So man, I don't think I've ever told you about this, but every day when I walk out of my house to go get my mail,
I get hit by this stupid bicycle every time.
It's a vicious cycle.
Cute.
Very cute.
Yes.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
It's good.
It's good.
Good evening everybody and welcome to the graveyard. Thank you for joining us tonight.
My name is Adam and my name's Matt.
Now we'll up a tombstone or settle into your casket and get comfortable because this is graveyard tales.
Oh right everybody. Here we are again.
Matt, you doing all right tonight brother?
Yeah, I'm doing good. Good deal. Good deal.
We're drowning in rain here, I think.
It's a good thing. Don't get me wrong.
My garden is doing fantastic.
The yard's doing good, but I feel like we're living in a rainforest the past few days.
Oh yeah.
It will not stop.
And you know me, I'm an outside guy.
Want to be outside.
I want the sun shining.
I need that.
Well, I can't.
So I've just been stuck in a house doing house modifications and playing guitar and working on the show.
So I got to get out.
Yeah, and all that rain will head our way and this.
I guess it can't be too bad.
I mean, this is the weekend that I have to move my daughter back home.
Oh yeah.
Her apartment.
And I wasn't going to get to work and play out in the yard or in the pool or any of that other stuff.
So yeah, it'll all work out.
Of course, having to move somebody out of an apartment in the rain is not the most fun either.
Well, that that's when you tell her, look, you're on your own sis.
Sorry.
I'm not doing that.
Dad can't get wet.
I'm sorry.
I'm like a gremlin.
Yeah.
It's okay.
I'm going to get wet.
All right.
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Well, enjoy our friends.
You at least tolerate us.
So maybe you'll find a show that you don't just tolerate and you'll find a show that you actually like on there.
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We could not do this show without our patrons.
They they have kept us going because we have equipment failures and stuff.
And if it wasn't for the donations of our patrons, Matt and I probably would have canceled the show four times already from equipment failure.
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Thanks to our patrons.
We just were able to update it and keep going.
So it's like it's like having a room full of inkjet printers.
Yes.
Yeah, you just you just want to take a sledgehammer to it eventually.
You're like, why won't you just work?
Yep.
And audio equipment, any of our fellow podcasters out there are probably laughing right now because they understand audio equipment and recording equipment is so fickle.
You've got to be standing on the correct foot and holding your tongue in the right position when you turn it on.
Otherwise, it's not going to.
Oh, for some reason, it's not reading my microphone today.
I haven't done anything different.
Why are you not reading?
So that little recording rant there, I apologize.
But our, like I said, our fellow podcasters that are listening are laughing and agreeing with us.
So yeah, but it's you, our listeners that allow us to overcome.
Absolutely.
All right, Matt.
So let's talk about one of our longtime sponsors and that's care of.
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Now, which is cool because when you and I first signed up for care of, they didn't have an app.
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So they allow you to do that and take it again.
Oh, yeah.
And now with with an app, it makes it so easy to take that quiz and see what you're what you're taking, what they're recommending and understand it.
Which is, you know, that's part of it is actually understanding the supplements that you're putting into your body and why you're doing it.
Care of makes that so clear as to why they recommend those.
So it's a critical tool.
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No, and it's funny because they recommended that for me as well.
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So Matt, that's all I've got for the housekeeping.
So why don't you tell us what are we talking about tonight, brother?
So tonight we're we're headed over to your backyard.
Yes, sir.
Literally almost.
This was this is a cryptid that had a had a very short run, but it's a really interesting story.
So tonight we're going to discuss the Lake Worth monster.
Yep.
And I mean, I had not heard of it before.
I'm sure if like Adam, if you if you are from Texas or you grew up in that in that Dallas Fort Worth area,
then you probably have heard the stories.
Yep.
But yeah, I mean the Lake Worth monster, it's the goat man, the lake worth goat man,
the goat man, the Greer Island goat man, you name it.
It had all kinds of names, but we're going to get into the story of the event that occurred and what followed.
But we're going to look at a little history of that area as to why this this may have happened.
Right.
And it didn't happen like last week.
Yeah.
But it's been a little while, but I mean, that kind of tells you how strong this legend is.
It's still around.
Right.
Right.
He is an old man now, but yeah.
So as we always say, go check our sources down at the bottom of the show notes.
You can find where we found this information.
You can continue the research and, you know, you might find some stuff on there that we left out just for time's sake or you might find a new nugget that we didn't even find.
If you continue down the rabbit hole here.
So like Matt said, the Lake Worth monster is a Seder like creature and it terrorized the city of Lake Worth there in Texas in July of 1969.
So before we get into the sightings and all that stuff that Matt's going to talk about, we need to look at the area and look at kind of what what the area is like where this creature was seen so we can get a good idea.
Especially of what might be there.
So when we start talking about it, you can say, Oh, well, it's definitely not that.
And we'll we'll look at it here.
So Lake Worth village.
It was previously called Indian Oaks and it's an incorporated residential community near the banks of Lake Worth.
So Lake Worth is a lake there and I'll get into it more.
But it's a lake in Fort Worth.
So if that it was confusing for anybody, you're like, I've heard of Fort Worth, but what is Lake Worth?
Lake Worth is a little bitty thing on the outside of Fort Worth and it's named after the lake, which is Lake Worth.
So at Fort Worth, this is not my notes, but Fort Worth was named after a Fort Worth.
There was a Fort named Worth.
So if you're confused, you're not the only one.
I confused myself.
So like I said, it's on the banks of Lake Worth on the outskirts of Northwest Fort Worth on State Highway 199 in Northwestern Tarrant County.
And Tarrant County is a county that borders Dallas County, which is where we're at.
So it's literally almost my backyard.
I meant to Google search and get an exact number.
How close?
Yeah, get an exact distance.
Have you ever been there?
I have been near it, but I have not gone specifically to Lake Worth.
We've been in Fort Worth and been around it.
Yeah, but we've never said, OK, let's just go over to Lake Worth.
But I am now.
We're going to go now because we go to Fort Worth quite often.
So it wouldn't be a big deal to say.
I got to go monster hunting for like 10 minutes.
Let's go over here.
We go out to a drive through out there in Fort Worth.
So after the drive through, we'll stop by Lake Worth and see if he's out there.
You know, maybe he's at the drive through.
I don't know.
You look over and there's the Lake Worth monster sitting in a pickup next to you.
And you're like, Hey, man, that's cool.
Now in the mid 1920s, the property of George T.
Reynolds was sold by his widow, Lucinda, as a subdivision that was named Indian Oaks.
So that that was the initial property for Lake Worth was this property that George T.
Reynolds owned.
Can you imagine owning enough land to turn it into a whole town?
Yeah, and I, I, that would be great.
I would love that.
Now.
Adjacent to Lake Worth, Indian Oaks became a popular residential and recreational spot
during the late 1920s in the early thirties.
It offered a casino play, a dance hall, a boardwalk and a popular club called the showboat.
So it was a happening place when it first was built.
Now, the Great Depression ended the recreational nature of Indian Oaks.
But after World War II, the residential neighborhood grew.
And in the early 1950s, residents decided to incorporate and change the name to the
community or change the name of the community to Lake Worth village.
So the majority of the 2000 residents worked in nearby Fort Worth because there
wouldn't many like businesses to work at in Lake Worth.
There were some small businesses, but if you didn't want to work at a grocery store
or a corner store or something like that gas station, you went and worked in Fort Worth.
So the population steadily increased with business growth in Tarrant County.
So in 1990, Lake Worth village had a population of 4,591.
In 2000, the population increased to 4,618.
So, 100 people or so less than 100 people.
Well, I mean, that probably means that there's not a lot of turnover there.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
You get young families in there in the 90s and they're still there and their children
make up the 100 there now and 10 years.
And that's probably exactly what it is.
It shows you that it's a nice community to live in and long term residents there,
which means it's a good community.
And you know, you wonder why why is this important to this story?
Let me tell you why.
Because we're telling you that we're not talking about a community of a bunch of
hill jacks.
Right.
Right.
You know, these aren't people that were just going to make up some story about a
monster attacking a bunch of people.
This was a respected community.
You know, this area, I mean, it was very, very nice.
Right.
Not the area you would expect for something like this.
Right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Very unexpected for that area.
So let's look at the lake where this monster was seen.
So it's called Lake Worth.
Well, it's an artificial lake.
And like I said, it was on the northwestern edge of Fort Worth in Tarrant County.
And the lake was formed by a dam that was completed in 1916 on the west fork of the
Trinity River.
So Matt, you know what the fish said when he ran into a brick wall?
Damn.
Sorry, I had to man, you could have used that one at the beginning of the show.
I should have, but I just thought of it now when I mentioned that a dam was built.
Yeah.
Well, you know, you live and you learn.
That's right.
Lake Worth actually provides municipal water and recreation for the Fort Worth area since
construction of the dam, the lake's capacity has been increased from 21,800 acre feet
to 33,600 acre feet through the construction of nearby Eagle Mountain and Bridgeport
Reservoirs and and the purchase of water from Ben Brook Reservoir.
So the drainage area above the dam, including the area drained by Eagle Mountain
and Bridgeport Reservoirs was increased from 200 square miles to 2,064 square miles.
So we're not talking about a tiny little lake here.
Mm hmm.
It's a pretty decent size lake.
So Lake Worth is surrounded by other residential areas in addition to Fort Worth,
uh, white settlement and Carswell Air Force Base are south of its southern shore.
And the community of Lake Worth lies to the east and Lake side is near its western shore.
So a number of city parks dot the shoreline and Fort Worth National Fish Hatchery
actually occupies an area that's just past the lakes dam.
So the local terrain around it is mostly flat to some, uh, you know, rolling.
Uh, kind of hills that are surfaced by Sandy Clay Loom that supports juniper and
oak trees, brush, chaperelle cacti and grasses.
And that made when it said it's mostly flat, that made me think of
that old joke that if you're out in West Texas, you can watch your dog run away
from home for two weeks.
Yeah.
See that dot over there?
That's my dog.
He ran away last week.
Um, now let's look at some of the animals and and fish and stuff that would be
in and around this lake to kind of get an idea of what wildlife is there.
What wildlife, the inhabitants of Lake Worth village have seen.
They know these animals and they, you know, most of them have a pretty good, uh,
idea of what these things look like.
So the predominant fish species in Lake Worth are white crappie, large mouth,
bass, spotted bass, white bass, catfish, bluegill sunfish, green sunfish,
and they stock rainbow trout in the winter.
So okay.
A pretty, I mean, this is a good fishing lake.
And after doing this research, guess where Adam's going fishing.
I have needed a new fishing spot.
I think I just found it because these are, these are all fish species that I
would eat the heck out of.
So plus it's pretty clean water.
Even the bluegills, huh?
Oh, yeah.
I'd eat bluegill.
Um, but a side note, this here, here's a little redneck factoid for you.
If you catch a bluegill, the best way to do it, take the scales off of it,
then you take the guts out and just throw the whole thing in the pan.
Just bones and all bones and all because the bones are soft enough where even
if you get one, not that big a deal, you can just crunch it up and eat it.
But it's real easy to take a fork and slide the meat off the ribs after you
fry it so much easier than trying to fillet the stupid thing.
If you ever try to fillet a bluegill, you pull your hair out.
That's actually what happened to Matt.
He tried to filet a mess of bluegill.
Now, see, that's why I asked, was there any meat on a bluegill?
Yeah, I would you even bother.
Yeah.
So yeah, just pan fry it, put it in a cast iron skillet after you got it and
scale it and you'll be doing good.
It's good, good eating, sweet.
So anyway, back to the research and not don't don't tell Brooks, and he'll be
he'll be begging to go down and go fishing and he's like, we're going to have
bluegill for supper.
Yeah.
Tell him he needs to catch at least three per person if they're, if they're
normal size because they yeah, there's not a lot of meat, but it's good eating.
Now, some of the animals that are around Lake Worth here, obviously, since it's
Texas, there are farms where there's cattle, goats and horses that are kept.
And that's sporadically around the area.
Um, now the known wild animals that are around there are medillos, bats, beavers,
bobcats, coyotes, deer foxes, possums, rabbits, raccoons, skunk squirrels.
Now, there are some alligators that live in the DFW area.
So it's possible that they could potentially get into Lake Worth from time to time
because they do migrate.
There's not, there's not like a population of alligators in Lake Worth, but there are
some alligators around DFW.
So you might run into a, a alligator that wandered over there, but I wouldn't
worry about swimming.
You're not, it's not like Florida, you know, where every, everybody water.
Teaming with alligators.
Everybody of water, including chlorinated pools have alligators in them.
That's not here, but it's a possibility.
So I want to bring that up since we're talking about the animals that potentially
you could run into around Lake Worth.
Yep.
Okay.
So according to the story, okay.
Um, this, this Lake Worth monster or the goat man or, or whatever, uh, it can swim.
Mm.
It can climb trees.
It eats fish and chickens.
It's about seven feet tall and it has what is described as unhuman strength.
Now some reports will, we'll say it's got horn sprouting from its head, which gives it
the goat like appearance.
Right.
Okay.
Now when, when we start, you know, when we give you the description, Adam just told
you the animals that are common around Lake Worth, you know, a seven foot bipedal
goat is not on the list.
Right.
Right.
So, uh, but also not on the list, is anything that sounds remotely like this or that could
potentially be mistaken for this.
Right.
And when I was looking it up, like Matt said, it's a strong swimmer.
It's bipedal.
But one of the things I ran into is that the noises that it makes, it doesn't sound
like any animal that you would run into, like a coyote or a bobcat, it either has
this deep growl, which I guess could be a coyote or bobcat.
But it makes this what they described as a pitiful sound like it was getting a
tack where it's like a yeeep or a you cry, which is really weird.
But think about other cryptids we've talked about that make that noise and that
will come in later, especially as well, the foul odor.
Apparently it's got a foul odor that accompanies it.
Yeah.
So, so back then back in in 69, the area around Greer Island wasn't gated off like
it is now.
Okay.
And teenagers could go down to the shoreline road around the lake to be alone and
hang out in the summer.
Okay.
So it was, it was like a make out spot.
Hang out and quotes.
Just hang out, you know, you know, people come up there, you park, you know, meet up
with all your friends and have a good time.
I'm sure some people were literally letting it all hang out.
Yeah.
Why not?
It was the 60s.
Come on.
And the island is, it's not exactly an island.
It's, it's actually got a little road that goes out to it.
Um, but it's just, you know, for all other purposes, it's, it's a little island.
Right.
Um, but on July 9th, a group of three couples were parked, uh, out by a clearing
on Greer Island around midnight, a beast reportedly leapt onto their car.
From the trees above.
I'm a monster also tried to grab one of the girls, but they were able to speed
off before it could pull her away.
Now at the time, the police said, uh, and this is a quote.
We've had reports about this thing for two months.
Now this was by a police dispatcher talking to the Fort Worth star telegram.
It says, but we've always laughed them off his pranks.
So before the actual major event, the police are saying, yeah, we've been
hearing stuff like this for two months.
And that's crazy.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
And I mean, I get it initially, I would think it was a hoax to, or just a prank,
whatever, but you get those calls and then you get something like this where
somebody was essentially attacked.
Well, now, now you've got to do something.
Mm hmm.
Okay.
And when witness drunk, John Riker showed police an 18 inch gas in his car's
side and with the police seeing the terrified nature of these witnesses
telling this story, they decided that they would open up a full investigation.
Uh huh.
Now it appeared in the newspaper the next day and the area just immediately
was electric.
I mean, it's, it's go time.
Yeah.
Here we go.
Said truckloads of men with guns headed towards Greer Island to hunt this thing.
Spectators came out in droves to try and just catch a glimpse of it.
Reporters came in and here were the police who were supposed to be investigating
what this thing is and if it's dangerous and they're trying to keep the
peace with all these people that have flooded this area.
Huh.
Now, Rick Pratt, who is a director of Greer Island nature center at the time
remembers folks coming out with wine, whiskey and beer just to have a good
time and hunt for the creature.
Is that's what you do?
You know?
Hey, you know, just go hang out and see if we see the monster.
That's a very Texas thing.
Let's go out and make an evening of monster hunting.
I love it.
Yeah.
Well, and Pratt even said he's like, here was the Sasquatch of our own.
You know, he said it was a party.
You know, we're going to come out and we're going to have a good time with it.
Sure.
We've got our own Bigfoot.
But on the afternoon of July 10th of that year,
the star telegrams front page carried a headline above the fold that said,
fishy man goat terrifies couples parked at Lake Worth.
Fishy man.
Fishy man goat.
OK, I love it.
We're going to get into that.
But yeah, that's what the headline said.
So that night of July 10th,
a few dozen people were at a clearing known for dumping.
OK, this is people go and secretly dumped their trash.
Oh, not taking the time.
Yeah, right near the lake where the monster made another appearance.
OK, so this now two nights in a row, it appeared on a cliff.
And the witnesses said that it looked very angry.
There were a lot of people in its homes.
I'll be angry too.
But this is this is the kicker.
It threw a tire with the rim still attached.
Yeah.
What witnesses say was about 500 feet.
Yeah, you try to do that.
Go pick up a tire with a rim attached and see how far you throw it.
You can't throw it five feet.
Yeah, listen, I want I want to put this in perspective.
OK.
Because it well, you know, to finish my my my thought here, it says that when that
happened, everybody, even the police bolted.
You know, they ran because they they realized real quick.
Whatever's up there is way stronger than us.
Right. Right.
But a football field, OK, a football field not counting the end zones is 300 feet.
Mm-hmm.
Tack the end zones on and that's another 30 feet at each end.
So 360 feet would be from the end line of a football field all the way to the other
goal pose. Right. OK.
Imagine throwing anything that far.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, it don't matter what it is.
I couldn't throw it.
I couldn't throw, you know, a glider plane that far.
Um, much less a tire with the rim on it.
And they're saying 500 feet.
I want you to just imagine this creature picking up something, anything and
throwing it at the end of a football field and it's sailing the entire length
of the field plus another 140 feet past the or at least at the top row of the
ends of the stands or something.
Yeah. I mean, you got realize that there are baseball players that they do not hit
500 foot home run.
Mm-hmm.
OK, that's how far they're talking about.
So that right there immediately gives me a little bit of pause.
But I think it's OK because
the way this played out, there was a lot of fear
that was that was there.
I mean, I know there were a lot of excitement and I know there were a bunch
of people there that were like, I'm not scared of this thing.
You know, we're going to come out here and have a good time and we're going to
find this thing.
I'm going to shoot it.
Yeah.
You know, I'm going to mount it on my wall.
But then faced with the actual, you know, creature, everybody says, yeah, I'm out.
You know, this is this serious.
So I think the distance was probably
exaggerated.
Probably.
Yeah.
But still, try throwing
a wheel of a vehicle and any distance.
Any distance.
Any distance.
Yeah.
And this thing threw it.
And not only that had it hit anybody, it would have probably it would have it
would have injured them really bad or it could have killed them.
Right.
I mean, you know, it's we're not talking about something lightweight here.
Now, Adam mentioned this earlier, but this actually comes from a reporter
named Jack Harris about that squall or howl or whatever.
And he described it as this pitiful cry
like it was being hurt, which, you know, doesn't fit with any of the other
animals that we've discussed.
I mean, Bobcats can make some really weird noises.
If they're if they're being territorial with other Bobcats, but that's not
something that just happens all the time, right?
You just, you know, hear that.
And it sounds more like a scream or something.
I it's it's a it's a different sound and tired.
Like a woman crying or a baby screaming or something, not not what they
described.
Yeah.
Now, one of the one of the spectators who went to Lake Worth that summer
was a lady named Sally and Clark.
Now, Sally was an aspiring writer and a private investigator who pretty
well dropped everything to go and interview people for what would become
her slightly tongue in cheek book, the Lake Worth monster of Greer
Island, which was published in September of 1969.
That's fast.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this thing happened on July 9th and 69 and she's published a book about it
in September.
Two months later, that's crazy.
She is moving.
Yep.
Moving to get that done and get it to a publisher and then actually put it out.
Cause I mean, this wasn't like, you know, you can you could publish stuff on
the internet nowadays and, you know, an instant, you know, this was, you had to
actually find somebody willing to buy your story and publish it, put it, put a
cover on it and print it.
And so she was successful.
And according to Clark's book, the monster jumped on the hood of another
fellas car and that man reported that he and two other men were out on the
island looking for the creature and it came up and jumped on the hood of their
car.
Now, when the creature landed on the hood, the man said that he swerved his
car wildly about the road.
So they were moving.
And he said the monster did not let go until they crashed into a nearby tree.
Hmm.
Now this witness, his name was Jim Stevens.
And Jim reported that he himself was six foot four and the creature was easily
much taller than him.
Yep.
Now, so Stevens, Oh, go ahead.
Keep all of that in mind.
This, especially, especially this one that Matt is talking about.
Cause I've got some stuff here coming up.
That I, when I start talking about it, I want you to remember what Matt just said.
This is a moving vehicle.
This creature jumped onto the hood of this moving vehicle and held on.
Yeah.
Plus it was way taller than a six foot four dude.
So right.
Keep on that.
Yeah.
So Steven said that he figured the monster was at least seven foot tall.
Um, maybe even taller than that.
And other eyewitnesses claimed the monster had this half goat, half man appearance
and was covered in fur and scales.
So that's where we get the, the fishy man goat.
Okay.
It had fur and scales.
Doesn't make sense to me.
I don't know how you have both.
You know, I get it being covered in fur.
I could even get it being covered in scales, but both.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And unless it was like half, like the top half was far, the bottom half of scales
or scaly arms and legs and furry torso.
I don't know, but it says covered in.
So yeah.
And part of it too is I'm always when I hear scales, I'm always thinking fish.
Mm hmm.
And not necessarily reptile.
Sure.
Yeah.
Um, that might make more sense.
If you think about it, although I don't know any furry reptiles either, but
I could at least say that my uncle.
That it may have had some type of scaly skin that wasn't covered with fur.
Yeah.
Um, and so it kind of gave that scaly appearance.
But it doesn't end there.
And you know what?
It absolutely could.
It absolutely could.
And this would be a great legend.
But Clark went on to say that she regretted the way she wrote her book.
Because after she published it, she saw the monster herself on three different occasions.
She said, if I'd seen it before I wrote the book, it wouldn't have been semi fiction.
And why did your dumb butt rush to publish?
I had to, I, yeah.
Well, just capitalizing on that's true.
Do your dang research though.
I mean, I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, could have could have waited another
few months and gotten a much better book.
So I can understand her regret.
Um, but again, you know, this is young.
Yes, it's going on.
Everybody's excited.
You do it and make that money.
Yeah.
But she said that it wouldn't have been semi fiction.
It would have been more like history.
Um, and this was in an interview with the star telegram in 1989.
Um, she also has the most famous and perhaps the only photograph ever taken
of the Lake Worth monster.
Now it was taken in October of 1969 at 1 15 a.m.
near Greer Island in both her descriptions and the photo show this large white
something.
Mm.
But it doesn't really look like a goat at all.
Um, and the gentleman, Alan Plaster, the man who actually took the photo.
Um, he thinks himself that he was mistaken about what he saw all those years ago.
Now, according to Plaster, he thinks what he witnessed was a hoax.
And he was most likely the victim of someone playing a prank.
Now, Plaster was quoted in 2006, um, by saying, looking back, I realized that when
we drove by, it stood up.
He was, uh, whatever it was, it wanted to be seen that was a prank.
That was somebody out there waiting for people to drive by.
I don't think an animal would have acted that way.
And Alan Plaster no longer accepts interview requests regarding the photo or the incident.
Yeah, but we'll talk about this.
We'll talk about this more about what I think about that.
Yeah.
Um, but I think Adam thinks the same way.
Um, but, you know, like I said, it's still, it's not over.
Stuff's still going on.
A few weeks later, several ranchers found the bodies of a number, a sheet that had been mutilated.
Now this event added even more fuel to the monster fire.
During the next weeks of summer, people saw the creature running through the grass.
They found tracks that were way too big to be a man and more reports of dead sheep and blood.
So the goat man was a celebrity now.
I mean, he, he had a lot of notoriety.
He's been on the front page of the newspaper and a local sculptor even carved his
likeness.
A woman wrote a book about an encounter with the goat man.
And it's just he's more famous than us.
That's right.
Um, he didn't even have a podcast.
Come on.
And not only that, it didn't stay local.
Reporters came from New York and Los Angeles.
And the story was carried in newspapers around the world.
The, the goat man's every move was news.
Um, all in all, more than 70 people claim to have seen the goat man.
But the goat man sightings decreased dramatically by September.
Just about the time that school started.
So that kind of points wants to point you towards this, we're high school kids is now
there back in school.
They don't have time to screw around like this.
And in 2005, a reporter at the star telegram received a handwritten letter with no name
and no return address.
It read in part, quote, one weekend, myself and two friends from north side high school
decided to go out to Lake Worth and scare people on the roads where there were always
stories of monsters and creatures who would attack parkers.
The writer claimed to have used an old gorilla suit and a tent and tin foil to make a mask
to scare a truckload of girls.
The kids decided to retire their monster to avoid prosecution or being shot.
But there's still no explanation for the mutilated sheep or how a tire could be thrown
500 feet like a frisbee.
Now there's no proof that the monster exists, but there's no proof that it doesn't either
or that it didn't at this time.
I mean, we don't have any current sightings.
So you would think if it's still around, it's hidden very, very well.
But this legend, I mean, it's still got legs.
Yep.
I mean, people still talk about it.
People still know about it.
They celebrate it all from these, you know, this period of a few months in 1969.
Right.
Right.
Now, some of the things I was going to talk about, Matt, and you touched on some of them,
but I'm going to I'm going to double touch because we need to discuss this a little deeper.
There there's been a lot of quote, unquote explanations that have come up for the Lakeworth
Monster.
And like you just said a second ago that we both kind of have our thoughts on at least
one of these scenarios.
But I want to look at that tire being thrown thing.
Tired being thrown 500 feet or whatever.
OK, like you said, it's probably exaggerated, but there was an explanation that came out
that I don't think should explain this, but people are sticking by this as the explanation for that.
Yeah.
So it says the creature hurling a tire was found out to actually be a man.
So he calls himself Vinsans, I guess, to avoid any publicity or people yelling at him or any.
Well, in 2009, apparently he admitted that he was involved with the tire throwing.
He claims that he was rolling a tire along with some friends and then it hit a bump
and went into the air, eventually landing close to the bystanders.
Now, here's my problem with that, Matt.
Before that, there had been some noises and stuff made by this creature off in the distance.
Right.
So everybody was looking in that direction.
Would they completely miss three or four kids rolling an inflated tire on a
rim down the road?
And I know I've rolled tires myself, but they're always off the rim.
I don't get a fully inflated, like a spare tire off my car and just go rolling it down the road
with some buddies.
Maybe they didn't 69.
I don't know.
But do you think looking in that direction that they would have missed two to four
kids pushing a tire down the street and then when it bounced, they would exaggerate it
that much to 500 feet.
Yeah.
Well, I don't I don't see how it would even if it's up on a cliff, how it would have enough.
I mean, it would have to have some serious speed and hit a bump at the exact right
spot to launch it like that.
But the other thing was, like you said, there was a lot of noise and people saw.
They actually said they saw the creature.
Now, could they have said they saw it when they didn't really see it or they saw something
and they're not 100% sure, of course, you know, we've seen that before.
But it, I mean, I'm with you.
I think they would have been able to discern that's not a creature.
That some kids up there playing around and either messing with us or it just looked like
they were messing with us.
You know, the tire flies off the cliff.
OK, but I don't I don't think that you absolutely run people off in panic with this happening.
Right.
Especially police.
Right.
So they had to have seen something.
Something up there.
I mean, even if the kid if the wheel got away from them and the kids were way far behind it,
trying to catch up and then they see it go over the cliff and they're like, Oh, crap, there's people down there.
They're going to be quiet.
They're going to go away.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, they don't want to get in trouble.
So they're going to leave.
Yeah, they're not going to start screaming.
Yeah, they're not going to do something to try to scare all these people that have come out.
Right.
And and how many kids do you know that the night before?
There was a reports of a monster attacking somebody.
How many kids do you know that are going to be able to get out and just decide, Hey, let's go screw around in these woods where this monster.
My big, I know when I was a kid, if that had come up, there's no way my parents would let me out of the house.
No, I wouldn't have wanted to go.
Well, that's true.
So another, another thing we talked about the hoaxing and Matt mentioned it to.
But now KDFW, which is a Fox on television station in the Dallas, Fort Worth area, they did this lengthy report in November of 1999 about the Lake Worth monster.
And it interviewed some of those who saw it, such as reporter Jim Mars and Sally Ann Clark that Matt mentioned.
The report announced that some high school students admitted to the police that they had pranked people by dressing up in a gorilla suit and parading around the lake in 19.
And 69.
So here's here.
Here's my.
I have a couple thoughts on this.
Now one is, yes, I can see kids after the reports have happened several days later, they go out and they find a gorilla suit and they say, wouldn't it be funny to capitalize on this monster hysteria?
And prank some people.
So I can see that as a thing, but I don't think that they would be the impetus for this legend.
I think they would capitalize on it.
Like you were talking the, the one that stood up and as it was going by.
Yeah, that could 100% be a hoax by somebody trying to capitalize on that story.
And I agree, I think Alan Plaster is probably exactly right, because if you look at this photo, this photo looks like nothing.
Right.
OK, this photo looks like a big white blur.
I mean, if it's a person, it's a person with a furry sheet on them.
Yeah.
And that's it.
So I think Plaster is probably right.
That's exactly what he took a picture of.
So you just kind of take the photograph and plaster story out of the equation.
Right.
OK, because it was a more isolated incident there, you know, you just remove that and then look at what's left.
Right.
And you've got to look at the goat mutilations and then you've got to look at, like I said, remember this story that Matt told.
Do you think that some high school students?
Would be able to pull off something where they looked like they were seven foot tall.
They jumped out of a tree onto a moving vehicle and rode that vehicle until it wrecked and then get up with no injuries and be fine.
And now now this is granted if that story is true.
Right.
But if that story and that encounter is true,
then I don't see how this could be the high school students pranking people.
Right.
It either.
It doesn't fit that.
OK, yeah.
You're stupid.
As a kid, you're stupid.
I was stupid when I was a teenager.
I did some stupid stuff.
I jumped on a roof of houses.
I rode my bicycle off of my buddy's roof into his swimming pool.
I mean, we did stupid stuff, but I would never think, OK, I'm going to go stand in a tree and jump on
the hood of a moving vehicle and grab on and go,
in the windshield.
So right to me, you got to you got to take out the pranking on that encounter as well.
Like I said, yes, I I would be I would put money on the fact that yes,
high school students did use that as a way to prank people after the stories came out.
They went out there too.
But that does show the stupidity of it because one of my thoughts was.
There are a lot of hunters in and around DFW.
That's right.
I I know personally that there are a lot of hunters.
So why would you think it'd be a good idea to get out in an animal suit that was scaring
people and not expect to at least get shot at?
I mean, somebody out even at that point, if somebody's out like squirrel hunting or
dove hunting, which they wouldn't be dove hunting or squirrel hunting at night,
but you know what I'm saying?
If they would have a gun, most likely they would have a firearm that, you know,
they would defend themselves if they felt threat.
Sure.
So by a large animal, so even if you're a 16, 17, 18 year old kid
and you dream up this funny thing to do, you've you've got to think at some point.
I hope we don't get shot.
Yeah.
And probably those those kids in 1969 in Texas were probably hunters themselves
or their dads were or something.
So they they understood this.
It's not like they were oblivious to the fact that there's people that
might be out hunting or could be out hunting this monster with a firearm.
So I mean, I I don't put it past them, but I don't think it answers all of the
the sightings, nor does it begin the sightings.
Yeah.
And another thing, there was a spokesperson for the Fort Worth Museum of Natural History.
Now, this is the one that I prefaced before we started recording.
And I said, this person needs to be smacked because he said that witnesses had seen
a common bobcat.
OK, like we said, maybe the sounds.
OK, I'll give you that.
Maybe, I mean, like you said, Bobcats make some weird noises.
I've heard him make some weird noises, but the the key word to this is they saw
they had seen a Bobcat.
Do you think that a Bobcat could get turned into a seven foot tall white bipedal?
Maybe Harry, maybe scaled creature.
Do you think that's possible even with the way I witness testimony is not really
that reliable in most scenarios?
Do you think it could get twisted that much to go from a Bobcat to 30 people
getting scared by a giant bipedal white hominid?
Yeah.
Now, I don't I think
of of the larger animals that are on that list, Bobcat is probably one of the least.
Yep.
Likely just because I can't I can't see a Bobcat being big enough to.
I mean, I've seen Bobcats.
I mean, I know.
I mean, they they can get bigger.
They don't get big enough to be mistaken for a seven foot tall creature.
Right. Right.
I mean, you know, when the last time you saw Bobcat walking on its hind legs to.
Yeah, never.
Yeah.
You know, never.
And then of course, you know, if it's a deer or something like that,
I think most people, like you said, there's plenty of hunters around there.
Um, you're familiar with the wildlife.
We know our data.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're going to know.
I mean, even if it's a buck that gives you this.
Impression that this thing has horns.
You're still going to know.
Right.
You're still going to be able to tell that's just a deer.
Don't get excited.
Right.
That deer is not going to throw a tire.
It's not going to throw a tire and it's not going to leave the large
tracks that you mentioned, which were 16 inches long and eight inches wide at the toe.
Yeah.
I mean, that you know what that sounds like to me.
That sounds like my favorite bipedal cryptid, which is Bigfoot.
That's right.
And some people have actually claimed that the Lake Worth monster was a rare albino
Bigfoot.
And I like you all know, I believe Bigfoot is a thing and it's out there.
Bigfoot is in Texas.
There are a lot of stories from Texas of Bigfoot.
So.
And we know albinism is a thing that happens in all creatures.
All creatures can develop the gene to be albino.
So.
It's possible that.
And albino Bigfoot could be the cause for this.
And then the descriptions of the horns and the scales.
That is all the eyewitness mistake and identity thing that happens, the telephone
game when you tell somebody something and then it it exaggerates and changes.
But.
Now, I'm not saying that I 100% believe that that's what it is.
But if we're talking, this is actually something.
This was seen this creature was there.
Then my bet goes toward a lone albino Bigfoot because in nature, a lot of times.
Something like albinism is seen as a detriment to the species of an animal
because they can't camouflage themselves.
They get attacked by predators and they usually will push these creatures out and away.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
So.
Possibly it was albino Bigfoot that got separated from its group and it lived for
a short period of time around Lake Worth and then it died.
And that's why there's no more sightings of it.
There wasn't anymore.
He accidentally wandered into Lake Worth and went, Oh crap, there's people here.
And they saw him.
They had that few month thing where he was trying to figure out what to do.
And then he left.
And is it is it bad that looking at this that I think the most logical
explanation is that albino Bigfoot?
Probably.
I mean, it's it's the one that actually makes the most sense.
Yeah.
If you just kind of open your mind to it, all the other explanations, I'm like,
these are some of the worst explanations I've heard.
Yeah.
And they're worse than an owl in something.
And I got to thinking about, you know, Jim Stevens, the guy that wrecked this car,
you know, the thing jumped on the hood of his.
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
OK.
Um.
So, so just playing devil's advocate.
What?
What if what if he just let's say they'd been drinking.
They accidentally wrecked their car.
They're coming to the police.
We got to tell them a story.
We can't tell them we've been drinking.
If this is the story that you come up with.
Yeah.
To tell a police officer to hide the fact that you, you know, were dumb enough to
to do some drinking and then drive your car into a tree.
Right.
And you're going to tell them.
But recent story or not that this giant monster jumped out of the tree and landed
on the hood of your car, caused you to crash or you had to crash just to get it off of there.
I mean, if I'm that officer, I'm looking at them like, all right, all right.
You know, you're all coming with me.
Yeah.
You know, let's see those risks.
We're going to take a ride and we're going to sort this out.
Check out my bracelets here.
We're they don't just go.
Oh, oh, yeah.
Okay.
There.
So they had to seem legitimately afraid of what had just happened to them.
And, you know, a police officer has at least got to see
a, a some sparkle of truth in what they're saying.
Yeah, right.
To not just go get shut up and get in the car, you know, I'm taking you.
I'm taking you to the station.
Right.
Right.
So, so, you know, every way you look at that particular story, you just, you can always find
something that just doesn't quite make sense as to, you know, that this was a part of the hopes
or this was a made up story or that it completely didn't happen.
Um, it was just kind of like, why?
I mean, I mean, you know, you couldn't come up with anything better than this.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Why was that what you went to to try to talk your way out of a drunk ticket?
Yeah.
And you know what?
I mean, this is, this is pre-cell phone day.
This car didn't have nor star.
Right.
I mean, they probably had plenty of time, you know, to come up with a story before they
ever had to speak to a police officer.
Especially out there on that island where there was probably not many people at that time of night.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you spent what?
30 minutes and you and your drunk buddy, all you come up with is, man, there was this
goat man thing that jumped out of a tree and landed on my car.
I think even drunk is a skunk.
You're going to realize that ain't a good, uh, a good explanation for it.
Yeah. Even though part of your story was that you were out there hunting it, you know, looking for it.
I still, I don't, I don't buy that that, you know, that I think, I think something really did
happen. I'm not saying, I know what, but I think something really did happen and it caused
them to crash that car and it scared them pretty bad.
Just like the, the original couples, you know, it terrified the vehicle.
Right.
And I mean, why, if you're a hoax, look, if I'm going to pull a hoax and at some point,
the people I'm working with go, all right, Matt, we're going to put an 18 inch gash down the
side of your car. I'd be like, the hell you are.
Oh, yeah. Right. It's not worth that.
Does your dad on a body shop?
No. Yeah.
You're not going to do that.
Yeah.
Uh, you know, so you wouldn't do something like that yourself.
Right.
If, if you accidentally wrecked your car and you were kind of, kind of, you're,
you ran into something scraped against something again, why, why even involve the police in this,
you know, I just go home and come up with a, you know, a better story of, uh, you know,
dad, somebody who said something and I would, and I looked and all of a sudden I was there and
there was a mailbox and they, a deer ran out in front of me and I had to swear to miss the deer.
Anything, anything other than we were attacked, you know, by this seven foot goat creature.
Right.
Right.
So, I mean, we're, we're not telling you what to believe. We're just telling you,
look, the explanations for what this most likely was are crap.
They're crap and you dissect this story and it just boils down to something happened
during those, those few days to months between July 9th and September of 1969.
Right.
And, and we, we don't know what we probably won't know what. It's fun to talk about it.
That's why Adam and I are discussing it. But, you know, it's even, it's even more funny that
they've come up with all these ridiculous explanations to people from thinking there was
actually a Lakeworth monster.
Yeah. And, and that's my thing is we see this in a lot of cryptozoology tales is the skeptics or,
as I've said before, the cynics. And I got, I got yelled at by an online person for saying
something similar to this, but I'm going to say it anyway. I think it's the unwillingness to believe
that something unknown could have happened. And so we grab the lowest hanging fruit,
despite the idiocy of that fruit. And we will stick to that. And, and that's the hill you're
dying on, that it was a bobcat standing on two legs or it was
everything was these teenagers and they're just very acrobatic and tough.
And, and they also should go to jail for animal cruelty because of the killing of those goats.
So, but I think it's just, I don't know what happened. And, and I'm unlike other encounters,
I'm not willing to say that I would put money on the fact that this was like an albino Bigfoot.
But I think something did happen that is unexplained. And all of the
quote explanation, the debunking of, like you said, is crap. It's, it's, it's all worthless
blabber because nobody can disprove really that that happened. We can't prove it either,
but you can't disprove it. And so to try to disprove it, you're going to latch on to anything
that seems plausible. And I, I'm okay with saying something happened. I don't know what it was,
but something happened. I'm not one that I have to have an explanation for it. I like the mystery of
it. Yeah. So my thought is something happened. Now, yeah, I'll dip the toe in the albino Bigfoot
waters and say perhaps that's what it was. Or it was some weird portal open and this thing
came in and then it disappeared a couple months later. I don't know. Yeah, but it's not the
explanations given by the debunkers. Yeah, sorry. It's not. And, and is, and is
strange as that sounds, like I said, it, it seems, it seems more reasonable than
what, what we've got to go on. But what do you guys think? Do you, do you agree with us? Do you
think something really did happen? We don't know what it is, but it's not one of these explanations.
Or, or do you have another idea? Do you, did you grow up in that area? Do you live in that area now?
Like I said, I think if you're from Texas, you've probably heard this.
But I, I had never heard it, but it was very interesting to look into it. And, and all of the
side stuff that goes along with it, the book that came out way too quick. Yeah. You know, just all,
all of these other little nuances to the story, you know, the fact that it became a, a global
phenomena, just, you know, by the media pushing that story out there. It's incredible. But let us know
what you think about it. And the best place to do that is in our Facebook group. Just go on Facebook,
search graveyard tales. You're going to find our group. It's called the graveyard. You know,
we've got seven, eight thousand members in there. And it's growing every day. And we share, we share
jokes, we share personal experiences, you know, good old fashioned ghost stories or that,
that creepy thing that was out of the woods that came out of the woods at your grandparents' house,
you know, when you were a kid, all that stuff. We want to hear them. And so does everybody else.
And make sure. It's a safe place to share those stories.
Make sure you answer the questions. There is to get in, it's real simple. You just have to
acknowledge that you read the group rules. But I not only say this because there are a lot of people
that will request to join the group, but do not answer the question. So we can't
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scan them, answer that question. It's one question. And then we'll let you in.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And don't forget to check out our website, which is graveyardpodcast.com.
And there you can find links to purchase graveyard tells merchandise. You can listen to the show
and you can sign up to be a patron. We've already talked about tonight how much we appreciate
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content in there. So if you want to jump in there, now is a great time. I think that's all I got,
brother. But this was a lot of fun. I had fun talking about stuff.
Got a lot of crazy stuff and Adam's back. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We might go by there this weekend.
So if we do, I'll give you an update. All right. So until next time, we'll save you a seat
in the graveyard. See you soon.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
♪♪♪