Goat Man of White Rock Lake

In northeast Dallas, Texas is the beautiful, suburban White Rock Lake. The north part of the lake is a state park and in the southern part are expansive waterfront estates. Surrounded by a 9 mile jogging trail and bike path, the park is an idyllic urban oasis visited by thousands of people every day. Fishing, jogging, biking, families having picnics, sailors piloting their sailboats, lovers stealing kisses under a shady oak tree, boys and young men playing football and small children feeding the ducks present a picturesque, idyllic, Norman Rockwell slice of Americana.



Creepy, haunted Cox Cemetery by
White Rock Lake.

All, however, may not be as it seems, for White Rock Lake has its dark stories. There is the creepy cemetery dating from the mid-1800's which is rumored to be haunted. There are the deaths by drowning in the lake with some of the bodies having never been found. At least one person has committed suicide at the lake by hanging himself from a limb of a large tree by the water's edge. The drowning in a boating accident in 1927 of beautiful 19-year-old Hallie Gaston led to the story of the Lady of the Lake. In 1934, a small plane crashed into the lake, killing every passenger. In 1941, 27-year-old John Howard, a world record holder for underwater swimming inexplicably drowned in the lake. Is it any wonder there have been numerous reportings of strange goings on in the area?

Runners talk of strange "cold spots" frequently encountered near the area where J.C. Hacker drowned in 1938. He was one of the victims whose body has never been recovered. Even in the hot Dallas summer months, there is one particular spot that always feels coolish. Perhaps though, the strangest story of them all is of the Goat Man of White Rock Lake.

In the 1960's, I was busy growing up in Garland, a town "just down the road a piece" from the lake. I went to a church located 2 miles from the lake. I heard all of the ghost stories and I heard about the Goat Man. My teenage friends and I spent many Friday and Saturday nights slowly cruising around the lake. A couple of times I somehow even convinced a girl to spend some time with me parked in a dark corner of the park steaming up the car windows. I never saw the Lady of the Lake and I never saw the Goat Man, but a couple of times I did see and have a nice conversation with Officer Daley of the Dallas Police Department. He told me to button up my shirt, get my butt out of the park and take the girl home. My side of the conversation consisted of, "Yes sir." I may never have had an encounter of the supernatural kind at White Rock, but to this day, the stories persist with a few more people over the years giving eye-witness accounts of encounters with the Goat Man.

The last reported sighting of Goat Man
was on this spooky road.

According to these accounts, the poor creature is half-man, half-goat. He is about 7 feet tall when standing and is covered from head to hoof in coarse, brown hair. He has 2 horn-like protrusions coming out of his head, his feet are hoofs like a goat and he has the body and face of a man. It's skin has a jaundiced appearance and he has long, gnarled fingers with grotesque fingernails.

Most often he is seen early in the morning when he comes running out of the woods toward an individual jogger or biker. He sometimes throws trash or even muddy tires at the person. With a fierce look on his face (some have reported his eyes to be red), he turns and seems to vanish into thin air. He doesn't seem to have ever physically hurt anyone, but the fright he gives has made more than one person swear off White Rock Lake forever.

Bigfoot in Texas



Bigfoot sightings in Texas

If you think Bigfoot is only in the northwest states of America, you would be wrong. There have been sightings reported in every state except Hawaii. One of the area's with the most sightings is the nearly 12-million acre "Piney Woods" region in East Texas. Stretching from the Gulf Coast all the way up to Texarkana in the northeast corner, this huge strip of land contains four national forests, five state forests, and accounts for almost all of the state's commercial timber.

It is also home to one of the first documented sightings in history - the strange case of "The Wild Woman of Navidad." This story was recounted in the "Legends of Texas" book published by the Texas Folklore Society in 1924. The creature was described as covered in brown hair and was very fast. She eluded capture because the horses were so afraid of the strange creature that they could not be urged within reach of the lasso. The events occurred in 1837 in the Texas settlements of the lower Navidad. Mysterious barefoot tracks were seen frequently in the area for years. There are Native American legends dating back hundreds of years that describe tribes of giants that were hair-covered and lived in the woods.

In 1965, there was a spike in sightings reported by a number of people living in several small, rural towns located deep in the woods. One of the first of these came from an encounter in a cemetery just outside the town of Kountz.

At that time, there was a group of students at Kountz High School who called themselves the Rat Finks. There sure wasn't much for teenagers to do in the small, isolated town so on weekends they would amuse themselves by going "booger hunting," their name for running around in scary places looking for a boogeyman. One night they took a prospective new member of their group to their favorite place, the Old Hardin cemetery located in the woods a couple of miles outside of town. On that night though, they got more than they bargained for.

The Talking Angel

There is a gravestone in Old Hardin cemetery that has a statue of an angel pointing at the heavens. The Rat Finks called it the Talking Angel and would take the prospective club members to the cemetery in the dark of night to ask it questions. The legend they had made up was that if the angel did not answer you, you were doomed!

On this particular night though, with the half-moon providing just enough light to cast shadows, their ceremony was cut short by an eerie figure racing across the cemetery grounds. It ran into a maintenance shed, turning over cans, tossing equipment around, and generally just making a noisy ruckus for a few seconds. The figure came out of the shed and before running away as fast as they could, each of the kids got a good look at the boogeyman. To their horror, it was a huge, hairy apelike creature! One of the few girls in the Rat Finks, Sharon Gossett, let out a scream and when she did, the boogeyman turned to look at them. That was all they needed to beat feet out of there and jump in their car.

After driving back toward town for a couple of miles and regaining their wits, the teens realized that if they ever told anyone about  their experience, they would be accused of having overactive imaginations, so they went to Sharon's aunt's house and persuaded her to return with them to the cemetery for another look and to verify their sighting.

Closer look at the
Talking Angel.

Sure enough, as they pulled into the graveyard entrance, the car's headlights illuminated the creature standing on two legs at the edge of the woods on the other side of the small cemetery. The aunt later described it as being about 7 feet tall and covered with hair like an ape. The creature disappeared into the trees as the aunt and the teenagers got out of the car with several flashlights. After looking into the shed and verifying for herself the disarray of the contents, they were heading back to the car when they heard rustling noises. Their flashlights illuminated the creature which was now back inside the fenced cemetery. As they ran to the car, the boogeyman followed them, loping on all fours alongside them.

After speeding away, the horrified aunt made the kids drive her straight back to her home. Fearing she would be reluctant to verify the kid's account, they then found an adult male to go back with them. After carefully looking all around the cemetery and in the woods along the fence line and seeing nothing, the adult man was getting mad thinking the kids were playing a trick on him. Wanting to show him how the contents of the maintenance shed had been thrown around, they were walking toward it when the beast once again walked out of the shed's door. This time the creature quickly ran away in the opposite direction, leaped over the fence in one bound and into the woods. It was a good thing it did as after seeing the boogeyman, the brave adult male passed out on the spot from sheer fright!

Later, the grandmother of one of the Rat Finks told the kids she remembered hearing of similar sightings near Old Hardin in the Cypress Creek bottoms when she was a child.

Although there is not yet factual proof for the existence of a Bigfoot creature, it's hard to fully dismiss all of the stories and reported sightings. New creatures are routinely being found in the oceans and jungles of the world; strange creatures which have never been seen until now, living and even thriving in places and environments we assumed could never support life. Would it be that much of a surprise to find a species living off the land alongside creeks, streams, and ponds deep in the sparsely inhabited woods of America? Surviving members of the Rat Fink club still swear - the boogeyman is out there!

Aurora, TX. - UFO Crashes Into Windmill - Alien Buried In Local Cemetery



Cigar-shaped UFO

In 1896 & early 1897, more than six years before Orville Wright made his first flight of 12 seconds covering 120 feet, thousands of sightings of a cigar-shaped flying object were reported from California to Michigan and then down to Texas. Witnesses gave the same general description, sometimes with two lights, sometimes with none, in daylight and at night, hundreds of feet in the air, making right-angle turns and even stopping in mid-air and reversing course. On April 17, 1897, according to reports, a cigar-shaped flying machine suffered a malfunction and, trailing smoke, crashed into a windmill in the tiny town of Aurora, Texas. Afterwards, reports of seeing the UFO dropped off dramatically.

Witnesses at the time said the spaceship exploded upon impact with the windmill and the largest piece of debris hit a large tree with smaller pieces scattered across several acres. In the debris was found pieces of strange metal inscribed with hieroglyphics and the body of the pilot, a small child-sized humanoid. Although the body was badly torn up, it was evident it was a being "not of this world."

Entrance of Aurora Cemetery

The kind, rural folks buried the alien in a grave in the local cemetery underneath a tree and marked the spot with a small hand-made headstone inscribed with the outline of a cigar-shaped airship containing windows.

On April 19th, a small article appeared on page 5 in the Dallas Morning News. It read:
"About 6 o'clock this morning the early risers of Aurora were astonished at the sudden appearance of the airship which has been sailing around the country. It was traveling due north and much nearer the earth than before.

"Evidently some of the machinery was out-of-order, for it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles an hour, and gradually settling toward the earth. It sailed over the public square and when it reached the north part of town it collided with the tower of Judge Proctor's windmill and went into pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge's flower garden.

"The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one aboard and, while his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world."

Texas State Historical Marker at the
Aurora Cemetery

Over the next few weeks, the debris was removed and the farmers went on with their lives. The story was basically forgotten until May 24, 1973, when newspapers around the country published a United Press International account of the story. Within days, the alien's headstone was stolen and on several occasions, intruders were run off from the cemetery by police or, in some cases, local residents armed with their shotguns. The state of Texas declared the area a State Historical Spot and erected a Historical Marker, but eventually, things died down again and Aurora returned to being the small, quiet, rural little town it has been for over 100 years. In 2000, the town's people, utilizing memory and existing pictures, replaced the stolen headstone on the alien's grave.

Alien grave?

Is the story true or was it all just a hoax? The mystery remains.

When I visited recently, I found the residents living across the street from the cemetery to still be wary, watchful, and protective. Parking by the front gate, several dogs began barking as soon as I exited my truck and an elderly lady came out onto her porch to watch me. I waved to her and I think she nodded in return, but I was far enough away that I couldn't be sure. She watched me for a few minutes and then went inside her house and opened the curtains in a front window. About 10 minutes later, a police car slowly cruised by, but didn't stop. I was dressed in good jeans and a pullover shirt and carried nothing in my hands except my camera so I guess I passed his inspection.

Alien's headstone?

The cemetery was very well-kept and pretty with fields of Bluebonnets. It took a while to find the alien's grave. I finally figured out the corner containing the oldest graves and concentrated my search there. Eventually I found what I was looking for. It had been easy to miss because the marker is small and there are no other graves within about 10 feet of it. All of the other graves were next to each other in the normal layout. It was as if nobody had wanted their kin buried next to the alien.

I had been roaming around the cemetery for about an hour and nobody else came in. There had even been very few cars pass on the road, but I still felt like I was being watched the whole time. I'm sure the old lady across the street never took her eyes off me. It wasn't a scary feeling, it wasn't like that "somethings not right, I better be on alert" feeling you sometimes get when you are by yourself in an unfamiliar place; just that general feeling of having someone's eyes on you. I noticed the police car slowly cruise by again, but by then, I was already on my way out. I waved at the policeman and received a small wave of his hand in return, but no smile. I could almost hear the thoughts in his head saying, "It doesn't appear you are here with harmful intent and you are not breaking any laws, but I'm keeping my eye on you just the same." I didn't hang around to see him come back a third time.

I don't know if there's anything in the "alien" grave or not; don't know if the tale is true or not, but either way, it's an interesting story.
 

In Search of The Boggy Creek Monster

Fouke, AR water tower

Late the night of May 1, 1971, just south of the little town of Fouke, Arkansas, something attacked the home of Bobby and Elizabeth Ford. According to Elizabeth, the creature, which she initially thought was a bear, broke and reached through a screen window while she was sleeping on a couch. Her husband and his brother Don just happened to be returning from a hunting trip at that time, heard Elizabeth's screams, and chased off the monster, firing several shots as it fled into the dense surrounding woods. The creature returned after midnight the next night and grabbed Bobby across the shoulders as he stood on the porch having a smoke, throwing him to the ground. Bobby managed to crawl free and made it inside the house where he retrieved his gun. He was later treated in St. Michael Hospital, Texarkana, for scratches across his back and mild shock.

The Fords believed they had hit the monster with shots from their rifles, but no traces of blood were found. An extensive search of the area did not locate the creature, but found three-toed footprints close to the house, scratch marks on the porch, and some damage to a window and the house's siding. The Fords said they had heard noises outside the small house several nights before, but they had never seen the monster previously as they had only lived in the house for one week.

Boggy Creek, near where the Ford Family lived.

On May 23, three people, D. Woods, Wilma Woods, and Mrs. Sedgass reported to the police they had seen an ape-like creature crossing Highway 71 south of Fouke near the Sulphur River. They reported the creature was about 7 - 8 feet tall, was covered in thick long hair, weighed about 300 pounds and ran upright, Numerous more sightings were reported over the next few months by both residents and tourists and several large 3-toed footprints were found along the banks of Boggy Creek and in a soybean field which belonged to Scott Keith, a local gas station owner. They were investigated by game warden Carl Galyon who indicated he had never seen anything like them.

The dense woods around Boggy Creek.

Not long after word got out about the Ford's experience, the Little Rock radio station KAAY offered a $1,009 reward for the creature, dead or alive. Numerous attempts were made trying to track the creature with dogs, but they were unable to track its scent except once. Just before sundown one day, several hunters with 3 hunting dogs were in the woods south of Fouke between the Sulphur and Red Rivers when the dogs indicated they had the scent and began running through the underbrush. A few yards in though, all 3 dogs began whimpering and refused to go any further. The hunters said they didn't see anything, but felt like they were being watched and when they smelled something foul, they decided with the daylight fading, it would be best to get out of those woods before darkness fully descended.



At the Red River at the exact spot where the
monster was seen.

Soon enough, public interest in what had become known as the Boggy Creek Monster waned. Then in 1973, a documentary-style horror movie based on the creature was released. Costing only $160,000 to make, the film became a cult hit and grossed over $22 million.

By late 1974, interest had again waned with the lack of public sightings or any further evidence. But in 1978, the same 3-toed tracks were found by two brothers who were out prospecting. Several ranchers reported missing cattle and the body of a dog was found in the woods. Some people blamed the monster, but definitive proof of the creature's guilt was never found.

Since the 1970's, there have been sporadic reports of the monster. In 1997, there were 40 sightings reported to the police. In 1998, almost 20 more sightings were reported with the last one of the year being in a dry creek bed 5 miles south of Fouke. The last two sightings were in 1999 with one stating the monster was seen jumping off the Highway 71 bridge over the Sulphur River and the last was reported by four boaters who stated they saw it at sundown standing on the boat landing just down from where the Sulphur River joins the Red River.



The Hwy 60 bridge where the Sulphur and
Red Rivers merge.

The Momma-woman and Youngest-daughter recently joined me for a weekend of Boggy Creek monster hunting. Located just a couple of hours from where we live, no way could I go for long without investigating with my own little eyes. Just because I didn't get to shake the monster's hand doesn't mean it's not out there somewhere. We found and walked around the edge of the woods where it was reportedly seen and I can tell you, those woods are dense and very creepy. At the place of the last sighting, it was lonesome, eerie and the only noise was the occasional car crossing over the Highway 60 bridge in the distance. I could definitely understand how something that's not supposed to be there could in fact be there and not be found. We stayed in that spot for a while, exploring along the edge of the river and peering into the woods. But when the sun began to go down and there were no other people around, the spookiness factor began to rise and we got ourselves out of there.

The Monster Mart

We stopped in at the Monster Mart in Fouke (pronounced like "folk" with a silent "L"), visited the little corner of the store where they have posted on the wall a bunch of old yellowed newspaper clippings reporting on the monster and had a nice long chat with Sonya, the grand-daughter of the original owner, Denny Roberts. She said she had never seen the creature, but she's sure her grandfather did. However, he would never admit it as he was afraid of people thinking he was crazy. We purchased a handful of Boggy Creek Monster souvenir postcards along with some road trip health food - chips, candy, soda's and enough Double Bubble gum to enable Youngest-daughter to showcase her talent for blowing really big bubbles during the drive back home.

Mural inside the Monster Mart, right next to the
monster t-shirts, caps and coffee cups for sale.

I like to think the Boggy Creek Monster is really out there, maybe with a momma monster and a couple of young monsters, happily living out their lives in the deep dark woods where humans don't go. I like to believe there are still unknowns here among us, that the earth still holds secrets not just in the deepest oceans, but right next door. I like to believe the earth is indeed stranger than fiction. With all of our vaunted knowledge, I think we've only just begun to scratch the surface. There is so much more. Things that will astound us. Things that will make us exclaim, "Holy cow!" Things of such beauty that the poets will be speechless. Things that will make us sit with our mouths open in stunned silence. In the long ago, when men thought the earth was flat, they would draw maps and clearly mark the boundaries of the lands they knew. Beyond those boundaries, at the far edge of the known, they wrote, "Beware! Here there be monsters!" I believe it's still so.