The nervous whispers that sprouted from the violent end and missing remains of Ginger would soon grow into the loud and proud reports of the area's most notorious antihero: Goatman (or "the" Goatman—your choice), a monster of many masks—half-man, half-goat; mad scientist; unhealthy hermit—but of universal, seemingly everlasting, spooking power.
In fact, the myth's essential starting point—the sad demise of Ginger, a true tale this time, not some much-trafficked account of unfortunate Bowie lovers bumping uglies in the brush—has considerable staying power, even 27-plus years later. And as Mark Opsasnick, the nation's foremost Goatmanologist, recaps the dog's last days while driving toward his old Bowie haunts on a spectacular summer day, the story still manages to tingle.
These are exciting times for Opsasnick and the legions of Goatfans scattered across the globe: Tales of the Washington area's most popular urban legend have been thoroughly revived lately (if for no reason other than that's what the best and most deviously creative urban legends will do). In just the past few years, the Internet has become ablaze with Goatman tributes. A prestigious horror-centric magazine continues to give the monster good press. A recent X-Files graphic novel features Mulder and Scully heading for P.G. County hot on Goatman's trail. The Discovery Channel has been running the creepy Animal X series since April; in one of the episodes, titled "In the Shadows," Goatman, our Goatman, is discussed in full and is given kudos for still drawing crowds. And though many of these swirling, endless campfire stories originate from a seemingly more innocent time, their freshness today—a time when buckets of blood and knife-wielding lunatics send flicks like Scream into the box-office stratosphere—makes them that much more special.
The 36-year-old Opsasnick is a fanatical, detail-oriented historian who has actually tracked the beginning of the Goatman oeuvre to a time years before Ginger went headless. In fact, Opsasnick goes all the way back to the sweltering summer of 1957, when the Washington Evening Star published reports of a gorillalike beast roaming P.G. County and scaring the bejesus out of residents. After an extensive but fruitless search for an "Abominable Phantom"—a shotgun-led manhunt composed of members of the Upper Marlboro fire department and avid hunters was even organized—local authorities announced that the reports were nothing but a hoax. In fact, county cops claimed this mutated gorilla with "red beady eyes" was nothing more than a deranged—and deaf—chow dog aimlessly wandering the vicinity.
But 14 years later, on that infamous fall morning in 1971, Ginger's decapitated head was found, and that's when Goatman hell really broke loose. John Hayden, in a 1994 interview with Opsasnick for Strange Magazine, would matter-of-factly reveal how early-'70s Bowie became blissfully unhinged by those original rumors of a monster in their midst:
Everybody around here was complaining about it, strange things going on around here. It was seen on Fletchertown Road, mainly in the area of High Bridge Road....We had sightings of it here, me and Willie Gheen, my brother-in-law. We seen it back in the field located across the railroad tracks from 8510 Zug Road just before it got dark. It was a long time ago [1971]. It was 6 foot, hairy, like an animal. As far as I know it was an animal on two feet. I remember it made a high-pitched squeal.
Around the same time, signs began to appear on the strangest of places—gutted refrigerators, picket fences, old, dying trees—some bearing the warning "Goatman Was Here." Goatman seemed a little on the literate and artistic side for a monster that munched on puppies, but the dripping red graffiti made for some very good marketing. Stories divided and mutated, morphed and grew meaner: Several Bowie residents claimed to have spotted a creature with the torso of a man, the legs of a goat, horns, and coarse body hair rumbling across their driveways and through their back yards. Others said Goatman was really just a pissed-off hermit who roamed the Huntington section of Old Bowie, spooking high-schoolers, mutilating mutts, and doing some serious hell-raisin' to parked cars with an ax. Or, even better, Goatman had been a scientist at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center experimenting with barnyard animals, and one day his studies had gone considerably awry and...well, you get the picture.
Fueled by locker-room chatter and after-school bull sessions, every kid with a little imagination and a share of courage joined the Goatman hunt. With fresh driver's licenses tucked into thin wallets, teenagers from all over the region—Opsasnick and his Eleanor Roosevelt High School classmates included—would spend their weekend nights racing through Bowie's tight, rural roads, loaded on Natty Bo and intent on bagging themselves a beast.
Not to be left out, the local press piled on. Along with the Post, the Prince George's County News and local academic folklorists were also publishing reports on sightings and hearsay that would add serious fuel to the Goatman fires. A few years later—November 1986, to be exact—the Bowie High School newspaper, The Pacesetter, would publish an article, "Goatman Mania Hits Bowie," by student Jennifer Joyner, claiming, "When we came into school on October 31, the 'Goatman' had struck, leaving the head of a paper mache [sic] dog in front of the school. There is now a Goatman Squad at BHS and, believe me, Goatman fever is catching." (A crude illustration accompanied the article, claiming Goatman's "known friends" to be "Satan, Sasquatch, Mr. Montie, Hitler, Burl Ives, Zamfir, shepherds, and others.")
"The people of Fletchertown Road must have put up with hell over the years," Opsasnick says, pointing at various landmarks like a Universal Studios tour guide as he wheels through the area. "There would be beer cans all over the road. It was an event. If there was a Friday night football game, you would end the evening cruising for the Goatman."
As Opsasnick tells his tale, his eyes glaze over with the recollection of good times long gone. His tone is pure Stand by Me—in fact, the dull ache of dewy remembrance can be heard in the stories of many men and women who grew up with the joyous threat of Goatman. Take Frederick's John M. Roman, for instance, who jumped at the chance to jot down his rambling, sepia-toned tale about his salad days, when he lived in the Seabrook-Lanham area of Prince George's County.
In our area, he was a shaggy, unkempt hermit who carried a hatchet. His main territory was between Glendale and Bowie, bordered by the (then) Pennsylvania RR tracks, Fletchertown Road, Bell Station Road, and MD 450. The Cleary family, who lived in Mitchellville at the time (1967?), claimed a sighting near their house of a ragged, unkempt "something." Mrs. Cleary called in her sons [from playing in the yard]. They told us that story on the bus and we believed them! They were scared!
Why was he called the "Goatman"? It's unclear. I think he looked like a goat. He wasn't "half-goat, half-man." And he didn't carry a "goat's head" or anything like that. He did have an ax or hatchet, though. When Susie went to Duval HS, a girl who lived on Fletchertown Road related how her mom would call them into the house near dusk because of the "Goatman." This was in the mid-'60s. The eerie part was, on some nights, this girl and her family would hear the Goatman crying and howling. Very strange.
I never saw the Goatman, but he made his mark. I got my driver's license in 1972 and tooled around the countryside. I went down Fletchertown Road [one night], came to a 90-degree turn...and on the plank fence in front of me was a spray-painted "Goatman Lives!" I mentioned the spray-painted fence to my peers and friends. One guy, who had several older brothers, said the fence was painted years earlier and showed no signs of deterioration...[but] I think the guy was [just] being "hammered" by his big brothers...
Those days of narrow, forest-lined roads that Opsasnick and Roman recall so fondly, however, are now mostly nothing more than a memory: As the modern claws of the District reach farther and farther out to strangle the remaining countryside, the flora and fauna of Goatman yesterdays have been replaced by pricey sprawling housing developments and wide, well-paved roads. Massive planned communities like Northridge and Walnut Grove don't exactly strike fear into the hearts of young teeny-boppers the way thick woods and haunted houses used to. The very same folks who chased besotted kids off their lawns, all the while insisting that Goatman was going through their garbage and molesting their pets, have moved on and been replaced by Pizza Huts and luxury condos.
It's not until you weave down Fletchertown Road into the very heart of the Goatman legend—the place Opsasnick is driving so calmly to now—that you find the proper rural landscape. Leafy, shadowy, sparsely populated with easy prey, this is the place where common sense takes a sharp left-hand turn and imagination begins to barrel down the road all by its lonesome.
"There's some intrigue in any unexplained phenomena; it makes things more exciting. It's fun to be scared, especially when you're young," says Opsasnick, who, along with his incessant ghoul-chasing, has also written and self-published two well-received books on the history of the local music scene, Capitol Rock and Washington Rock and Roll: A Social History. "And there's no question the people believe what they're saying," he adds, driving past the Ascension Catholic Church cemetery and heading down Zug Road. "But what they're seeing, well..."
As Opsasnick pulls his car to the end of dusty Zug Road—the small house on the left, the bigger, creepier house on the right, the tow truck parked 50 yards away—it's a spooky enough tableau to spark some nervous laughter in Opsasnick. To the left, in a long, wide, penned-in back yard, frolics a young white puppy, beyond frisky in his relative safety. And in front of us, guarding the three sets of train tracks that wait beyond is a tall, silver, chain-link fence, today with its security gate very wide open. When you and a date head to a movie theater sometime in the near future and find Goatman: The Movie as one of the featured attractions glowing brightly on the marquee, you can thank Mark Chorvinsky for the bloodstained thrills and over-the-top chills that will creep onto the big screen.
Legend of Goatman
In the autumn of 1971, Washington Post reporter Ivan Goldman ventured out to Bowie, Md., to investigate a grisly murder: On the frosted morning of Nov. 4, two 20-year-old kids, William Gheen and John Hayden, had gone searching for Ginger, a German shepherd puppy belonging to April Edwards, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lacie Daniels, with whom Gheen was currently residing. The puppy had escaped from its Zug Road pen the night before and was probably wandering around the neighborhood looking for trouble. But the boys, who would later report seeing a strange figure and hearing a "high-pitched squeal" the night before, didn't have to look far to find the dog—or at least what remained of the juvenile canine. As Gheen and Hayden casually walked into the back yard, in the direction of the Penn Central Railroad train tracks, they spotted something in the grass. Furry. Fanged. A rabid gopher? A crazed squirrel? No, Gheen and Hayden found the cleanly severed head of the family dog. And even worse was what the two young men didn't find that morning: the rest of the family dog's corpse.
Part 1
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(Source: Washington City Paper / By Sean Daly - Sept 18 1998)
Page created May 30 1999