,
particularly in rural areas, and particularly
in these remote Lovers' Lane areas,
where teenagers go and park at night, where they like to spook
each other and tell stories.
So at some point the Goatman and the serial killer, the hook,
those ideas kind of converged.
NATHAN COUCH: Folklorists actually call him a Lovers' Lane
Monster because his legends exist almost exclusively
in places like this where teenagers or someone
of the like gathering.
There's a lot of sightings that happen in locations that aren't
like this, where there's no Goatman legend,
but people say they see creatures like it.
So I think a lot of the locations where he's
near railroad tracks or bridges could
just be the more sensational folklorist-type stories.
The fact that Goatman is associated with Lovers' Lane
areas, I think, speaks to his sort of folkloric role
as a kind of agent of judgment.
And you see this playing out in a variety
of ways, like in the case of the Pope
Lick Monster and the Trestle.
He's an agent of judgment in the sense
that he's punishing you for bad decision making.
It's a bad idea to climb out on this active train trestle
when you could get run down by a freight train
that you can't possibly escape.
[ominous music]
Well, in the case of a Lovers' Lane,
it's not quite the same thing, but you
are very much capable of poor decision making
out there in Lovers' Lane.
And maybe a couple drinks in and you're out there with your loved
one, and one thing leads to another,
and here comes the Goatman to be that agent of judgment,
to say, hey, kids, you break it up
unless you want some unintended consequences to deal with.
Here, let me pound on your car hood
to make sure that you get out of here in time.
So I think he does play that function.
If a person is entertaining Goatman as sort
of an actual flesh and blood cryptid,
then there's also the added dimension that most
Lovers Lanes are remote.
You're going out there because you don't want to be
bothered in the first place.
So where are you going to seek out?
Well, it's not going to be a populated area.
It's going to be a Lovers' Lane, a darkened area,
and a place in near the woods that you hope is not detectable.
And those are often those liminal areas
that are also associated with all manner of cryptid sightings.
[dramatic music]
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: The Goatman
is not always relegated to the Lovers' Lane, however.
Traveling from the East Coast, another Goatman
legend emerges, this time in the sun-baked hills of California.
So the Billiwhack Ranch is a former dairy farm that's located
in Santa Paula, California.
It is home to, supposedly, the Billiwhack Monster,
a humanoid-looking creature that has Goatman-like features,
giant horns, and is reported to even carry around a club,
that's violent in nature, tends to attack people that
come across it, and the cryptid story of this
is a little bit more mysterious than what
you typically get in most original cryptid stories.
MARK MATZKE: It has numerous parallels
to the Goatman of Maryland, and what I mean
is that Ventura, California is the basic area
involving Billiwhack.
There's a Billiwhack farms that became established at that time
that it wasn't immediately evident,
but as time elapsed and people dug into the history
of this location, that facility, there
appeared to have been possible CIA
ties to at least the person who was instrumental in founding
the farm site.
So August Rubel is an interesting guy.
He's a pretty smart guy.
One of the things that comes up about him
pretty often is that he's from Europe.
He's Swiss.
So this is a guy that majored in chemical engineering.
This is something that's going to come up in the Billy
whack monster story.
But he also has apparent ties to the OSS, which
is a precursor to the CIA.
It stands for the Office of Strategic Services.
So this is an interesting guy.
He has government ties, chemical engineering ties,
and now he's associated with what
is supposedly a humanoid monster that roamed around his ranch.
Now, the original story involves August Ruble, and with
his chemical engineering background,
was trying to manufacture a super soldier using goat DNA,
and building an indestructible force that can
be utilized in World War II.
That's story A.
Story B is that ruble was more of almost
like a James Bond-type of character,
where he went off during World War II
and rounded up Nazi scientists that Hitler
was utilizing to build his own version of a super soldier.
And he rounded those guys up, brought them back
to Santa Paula, to the Billiwhack Ranch,
and utilized utilize their knowledge to build
the Billiwhack Monster.
And at some point, the monster escaped,
killing many of the scientists, and now
runs free in the Aliso Canyon near the Billiwhack Ranch.
MARK MATZKE: And so what you had were
a couple scattered tales of a Goatman-type figure being seen.
In one case, by hikers who felt that they
were being trailed by a half-man, half-goat figure.
And so that traces back to this idea
of a pseudoscientific origin for the Goatman,
in that regard, that I see the parallels
between Ventura, California and Maryland, as far as origins go.
It's one of the oldest ones that
I've seen reported in newspapers,
I think goes back to the '50s.
A lot of the Goatman stories cropped up in the '70s, at least
in papers.
They may have been talked about by locals many,
many, many decades before that.
The oldest sighting I could find dates
back to 1912, seen by a herd of cowboys wandering
the Aliso Canyon area.
There wasn't much more to it.
Finding the actual cited sources to that story
were a little tough to find.
I couldn't really do it.
It was a lot of just copy and paste, copy
and paste, which is pretty common in this era
with the internet.
So that would actually predate August Rubel even purchasing
the Billiwhack Ranch, setting up his dairy farm infrastructure.
And that would actually more suggest,
too, the Billiwchack Monster predating
any of these World War II ties.
[ominous music]
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: Both
the story of the Goatman of Bowie
and the Beast of Billiwhack feature genetic experimentation
as explanations for their origins,
but few people would give that theory any merit.
As far as these stories about genetic experimentation
at an agricultural center and half-man,
half-goat being created, my first question is a critical
thinker would be, why?
What would be the advantage of creating a half-man, half-goat.
And I think it almost it seems to draw off
of a very famous story called The Island of Doctor Moreau,
by HG Wells, the great sci-fi writer.
And in that particular story, there's a mad scientist
on an island, and he's experimenting with splicing
human genes with animal genes.
And in fact, one of the creatures
was a half-man, half-goat.
So I think that idea, that seed, was kind of planted deep
in our unconscious minds, and that may
have had an influence as well.
Genetic experimentation is something
I don't know enough about to say that,
yeah, that makes sense to me.
I do just very loosely and anecdotally,
that scientists have attempted to cross human and primate DNA
and that they were not successful in doing so.
So if they were somehow able to cross goat and human DNA,
that would speak to a level of technological sophistication
that is beyond me, certainly, and I
think is beyond our present scientific capability.
So I think that concept of combining humans
with other animals through scientific experimentation
is very interesting to people.
It's got this cool sci-fi quality.
But in terms of how genetics actually works and ultimately
motivation and why someone would do something like that,
I think it's a big problem.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: Although
no power-crazed scientists may have created
a human-goat chimera, there are other versions of the Goatman
that may offer different explanations
for the mysterious creature's origins.
REPORTER: Good evening, Fort Worth.
We interrupt our regular programming
to bring you an extraordinary report from Lake Worth.
In an unprecedented event last night, on July 10, 1969,
several residents claimed to have witnessed a creature dubbed
"The Lake Worth Monster."
Reports described the beast as a half-man, half-goat hybrid,
standing over seven feet tall with fur,
scales, and large horns.
Witnesses, including teenagers who were at the lake,
say the monster leaped onto a car,
denting its roof before vanishing into the dark.
The original encounter with the Lake Worth Goatman
occurred in July of 1969, when two
couples were parked at the Greer Island Nature Center one night.
And they claimed that this creature actually jumped out
of a tree, onto the roof of their car,
attempted to abduct one of the women,
and ended up scratching their car.
And they were so terrified that they
immediately drove to the Sheriff's Office
and reported their encounter.
The next night, there were 40 people out
searching for the monster, and allegedly,
in front of about 30 or 40 eyewitnesses,
this creature appeared on a bluff, picked up a spare tire
and hurled it at the crowd, and it bounced about 500 feet.
Now, what's interesting is that the creature was described
as being a white color, but the initial description,
the two couples said that it was a scaly Goatman,
whatever that means, and so ultimately
became known as the Goatman.
But then later on, people said it
had more of like a gorilla-like look to it.
Strange thing about the tire throwing incident with regard
to the Lake Worth Monster is the fact
that it evidently happened with so many eyewitnesses involved.
Between 40 and 50 people, evidently,
were at the rim of this pit.
But all the stories in the paper and in Clark's book report
that the creature threw this tire 500 feet at a rate of speed
that caused everyone to immediately scatter and leave
the vicinity, because they would have been killed
had it hit them.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: With such a dramatic entrance
for the Lake Worth Goatman, and with so many witnesses,
law enforcement felt pressured to provide answers.
When law enforcement is brought into the picture, which
is relatively right away, I mean, the first stories
that were filed that appeared in the local newspaper
were within a couple days of each other.
[ominous music]
The law enforcement took the stance
that it was an escaped bobcat, that a bobcat had been released
into the wild by their owner, and had taken up residence
in the Greer Island Area and was in the habit of going up
into trees and dropping down onto unassuming people,
especially seem to like landing on cars for whatever reason,
and then scratching them up.
That was their explanation to many of these sightings.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: The newspapers
didn't seem interested in following up on the story
beyond the incredible tire throwing incident,
and many people were content to explain it all away
as the work of pranksters.
And that would have been the end of the Lake Worth Monster saga,
if it weren't for Sallie Ann Clark.
After reading about the incidents in the Fort Worth Star
Telegram, Clark made her way to Greer island
to investigate for herself.
Armed with a camera and a cassette tape recorder,
Clark proceeded to interview dozens of witnesses who claimed
to have encountered the beast.
She then compiled the information,
along with her own observations, into a self-published book
titled The Lake Worth Monster of Greer
Island, Fort Worth, Texas, which was released in September 1969.
All I can tell you about Sallie Ann Clark
is what she reveals in her book.
And so she is a self-described private investigator
and freelance writer.
And what else she was doing beyond that, I have no idea.
But that is the angle that she takes in her book,
and it's a very interesting read.
She goes around in the book describing her random driving
from one location to another, especially
in the vicinity of Greer Island, collecting reports
from individuals, some of which are extremely dramatic stories.
In one case, in the flow of the book,
talks about meeting this young eight, nine-year-old boy
on Greer Island, getting a report
from him that the Lake Worth Monster had killed his cousin.
In detail, she goes into this story about the Lake Worth
Monster swinging through the trees
with his cousin in his arms and then
throwing them, throwing his cousin at a car,
effectively killing him.
And that same boy that she had talked to
falls asleep on a rock.
She wonders, what do I do with this kid,
because it's not her child.
And that as she's wondering what to do,
she hears the sounds of the Lake Worth Monster approaching her.
She climbs up in a tree and watches as the Lake Worth
monster approaches this boy, who's still asleep,
and it scratches the child's cheek
and then wakes up, sees the monster,
and calls out to Sallie Ann, who's up in the tree.
"Lady, lady, I'm seeing the monster that I told you about."
And then after that whole incident wraps up,
she goes to the diner and has a piece of pie.
It's very bizarre.
And to this day, I don't really know
how to take that bit of writing, because she
presents it as factual, take it or leave it.
And it's sort of Gonzo journalism
before that phrase was even coined, I think.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: After Sallie Ann Clark's venture
into the case, another notable researcher dug into the Monster
of Lake Worth's story.
Ken Gerhard.
KEN GERHARD: I first investigated the Lake Worth
Goatman about 20 years ago, 2004,
along with another researcher named Nick Redfern.
We went to the Greer Island Nature Center.
We found The Bluff, the area where it supposedly threw a tire
at this crowd of people, and then we went out
onto Greer island itself, which was said to be the haunt
of this Goatman creature.
And we did find a weird teepee-like structure.
We found a large impression on the ground
nearby where something had been laying down,
and we also found the remains of a fish that had been half eaten.
So since that time, I've been to that particular location
a few different times.
I looked around, I haven't found any significant evidence,
and in fact, I spoke to some of the park rangers
there and asked them about the monster legend,
and they kind of tried to brush it off
and say that it was probably a hoax,
maybe someone dressed up in a costume and so forth.
But it's worth noting that there were
a lot of people that claimed to have seen this creature.
But the Lake Worth monster is very--
is described, always, in very aggressive terms.
Beating people against the side of their cars, one
ex-military person that Clark allegedly
spoke to who made a big deal out of the fact
that he had purchased this convertible,
and he was very proud of it.
He mentions it a number of times,
was driving around out on Greer Island,
before all these other reports hit,
and he saw the monster bludgeoning
this guy against the side of his car, almost apparently to death.
And he said, I had far too much to drink at the time,
but I sobered up on my way back to town
because I was going 180, putting this car
to-- taking it to its limits.
[ominous music]
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: I myself
have done extensive research into the story of the Lake Worth
Monster, even finding witnesses who were only just now talking
about their experiences.
My own book, The Lake Worth Monster: The True Story
of The Greer Island Goatman, delves both into the history
of the case and the legacy it has built around my hometown
of Fort Worth.
But the answers as to what the creature is or was
remains a mystery.
One theory, however, presents itself
most prominently in another encounter with the monster.
The last alleged sighting occurred in November of 1969,
when a guy named Charles Buchanan was parked
alongside Lake Worth, and he claimed the creature climbed up
in the bed of his pickup truck and stole
a bag of fried chicken, and then jumped in the lake and swam
away.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: Before Buchanan left the scene,
he spotted something on the ground,
a footprint that resembled that of a human,
yet it was 18 inches long.
Cryptid enthusiasts would be quick to point out
that a giant, human-shaped footprint might belong
to something like a Sasquatch, rather
than a goat-like creature.
And indeed, there seems to be a lot
of Sasquatch activity in the areas surrounding Lake Worth.
In the 1960s, newspapers reported run-ins with ape-like
creatures in the areas surrounding Fort Worth,
encounters with so-called wild men.
Large, man-like figures covered in hair
were confrontational in nature, with the wildman
growling, yelling, or throwing rocks at the eyewitnesses.
While Sasquatch are typically described as being covered
in dark hair, some reports, especially those in the Northern
United States, describe Sasquatch with white hair,
matching the description of the Lake Worth Monster more closely.
But the Lake Worth Monster is not
the only Goatman story to be closely associated
with Sasquatch reports.
In 1957, a week-long panic gripped the town of Upper
Marlboro, Maryland, when over 200 people claimed to have
encountered a large bipedal ape that was quickly dubbed
"The Abominable Phantom."
Local authorities searched the woods of Prince George's County,
but found no sign of the alleged creature.
All of this occurring a little less than a decade and a half
before the Goatman of Bowie made his debut.
So you can imagine a lot of this stuff
is about perspective and interpretation.
If somebody's out in the woods where they heard
there was a Goatman and they see a big hairy man-like creature
running through the woods, well, then that's the Goatman.
People aren't thinking Bigfoot, at that point.
They've already had their perspective
colored, to some extent.
AARON DEESE: If we're open to the idea of Sasquatches
existence, which I know many people are, then the idea
that Sasquatch could be seen and then mistaken for something
else could explain any number of supernatural or cryptozoological
encounters, because many of these sightings
take place from a distance, they're
very fleeting, they're often taking place at night,
they're in very frantic situations.
So if Sasquatch is out there, which
I tend to think there's a pretty good chance that it is,
I think that's certainly a possibility.
What's striking about these descriptions,
though, when we're talking about the Goatman motif,
is this recurring idea of it having horns.
And Sasquatch, if we're going on the assumption
that it's a primate, primates generally
don't have horns, so that's kind of where
we run into some difficulty.
As a cryptozoologist.
First, I have to consider the fact that something
like a half-man, half-goat, an anthropomorphic creature,
is a zoological impossibility.
The two lineages that led to us Homo sapiens and artiodactyls,
or hoofed animals, like goats, the last common ancestor
we shared was about 65 million years ago or something.
So you're talking about two distinct lineages that
went in opposite directions, that evolved
over a long period of time, and therefore,
could not converge again.
So it's a biological impossibility, which almost
implies either more of a supernatural origin,
or there are some people that talk
about diabolical genetic experiments,
where nefarious government agencies
or laboratories are trying to splice human and goat DNA.
Now, admittedly, that type of knowledge
is kind of beyond my understanding,
so I don't know if that can actually be achieved or not.
But it's worth noting that, throughout history, there
have been weird genetic anomalies in humans.
For example, there have been humans born with tails.
It's very, very rare, but it does happen.
And it's called an atavism.
An atavism is when a human displays
an ancient physical trait that's locked into our deep
in our genetic code from a long, long time ago.
And there are also humans that have horns, believe it or not,
they're called cutaneous horns.
And it's actually a strange type of tumor that grows on people,
and oftentimes, on their foreheads, strangely enough,
and it looks just like a horn.
There's a woman in China known as the unicorn
woman that has one of these horn like structures.
So you can imagine, throughout history,
if there were humans with horns or humans
with tails, as rare as that was, how that might apply or spawn
some of these Goatman legends.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: While misinterpreted Sasquatch
sightings may explain away some of the Goatman sightings,
it does not explain the description
of horns, which are so characteristic of these
creatures.
A biological answer doesn't seem likely either,
leaving few rational possibilities to explain
the creatures origins.
One of these possibilities leads to a much darker side
of the phenomenon, one that also shines
a light on the darkest parts of humanity.
And it lies only 30 miles away from Lake Worth.
The Goatman of the old Alton Bridge
is one that I find fascinating because of its roots
in local folklore, having to do with a bridge that
connected a couple communities, essentially,
in North Central Texas.
AARON DEESE: The story is that there
was an African-American goat farmer in the area
who was very successful.
He was doing very well, making a big name for himself.
His name was purported to be Oscar Washburn,
is how the story goes.
MARK MATZKE: Had become fairly successful in being a goatherd
and selling goat products in the area.
And in fact, advertising his wares by hanging
a sign on the Alton Bridge that said, "this way to the Goatman."
And it was his form of advertising.
Evidently, the local KKK didn't like that too much and hated
the idea of a successful Black man peddling his wares,
so they held a clandestine town council meeting where they
outlawed the type of advertising that he had placed
on the bridge, and then went out to accost him and accuse him,
and tried to throw him in jail for this crime
that he was now committing.
They formed a noose, and they were going to lynch him
off of the side of the bridge.
And when they did that--
and here's where many variations occur,
either that they went through with the lynching,
only to find that his body was missing,
or that his head had become separated from the body,
and depending on what version you hear, but they then go back
from that apparently unsuccessful attempt
to kill him, or it was successful,
and they buried the body and told everyone
they couldn't find the body, but evidently, they
murdered the entire Washburn family after that.
[ominous music]
AARON DEESE: And as a result of this horrific event,
this half-man, half-goat entity is now purported
to haunt the old Alton Bridge.
And people go out there and they do ghost investigations.
They go out there at night, they take EM readings and things.
Sometimes they get results, sometimes they don't.
But this is one of those stories that's
associated more with the darker side of this legend.
It's not so much just a monster sighting it.
It talks about some of the worst parts of humanity,
and looks at some of the darkest places in our history
as the backdrop for this story.
So unlike some of these other Goatman legends,
where oh, it was a government experiment or a man cross-bred
with goats, it's grounded a lot more
in reality, in a very dark way.
MARK MATZKE: There's some real weight to the story,
because if that actually did happen to Oscar Washburn, then
there is some sort of justice, that it seems to be much needed.
And to me, this is one of the telltale signs of the Goatman,
in many of these cases, where he appears as a kind of avenger
or an agent of judgment.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: The apparent difference
between the Goatman of old Alton Bridge and other Goatman cases
previously discussed is its brutal origin story.
No longer is the Goatman a result of an experiment
gone wrong or a misidentified Sasquatch.
It has now been transformed into a spirit of vengeance,
to right the wrongs that the living
have suffered at this bridge.
The old Alton bridge is one of the things that makes the Lake
Worth Monster so interesting, because you have two Goatman
stories or legends or sightings that are really only about 35
miles apart in a straight line.
The Alton Bridge is a little bit south of the Dallas Fort Worth
area, and it's this old iron trellis bridge
that was constructed in 1884.
And for a long time, it was a main thoroughfare.
It was used by people on foot, horses, cars,
until it was finally shut down and they installed a new bridge
and moved the road over a little bit.
The bridge is still there.
You can visit it, you can walk on it,
it's a popular tourist draw.
And there's already a lot of paranormal folklore associated
with these old iron bridges.
Iron itself has a lot of lore and stories
and mythology attached to it.
Bridges are considered places of crossing over, liminal areas.
Water is considered to be a very spiritual, supernatural thing
in a lot of belief systems.
So these old iron bridges, for a lot of people,
represent intersections of high strangeness.
And when people investigate these places
or they just visit them, they very frequently
come away talking about ghosts, hearing voices.
There's this idea in the world of high strangeness
and the paranormal, of strange things
existing in liminal spaces.
Liminal, in this sense, refers to like
a threshold, a place that really nothing has any sort of dominion
over.
So in this sense, things can exist there.
It's not really a place that has a beginning or an ending.
It's just a place that's going somewhere.
It sort of exists in this transient state.
So the idea of a paranormal entity
sort of finding a home there kind of lends some credence.
Now, you get other ideas of like Hecate, the goddess,
she's the ruler of the crossroads.
You have a lot of stories of crossroads being
associated with the paranormal.
It kind of lends into the idea of bridges and train tracks too.
Deals going down there, entities existing.
So I think that could play into the idea
of why things exist near these transient liminal places.
"Crybaby bridges" is a term I'm hearing more lately,
but people will report hearing babies crying,
which is something we know John Keel was talking about
back in the '60s and the '70s.
That's something that's been in our minds for a while.
But a lot of this stuff seems to intersect
with these iron bridges.
JOHN KILLIAN: Crybaby bridges or crybaby lanes, for that matter,
seem to be a phenomenon that you can find in almost every state.
Every state's got one.
So the the basic premise of the crybaby bridge
is, more often than not, the bridge
becomes haunted because of a terrible accident
that happened there.
People end up dying, and then years later,
activity will start to be reported on there.
Now, in particular, when it comes to crybabies,
this often means that there was a death
of a child or several children.
There's an interesting one in North Carolina that originally
was considered to be a Lovers' Lane bridge,
but has since become a crybaby bridge.
Apparently, what happened here is there was a school bus that
ended up veering off of this bridge,
and all of the children in the driver died.
Fast forward several decades later,
this bridge has now been remade and another road
has been put on the side of it, so the bridge is just
kind of abandoned, and this becomes a very popular spot
for teenagers to go run off and make out
in the middle of the evening.
And it wasn't too far after this little bridge became
a private hiding spot for teenagers that most kids who
went out there started to report hearing children crying
and handprints appearing on the windows.
There's always been a link with supernatural creatures
and bridges of various from various cultures.
Trolls are supposed to live under bridges,
spirits can't cross water, things like that.
If he is a supernatural creature,
allegedly running water can provide energy for things
to manifest, so it might be easier for something
like Goatman, if he is something akin to a spirit that needs
energy to appear, a bridge would be a good location
for him to do that.
And there's often supernatural and paranormal aspects
and stories of many bridges around,
such as Emily's Bridge in Stowe, Vermont,
where there was a tragic story of a bride-to-be who
ended her life around this bridge as she
was stood up at the altar.
And there are many stories like that elsewhere as well.
There's all sorts of haunted bridges all over the world.
We have a couple in Texas.
We have another human-animal hybrid,
the Donkey Lady Bridge in San Antonio,
down on old Applewhite Road.
And that's a very similar story to some
of these Goatman legends, where someone was killed
and somehow they were fused with this animal,
and now they haunt this area.
And it's a tradition, or was for a long time in San Antonio,
for people to drive out there at night and park their car,
go poke around in the woods.
And there are a lot of stories, if you look around online,
of people hearing something or seeing something in the woods.
So it's a recurring motif that we see in our culture.
It's something that pops up all over the place.
I'm honestly not sure if there's really
a paranormal connotation to these goatmen
being seen in specific areas around bridges
and railroad tracks.
I tend to think it's more of a cultural phenomenon,
in terms of the old legends of European trolls living
under bridges and some of those stories.
As far as railroad tracks go, I think
it's interesting to point out that I
grew up next to some railroad tracks, kind of in a rural area.
And there's almost something spooky,
particularly as a young person, when you go out to these areas,
these Lovers' Lane areas, if you will,
where these goatmen have been described.
There's something kind of spooky about railroad tracks,
particularly when you're walking along a long line of railroad
tracks next to a forested area.
I don't know.
It's quite an interesting question.
One could derive the idea that there's
some type of energetic force or something
that conjures up these Goatman images
when you're in these specific types of locations.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: The stories of Goatman seem more
paranormal in nature, but why?
I think it's kind of hard to pinpoint
a Goatman entity existing as a biological creature.
There's nothing in the fossil record that
suggests a Goatman could exist.
Unlike a Bigfoot, you have Gigantopithecus, things
like that, that we have evidence of something
like this can actually biologically
walk around and exist.
Goatman, on the other hand, not so much.
However, if you tie in the idea of the supernatural,
the paranormal, and these things existing
without any rhyme or reason, but through fantastical means,
I think something like that can exist.
Maybe it's phasing in and out of reality,
or is some sort of ancient deity that pops into existence,
I think that may be more of what's going on here.
I don't think a half-man, half-goat makes any sense
in the biological kingdom, based on my limited
zoological knowledge.
And unlike a lot of other human-animal chimeric beings
that we see in folklore and mythology,
and even in the modern cryptozoological lexicon,
Goatman is generally described as distinctly being half-human,
half-goat, as having this goat head on a very
distinctly human body.
That doesn't really make sense.
So if it's not a hoax, a hallucination, just
an urban legend, if it's something that actually exists
in the form that we're perceiving it,
you could make the argument that it would have
to be something supernatural.
Something from outside the veil, if you like.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: Returning to the beast
of Billiwhack, we see that the paranormal aspect of the Goatman
legend is not far from the more commonly touted origin stories.
Leasowe Canyon is also home to what some Spanish speakers
call the Chivo Man, a Goatman-like entity
with supernatural roots.
So the Chivo Man and the Billiwhack monster,
they're essentially one and the same.
The only difference there is, the Chivo Man has more of roots
in Mexico and Central America, as the y chivo
creature, which is essentially a Goatman-like creature that
is human.
It's a brujo, a witch, a male witch that utilizes witchcraft
to turn himself into a Goatman-like creature
or other sort of humanoid-looking entities.
And one of the interesting things about that,
if you were to tie in witchcraft into the idea of the Billiwhack
monster, the Billiwhack monster is
located in the Billiwhack Ranch, but that was originally
in the Aliso Canyon area.
That's what the entire area surrounding Billiwhack Ranch is.
Now, "aliso" means alder in English.
So Alder tree.
If you look into elemental magic,
the Alder tree is associated with being
a gateway for the fairy folk, the fae people.
It's utilized as a portal to go from one realm to the next.
So if you were to add in the idea of witchcraft
into the idea of this Billiwhack monster creature,
now you can see why a creature can pop in and phase in and out
of existence, and not really have
any sort of biological precedent for existing.
And the Aliso Canyon area acting somewhat
as a window area, a hotspot for anomalous activity to exist.
[ominous music]
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: When considering the possibility
of the Goatman being something otherworldly,
the floodgates are open to a plethora of explanations.
Nathan Couch, author of the book Goatman: Flesher Folklore,
offers one of the most interesting and unique
takes on what the Goatman may be.
We discussed, like, could he be a zoological creature?
And I think it's an impossibility.
And the fact-- and of course, I said earlier
that he has a lot of supernatural traits
and skills in these stories and in these sightings.
I think if he does exist, he'd have
to be something supernatural, something that hasn't
been explained by science yet.
I think he'd have to be like a nature spirit of some type.
I don't really necessarily mean a spirit,
as in a ghost or human spirit, but pagan religions
worship nature spirits like the fey, fairies or nature spirits,
all these things like gnomes, trolls, things of that nature.
They're all these supernatural creatures that exist in nature
that aren't human, and they have some sort
of supernatural or divine quality to them.
Goatman looks a lot like the god Pan, from Greek mythology.
He was a half-man, half-goat creature.
Pan was the god of the wild.
He was very connected to nature, very
symbolic of humankind's relationship
with nature in the Greek pantheon.
And the term panic, as in extreme fear that we use today,
comes from Pan's name.
That's the root term for that.
Because Pan, when you're walking in the wilderness
and you hear animals howling in the wind and the sounds
of the wild, that's said to be Pan shouting at you
or calling out into the night as you pass through his territory.
So when you look at the modern day
and you have some of these more modern Goatman encounters,
a lot of times, they're accompanied by people saying,
I heard a wailing sound, I heard this horrible scream,
this inhuman cry coming from the night.
So at the very least, there's a tangential correlation, not only
in the physical resemblance between Pan
and the modern Goatman, if you want to call it that, but also
the way in which these things behave
and the way in which they seem to approach
people when they're in these wild and wooded places.
NATHAN COUCH: And there is an exact sighting in Dallas,
near white Rock Lake, that I believe Nick Redfern uncovered,
where a woman who was jogging around the lake,
felt like she was being watched.
She turned, she saw this goat-like creature
looking at her, smirking.
It walked towards her a little bit
and then there was a smell of sulfur.
He just disappeared in a flash after laughing at her,
and she said she felt like she was
having a panic attack, something that she had never felt before.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: The parallels
between the Goatmen and the satyrs of the ancient world
are obvious on the surface.
Half-man, half-goat figures that live in the wild,
sometimes feeling travelers with panic
if they are unlucky enough to come upon one at night.
Yet, perhaps the connection is more than skin deep.
MARK MATZKE: The correlation between goatmen
and satyrs or fauns really seems very, very natural
when you stop to think about the functions
of those figures in mythology.
They were associated with virility, fertility.
They were also associated with debauchery and wild parties.
And so it just seems like, in the case of the Lovers' Lane
stories, they're modern retellings
of these sort of Saturnalia.
I mean, that's where the phrase comes from in the first place,
is the satyr.
And the overlap between that and pagan holiday festivities.
Pan, as well, as far as a lowercase god is concerned,
was very much involved with these sort of tales.
And so there does seem to be, again--
although in the modern tellings, it's not so much
encouraging the behavior as it is discouraging
or talking about consequences.
[disorienting music]
Exacting some sort of judgment.
In the case of Alton Bridge, it's
a folkloric agent of judgment in a frontier justice.
Some consequence must be levied upon those who are doing wrong.
So I do see that there is a way that those paradigms, even
though they they morph slightly in function,
that that seems to be a pattern that
occupies the psyche of humankind, for whatever reason.
There does seem to be a connection or correlation
between some of this activity and the sexual energy
of human beings.
And the prime example of that is you
start talking about poltergeists.
These are often connected to young women who are just
now beginning to come of age, and all of a sudden,
this activity starts.
I think it might have something to do with the fact
that around those times in a person's life,
the chemicals in your brain start to shift,
and therefore, your perception is going to shift.
And when that starts to happen, there's a good possibility
that you might be able to open yourself up to other channels
and see different layers of reality.
And that's where I think a lot of this stuff comes from,
is layers of reality that's stacked on top of us.
And at the same time, I also think
that has something to do with human consciousness and the way
that we remember things as far as history goes.
Because satyrs, they were very popular and very believed
in during Greek times.
Now, fast forward to a time when spirituality is not necessarily
part of our main sphere of existence, but now
we have all of these people who are starting
to take an interest in it.
So now we're starting to see sightings of things
like Goatman, Dogman, stranger cryptids that don't necessarily
have the popularity of, say, Bigfoot or Loch Monster,
but enough sightings in recent times
have certainly made it a little bit more interesting.
MARK MATZKE: You go through this continuum
of natural explanations, supernatural explanations,
scientific, and you'd think that it would stop at that,
but it's kind of gone back in the direction
of the supernatural and dark, even satanic direction.
And I think that's where this idea that is whispered about
or talked about in very cautious ways
is that somehow this thing could have been conjured, in much
the same way as like dogmen are talked about today,
and highly suggested, like in the case of the Beast of Bray
Road, for example, that some sort of occult activity
could have intentionally or inadvertently
brought this thing to life.
And how that works, how long that it stays in our dimension
are questions I'd rather not know
the answers to, but seem to be put forward
as a possible explanation.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: These nature
spirits are not the only thing the Goatman resembles.
With a goat-like head and a man-like body,
the Goatman might as well be the devil himself.
KEN GERHARD: I think what sets the Goatman legend apart
from other cryptids is the fact that our essential image
of a half-man, half-goat conjures
up Satan, demons, the embodiment of ultimate evil.
And so in that respect, the Goatman
is almost scarier than something like a Bigfoot,
or a Dogman, or even a chupacabra,
because it is demonic in nature.
It's got paganistic qualities, so it hearkens back
to that ancient form of evil, something
that evolved centuries ago, something that's still around.
Psychologically, I think people are very, very scared
of the notion of something that looks like a half-man, half-goat
because it's demonic.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: The quintessential image
of the Satanic goat-like entity known
as Baphomet stems from early occultist
writers like Eliphas Levi.
Later, it became entwined with inverted pentagrams.
Thelema, Freemasons, Aleister Crowley, and the teachings
of Anton LaVey, both of whom associated
the Baphomet with the god Pan.
What's more is the sigil of Baphomet
is the official insignia of the Church of Satan.
In many ways, equating the Goatman with the devil
is a natural thought process, but not necessarily the most
explanatory.
Classically, the devil is often portrayed as something
very similar to a satire.
You have the cloven hooves, the rather muscular torso,
and then you have the head of the goat.
Where that imagery actually comes from, I cannot be sure,
but it is now made its way into the psychological aspect of how
we perceive good and evil.
There's a whole stream of thought that goes
into consideration of goat man.
As far as like occult, or we'll just go right to Baphomet
and Satan, it says, why this?
And I think part of this is related to ideas that correlate
to the ability that evil has or does
not have to make and create.
And this has been explored in the writings of C.S. Lewis
and JRR Tolkien and others, but that Satan
does not have the power to create things from nothing.
He can only take what's there and corrupt it.
And so here's where it really gets interesting,
is that the idea, in some cases, like the Pope Lick Monster,
for example, early reports seem to break
in the direction of a sheepman, but later ones
go in the direction of Goatman.
And a correlation here could potentially
be that, in the case of sheep, when you think of a sheep,
you don't think of something malevolent,
you think of something innocent.
You think of something pure.
And taking this to scripture, such as the Holy Bible,
you have the son of God, who is described
in terms of the lamb of God.
So you've got this symbol of purity and goodness.
What's a way to corrupt that?
Well, potentially take it in the direction of a goat, which
is less likable as a figure, certainly one
that we associate with things like eating
trash and living off of that.
While a ram, a sheep's ram can develop horns,
we don't think of a lamb as having that ability,
but a full grown goat has the horns,
and therefore, seems more intimidating
and will, in fact, resort to violence
when that's seen as needed.
So I think that there may be some territory to explore there,
that a goat is a violent or corrupt form
of an innocent little lamb, and maybe, somewhere along the way,
our expectation or perception of what
half-human, half-sheep, then goat, becomes,
is colored by that.
[sinister music]
[bleating]
[train horn blaring]
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: One of the most notable
of all Goatman stories is that of the Pope
Lick Monster of Kentucky.
Some legends suggest that if one walks
to the middle of the train trestle,
the Goatman will appear on the other side.
Others claim that the Goatman is the result of satanic rituals
conducted in a nearby shack.
Stories of the Pope Lick Monster are as varied
as any that have already been discussed,
but they also introduce new elements
into the mythos of the Goatman.
My name is David Domine, I'm a Louisville-based
author and educator, a folklorist as well.
And I've lived in Louisville since 1993,
and one of the first urban legends I heard about
was one that said to be rooted here at the Pope Lick Trestle.
It's called the Goatman.
Some call it the monster of Pope Lick.
This is an active trestle.
We have early mentions of it in 1909
already, so we know this train track has run through here
for at least 100 years.
Interestingly enough, this is a case where an initial, very
old reports seem to describe it as Sheepman instead of Goatman.
And at some point, that tilts in the direction of the goat
instead of the sheep.
There's some rather sort of highly bizarre stories
having to do with origins.
NATHAN COUCH: Supposedly, there was this goat-like creature seen
in the wilderness of Canada, and this circus owner
named Silas Garner, who was somebody who I have not been
able to prove ever existed, found out
about the creature hired someone to capture it,
to put it in a sideshow.
Supposedly by capturing this creature, he cursed himself.
And on a stormy night, as the train
was traveling through Kentucky, the Goatman's curse
caused the train to derail, and he escaped, and now lives
under the bridge at Pope Lick.
Others say that there was a local farmer who was a little
too friendly with his goats.
He was breeding with them, and that's one
of the more interesting takes.
Another far more even sinister origin stories
having to do with a farmer who made goat sacrifices, hoping
to gain some sort of satanic dark power,
and he ends up becoming the Goatman.
It's very much an urban legend.
It's said that there's a half-man, half-goat kind
of creature who lives under the trestles,
and he's a siren-type of being.
He likes to attract unsuspecting visitors up to the tracks.
Sometimes he mimics voices, sometimes
he acts like he's in distress.
But for whatever reason, people are led up to the trestle,
and many people don't realize this is still an active trestle,
several times a day.
So there's an almost 800 foot span.
And if you're caught up there where a train is coming through,
there's really no place to go.
All you can do is outrun the train, which most people can't,
or you have to jump over the side
and dangle from one of the pieces of wood
that juts out, which is kind of a hard task
because it takes usually at least five minutes
for a train to rumble overhead.
That's when people often fall to their deaths, or they're running
and they stumble and they fall over the side,
because there's really no railing.
It's just tracks up in the sky.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: One thing
separating the Pope Lick Monster from other Goatman stories
are the very real deaths connected to the legend.
As of 2019, at least 12 people have
been injured while seeking the Goatman
upon the Pope Lick Trestle.
JEFF FORAN: There are some people that have actually
gone out there to look for the Goatman,
and their lives have been tragically ended,
as in the case of a couple who went up there around 2015
or 2016, and they were on the train trestle
and a train started coming their way,
as there are 20 to 25 trains that actually go over this train
trestle every day.
The boyfriend managed to jump and hang onto a steel beam,
where the girlfriend met her tragic fate
90 feet below onto the ground.
JC Bahm was a teenager, I believe, in 1988,
and he was struck by the train and killed,
and presumably fell to his death off of the trestle.
Those stories-- and they're matters of historic fact--
people who have gone out on the tracks and have
died because of it.
So unlike a lot of these other stories where they kind of just
add up to a bunch of fun sightings
and a few spooky stories, this is
one that actually has a tangible death toll attached to it.
Some people have taken it to say that, oh, well,
that means the Goatman is responsible for these deaths,
or the Goatman hypnotizes people and brings them into the woods.
I tend to think some places are just very dangerous,
and that's why people get hurt when they go out there
and don't take the appropriate precautions, when
they go to places that they aren't supposed to go.
But there's no separating this legend
from this place and all of the tragic events
that have gone on here.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: The final key
to the Goatman mystery is the influence of the media.
In the age of information, where a sensational news can and does
influence the decisions of individuals,
the proliferation of certain stories
are bound to ignite the imaginations of people.
A single newspaper article was all
that it took to lure teenagers out
to Fletchertown Road in search of the Goatman of Bowie.
Even years later, when the story of Ginger the Dog
was revealed to have been a hoax,
the legend had grown well beyond the newsprint
and was now part of modern folklore.
Hundreds of people flock to Lake Worth
when the sensational sightings were mentioned
on local television news.
Deaths on the Pope Lick Trestle that were once
seen as accidental were now shrouded in mystery
due to the popularization of an urban legend
through an independent film.
In every major case of the Goatman,
there lies a strong media backing to the legend.
And with every legend tripper that seeks out the Goatman
and has an experience either real or imagined,
the mythos continues to grow.
I think part of the reason why there are so many origin stories
and such variants has, in part, to do with the explanatory power
of things over time.
And what I mean by that is 150, 200 years ago, you
would have had sort of agrarian, naturalistic explanations
for things, yet mundane sort of reasons
that a Goatman might appear.
In other words, a fleshly union between farmer and animal,
as sickening as that is to consider,
that is one stream of explanatory story
that was given about that.
And then you start to bring in folk religion, witchcraft,
and so forth.
And now, the devil and dark forces
become to swirl into the story, where if some sort
of pact or agreement was made.
Then that would result in a necessary consequence of making
a deal with the devil, is you have to pay
a price that you don't expect.
And certainly, being forced into the form of a goat man
would qualify as one of those terrible prices to pay.
And then, with the rise of science as something
that explains everything, you get into then stories
having to do with breeding taking place,
normally in a secret facility where, evidently, DNA
of some type could be spliced.
And that sort of rules the creation,
if you will, of a creature like Goatman or Sheepman,
where you're moving away from a kind
of spiritual religious overtone into the realm
of a scientific, reasonable explanation.
Goatman is generally always, at least
in the stories I've looked at, somehow
intimately tied to human nature.
Again, if we look at Pan and those early stories
that talks about how humankind interacted with the wild,
how we viewed wild places, and what we learned to fear,
it symbolizes this mash up of humanity and something wild.
And again, a lot of cryptids do that.
But these modern Goatman stories, the origin stories
are always racism, genetic experiments
gone wrong, humans and animals intermixing, just bad things.
A lot of cryptid stories, we get monsters that
kind of represent humanity.
They're upright, maybe they're hominids, Bigfoot stories.
But Goatman reports seem to, again, just talk
about the worst parts of humankind.
Science gone wrong, racial prejudice, greed, violence.
There's never anything positive in there.
There's never anything that we look at and go,
that makes me feel a little bit better about the world.
Unlike with, say, again, Bigfoot encounters
or some other potentially unclassified animals,
the Loch Monster.
People have these encounters and it changes
their life for the better.
I don't think we've heard a story like that about Goatman.
NATHAN COUCH: The locations where
he's a known legend, like the trestle at Pope Lick,
so you have those types of stories, which probably
not even a morsel of truth in them,
but you have sightings of creatures
that very much could be in the realm of real experience.
Like perhaps a lot of these sightings
have nothing to do with the outlandish stories they've been
given, people are experiencing them
and then people are attaching plot
lines from movies and comic books
and campfire stories to these sightings.
NICK VALENZUELA: I think there's so many different versions
of Goatman just because again, sort of exists
as this primordial fear that we have,
this idea of fear of the woods, fear of the unknown,
and the idea of going back, again, to Pan,
the trickster God of the woods.
There was essentially a Goatman entity that
would lure you to your doom.
Maybe that sort of memory, that genetic memory that we have
of danger in the woods, has been personified
into the idea of this Goatman-like figure that--
now that can exist all across the world, in every state,
in every country, in every dark wooded area that we wander into,
the idea of this goat man waiting there to get us
can exist and live and thrive, and is probably experienced
by numerous amounts of people.
When considering the archetype of a Goatman,
I think there are many different influences
and we have to accept that many of our cryptids
are actually examples of what I call composite identity,
meaning there's different influences
coming together to form this one specific archetype.
And so, for example, the idea of a half-man, half-goat
goes back a long time.
In the fifth century BC, we find the first Greek interpretations
of creatures known as satyrs, which are essentially
forest beings that are often portrayed
as having goat-like features big ears, horns.
So that particular idea has been around a very, very long time.
And then that evolved over time, and I
think those ancient Greek mythologies
and legends were adapted by the Romans,
and the satyrs became the fauns.
And then as Christianity took over,
a lot of these old pagan ideas of things like satyrs
were kind of pushed to the side.
And then eventually, early interpretations
of Satan or the devil began to resemble a half-man, half-goat,
almost as if Christianity was saying,
OK, well, these old pagan ideas of goatmen, these are demons.
These are the devil.
And so the Goatman, therefore, become an evil entity.
It's become kind of an embodiment of pure evil
or demonic activity.
And furthermore, I think we have to acknowledge
that a lot of urban legends and campfire tales
actually migrate and evolve.
And as different communities and areas
adapt these monster stories, they put their own brand on it.
There are always some similar themes or motifs in terms of,
it's out in the woods, in a remote area,
or near an old spooky stone bridge.
So the basic themes remain the same.
I think a good parallel example are
these legends of giant catfish living under dams.
And I've been to many places in the United States--
Arizona, Georgia, Texas-- where I've heard this recurring story
about below a dam, there are these car-sized catfish
that will swallow people and animals and things.
And so you find these similar legends in different places,
and it's almost as if they kind of migrated.
Similarly, a lot of these Goatman stories
may have migrated from Europe, with European immigrants
that brought some of the old world stories and tall tales.
And finally, there's an aspect in terms
of when you consider what occurs at Lovers' Lane areas.
Teenagers are lustful, they're looking to party,
so they're out there, they're drinking,
they're doing things that their parents don't want them to do.
And so it's almost like there's an unconscious connection here
to ancient Greek mythology and the satyrs, who were
the original party animals.
They were out with Dionysus, they
were drinking wine, they were debaucherous, chasing women.
And so I think by associating the Goatman legends
with these remote Lovers' Lane areas,
it's almost like we're harkening back
to the earlier age of paganism and the types
of debauchery that occur in places where
people are not supposed to go.
MARK MATZKE: What sets the Goatman legendarium
apart from other cryptid stories is
that I think it's hard to even consider it a cryptid.
If we're taking of an old school approach to cryptozoology
and saying that a cryptid is simply an animal that's
gone undiscovered and uncatalogued,
but it's out there waiting to be found,
Goatman doesn't appear to be that kind of entity whatsoever.
It doesn't seem to occupy a physical space.
Spiritual space, perhaps, or a folkloric space, yes,
depending on what stories you're listening to.
Monsters associated with Goatman legends
have done things like kill people.
But when you're asked to produce even an obituary,
you run into dead ends immediately.
So I think the central issue is that Goatman is like a cryptid,
wedded with urban legend, wedded with folklore and stories
that humans have been telling ever
since they could tell stories.
CRAIG WOOLHEATER [VOICEOVER]: The Goatman, it seems,
is greater than the sum of all of its pieces.
It is more than folklore.
It is more than a cryptid.
It is something that has seemingly
existed alongside humankind for thousands of years,
and yet never physically existed.
Perhaps it's the inexplicable nature of the Goatman
that keeps us coming back to that bridge after dark,
or stepping into the woods in hopes of adding
our own experience to the legend,
perpetuating the mystery well into the future.
[ominous music]