Tag Archives: scary story

Goatman’s Bridge

Nationality: African-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 25, 2012
Primary Language: English

Additional informant data: My informant was born and raised in Northern Texas, about thirty minutes from Denton.

Contextual data: My informant told me this story when I asked about ghost stories from her hometown. She says she learned it from friends, when she was around 16 years old. She says she would tell this story if she was “telling someone where to go for fun,” and one time she and her friends actually made a trip to the place (though one friend got really scared so they didn’t get out of the car). The following is a description of the legend in her own words:

There’s a bridge in Denton, Texas called Goatman’s Bridge. If you park outside the bridge at night and honk your horn three times a goatman will appear. He’s half-goat half-man. I want to say that he screams, but I don’t remember. There’s the bridge, and then there’s this sort of cul-de-sac area around it, and if you park in that area then he appears in the entrance of the bridge. On an unrelated note, a lot of people have died there–I don’t think in the recent past, but a long time ago–and I don’t know how, but I know it happened. It’s in a really sketchy area.

This type of story is a common one, involving a haunted place and a summoning ritual (often including a 3x repetition of an action). My informant wasn’t sure about the historical background, and neither was I, but a little research showed that legend has it that there was a successful black goat herder who lived near the bridge and was hanged off the side by angry Klansmen. According to my informant, taking a trip to Goatman’s Bridge late at night is a fun and scary adventure, and it’s often a bonding experience, as everyone gets scared together.

Annotation: Seen in YouTube user SilkOlive’s documentary video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIrnzzTmP0s.

Hanged Man on Halloween

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 35
Occupation: Graphic Designer
Residence: Lomita, Ca
Performance Date: 4/20/2012
Primary Language: English

When my informant was younger, she was told a story by her brother that he had apparently heard in school. It was an urban legend about a young man who had hung himself a night before Halloween in a tree in a nearby neighborhood. Apparently, since it was Halloween nobody took the body seriously, believing to be just another gruesome prop. A few days later people realized it wasn’t a prop thanks to both the smell and the birds coming to eat away at his body.

This legend is fairly disconcerting to my informant, who believes this legend to be real. When she had asked her father if it was real, he had replied in the positive, citing his cousin as a source. Apparently the boy it had happened to was the son of a distant relative. This story may or may not be true.

This story seems like a warning against complacency for a holiday that has become a mockery of what it used to be and still is for some people. The fear that some props used on this night may actually be flesh and blood instead of plastic and paint is deep seated in superstition, and that is why so many people really do get a good fright from haunted houses and the like.

It could also be seen as a warning against suicide, as the boy didn’t recieve a particularly pleasant death and his body was desecrated by the local wildlife and exposed to the elements for quite some time.

This story seems to hold a particular significance for my informant, who has told me previously that her best friend attempted to commit suicide when they were much younger, and that to this day he lies in a coma as a result.