He roams the woods of Prince George’s County by day and stalks deserted, mist-covered roads, preying on dogs, searching out lone teenagers and screeching his eerie, high-pitched call late into the night. His body is a grotesque mix of man and beast.
He is Goatman.
The legend that has haunted Prince George’s County for decades has become part urban, legend part ancient folklore. With his own Wikipedia page, Facebook groups and haunted house show, Goatman is an icon to rival any Bigfoot, Yeti or Loch Ness Monster.
His home turf is the university’s back yard. He has been reported seen across the county in Beltsville, Mitchellville and Bowie, though, sightings in Texas, Alabama and Michigan have elevated Goatman to a national phenomenon.
And as this year’s Halloween festivities arrive, his legacy has finally been chronicled in print with the publication of alumnus Mark Opsasnick’s book, The Real Story Behind the Exorcist: A Study of the Haunted Boy and Other True-Life Horror Legends From Around the Nation’s Capital, which includes an in-depth chapter on the Goatman.
Opsasnick said he set out to discover Goatman’s true origins.
After digging through newspaper archives, he discovered a cache of 1957 articles describing an “abominable phantom” lurking in Upper Marlboro with the same physical description as the modern Goatman. Opsasnick believes this phantom is what evolved into the story of Goatman over the next few decades.
“It traveled through the county and was transformed through word of mouth,” Opsasnick said in an interview. “It was used to scare kids to keep them in line and eventually spread through high schools to become a legend.”
It was in the 1970s that Goatman began to spawn other legends.
In one version he was an old hermit creeping around the back roads of the county. In another, he became a kind of Sasquatch figure.
The third legend that emerged became the most popular. This variation told the story of mad scientist, Dr. Stephen Fletcher, who worked in the United States Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville where one of his experiments went horribly wrong. Working with goat and human DNA to try to save his fatally ill wife, Jenny Fletcher, Dr. Fletcher’s research mutated into a hybrid beast; part goat, part man.
This version of the story has become an running joke among employees at the Agricultural Research Center.
“Most of the public knows it is a silly urban myth,” Public Affairs Specialist for the Agricultural Research Service Kim Kaplan said. “There is no evidence at all. I love that one website talked about a couple of teens who found scratches on their door and thought it was the Goatman, because nothing else causes scratches around old moldings.”
In the past 20 years, innumerable versions of the Goatman story have emerged.
“Especially with the advent of the Internet, various reports and sites extrapolated the legend to a point to where they do not even resemble the original stories,” Opsasnick said. “It’s mixed and matched. It all depends on what group of teens you come across promoting the latest story.”
Today, Halloween ghoul hunters can learn more about Goatman at the Mysterious Maryland exhibit in Hornbake Library or a haunted house show called GoatMan Hollow down Route 1 in Riverdale.
With performances every weekend in October, Goatman Hollow adds characters and a plot line to the Goatman story, always including Dr. Fletcher.
Running for six seasons, GoatMan Hollow creates a new episode for the Goatman and his mad doctor friend every year with a large volunteer cast. The combined show and spook walk mixes classic scare tactics with scripted performances.
“We wanted to build a story more tangible for people to grasp onto and remember as they left,” creator Ron Livingston said. “What ended up happening is we created a unique story. There was no other one out there for Goatman. It turned out to be very successful. The fact that we have done the attraction has drawn attention back to urban legend.”
Opsasnick has his own theories on why Goatman’s legend has had such a long shelf life.
“He’s stayed popular because it’s fun to be scared,” Opsasnick said. “Younger people especially seem to be intrigued by horror in general. In this instance, Goatman is a home-grown project. It did have its origins here in Prince George’s County. For that reason, it felt closer to a legend and gave it a stronger sense of truth.”
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