It’s Tuesday again! Time for your weekly dose of the Spooky, culled from around the web, the world, and life. Every week I’ll have something new to send a shiver down your spine.
This week’s theme is Goatman’s Bridge.
Goatman’s Bridge is one of those local haunted treasures that seems like something out of a Stephen King novel. It’s more or less the subversion of the Creepy Things That Seem Real But Aren’t trope; this is a Creepy Thing That Seems Fake But Isn’t. The bridge known as “Goatman’s Bridge” is actually called Old Alton Bridge (sometimes it is also called Argyle Bridge), but local legend has forever superseded its original name. Goatman’s Bridge has stood there spanning Hickory Creek on Copper Canyon Road since the King Bridge Company built the iron through-truss bridge in 1884.
This bridge has every possible thing going for it to become a local haunted favorite. It’s appearance alone is Spooky: combine its truss construction–which makes it look old–, the muddy river it spans, and the generally overgrown nature of the trees in the area around the bridge, and it looks like the very embodiment of the Spooky Metal Bridge. Tack on the local legends about the Goatman, complete with a midnight ritual, and this might be the Spookiest place I’ve ever been since Spokane’s Thousand Steps.
Old Alton Bridge, AKA Goatman’s Bridge
The mundane history of the bridge is nightmare-fuel enough: the thing has a single lane, and the approach to the bridge on either side curves, so that oncoming traffic would not be visible until it burst out of the underbrush and onto the bridge. For that reason, it was customary to honk one’s horn loudly before crossing, simply to give anyone else who was there a chance to honk back in order to avoid an accident. And by the way, this thing carried automobile traffic until 2001.
Now for the not so mundane history: Five decades or so after the bridge was built, an African American man named Oscar Washburn started a goat farm near the bridge (and hence became the “Goatman”). One day Washburn put up a sign on the bridge that said “this way to the Goatman.”
This must have seemed a bit too much to the local Klansmen like Washburn had annexed Goatman’s Bridge; one night in August, 1938 several Klansmen crossed the bridge with their headlights off (possibly to avoid warning the Washburns of their approach), then tore Oscar out of his house and took him back to the bridge to hang him.
This is where things go from simply horrible to Spooky: after the men pushed Oscar off the bridge, they looked over the side expecting to see his kicking and twitching corpse; they found only an empty noose. Reports vary, but the version I heard said that the men didn’t hear a splash, either.
So what did the Klansmen do? Did they run in fright, afraid of Oscar’s ghost? Sadly no; they went back to Oscar’s house and murdered the rest of his family. To the best of my knowledge they were never caught (I haven’t looked into it though; if anyone knows more I’ll gladly make a correction).
Naturally, a bridge with a history as troubled as this quickly gained a reputation for being haunted:
Ever since that fateful day, a number of strange things have reportedly occurred on and around the bridge. Many believe that the Goatman haunts the overpass and the nearby woods. The tale continues that when travelers crossed the bridge at night with their headlights off, they would meet the Goatman on the other side. …
A number of other reports tell of numerous abandoned cars that have been found near the bridge, with their occupants missing.
Others report seeing a ghostly man herding goats over the bridge, while others say they have seen an apparition staring at them, holding a goat head under each arm. Stranger stories even include people having seen a creature that resembles a half-goat, half-man.
More tales of strange noises have also been described including the sounds of horses’ hoof beats on the bridge, splashing in the creek below, maniacal laughter, and inhuman like growling coming from the surrounding woods.
Visitors sometimes tell of seeing mysterious lights in the area, of car doors locking and unlocking of their own accord, a numerous vehicle breakdowns while near the old viaduct.
According to legend, if you visit on Halloween and honk your car horn twice, visitors can see Goatman’s glowing eyes.
As I said I would, I traveled to Texas to see Goatman’s Bridge. I landed at DFW about 8:15, and Krista and I ate dinner in Dallas. About 10:45 PM we were finally ready to head out to Corinth. After a 45 minute drive, we arrived at a turnout. Amusingly, there were already two other cars there. We took that to mean that we’d found the right place; I hadn’t just imagined that Goatman’s Bridge was a local haunted thing. This has been true of many such places I’ve visited.
This sign may or may not have been there; it was too dark for me to have seen it.
Krista and I hopped out. In the dark, there are two trails visible. One of them, the one on the left, looks like a dirt road behind a closed gate. To the right is a smaller foot trail. I think there might have been a sign or something as well, but I don’t remember it; we wouldn’t have been able to read it anyway.
As we strode through the underbrush which was encroaching on the path, we had our first scary encounter of the evening. I let out a very undignified yelp and began waving my arms around frantically. “Spiders!” I explained to Krista. We doubled back and took the wider, presumably spider-free road instead. The road curved to the right, which is what I hoped it would do; we could not see the bridge from where we stood.
Advancing along the path, my heart raced when the dirt resolved into a grainy image of wood and metal ahead of us. Krista and I stopped to try to take some pictures of the bridge, but my camera wasn’t good enough to pick anything up. In reality the view was pretty good. We could just barely make out the other side of the bridge, and the moonlight reflected ominously off the river below. The wood of the bridge’s roadbed gave off the warm smell of railroad ties, and it thumped hollowly underfoot.
Then, we heard the voices.
Krista’s eyes went wide, and I waited a few seconds to tell her that I thought it was the people who owned the cars we’d seen. To me it sounded like some local kids, but it really freaked her out. For the moment the voices sounded fairly far away, as we could only barely make out their noise; it was impossible to make out what was said as the sounds had passed through too many trees and bushes to remain intelligible.
We crossed the bridge slowly, my imagination running wild. I could hear the trickle of the stream beneath us, and the spidery limbs of the trusses periodically interrupted my view of the sky.
Then, we saw the light.
It bobbed up and down, bright, just one orb. The sound of voices began to get louder. Krista wanted to leave. I wanted to say hello to the local kids. I kept her calm by joking that she should climb on my back and we should pretend to lumber down the bridge, growling. We agreed that it would be hilarious, but we didn’t want to do a Bill Murray. Instead we waited, silently, at the end of the bridge and waited for them to come upon us. Despite having a light, the people who approached us did not seem to be very observant: they got within twenty feet of us, and they didn’t all see us at once–there was a staggered chorus of “oh my God!” from the girls.
Goatman Krista!
We exchanged pleasantries, and I shook hands with the two boys. When I told them that Krista and I had come all the way from Spokane, WA, to do an investigation of Goatman’s Bridge, they were impressed (they were still impressed by the existence of the Spooky Scary Skeletons Literary and Horror Society even after we told them that in actuality Krista had moved to Texas for school and that I was there visiting her). I promised that I’d make mention of them in the eventual post.
We walked back over the bridge together while one of the girls related the local legends to me (they were in line with what I already knew of the place), and we prepared for the midnight ritual. According to the teens, we had to walk across the bridge without any lights and yell “Goatman! We summon thee!” three times once we got to the other side.
Unfortunately, just before we set out, I saw flashlights coming from back where the cars were. I asked them to wait a minute and then I took off running to the cars. When I turned the bend at the end of the dirt road, I saw what I had feared: the police had shown up. Initially I was surprised; how had they known we’d be here? But it made sense. If I knew about this tradition from all the way in Washington, surely the local cops knew about it too. I braced myself for the worst. I hadn’t seen any explicit “No Trespassing” signs, and we’d been careful not to block the gate in front of the dirt road, so I hoped I’d be able to get away with exuding cheerful optimism and politeness and begging “I’m from out of town and I’m sorry.” Fortunately, the officer was very friendly. I explained what we were doing there and asked if that was alright. He told us by all means, enjoy ourselves; he was just there to make sure nobody’s car was being broken into or anything. I thanked him and took off running back to the bridge, hoping I’d be in time for the ritual.
Sadly, I wasn’t. The teenagers had already reached the end of the bridge, so I walked across it. This elicited another “oh crap!” from one of the girls when she saw me. Sometimes I forget that my night vision is significantly better than most peoples’, so I often take them by surprise in the darkness unintentionally. They asked me what I’d seen back at the cars. When I told them it was the police but that everything was fine; I’d talked to the officer and then he left they said that it was good that the “actual adult” had done the talking (this thoroughly amused both Krista and I).
Those eyes certainly glow like the Goatman’s are reputed to.
We stopped to take a picture of the teenagers, and I promised them that I’d include it in the post. Unfortunately the light wasn’t good enough for Krista or I to make it into the photograph (no flash on the selfie camera), but we certainly got some good Goatman Glow from the eyes of the guy in the middle. If any of you kids ever read this, know that you made this expedition quite enjoyable for us. It warms our hearts when we see youngsters investigating the Spooky.
And that would be that, except for one thing: when we rounded the corner on the way out there was one extra car; someone else had come to join us. It was an older model Toyota, white. No driver in sight. Goatman’s Bridge has a reputation for collecting abandoned cars with missing owners. Was this one of those, or had someone simply pulled off the road to take a nap? We’ll leave that for you to decide; I didn’t go anywhere near the car to check.
Further Reading:
Weisler, Kathy. “Texas Legends: Alton, Texas and Goatman’s Bridge.” legendsofamerica.com. Legends of America, Oct. 2012. Web. 1 Sep. 2015. <http://www.legendsofamerica.com/tx-alton.html>.
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