Another Death From Pope Lick Monster Hunting?

A New Fatality

Louisville, Kentucky media has confirmed that two adolescent females on the Pope Lick Train Trestle were stuck by a train near Pope Lick Road, and Taylorsville Road, in Louisville, Kentucky, on Sunday night, May 26, 2019.

One teen is dead, per the dispatch supervisor, and the condition of the other teen is unknown. The Norfolk Southern train was operating in general freight service at the time of the incident, according to the corporation, and was en route to St. Louis.

The new incident was reported around 9:30 p.m. Sunday, May 26, 2019, near Taylorsville and Pope Lick Road, according to Louisville Metropolitan Police Department.

One sister of the victims responded to Travis Ragsdale's reporting of the incident for WDRB News.

The following is her tweet:

There is no confirmation of this tweet, to date.

The Pope Lick Monster

The most recent death previous to this event was when a train hit and killed a woman from Ohio in 2016, who was looking for the Pope Lick Monster.

The area is known to be "notoriously dangerous" as it is alleged to be the home of the Pope Lick Monster. The creature is said to be part human and part goat.

The Pope Lick Monster is the subject of an urban legend and popularized in YouTube videos, as well as a 1988 film, The Legend of the Pope Lick Monster (director Ron Schildknecht); and a 2013 episode of Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America (in "Ozarks"). There is also a haunted attraction themed after the tales surrounding the Pope Lick monster called the Legend at Pope Lick located at Pope Lick Park in the Parklands of Floyds Fork.

There are signs telling those in the area to keep away from the train trestle.

Deaths on the Trestle

According to the Federal Railroad Administration, in 2018 in Kentucky 10 people died while trespassing on train tracks and 16 were injured. There have been a number of deaths and accidents at the Pope Lick trestle since it’s construction.

The Pope Lick Trestle has gotten a lot of attention over the years due to a local legend. Suicides, near-misses, and homeless people's death have all been discussed by local authorities.

There were at least two confirmed deaths in 1987 and 1988, and many injuries and close calls, attributed to "Legend Tripping" looking for the Pope Lick Monster. The weekend before the 2019 incident, rumors were circulating that a death body had been found underneath the trestle.

The most recent acknowledged death before 2019 happened in 2016 when a woman was hit by a train while searching for the legendary monster.

Bain of Death

Before 2019, in 2016, Roquel Bain and her boyfriend Dave Knee decided to go to a paranormal event at the nearby Waverly Hills Sanatorium, a well-known haunted location often highlighted on "ghost hunter"-type reality programming. But with some time to fill, the couple decided to explore the Pope Lick Trestle and actively see if they could sight the Pope Lick Monster. Bain met her tragic fate there.

Roquel Bain, 26, the victim of the Pope Lick Trestle accident of 2016.

Ohio tourist David Knee is shown with girlfriend, Roquel Bain, 26. Bain died outside Louisville while searching for the famed Pope Lick Monster atop a train trestle with boyfriend Knee, 41, who survived by hanging on the edge.

For more on the Roquel Bain death, see:

"Woman Killed Searching For Pope Lick Monster," Cryptozoonews, April 24, 2016.

"Photo Exclusive: Trestle of Death Claims A Monster Hunter," Twilight Language, April 25, 2016.

As recently as the weekend of the May 2019 Pope Lick train trestle death, Twitter showed groups of people searching for hauntings at the Waverly Hills site in Louisville, located near Pope Lick. Individuals often going to one location end up at the other.

The Pope Lick Monster and the train trestle are said to be part of the Big Lick Triangle, a "window area" of high strangeness or Fortean activity.

h/t Craig Woolheater for this initial breaking news.

Cherryfield's Goatman and Other Satyrs in Flannel

Not many Mainers have heard about there being a Goatman Downeast. Most of the stories I have heard have been from the County. But, nevertheless, there's a rumor coming out of the Midcoast.

A goat man...was seen in Cherryfield, Maine.... 

The story goes something like this. Back in the 1950s a Cherryfield man was driving his truck through the woods outside town. He was a local and had spent most of his time hunting, fishing, and logging in the forests of Maine....
He had filled up his gas tank before he left home that day, so he was very surprised when his truck came to a gradual stop on a lonely road. His gas gauge read empty.
He got out and checked the tank. It indeed was empty. He checked the bottom of the truck but couldn't see a leak, and he didn't see any sign of gas dripping on the road. He was annoyed and puzzled, but when he got out from beneath those truck those emotions turned to surprise - and maybe a little terror.
Standing in the middle of the road was a man who was half-human and half-goat. His lower body and legs were naked, hairy and shaped like a goat's, while his torso was human-shaped and covered in a flannel shirt. Goat horns grew out of his head and his ears were pointed like an animal's. Other than the flannel shirt, the goatman looked like a mythological satyr or the Greek god Pan.
The half-naked goatman smiled at the Cherryfield man, and then slowly sauntered into the woods. The man got back into his truck and locked the door. He tried to start the truck, hoping desperately that he could drive home just on fumes, and to his surprise the engine started. His gas gauge now read full. He drove home without incident and never saw the goatman again. ~ Peter Muise

Muise also mentions that "Goatmen have been seen in other parts of the nation, including Maryland, Kentucky, and Texas. Apparently a Goatman has also been seen in Williamstown, MA but I don't have any more information on those sightings."

Frequently, Goatmen are noted for these locations:

Goatman of Maryland 

Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, Beltsville, Maryland

Fletchertown Road, Maryland

Texas Goatman

Lake Worth Monster, Texas

Goatman's Bridge

Old Alton Bridge, near Denton and Copper Canyon, Texas.

Art by Kim Parkhurst

Pope Lick Monster

Pope Lick Bridge, Kentucky

Death did await on the Pope Lick Creek Trestle. See here and here.

Books about Goatmen tales are as rare as the folklore.

More localized stories are to be found of the....

Nebraska Goatman

Lincoln, Nebraska

Louisiana Goatman

Plain Dealing, Louisiana 

Billiwhack Monster of Ventura County

Aliso Canyton, California

Wisconsin Goatman

Hogsback Road, Holy Hill, Wisconsin

These Goatmen are often reported to be wearing flannel or plaid shirts. I wrote about Bigfoot wearing flannel shirts decades ago:

In the 1960s and 1970s, reports from the American West would occasionally surface of hairy bipedal Bigfoot being seen with tattered plaid shirts and ragged shorts on their bodies. In some research, there were intriguing attempts to relate these to files of paranormal encounters with sightings of upright entities said to be wearing “checkered shirts.” (Within parapsychology, there is a subfield of study regarding “checkered shirted ghosts.”)

Peter Muise picked up on a similar point when he noted:

Again, like the Goatman, these shirt-wearing Bigfoot are naked from the waist down, but why are they even wearing shirts at all? A Bigfoot is hairy all over. There's something unnerving about the idea of a large male monster roaming around the woods just wearing a shirt. Or maybe it's appealing, depending on what you're into. The shirts Bigfoot wear are usually described as plaid or flannel, which in the US are symbolic of rural masculinity. Bigfoot and the Goatman aren't wearing Brooks Brothers Oxfords because they inhabit the wild side of the world. Interestingly, the red-headed hitchhiker of Route 44 also wears a plaid shirt.

Can you imagine Ken and his friend giving up their shirts to a Goatman's wardrobe?

Other sources:
"Goatmen and Satyrs," Cryptomundo, October 11, 2009.

"The Satyrs in Our Midst," Wonders, Volume 9, No. 3, September 2005.

Peter Pan, Lost Boys, Bunny Men, and Goat Men

After reading "Peter Pan, Graverobbing, and Lost Boys" and "The Peter Pan/Hook Deaths," the following thoughts were shared by a correspondent:

I couldn't help wondering if there could be any connection between these
cases of children found mysteriously or suspiciously hanged from hooks, and
a couple of American "urban legends" or "campfire tales" of psychopathic or
demonic assailants who allegedly hang teen-agers from bridges in wooded
areas. One cluster of such tales concerns a railroad trestle in Fairfax
County, northern Virginia, called "Bunny Man's Bridge," and attributes the
alleged hangings to the "Bunny Man," supposedly a psychopathic killer
(either an escapee from an institution for the criminally insane, or a
one-time teen-age boy gone berserk) wearing an Easter Bunny costume. The
other cluster involves a highway overpass over Sweet Hollow Road in
Melville, eastern Long Island, and blames the alleged hangings on the
spirits of supposed escapees from a burnt-down local asylum. In neither
the "Bunny Man Bridge" nor the Sweet Hollow Road cases are there any actual police records of people actually ever been found hanged from the bridges in question nor of unsolved missing teen-ager reports from the respective local areas. Likewise, neither in the Sweet Hollow Road nor the "Bunny Man Bridge" cases is there any historical record of any burned-down or closed-down institution in the area such as those from which the alleged
perpetrators supposedly escaped. I've always wondered myself if there could
be some sort of "copycat" historical connection between the "Bunny Man
Bridge" and Sweet Hollow Road legends. ~ T. Peter Park.

The links do not end there.

I have written of the Bunny Man often in books and blogs (e.g. "Donnie Darko and Bunny Men"). As Wikipedia correctly summarizes, "Loren Coleman,...in the book Weird Virginia, which has a section on the Bunny Man, sees a direct association between the legend of Bunny Man and that of the Goatman of nearby Maryland." (For more on Goatman and the illustrations above, see here.)

Washington D.C. bound Amtrak train crosses over Colchester Road in Fairfax Station, Virginia at Colchester Overpass, also known as the "Bunnyman Bridge." Taken March 22, 2012. Credit: Kohlchester. Used by Wikipedia Creative Commons license.