WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:05.759 For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace. 2 00:00:06.519 --> 00:00:10.279 Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world 3 00:00:10.359 --> 00:00:14.160 refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they 4 00:00:14.199 --> 00:00:18.679 know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we 5 00:00:18.719 --> 00:00:22.879 share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot, 6 00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:28.239 dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make 7 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:32.320 it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because 8 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:34.640 once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the 9 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:38.920 woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and 10 00:00:39.039 --> 00:00:41.840 remember some things in the woods don't want to be found. 11 00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:46.240 Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads, 12 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:48.399 and let's head off into the woods if you dare. 13 00:01:03.159 --> 00:01:05.159 If you've been riding along with me for a while, 14 00:01:05.680 --> 00:01:08.920 you know how this works. By now, every stop we 15 00:01:08.920 --> 00:01:11.439 pull into a new state, we find the thing the 16 00:01:11.519 --> 00:01:14.239 locals whisper about, and we dig into it the way 17 00:01:14.359 --> 00:01:17.480 I dig into everything. We've stood on the banks of 18 00:01:17.480 --> 00:01:20.719 a lake in Idaho waiting for Charlie. We've walked the 19 00:01:20.719 --> 00:01:24.079 fields outside Van Meter, Iowa, where a winged thing with 20 00:01:24.159 --> 00:01:26.719 a glowing horn shot out of an old coal mine, 21 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:29.079 and terrorized a whole town for a week. 22 00:01:29.879 --> 00:01:31.359 We've circled Folk Lake. 23 00:01:31.120 --> 00:01:34.879 In Indiana hunting a five hundred pounds snapping turtle named Oscar. 24 00:01:35.560 --> 00:01:39.040 We've chased sinkhole serpents across Kansas weak Country, and stood 25 00:01:39.079 --> 00:01:42.239 in the dark timber of northern California listening for footsteps 26 00:01:42.439 --> 00:01:45.239 that were too heavy to be a deer. Tonight we 27 00:01:45.319 --> 00:01:48.480 crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky. And before I say 28 00:01:48.480 --> 00:01:50.840 one more word about this, stop, I need to do 29 00:01:50.879 --> 00:01:53.319 something I've never had to do on this show, not 30 00:01:53.480 --> 00:01:56.239 like this. I need to give you a warning, and 31 00:01:56.319 --> 00:01:59.319 I need you to actually hear it. Because tonight's location 32 00:01:59.480 --> 00:02:01.959 is not in a lake or an empty stretch of 33 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:07.920 forest road. Tonight's location has killed people, real people, teenagers, 34 00:02:08.479 --> 00:02:11.960 a young woman on vacation with her boyfriend. Their names 35 00:02:11.960 --> 00:02:14.400 are in the newspaper archives and their families are still 36 00:02:14.439 --> 00:02:17.039 out there, and every single one of them died in 37 00:02:17.120 --> 00:02:21.120 the same place, on the same structure, chasing the same story. 38 00:02:21.120 --> 00:02:24.400 I'm about to tell you. So here's the rule, and 39 00:02:24.479 --> 00:02:27.400 it is not negotiable. Do not go to the pope 40 00:02:27.400 --> 00:02:31.120 Lick trestle, Do not climb the fence, do not walk 41 00:02:31.199 --> 00:02:34.520 the tracks, do not stand under it at midnight with 42 00:02:34.599 --> 00:02:37.879 your phone out, and do not, under any circumstances, set 43 00:02:37.919 --> 00:02:41.560 one foot on that bridge. The trestle is private property 44 00:02:41.599 --> 00:02:45.199 owned by an active freight railroad. Trains cross it day 45 00:02:45.199 --> 00:02:47.439 and night with no fixed schedule you can count on. 46 00:02:47.960 --> 00:02:50.960 There is no walkway, there is no railing, there is 47 00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:53.639 no safe spot to stand when a train comes, and 48 00:02:53.680 --> 00:02:56.439 a loaded freight train cannot stop for you, no matter 49 00:02:56.439 --> 00:02:59.479 how hard the engineer lays on the brakes. By the 50 00:02:59.520 --> 00:03:02.800 time you hear the math is already against you. You 51 00:03:02.840 --> 00:03:05.360 can hear this whole story from your couch. That's the 52 00:03:05.520 --> 00:03:08.199 entire point of this show. I go so you don't 53 00:03:08.280 --> 00:03:11.120 have to. And in this case, I didn't even go 54 00:03:11.199 --> 00:03:13.800 on to the structure myself because I've seen what a 55 00:03:13.840 --> 00:03:17.000 train does to a human body. Nobody needs to see that. 56 00:03:17.599 --> 00:03:22.599 Nobody needs to cause that. Okay, warning delivered, and I 57 00:03:22.680 --> 00:03:24.719 mean every word of it. Now, let me tell you 58 00:03:24.800 --> 00:03:28.039 about the goat man. Because Kentucky has a lot of monsters. 59 00:03:28.439 --> 00:03:31.319 It has more bigfoot reports than most people would ever guess. 60 00:03:31.919 --> 00:03:34.840 It has lake creatures and hill haints and a whole 61 00:03:34.919 --> 00:03:39.360 catalog of things screaming in the hollows after dark. But 62 00:03:39.400 --> 00:03:41.800 there's one legend in this state that stands apart from 63 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:44.360 all of them, and it stands apart because it's the 64 00:03:44.360 --> 00:03:47.919 only one where the body count is real, documented and 65 00:03:47.960 --> 00:03:52.400 still climbing. They call him the Pope Lick Monster, half man, 66 00:03:52.680 --> 00:03:55.840 half goat. He lives under a railroad trestle on the 67 00:03:55.879 --> 00:03:58.960 eastern edge of Louisville, and according to the legend, he 68 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:02.879 doesn't chase you. He calls you, he gets inside your head, 69 00:04:03.240 --> 00:04:05.639 or he mimics a voice you trust, and he draws 70 00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:08.599 you up onto that bridge, out over the creek, out 71 00:04:08.639 --> 00:04:12.080 onto eight stories of open steel with no way down, 72 00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:16.079 and then the train comes. That's the legend. Stay with 73 00:04:16.120 --> 00:04:18.519 me tonight, because by the end of this episode I'm 74 00:04:18.560 --> 00:04:20.680 going to make the case that the Pope Licked Monster 75 00:04:21.040 --> 00:04:24.519 might be the most honest monster in America. Whether he's 76 00:04:24.560 --> 00:04:27.480 flesh and blood, whether he's a ghost story, or whether 77 00:04:27.519 --> 00:04:30.519 he's something the community built on purpose. He tells you 78 00:04:30.600 --> 00:04:33.360 exactly what he is going to do to you, and 79 00:04:33.399 --> 00:04:37.000 people keep going anyway. Let me set the scene, because 80 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:39.759 the location matters more in this story than in any 81 00:04:39.759 --> 00:04:43.720 other episode we've done. Drive East out of Louisville on 82 00:04:43.800 --> 00:04:48.040 Taylorsville Road, out past the subdivisions, out to where Jefferson 83 00:04:48.079 --> 00:04:50.959 County starts to loosen its collar and turn back into 84 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:54.839 farm country. There's a little community out there called Fisherville, 85 00:04:55.360 --> 00:04:59.120 rolling ground creeks, hardwood bottoms. Running through it is a 86 00:04:59.160 --> 00:05:02.199 stream called Pope Lick Creek, which feeds into a bigger 87 00:05:02.199 --> 00:05:06.040 stream called Floyd's Fork. If the name sounds strange to you, 88 00:05:06.480 --> 00:05:09.000 a lick in old Kentucky talk is a salt lick, 89 00:05:09.639 --> 00:05:12.000 a place where the ground held minerals and the deer 90 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:14.360 in buffalo would come to work it with their tongues. 91 00:05:15.199 --> 00:05:18.199 The Pope family owned land along the creek way back, 92 00:05:18.399 --> 00:05:21.800 and so it became Pope's Lick, and eventually Pope Lick. 93 00:05:22.519 --> 00:05:25.879 Nothing sinister in the name at all, just settlers and 94 00:05:25.959 --> 00:05:30.120 salt and deer. Then there's the bridge. The Pope Lick 95 00:05:30.199 --> 00:05:32.920 Trestle is a railroad bridge built to carry a rail 96 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:35.800 line across the valley of Pope Lick Creek, and it 97 00:05:35.839 --> 00:05:40.120 also passes over South Pope Lick Road down below. The 98 00:05:40.199 --> 00:05:43.360 original crossing there goes back to the eighteen eighties, and 99 00:05:43.439 --> 00:05:46.920 the steel structure standing today has been rebuilt and reinforced 100 00:05:46.959 --> 00:05:49.680 over the years into the thing you can see now. 101 00:05:50.399 --> 00:05:54.600 It is enormous. The span runs somewhere in the neighborhood 102 00:05:54.680 --> 00:05:57.279 of seven hundred and seventy feet from end to end, 103 00:05:57.600 --> 00:06:00.680 which is longer than two football fields, and at its 104 00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:03.720 highest point it stands roughly eight to nine stories above 105 00:06:03.720 --> 00:06:07.720 the creek bottom. It's a working freight line currently operated 106 00:06:07.759 --> 00:06:11.519 by Norfolk Southern, and trains still cross it regularly, long 107 00:06:11.639 --> 00:06:14.600 heavy freight trains, the kind that take a mile or 108 00:06:14.600 --> 00:06:16.519 more of track to come to a stop once the 109 00:06:16.560 --> 00:06:19.759 engineer dumps the air. Now here's the part I need 110 00:06:19.759 --> 00:06:22.879 you to understand, because this detail is the trap at 111 00:06:22.879 --> 00:06:26.519 the center of the whole legend. The trestle is single track. 112 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:31.040 There is no pedestrian walkway. There are no refuge platforms, 113 00:06:31.399 --> 00:06:35.600 no bailout spots, no ladder you can scramble down. The 114 00:06:35.680 --> 00:06:38.560 ties are spaced so you can see daylight between them 115 00:06:38.920 --> 00:06:41.720 all the way down to the creek. If you're standing 116 00:06:41.720 --> 00:06:43.879 in the middle of that span and a train enters 117 00:06:43.879 --> 00:06:46.920 the bridge, you have three options, and all three of 118 00:06:46.959 --> 00:06:49.680 them are terrible. You can try to outrun a freight 119 00:06:49.680 --> 00:06:52.920 train across hundreds of feet of open ties. You can 120 00:06:52.959 --> 00:06:55.600 lie down and pray the train passes over you, which 121 00:06:55.639 --> 00:06:58.720 does not work because the equipment hanging under those cars 122 00:06:58.839 --> 00:07:00.439 rides lower than a human body. 123 00:07:01.199 --> 00:07:03.079 Or you can go over the side, and. 124 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:05.279 The side is a drop that has killed and broken 125 00:07:05.319 --> 00:07:10.199 people all by itself. There's one more cruel detail. People 126 00:07:10.240 --> 00:07:12.519 who live near that valley will tell you. The trestle 127 00:07:12.560 --> 00:07:16.279 plays tricks with sound, the way the ground rolls, the 128 00:07:16.319 --> 00:07:19.560 way the creek bottom channels noise. A train can be 129 00:07:19.680 --> 00:07:22.319 almost on top of the bridge before you hear it clearly. 130 00:07:23.319 --> 00:07:25.920 Add to that a myth that has floated around Louisville 131 00:07:25.959 --> 00:07:28.920 for decades, the idea that only one train a day 132 00:07:29.079 --> 00:07:31.920 uses that line, and you have a perfect machine for 133 00:07:32.040 --> 00:07:35.600 killing trespassers because the one train a day story is 134 00:07:35.639 --> 00:07:36.279 flat wrong. 135 00:07:36.879 --> 00:07:37.600 Always was. 136 00:07:38.360 --> 00:07:41.439 The trains come when they come at all hours, and 137 00:07:41.480 --> 00:07:43.759 the people who climbed up there, believing they had checked 138 00:07:43.759 --> 00:07:46.240 the schedule, found that out in the worst way a 139 00:07:46.279 --> 00:07:48.199 person can find anything out. 140 00:07:48.360 --> 00:07:49.360 So that's the stage. 141 00:07:50.040 --> 00:07:52.759 A giant steel bridge over a quiet creek in the 142 00:07:52.759 --> 00:07:57.000 farm fringe of Louisville deadly by design, not because anyone 143 00:07:57.040 --> 00:08:00.000 designed it to kill, but because it was designed for trains, 144 00:08:00.279 --> 00:08:03.560 and only trains and human beings keep putting themselves on it. 145 00:08:04.319 --> 00:08:07.600 The question tonight is why, and the answer Louisville has 146 00:08:07.600 --> 00:08:10.560 been giving for about eighty years is that something lives 147 00:08:10.639 --> 00:08:13.639 under that bridge, something that wants you up there on 148 00:08:13.680 --> 00:08:17.639 the ties. When the rail starts to sing, every telling 149 00:08:17.639 --> 00:08:20.439 of the Pope Lick Monster agrees on the basics, and 150 00:08:20.519 --> 00:08:24.920 after that the versions scatter like buckshot, which, if you've 151 00:08:24.959 --> 00:08:27.639 listened to this show for any length of time, you 152 00:08:27.720 --> 00:08:30.319 know is exactly what a real folk legend looks like. 153 00:08:31.160 --> 00:08:34.480 Tidy stories come from one author. Messy stories come from 154 00:08:34.519 --> 00:08:38.559 a community. The basics are these. The creature is a hybrid. 155 00:08:39.080 --> 00:08:42.080 From the waist up, mostly a man, though a wrong 156 00:08:42.120 --> 00:08:45.919 looking one, with pale or grayish skin, a heavy brow, 157 00:08:46.039 --> 00:08:49.360 and short, sharp horns growing out of a forehead framed 158 00:08:49.360 --> 00:08:53.519 by greasy hair. From the waist down, a goat, furred 159 00:08:53.639 --> 00:08:56.639 legs that bend the wrong way, ending in hoofs that 160 00:08:56.679 --> 00:09:00.480 can grip steel and ballast better than any boot ever made. 161 00:09:00.519 --> 00:09:04.159 Some tellings give him wide set eyes with rectangular pupils 162 00:09:04.519 --> 00:09:07.600 like a real goat has, Some give him a bleeding, 163 00:09:07.679 --> 00:09:11.360 broken voice. Almost all of them put him on under 164 00:09:11.480 --> 00:09:14.360 or around that trestle, and almost all of them agree 165 00:09:14.399 --> 00:09:15.039 on his method. 166 00:09:15.759 --> 00:09:18.080 He doesn't run you down. He lures you. 167 00:09:18.919 --> 00:09:22.360 In some versions, it's outright hypnosis, a gaze or a 168 00:09:22.399 --> 00:09:24.639 sound that empties your head and walks your legs up 169 00:09:24.679 --> 00:09:28.440 the embankment for you. In others it's mimicry. And to 170 00:09:28.519 --> 00:09:31.840 me this is the creepier version by a mile. The 171 00:09:31.879 --> 00:09:34.759 goat man calls out in a voice you know a 172 00:09:34.759 --> 00:09:37.960 friend who wandered ahead in the dark, A kid crying 173 00:09:38.960 --> 00:09:40.919 your own name, said the way your mother says it. 174 00:09:41.440 --> 00:09:43.799 And you follow the voice up the slope, and you 175 00:09:43.840 --> 00:09:47.000 follow it out onto the ties, and somewhere around the 176 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:50.000 middle of the span, the voice stops, and that's when 177 00:09:50.039 --> 00:09:53.200 you feel the rail humming under your feet. Some versions 178 00:09:53.360 --> 00:09:56.399 arm him with a rusty, blood crusted axe and say 179 00:09:56.399 --> 00:09:59.039 that if the train doesn't get you, the axe will 180 00:10:00.120 --> 00:10:02.320 version say he doesn't need any of it, that he 181 00:10:02.399 --> 00:10:04.879 simply drops from the underside of the trestle onto the 182 00:10:04.960 --> 00:10:07.919 roofs of cars passing on the road below. And there 183 00:10:07.919 --> 00:10:10.120 are people in Louisville who will swear to you they've 184 00:10:10.159 --> 00:10:13.639 heard of dented roofs and claw marks and paint I've 185 00:10:13.679 --> 00:10:16.120 never seen a police report or an insurance claim to 186 00:10:16.159 --> 00:10:17.039 back that one up. 187 00:10:17.679 --> 00:10:18.799 But I'll tell you this much. 188 00:10:19.440 --> 00:10:21.639 If you park under that trestle at night and you 189 00:10:21.720 --> 00:10:24.360 look up at eight stories of black crisscrossed steel with 190 00:10:24.399 --> 00:10:28.399 a flashlight, you will absolutely understand why that version exists. 191 00:10:29.039 --> 00:10:31.200 The underside of that bridge looks like a place where 192 00:10:31.240 --> 00:10:32.000 something waits. 193 00:10:32.519 --> 00:10:34.120 Where did he come from? 194 00:10:34.399 --> 00:10:37.159 The origin stories are where the legend really shows its 195 00:10:37.200 --> 00:10:40.200 age and its fingerprints, because there are at least three, 196 00:10:40.840 --> 00:10:43.799 and they don't agree with each other at all. The 197 00:10:43.879 --> 00:10:46.399 first and most popular origin says the goat man was 198 00:10:46.440 --> 00:10:49.799 a circus freak. In this telling, sometime in the late 199 00:10:49.879 --> 00:10:53.519 eighteen hundreds or early nineteen hundreds, a traveling circus was 200 00:10:53.559 --> 00:10:56.879 moving through the area by rail, and among its attractions 201 00:10:57.000 --> 00:11:00.600 was a captive half man half goat creature billed as 202 00:11:00.600 --> 00:11:05.240 a freak of nature, caught somewhere wild, sometimes Canada, sometimes 203 00:11:05.279 --> 00:11:09.639 deeper backwoods that nobody names. The story goes that a 204 00:11:09.679 --> 00:11:12.759 storm came up, lightning struck the tracks, or the train 205 00:11:12.879 --> 00:11:16.240 derailed right there at the Pope Lick crossing cars went 206 00:11:16.279 --> 00:11:19.159 off the trestle, and in the wreck the creature escaped. 207 00:11:19.720 --> 00:11:23.559 Everyone else died. He lived, and having been caged and 208 00:11:23.559 --> 00:11:26.679 prodded and gawked at by humans for years, he took 209 00:11:26.759 --> 00:11:29.600 up residents under the bridge that freed him and started 210 00:11:29.639 --> 00:11:33.559 evening the score, one trespasser at a time. I want 211 00:11:33.559 --> 00:11:36.000 to pause on that version for a second, because as 212 00:11:36.039 --> 00:11:38.440 a researcher, I love it, and I don't believe a 213 00:11:38.480 --> 00:11:42.519 word of it. Circus train wrecks were real. They happened, 214 00:11:42.799 --> 00:11:45.440 and some of them were horrific. But a circus train 215 00:11:45.480 --> 00:11:48.360 wreck at Popelit Creek would have made the Lieusville papers, 216 00:11:48.799 --> 00:11:52.519 and it isn't there. What that version does beautifully, though, 217 00:11:53.000 --> 00:11:56.799 is explain the creature's grudge. He isn't evil for no reason. 218 00:11:57.559 --> 00:12:00.840 Humans made him a prisoner and a spectacle. The revenge 219 00:12:00.919 --> 00:12:05.360 is personal. Folklore loves a monster with a reason. The 220 00:12:05.399 --> 00:12:09.360 second origin is darker, and it's pure Southern Gothic. This 221 00:12:09.440 --> 00:12:11.600 one says there was a farmer out in that country, 222 00:12:11.919 --> 00:12:14.759 and in some tellings folks even hang a name on him, 223 00:12:14.919 --> 00:12:18.279 a man usually called something like Silas Cooper, though the 224 00:12:18.360 --> 00:12:21.759 name floats from telling to telling. The story says he 225 00:12:21.879 --> 00:12:24.720 raised goats, and that he didn't just raise them, he 226 00:12:24.840 --> 00:12:28.200 sacrificed them. Made deals in the dark, the kind of 227 00:12:28.240 --> 00:12:31.720 deals Hill preachers warned about, trading blood for power or 228 00:12:31.759 --> 00:12:34.559 money or land, and the deal went the way those 229 00:12:34.600 --> 00:12:38.639 deals always go in these stories. Whatever he was bargaining 230 00:12:38.679 --> 00:12:42.559 with collected. Either the farmer was twisted and merged into 231 00:12:42.600 --> 00:12:45.360 a goat bodied thing as punishment, or the thing he 232 00:12:45.440 --> 00:12:49.480 summoned killed him and stayed. Either way, the debt lives 233 00:12:49.559 --> 00:12:53.279 under the trestle now and it's still collecting. The third 234 00:12:53.320 --> 00:12:57.279 origin skips the biography entirely and just says he's a reincarnation, 235 00:12:57.919 --> 00:13:02.200 a rebirth of that same sacrifice. Farmer sent back wearing 236 00:13:02.240 --> 00:13:04.600 the shape of the animals he butchered on the altar, 237 00:13:05.320 --> 00:13:09.360 same idea in cheaper packaging. Sin comes home wearing hoofs. 238 00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:12.799 And then there's a four thread quieter that you hear 239 00:13:12.840 --> 00:13:16.559 from older folks and from people who like their monsters biological, 240 00:13:17.039 --> 00:13:20.440 which says, forget all the theater. Something lives in the 241 00:13:20.440 --> 00:13:25.159 Floyd's fork bottoms always has it's big, It walks on 242 00:13:25.200 --> 00:13:28.440 two legs, It screams at night, and the goat business 243 00:13:28.480 --> 00:13:31.559 got stuck onto it by teenagers and drive in movies. 244 00:13:32.480 --> 00:13:35.240 File that thread away, because we're coming back to it 245 00:13:35.320 --> 00:13:37.960 in the second half of tonight's episode, and it's going 246 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:42.559 to take us straight into Kentucky's sasquatch problem. Yes, Kentucky 247 00:13:42.600 --> 00:13:46.039 has a sasquatch problem, a big one. Here's something a 248 00:13:46.039 --> 00:13:49.840 lot of Louisville folks don't realize their monster has cousins. 249 00:13:50.559 --> 00:13:53.159 The goat Man is not a Kentucky invention. He's a 250 00:13:53.159 --> 00:13:56.320 recurring American character, and he shows up in places that 251 00:13:56.360 --> 00:13:59.720 have no connection to Pope Lick at all. The most 252 00:13:59.759 --> 00:14:03.279 fame famous relative lives in Maryland, in Prince George's County, 253 00:14:03.480 --> 00:14:06.159 where the Maryland goat Man has been blamed for slaughtered 254 00:14:06.200 --> 00:14:09.399 dogs and stalked lovers lanes since at least the nineteen 255 00:14:09.440 --> 00:14:13.279 fifties and sixties. The Maryland version comes with his own 256 00:14:13.360 --> 00:14:17.799 origin story, and it's a beauty of the atomic age. 257 00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:21.200 He was supposedly a scientist at the Agricultural Research Center 258 00:14:21.240 --> 00:14:24.879 in Beltsville whose experiment on goats went wrong and merged 259 00:14:24.960 --> 00:14:27.519 him with his test subjects, and he escaped into the 260 00:14:27.519 --> 00:14:32.120 woods with an axe a government lab an experiment gone wrong, 261 00:14:32.720 --> 00:14:37.600 an axe. That's not medieval folklore, that's nineteen fifties America 262 00:14:37.639 --> 00:14:39.759 processing its brand new fear of what the men and 263 00:14:39.879 --> 00:14:44.200 lab coats were up to. Texas has won two. In 264 00:14:44.240 --> 00:14:46.559 the summer of nineteen sixty nine, the town of lake 265 00:14:46.600 --> 00:14:50.480 Worth outside Fort Worth went absolutely sideways over something people 266 00:14:50.519 --> 00:14:54.799 called the lake Worth Monster, a white, scaled or shaggy 267 00:14:54.799 --> 00:14:58.519 goat man that allegedly jumped on a car hood, terrorized 268 00:14:58.600 --> 00:15:02.399 parked couples, at one point supposedly hurled attire at a 269 00:15:02.399 --> 00:15:05.240 crowd of onlookers from a bluff. Stay tuned for more 270 00:15:05.279 --> 00:15:11.159 Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. That 271 00:15:11.240 --> 00:15:14.759 flap made the newspapers drew armed crowds out to Greer 272 00:15:14.840 --> 00:15:20.200 Island and produced one famously blurry white photograph. Louisiana has 273 00:15:20.240 --> 00:15:23.480 goat mantails tied to train bridges too, and so do 274 00:15:23.559 --> 00:15:28.840 pockets of Alabama and Arkansas bridge goat man. The same 275 00:15:28.879 --> 00:15:32.240 three cards keep getting dealt all over the country, and 276 00:15:32.279 --> 00:15:34.919 if you pull the thread back far enough, it doesn't 277 00:15:34.960 --> 00:15:38.519 even start. In America, a creature with a man's torso 278 00:15:38.639 --> 00:15:40.919 and a goat's legs and horns is one of the 279 00:15:40.960 --> 00:15:44.919 oldest characters human beings have ever drawn. The Greeks called 280 00:15:44.919 --> 00:15:47.360 them satyrs and fawns and put them in the wild 281 00:15:47.480 --> 00:15:51.200 margins of the world, the places past the last farm fence, 282 00:15:51.519 --> 00:15:55.240 where the rules of town didn't reach. Pan himself, the 283 00:15:55.240 --> 00:15:57.759 goat legged god of the wild, is where we get 284 00:15:57.799 --> 00:16:00.960 the word panic. His voice in the trees, they said, 285 00:16:01.120 --> 00:16:04.879 could fill a traveler with sudden, unreasoning terror. And when 286 00:16:05.000 --> 00:16:08.879 Christianity moved through Europe, the old goat legged wild gods 287 00:16:08.919 --> 00:16:11.879 got repainted as the devil, which is why the devil 288 00:16:11.879 --> 00:16:14.480 in a thousand years of art has horns and hoofs. 289 00:16:15.200 --> 00:16:18.879 So think about what the pope lick Monster actually is. Structurally, 290 00:16:19.480 --> 00:16:21.799 he's a goat legged figure who lives at the edge 291 00:16:21.840 --> 00:16:25.399 of town, in the wild margin, whose voice makes people 292 00:16:25.440 --> 00:16:29.679 lose their reason and walk to their deaths. That is Pan, folks. 293 00:16:30.240 --> 00:16:33.159 That is a four thousand year old character wearing Kentucky 294 00:16:33.240 --> 00:16:36.720 clothes and squatting under a Norfolk Southern trestle. I'm an 295 00:16:36.720 --> 00:16:39.799 evidence guy. You all know that, and I'm not telling 296 00:16:39.840 --> 00:16:43.120 you the ancient Greeks were reporting a real animal. I'm 297 00:16:43.120 --> 00:16:45.399 telling you that when human beings need to explain why 298 00:16:45.440 --> 00:16:48.440 the wild edge of the map keeps eating people, we 299 00:16:48.559 --> 00:16:53.279 reach for the same shape every single time. Horns, hooves, 300 00:16:53.960 --> 00:16:57.279 a voice that calls you off the safe path. Kentucky 301 00:16:57.360 --> 00:17:00.399 just gave him a railroad bridge, and the railroad bridge 302 00:17:00.440 --> 00:17:03.200 is what made him lethal. Nobody can point to the 303 00:17:03.240 --> 00:17:07.480 first telling of the popelic monster. That's normal, legends don't 304 00:17:07.480 --> 00:17:11.200 have birth certificates. But folklorus and local historians who have 305 00:17:11.240 --> 00:17:14.319 worked on this one generally trace the oral story back 306 00:17:14.319 --> 00:17:17.039 to at least the nineteen forties and fifties, when the 307 00:17:17.119 --> 00:17:20.200 land around the Trestle was still working farm country and 308 00:17:20.279 --> 00:17:24.039 the bridge was already an old fixture. Farm kids dared 309 00:17:24.079 --> 00:17:28.440 each other out there. Older brothers scared younger ones. The 310 00:17:28.480 --> 00:17:31.599 story got passed down at sleepovers and scout camps and 311 00:17:31.640 --> 00:17:34.839 in the beds of pickup trucks, and every generation added 312 00:17:34.839 --> 00:17:35.559 a code of paint. 313 00:17:36.359 --> 00:17:38.079 By the sixties and seventies, the. 314 00:17:38.039 --> 00:17:41.920 Trestle had become what folklors call a legend tripping site. 315 00:17:42.319 --> 00:17:45.559 That's the academic term for a very old teenage ritual. 316 00:17:46.319 --> 00:17:49.039 You take the scary local story, you load up a 317 00:17:49.039 --> 00:17:51.400 car full of your friends, and you drive out to 318 00:17:51.480 --> 00:17:54.519 the place where the story lives to test yourselves against it. 319 00:17:55.200 --> 00:17:59.319 Every region has one, a haunted bridge, a witch's grave, 320 00:17:59.759 --> 00:18:03.400 a cursed stretch of road, the trip is the point. 321 00:18:03.640 --> 00:18:06.200 The screaming and laughing on the drive home is the point. 322 00:18:06.880 --> 00:18:09.440 It's a rite of passage, and for the most part, 323 00:18:09.680 --> 00:18:13.680 at most sites it's harmless. Pope Lick is the exception, 324 00:18:14.039 --> 00:18:16.359 because at Pope Lick the legend trip has a live 325 00:18:16.480 --> 00:18:19.400 rail line running through the middle of it. The test 326 00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:22.759 of courage isn't standing in a dark graveyard. The test 327 00:18:22.759 --> 00:18:25.480 of courage the way it evolved out there was walking 328 00:18:25.480 --> 00:18:28.960 the trestle itself, and that turned an ordinary rite of 329 00:18:29.000 --> 00:18:32.039 passage into a game of chance with a freight schedule. 330 00:18:32.119 --> 00:18:36.359 Nobody actually knew then. In nineteen eighty eight, the legend 331 00:18:36.359 --> 00:18:39.039 went from local to national, and it happened. 332 00:18:38.759 --> 00:18:39.559 Because of a movie. 333 00:18:40.319 --> 00:18:43.759 A Louisville filmmaker named Ron Shield Connect made a short 334 00:18:43.759 --> 00:18:47.279 film about sixteen minutes long, called The Legend of the 335 00:18:47.319 --> 00:18:51.279 Pope Lick Monster. It's a moody little piece shot around 336 00:18:51.279 --> 00:18:55.079 the real trestle about teenagers, the dare and the thing 337 00:18:55.160 --> 00:18:58.440 under the bridge. It premiered in Louisville at the tail 338 00:18:58.519 --> 00:19:01.200 end of December nineteen eighty eight eight and before it 339 00:19:01.240 --> 00:19:03.720 even screened, it kicked up a fight that made the 340 00:19:03.759 --> 00:19:08.319 papers Norfolk, Southern the Railroad that owns the trestle was 341 00:19:08.359 --> 00:19:12.000 not amused. The company worried out loud and in writing 342 00:19:12.400 --> 00:19:15.279 that a film glamorizing the trestle would send waves of 343 00:19:15.359 --> 00:19:18.559 kids up onto the tracks, and they pushed for warnings. 344 00:19:19.440 --> 00:19:22.440 The premiere ended up carrying a disclaimer hammering the point 345 00:19:22.440 --> 00:19:25.359 that trespassing on the trustle was illegal and could get 346 00:19:25.359 --> 00:19:29.400 you killed. And the whole dispute, of course, did exactly 347 00:19:29.440 --> 00:19:33.640 what disputes like that always do. It advertised the monster 348 00:19:33.720 --> 00:19:36.480 to everybody who'd never heard of him. I want to 349 00:19:36.480 --> 00:19:38.759 be fair to shield Necked here, because I've read his 350 00:19:38.839 --> 00:19:42.359 comments from back then, and he wasn't being reckless. He 351 00:19:42.400 --> 00:19:45.279 grew up with the story. He treated the film partly 352 00:19:45.319 --> 00:19:48.839 as a warning in itself. But the Railroad wasn't wrong either. 353 00:19:49.240 --> 00:19:52.480 Telling a story about a dangerous place always cuts both ways. 354 00:19:53.240 --> 00:19:55.519 The story warns some people off and it draws other 355 00:19:55.559 --> 00:19:58.920 people in, and you cannot control which listener is which. 356 00:19:59.720 --> 00:20:02.160 That's why why I front loaded the disclaimer tonight instead 357 00:20:02.160 --> 00:20:04.680 of tucking it at the end. If you take one 358 00:20:04.720 --> 00:20:08.039 thing from this episode, take the warning, not the dare. 359 00:20:08.920 --> 00:20:11.880 After the film, the monster never went back in the box. 360 00:20:12.200 --> 00:20:15.519 He showed up in newspaper halloween features. Year after year, 361 00:20:16.200 --> 00:20:19.319 he got chapters in books about Kentucky ghosts and monsters. 362 00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:23.960 When the Internet arrived, he got forums, then creepypasta rewrites, 363 00:20:24.440 --> 00:20:27.960 then video after video of people doing exactly what Norfolk 364 00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:32.960 Southern feared, filming themselves at the trestle. In the twenty tens, 365 00:20:33.000 --> 00:20:35.880 the city built a beautiful string of parks along Floyd's 366 00:20:35.880 --> 00:20:38.799 Fork called the park Lands, and one of those parks 367 00:20:38.799 --> 00:20:41.400 sits close enough to the trestle that visitors can see 368 00:20:41.400 --> 00:20:45.319 it foot Traffic near the bridge went up. Interest went up, 369 00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:49.480 and the railroad kept raising fences and posting signs and 370 00:20:49.519 --> 00:20:53.119 people kept climbing over them with cameras, Which brings us 371 00:20:53.119 --> 00:20:55.839 to the part of this episode I've been dreading, and 372 00:20:55.880 --> 00:20:58.680 the part that makes Pope Lick different from every other 373 00:20:58.720 --> 00:21:01.839 stop on this road trip. Everything I've told you so 374 00:21:01.960 --> 00:21:05.119 far as folklore. What I'm about to tell you is not. 375 00:21:05.680 --> 00:21:09.279 These are real people. I've pieced this together from newspaper 376 00:21:09.400 --> 00:21:12.880 archives and reporting over the years, and while the details 377 00:21:12.880 --> 00:21:16.599 in old coverage don't always line up perfectly, the outline 378 00:21:16.720 --> 00:21:20.240 is solid. In early nineteen eighty seven, a seventeen year 379 00:21:20.279 --> 00:21:23.240 old student named Jack Charles Baum. The second was on 380 00:21:23.319 --> 00:21:26.200 the trestle when a train came. He had no chance. 381 00:21:26.680 --> 00:21:30.160 He was struck and killed on the bridge, seventeen years old. 382 00:21:30.480 --> 00:21:32.680 Just months later, in the spring of that same year, 383 00:21:33.039 --> 00:21:35.839 a nineteen year old named David Wayne Bryant was up 384 00:21:35.839 --> 00:21:38.920 there with friends when a train entered the span. He 385 00:21:38.960 --> 00:21:41.240 did the only thing left to do and went over 386 00:21:41.279 --> 00:21:45.079 the side to escape it. He survived the fall badly hurt, 387 00:21:45.359 --> 00:21:48.079 and he fought his injuries for months. He died of 388 00:21:48.119 --> 00:21:51.799 them the following year. Two young men the same bridge, 389 00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:55.160 the same twelve months. And here's the detail that ties 390 00:21:55.200 --> 00:21:58.359 it to our story tonight. The coverage from that era 391 00:21:58.480 --> 00:22:01.039 makes clear these weren't kids who wandered on to some 392 00:22:01.119 --> 00:22:05.359 anonymous bridge. The monster legend was part of the landscape. 393 00:22:05.640 --> 00:22:08.119 The trestle was the place you went because of the story. 394 00:22:08.599 --> 00:22:11.960 The deaths didn't stop there. In the year two thousand, 395 00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:14.240 a nineteen year old man fell from the trestle and 396 00:22:14.359 --> 00:22:17.559 was killed. Over the years, there have been other falls 397 00:22:17.559 --> 00:22:20.920 and other close calls that ended in emergency rooms instead 398 00:22:20.920 --> 00:22:24.680 of funerals, and those mostly don't make the archives. But 399 00:22:24.799 --> 00:22:28.079 talked to Louisville area first responders, and they'll tell you 400 00:22:28.119 --> 00:22:30.880 the trestle has been a repeated dress for a long time. 401 00:22:31.720 --> 00:22:34.880