Despite Naysaying Bigfoot Lobby Maryland’s Goatman Marauds The Nation
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
As stories of the Goatman clop their way westward across the American continent, the thoughts of a nation turn to Maryland’s monster in a desperate bid to assimilate his cloven feet and rugged beard, his buff physique and uneven temperament, his steely glare and nasal bray, into the larger framework of national mythology. Texas! Missouri! Oklahama! California! The Goatman marches. In the same way that Maryland turned their intrepid mutation into a nightstalking vessel for an age’s worth of urban legend – the hookman, the Crybaby Bridge and even Bigfoot – so, too, do other states incorporate the fantastical axe-wielding émigré into their own local folklore.
While the Goatman blazed his way across the American South, stopping once in Arkansas to brandish a severed human leg at a Sonic waitress and once in Texas to chase after a rowdy band of teenagers, rumors of his possible connection to El Chupacabra began to surface. Could the insidious goat sucker that’s been exsanguinating American beef stock be the unholy progeny of the Goatman’s cross-country sex safari? Probably not – though it has been suggested. A more popular theory is that, given his penchant for ruthlessly dispensing with neighborhood pets, the Goatman might be El Chupacabra’s cousin. Sounds similar to Maryland’s “Bigfoot is a relative of the Goatman” theory, no?
While the Goatman diverted northward through Oklahoma and, eventually, Washington State, Bigfoot aficionados began to balk at the monster’s popularity. Many modern Sasquatch enthusiasts branded the creature a children’s story, undeserving of either national press or rigorous scientific attention. In a 1998 article in the “Washington City Paper,” (“The Legend of Goatman”) Tennessee Bigfoot hunter Scott McNabb dismissively declared, “Goatman is not an interest of mine.” McNabb went on to explain that, unlike Bigfoot, the Goatman tale lacks historical and scientific plausibility. Other Bigfoot hunters, while equally skeptical, have been more diplomatic in their assessment of Maryland’s fair-weather paranormal mascot – perhaps, they posit, the so called
“Goatman” is a sasquatch that has fallen ill and lost patches of hair, causing it to appear more like a human/animal hybrid than a full-on missing link. One thing’s certain – for someone who’s feeling a bit under the weather, homeboy sure gets around.
The question is, what is it about the Goatman story – once the paragon of a locally confined myth – that has allowed its progress from anytown, MD to everytown, USA? Other equally compelling taxonomical conundrums (the Dover Demon, the Loveland Frog, the Beast of Bray Road, etc.) have gained national attention without ever managing to parlay local infamy into a physical nationwide presence.
Maybe it’s the fact that, as a humanoid creature with a consistently dark, but methodologically varied, modus operandi, the Goatman fits in nicely with America’s array of local Bigfoot analogs (Skunk Ape, Wild Man, Sasquatch, Tsiatko, etc.), many of whom display varying behaviors, but all of whom exhibit similar physical attributes. Bipedal posture. Hirsute bodies. Man-like faces. Heck, even Marylanders have posited the Goatman as Bigfoot’s genetic constituent. And the thing both Bigfoot and the Goatman have over, say, the Loveland Frog (a giant frog) is that they kinda look like big, hairy dudes in the woods. In the eyes of an observer, an axe-schlepping lumberjack is just four beers and forty feet away from the Goatman (or from evidence that Bigfoot’s a shill for the logging industry).
Maybe it’s a combination of natural Internet proliferation combined with his striking resemblance to the devil. Given that urban legends tend to spread most readily among an American teenage demographic that has, for decades, afforded all things Satanic a bleary eyed thumbs up (see every pentagram etched apathetically on to middle-school notebooks ever), a story about an evil marauding demon who hunts down doers of “it” comes pretty much campfire ready.
Maybe it’s just because he’s a man-sized goat with an axe.
Regardless, you might think about setting an extra place at the kitchen table. And picking up a third ticket to prom. The Goatman is coming to your town. And attending your prom after he eats dinner at your house. Maryland totally owes you one.

a rogue Smithsonian curator got involved). If the government has property in or near a town, you can count on it becoming the nexus of at least one sensational and horrifying urban myth (e.g., the U.S.S. Eldridge, the Montauk Project, et al).
Take, for instance, the monster’s aforementioned ‘50s debut – a bombastic affair in which the axe-toting Goatman went violently a-knockin’ on the hood of a car that was a-rockin’. After gleefully cutting in on the teenage couple’s horizontal mambo, the crazed monster fled into the woods, leaving the terrified adolescents practically peeing their pants, but actually just peeing the car seat near the pants that they had so lustfully removed. This story, and its ensuing echoed repetition among the randy pubescent suburbanites of Prince George’s County, bears all the tongue-clucking sex-negative hallmarks s of the ubiquitous hook-handed killer urban legend. Granted, some irritating scraping and a hook on the door handle is a bit subtler than enraged, melee-ready, bipedal livestock, but, you know, whatever it takes to chop a message through those thick teenage skulls, right?

What you know as “road flares,” your dead hobo grandparents knew as “fusees” (or “railroad flares”). On ye olde raily ways, when no one had radios and everything was crashing into everything else and then catching on fire and exploding, a train travelling an unsignaled line would drop flares to announce its existence to the train behind it. If that train encountered a burning flare, they stopped until the flare went out. Often, a conductor would use this time to quickly grope as many sleeping passengers as possible. Conductors would share their numerical groping stats with other conductors at the conductor bar. The conductor with the most gropes from a single flare wait won a day off. This is where we get the phrase “groper’s holiday.”

The best thing about secret government research projects is the fun, random codenames. For example – Project Bluebird… Weaponized birds activated by pitching peanut butter-and-seed-coated pinecones into an enemy camp? Not even a little bit. This 1950s CIA program was created to research alternative (generally psychopharmacological) prisoner interrogation techniques, and to create a new breed of puppet spook, whose free will, up to and including his self preservation instinct, was completely suppressed. Most of the experiment was spent administering low dosages of synthetic drugs and chemicals, including heroin, PCP, mescaline, LSD and ether, to unknowing military personnel stationed at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. While the CIA was tangentially interested in the direct effects of the psychotropics and narcotics, their real mission was to study the exploitability of withdrawal-addled soldiers – a goal they accomplished by suddenly ceasing test patients’ regular mickey slips. Of the 7,000 unwitting Project Bluebird participants, 1,000 demonstrated symptoms of epilepsy and clinical mopiness, including suicide attempts and the writing of songs with the word “Blues” in the titles.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – As Leatherface does his frustrational chainsaw-swingin’ twirly dance, the film suddenly freezes, the still image of the cannibalistic transvestite slowly pixelating and breaking down into blackness. Something beeps. Suddenly the blackness seems to lift away as we see a POV shot of two strong hands pulling stylish virtual reality glasses away from the screen. The hands belong to a middle-aged man with kind eyes and an “I’m really tired, but I also just drank some delicious hot cocoa” half smile. The camera cuts from the POV shot and we see that the through-the-glasses point of view was that of a sickly adolescent girl in a hospital bed. The man touches her IV-infused hand and says, “See, honey? That’s adulthood. Now do you understand why it’s almost better that you got sick?” The girl nods. Roll credits.
Alien – As the Alien spirals out into space, smash cut to sweat-drenched alien sitting up in bed. An alien next to him stirs and mumbles, “Is something wrong, honey?” The first alien catches its breath and replies, “I just had a nightmare where I was blown out of a spaceship by a horrific alien.” “You know,” says the other alien, “to an alien, you would look like an alien.” Before the first alien can reply, he begins choking and a human baby bursts out of his chest. Acid blood sizzles in the dark air. Smash cut to sweat-drenched predator sitting up in bed. A predator next to him mumbles, “Is something wrong, honey?” “I just had the funniest f***ing dream!” chuckles the first predator. Roll Credits.
The Shining – Cut to Grady and the bartender drinking scotch in the ballroom. “Wow.” Says the bartender, “I think that went really well.” Grady frowns pensively and replies, “Yeah… but I’m still not clear on how it’s supposed to make us rich…” The bartender freaks. “Dammit! I knew I forgot something.” He punches the bar top and shouts, “Well, how soon can we get another family in here with an unhinged dad and a kid who has the shining?” Grady shakes his head. “At least a couple months.” “Well… set it up, I guess.” The bartender says, shaking his head, “and this next time… this next we’re gonna get so rich!” They clink glasses. “So rich!” Roll credits.
Watching the new Wolf Man movie, I couldn’t help but think that maybe it’s a little one sided. Really, though, what can you expect from those liberal Hollywood types? “Ugh! Wolf man! Boo! Hiss! Destroy all wolf men!” Sure, wolf men kill some people and send the local chamber of commerce into a bit of a tizzy, but water slide parks do that, too. Honestly, though, I think our local wolf man is the best thing to happen to this town since they closed down the water slide park. Now I’m not shouting “wolf man for mayor” or anything like that (certainly not here in print), but damned if that hairy virgin murderer hasn’t done his part for our humble village.
Before the wolf man came, all the gypsies did was lie around their camp drinking raven’s feather schnapps and selling cursed jewelry that turned pregnant women’s babies into foals. After the wolf man though – when everyone started blaming the gypsies for the wolf man – those shawl-draped reprobates really stepped up! At first, it was just little things, like giving away free horse brushes with the cursed jewelry, but as the wolf attacks persisted and the townsfolk got increasingly grumpy, the gypsies actually started to help out. That one-eyed gypsy with three teeth showed the butcher how to prepare goat meat for soothsaying, and the extra mysterious gypsy (the one without thumbs) taught the town drunk to play a funny little drum. I even heard that the one-eyed gypsy with no teeth called a lightning storm down to set fire to our rival town’s high school. Take that, Ockton Otters! Hawks rule!
Before the wolf man came, everyone had to put up with the meddling Sheriff and his incessant law enforcement: “You can’t park in a crosswalk!” “Actually, the speed limit does apply to motorcycles!” “You’re under arrest for firing a gun in church!” But then, the wolf man ate the sheriff. After that, the deputy was made acting sheriff, and he was even worse! Everyone knows that no man can enforce the Law of the Lake, but try telling that to acting sheriff Reardon, who somehow got Art Putney sent to jail for beating his wife in the lake. Fortunately, the next month, the wolf man ate him, too. That’s when we started having new moon parties over at O’Higgity’s. Now, every month, the first night after the full moon, everyone gets together at the pub and celebrates the death of the most recent sheriff, who inevitably got elected on an “I’ll stop the wolf man” platform, and who inevitably died failing to stop the wolf man. Except sheriff Porter. He died in a lightning storm while watching his nephew’s football practice in Ockton. Hawks rule! 
In the 2005 film “White Noise,” Keegan Connor Tracy’s anxiously stuttering character tells Michael Keaton’s character that Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) is dangerous… “like homemade Ouija boards and… and, and teenage séances on Halloween.” Of course, desperate to hear from his dead wife, the recent widower doesn’t listen, and his obsession with pressing is ear to the mortal coil finds him at the business end of some serious supernatural monkey business. In real life, the supposed spirit voices that force their way through the surface noise of amateur paranormal investigators’ off-brand microcassettes are as likely to corrupt your soul as the hidden Satanic messages that pop-averse evangelists Where’s Waldo out of reversed Beatles’ songs. Even so, if any of you are thinking about doing a little ethereal eavesdropping, maybe should start out small – say, with animals.
is that, despite the legend’s seemingly holy origins, Europeans also believed that it was never good to listen to the speaking animals (probably because it’s pagan as f***). My favorite story re: talking animals – don’t listen to them! comes from the German Alps:


