Three people observed a horny devil while hunting in the woods of Point Isabel, Ohio in 1967. The witnesses; a father, his fifteen-year-old son and his brother in law were startled to happen upon a creature which the boy, Perry Adams, later described as, “...ten feet-tall, a light tan color, with long arms, pointed ears and short horns on its head.” Perry’s father reportedly fired on the creature, which screamed loudly, then dissolved into an eerie white mist. Over 40 years later, just what the trio saw remains a complete mystery.
Fort Worth, Texas has also played host to the Goatman, or others of his odd kin, back in the late 1960s. ‘The Lake Worth Monster’ as it became commonly known, first came to public notice when it stepped out of the woods back in 1967 in front of a group of startled teens who were hanging out on the Mosque Point area of the lake. Terrified, they gave the typical ‘Goatman’ description, of the beast they saw: “a Satyr-like ogre,” half-man, half-goat, tall and hairy.
Other sightings occurred. Three couples claimed that the monster attacked their car and scratched the hood on July 9th. Another motorist claimed that it liked to throw things at people, a characteristic often shared by his cousin, Bigfoot. This one reportedly tossed an auto tire and rim more than 500 feet!
An article published in the Fort Worth, Star Telegram, July 12th, 1969 mentioned that the monster was active around the Greer Island area and described by eyewitnesses as standing over seven-feet in height and covered in ‘fur and scales.’ Scales are not usually attributed to our frightful friend, the Goatman. Perhaps this particular inhumanoid actually did come out of the lake. There is also a place in Burkburnett, Texas known as ‘Goatman’s Bridge’ which is said to be haunted by a satyr-like ogre. Other strange weirdness has also allegedly taken place at this location.
“...The size of a good heifer, gray in color with a white mane, tiger-like fangs and the curved horns of a billygoat.” That’s how the ‘Monster of Lancaster County’ was described by two local farmers who witnessed it back in 1973 when it terrorized the community of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The creature, as we’ve come to expect, ran on two legs like a man and its roars and screams were often heard reverberating through local woods in that county. Many livestock kills were attributed to the beast. And, as is so often the case elsewhere, Pennsylvania Dutch country has a long history of inhumanoid appearances.
The Pope Lick Monster
Goatman is most well-known within Kentucky, the Bluegrass State, in Jefferson County where, back in the 1940’s and ‘50’s, the creature was rumored to live beneath a railroad trestle over Pope Lick Creek in the Fisherville area of Louisville. It was dubbed the ‘Pope Lick Monster’ by the locals and was said to have the power to hypnotize area youths, making them walk out onto the trestle late at night to their doom either beneath the wheels of oncoming trains or from the 80- foot fall into Pope Lick Creek.
The numerous deaths which have, indeed, occurred there are a matter of public record. Area farmers complained of finding livestock ripped to shreds there decades ago and there is even one account of the creature chasing a Boy Scout troop from the area, screaming at them and throwing stones. Oddly, the Pope Lick Monster was commonly considered to have the upper torso of a man and a goat-like head and some even consider that it may have been nothing more than a Bigfoot creature with mange; as unlikely an explanation as any, one might suppose.
Regardless, These creatures have been seen throughout Kentucky. In 1993, I interviewed a Mr. R. Stapleton, who claimed to have witnessed such a being with his own eyes. Stapleton and his entire family, including his wife and parents, all witnessed the Goatman on their farm in Henderson County in the late 1970’s.
They described it as having the familiar characteristics; long, shaggy hair falling down to its shoulders with two short horns growing from its forehead, hairy arms and chest with the hair thinning out around the abdomen and entirely covering the creature from its narrow waist to its goat-like legs and split-hoofed feet. Its eyes, according to the Stapletons, were a glowing yellow color. Two of the men were brave enough to approach it but it ‘vanished’ right before their eyes when they drew to within a few yards. Interestingly, the Stapletons claimed that the house they were living in at the time of the Goatman sighting was haunted.
Doug Olliver, from Paducah writes in ‘Weird Kentucky:’
“As a kid growing up I heard of the Goat Man. He was half human and half goat with a human torso and a goat head. The stories my grandfather told was of this screaming devil jumping a fence., grabbing two full-grown pigs and jumping off with them. There are stories of him that are over sixty years old.
On highway 69 outside of Dundee, I was heading home and I saw something leap across the road. I hit the ditch to keep from hitting it. It was so unreal, almost deformed. It had a monkey-like face, small horns, strange arms like a kangaroo, thick legs and a long tail. It was far from human. I think this was the Goat Man.”
Goatman seen in Kentucky in the 1970s. Sketch by author from witness description.
Paranormal Investigator Jan Thompson shares some research notes about the Kentucky Goatman. She writes:
“The Goat Man of Livingston County legend, in Tiline, Kentucky, goes all the way back to the mid 1840’s when there was a working iron ore mine in the area. There were local iron furnaces there that would leave mammoth sized holes in the earth to extract the natural ore. One in particular was dubbed ‘The Red Hole’ and was famous for its size, its vivacious rust colored dirt and the dangers surrounding the opening.
Supposedly, it was surrounded by quicksand, and after it was no longer in use it quickly filled up with water. Its depth was reportedly unknown. Anything or anyone slipping on the muddy steep sides of the hole would meet their untimely end. After its abandonment, stories abounded that the work crews had dug so deep they had unearthed a slumbering demon.
It’s been said that many of the miners that had worked that particular hole mysteriously died just before they closed it. Moreover, the rumors attributed these deaths to the arousing of the quiescent devil. A few years afterwards bright red eyes were seen at night by passing horse and buggies, and hoof prints were found in the dirt that were over 5 foot apart. Many attributed this to pranksters of the era and were even accompanied by the rumors of a terrible giant ogre haunting the area that was half man and half goat.
The stories continued over into the next century and were added to as the sightings increased. One belief is that it ceremoniously appears once a year on the eve of its awakening to wreak havoc on the close at hand residents, farms and the nearby highway. According to local tradition the Goatman goes on a rampage, killing anything in its path, eating it raw then throws the bones back down into the infamous red hole. No one exactly knows what date this ‘awakening’ took place on, but teenagers often go out there at night during various times of the year in hopes they have the correct anniversary of its rebirth. Today the area is all dried up, except for a small lingering puddle.”
Tennessee is also a state rife with tales of goatmen. Red Ash Cemetery in Caryville, TN has long been the rumored haunt of the “Pentagram Goatman.” This half-human, half-goat biform nightmare is said to stand over eight feet tall with a pentagram carved into his forehead.
Another Goatman; this time described as, four foot-tall, covered in gray hair with goat-like legs; appeared during the summer of 1989 in Vineland, New Jersey. A group of teenagers were hanging out one evening at baseball field, Menantico Park, when the incident took place. Juan Caraballo had just stepped into the woods near an old abandoned cemetery to relieve himself when he heard something rushing speedily, zigzag style, through the bushes and trees.
It was then that the creature stepped out of the darkness before the astonished teen. It stood there for a few seconds from six feet away, Caraballo said, looking at him with an evil looking grin on its bestial face. It looked frail and thin but still terrifying and the witness took a step back in shock. Then the creature turned and sped away into the blackness leaving the ter
rified witness frozen to the spot.
Gathering his senses, Caraballo returned to the group and noticed one of his friends staring into the woods with a horrified look on his face. Caraballo shook him to break his gaze, and asked what he saw. A group of dark humanoids as it approached the teens, was the reply. All the youths were able to make it away safely.
A similar beast was seen by a group of friends one night early in the year 2000 at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, home of the legendary ‘Mothman’ creature. The group was traveling down a lonely road on their way to Charleston when they saw it standing near the roadside. As they passed they were astonished to see that it was some type of monster, half-man, half-animal, covered with hair and sporting ram’s horns. It ran off into the woods, they claimed, when they backed the car up for a closer look.
Just a couple of years earlier UFO researcher, Ed Rollins had seen another horny devil while walking up a creek bed North of Bethel Church Road, just across the river from point Pleasant. He’d heard a loud crashing in the undergrowth ahead of him. Then suddenly there emerged “...a large, brownish-white creature. Its fur looked dirty and matted...it moved on all fours and knelt to drink from the creek...it had paw-like hands...its head was long and pointed like a canine’s and it had largish horns.”
A horned ‘devil skull’ allegedly found in a Native American burial mound in Pennsylvania.
Part Four:
Invisible Inhumanoids and inevitable conclusions
“Somewhere in the darkness, there is a monster who knows your name.”
-Brad Steiger
The only thing more frightening than the inhumanoid monsters which are often seen, I’ve learned, are those which are never seen. Nearly everyone has had the strange feeling of being watched, only to look around and find there’s no one there. Perhaps someone, or something, is there after all, and it is only that we cannot see these observers with our own eyes, yet can feel their invisible inhuman eyes upon us.
I have seen many strange creatures throughout my life; things that walk on two legs like men, and on all fours like animals; things that swim; things that fly; monstrous things. I have faced many dangers including great physical harm, even imminent death, on several occasions. But I will admit that I have never in my entire life been so frightened as I was on the two occasions in 2006, while I lay in my warm, ‘safe’ bed, thinking I was alone; but wasn’t. Regrettably, I have some experience with these entities as well, which I will touch on later. For now, let us take a brief look at some of the most terrifying inhumanoid entities which have never appeared.
The Devil’s Footprints
Some believe Satan himself walked through the town of Devon, England back in 1855, leaving behind a vast number of cloven-hoofed prints in the snow. The prints were seen by multitudes of people although none could explain them. As for the entity that had made them, however, no one saw a thing, it seemed, even though the prints thoroughly meandered through no less than five towns in the Devon area. What was it that made the enigmatic impressions? Many of them were found in places not easily accessible to ordinary creatures, which added greatly to the mystery. Was it really the Devil, the Prince of Darkness, come calling on the town in the middle of the night? We may never know.
From the London Times, February 16th, 1855:
“Considerable sensation has been evoked in the towns of Topsham, Lympstone, Exmouth, Teignmouth and Dawlish, in the south of Devon, in consequence of the discovery of a vast number of footprints of a most strange and mysterious description. The superstitious go so far as to believe that they are the marks of Satan himself; and that great excitement has been produced among all classes may be judged from the fact that the subject has been descanted on from the pulpit.
It appears that on Thursday night last there was a very heavy fall of snow in the neighborhood of Exeter and the south of Devon. On the following morning, the inhabitants of the above towns were surprised at discovering the tracks of some strange and mysterious animal, endowed with the power of ubiquity, as the footprints were to be seen in all kinds of inaccessible places; on the tops of houses and narrow walls, in gardens and courtyards enclosed by high walls and palings, as well as open fields. There was hardly a garden in Lympstone where the foot-prints were not observed.
The track appeared more like that of a biped than a quadruped, and the steps were generally eight inches in advance of each other. The impressions of the feet closely resembled that of a donkey’s shoe, and measured from an inch and a half to two and a half inches across. Here and there it appeared as if cloven, but in the generality of the steps the shoe was continuous, and, from the snow in the center remaining entire, merely showing the outer crest of the foot, it must have been convex.
The creature seems to have approached the doors of several houses and then to have retreated, but no-one has been able to discover the standing or resting point of this mysterious visitor. On Sunday last the Rev. Mr. Musgrave alluded to the subject in his sermon, and suggested the possibility of the footprints being those of a kangaroo; but this could scarcely have been the case, as they were found on both sides of the estuary in Exe. At present it remains a mystery, and many superstitious people in the above towns are actually afraid to go outside their doors at night.”
One summer evening in June of 1962, eighteen-year-old Gregori Sciotti woke up at 11:30 p.m. with the feeling that he was not alone in his home near Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania. He knew that his mother was at work in a nearby factory, and that no one, aside from his dog, Teddy, was supposed to be there but him. In a letter to John Keel dated 1967, Sciotti wrote:
“There was a light in the room. I quickly tried to get up and found it impossible to move. I tried to turn my head to see where the light was coming from. This I also found impossible. It seems as though the only control I had was over my eyelids. The feeling I had was something like when you’re very tired; you know, just too tired to move. Then I heard something on the steps just outside the door. Something like a heavily (sic) breathing sound. I heard it moving around. I tried to scream to find out if I was dreaming; but I couldn’t do anything but move my eyelids. Then, just like it started, it stopped. The light went out and it was like I was pushing on something heavy and it suddenly moved.”
Badly frightened, he ran downstairs, loaded his rifle, and called for his dog, but there was no answer. Teddy was gone. He grabbed a flashlight and searched the grounds surrounding the house, to no avail. Worse still, they’d had another dog that was kept tied in the yard; and it was gone as well. The next night a strange object rose up from the woods behind the house while he and a girlfriend were sitting in the car in the driveway. It was a dark oval shape with four visible windows.
“I feel rather silly discussing this and have never mentioned it to anyone but my mother and my wife. My mother sort of laughed at me and told me I was dreaming; but there is not a doubt in my mind that the incident took place. We never did find a trace of our two dogs.”
Invisible Bigfoot?
There is a place in Smith Mills, Henderson County, Kentucky called Burbank’s Lake, also known locally as ‘Spook Hill.’ As you might guess by the name, down through the years this particular spot has garnered a reputation for being haunted. Many inexplicable experiences have taken place in this area, including various cryptid sightings such as Bigfoot, water monsters, giant birds and black panthers.
UFO activity as well is not uncommon here, and there are many local ghost stories associated with Spook Hill. Paranormal researchers and investigators commonly refer to locations such as these as “window areas,” where multiple seemingly unrelated phenomena tend to overlap repeatedly. Lending to the aura of mystery that surrounds Spook Hill is the fact that there are two very old cemeteries, long since reclaimed by the forest, to be found at the hilltops.
Also situated there between the family cemetery and the slave cemetery, are three ancient lakes. One is fairly large and deep and all were rumored for as long as I could remember to contain ‘monst
er’ bass. The male members of my family have always been avid fishermen and outdoorsmen, so one day back in the summer of 1987, we had all decided to go and fish Burbank’s Lake. This was totally against our dad’s better judgment, mind you. He had lived near the area when he was younger and had been personally warned by Mr. Burbank never to let night catch him on the property. He never said why, and dad didn’t ask.
Also, my older half-brother, Harold, had told us a scary story about a time when he and a brother-in-law had been night-fishing there in a boat some ten years before. He claimed that every time the two tried to land the boat and come ashore to leave, the woods would erupt with the sound of breaking branches and heavy footsteps forcing them to shove back out into the lake. “It sounded like a herd of elephants was trompin’ around in there,” he had said. Every attempt to leave the lake was met by this resistance, which frightened them both, and they were forced to spend the entire night in the boat out in the middle of the lake. Only when dawn broke were the two ‘allowed’ to leave Burbank’s Lake, which they did in all haste.
This account intrigued me to no end, but the lure of trophy bass enticed us all. So, youthfully throwing caution to the wind, we headed out. We arrived at the lake that afternoon and walked through the trees a short distance down to the water. We had been able to procure a one man bass boat with a small trolling motor from a friend. It could hold two people; but just barely. As there were six of us, four brothers and two friends, this meant that four would be confined to fishing from the banks.
We found the place to be absolutely teeming with water moccasins and not one of us had brought a weapon of any type, only fishing poles. Since everyone wanted to fish the other side of the lake we opted to be ferried across one by one rather than walking around through the tall grass and thick brush, trying to avoid probable snake bite. It took forever for the little motor to chug everyone across the lake. By the time we made it to the other side it was already late afternoon, the sun was making a rapid descent through the trees. We fished awhile without much luck. I remember catching one largemouth that weighed a couple of pounds and, before we knew it, darkness was fast approaching.
The Inhumanoids Page 53
