Nick Redfern: This past weekend I had the pleasure of traveling out to Lake Worth, Texas, with well-known Texan cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard and his wife, Lori, in search of the truth about one of Texas’s strangest mysterious beasts – the Goat-Man. According to the facts, the legend and the rumors, on 10 July 1969, John Reichart, his wife and two other couples had been on the shores of Lake Worth around midnight when a giant creature leaped out of the darkness and onto the Reichart’s car. Covered in scales and fur, they creature was described as looking like a cross between a goat and a man – hence the somewhat unfortunate name that has been given to the beast. In the days that followed, further sightings of the creature were made as gun-toting locals wandered through the woods in search of their mysterious quarry. Needless to say, theories abounded as to precisely what the creature was – or wasn’t.

Some said that sightings of the beast were prime evidence that Bigfoot was living in Texas; others said that it was an escaped, pet Bobcat; the theory that it was a “big, white ape” was discussed; as was the possibility that it was all a hoax by teenagers; or – on a similar path - that it was simply a local folk-tale spread by anxious parents, to keep teenage couples away from the area and from doing the sorts of things that teenage couples get up to in the backs of cars in dark woods at midnight!

View: Full Article | Source: Phenomena Magazine

goat man it has to be goat man

Interesting.

Hmm.. I wasn't aware that Texas had a goatman. We have one here in Kelowna, but he's been said just to be a satanic spirit... Which is better im not sure!

Real interesting topic Saruman keep up the good work.

I live i live in texas in fact a 5 minute walk from Lake Worth.. There is in fact a goatman just the original story in the 1950-1960's of the first sighting doesnt describe right..The goatman has small hump like horns at the top of his head between the ears...just thought i should clear that up..

We have a goatman here in the Colorado/Fayette county area over here in Texas. There's a Goatman Woods, Bridge and road, all three are supposed to have the spirit of the goatman lruking around. Except the legend goes way back into the 1800s, it's still pretty interesting.

There was a man who lived in the woods, and he was somewhat deformed, but he had the look of him like a goat, thus giving him the named the goatman. He would often kidnap the local children, do what he pleased with them, and then either kill them, or kill and eat them. He'd skin them, too, because he wore a goatskin over himself, and he's wear the children's skin. No one ever caught him until a few years later, where they hung him on this big oak tree. Well, right before he was to be hung, he made a pact with the devil, where he'd later come back, except when he did, he had a human man body, but the head of a goat.

Now the tree is still here, alive and everything, but they say at night if you drive by, you can see his body hanging there. And you know which tree it is because it hangs completely over the road, (its a little country road) and if you go there and turn off your lights and stuff, he's supposed to come. Then you'd better high-tail it out of there as fsat as you can. In Goatman woods, thats where he was said to live, because it was the town around that area. This is all around the area of Weimar, Columbus, and Schulenburg, Texas. They're three little towns within a short distance of eachother.

hmmm....i have a feeling the goatman isnt a very nice guy But it's ok, i think it was a story that the mothers made up to keep their children from mating

One thing for sure is that in semi-rural Texas or just about any similar place in the US anybody stupid enough to prance around in a fake suit as a hoax is very likely to get SHOT!

Hi Shorti,
I grew up in Columbus - the stories sound like they have changed a lot! The way I heard, the Goat Man was on the Stafford's property.

South of Columbus there is a weathered old three storey Victorian mansion with a widow's watch on top. This is the Stafford House (not the Stafford Opera House that googling will get you - I couldn't google anything on the Stafford House.) I remember it being near the road, there is a lot of land around it, or was, if it hasn't been developed.

Read Carrie Estelle Stafford's obit for mention of the house, and a shootout downtown that many people still remembered when I was a kid:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~txcolora/obits/obitsstafford.htm

Janice Woods Windle states in True Women that Columbus was unpoliced because the Staffords kept killing the sherriffs. And what did not make the papers was what a lot of old people told me: The Staffords were reputedly sadistic and sociopathic. If a person was passing through the area, they would capture them and use them as slave labor. The old men told me that they put a black man inside of a cow, cut the cow open and forced the man in the belly cavity with just his head sticking out then whipstitched the dying cow closed and left it to lurch around with this guy's head sticking out.
Who knows what kind of sick things happened out there that nobody ever heard about...

Needless to say, there are manifestations on the property. At the turn of the century there were mysterious mutilations of people, kind of like cattle mutilations, and sightings of what people called a "Goat Man".

The way I heard it from the old people, the goat man and the wild man were two different beings. The wild man was just a guy who escaped from prison in the early 20th century and lived wild in the woods in the Millers Crossing area of Cummins Creek, north of Columbus. He basically didn't want to be bothered. But the Goat Man is real cryptozoology stuff, like the Moth Man. I don't think he's evil, in and of himself. I think he comes to tell people when things have run horribly amok.

This has been very interesting to read. I knew there were many stories out there that I haven't heard and this is one of them. Hope everyone keeps calm though and nobody gets hurt.

Glad you liked it! It's not something you hear about away from the area and there's little or nothing in print. It'd be a great tourist draw but the locals seem to have chosen not to advertise it, for whatever reason.

The real "reign of terror" was 100 years ago, the people involved have all passed on and nobody worries about it much now.

Also, I wonder about the local Native American legends, which may well tie in somehow. I was always taught that Columbus was formerly inhabited by the Montezuma Indians, but I can't find anything on them in print. The maps I have seen with tribal territories always show the area as being Caddoan.

There is a bodacious research project for someone here....