Goatman Bridge is located in Old Alton, Texas.
Denton’s most famous spectre is a story handed down for generations with a few variations, and that’s the haunted Goatman’s Bridge. Travelers to the Old Alton Bridge, built in 1884 as a busy thoroughfare, have long reported frightening encounters and ghostly experiences with supernatural creatures that have made it a legendary spot for Texas ghost hunters and a topic for numerous books.
According to the most circulated version, an African-American entrepreneur named Oscar Washburn and his family tended a farmstead goat herd near the bridge that was renowned for quality meat, milk, cheeses and hides. When the popular businessman proudly hung a sign on the Old Alton Bridge directing “This way to the Goatman,” it infuriated local Ku Klux Klansmen who plotted violence. On a dark night in the late 1930s, a lynch mob of Kluxers stormed Washburn’s shack and dragged the screaming Goatman to their noose waiting on the bridge, tightened the rope around the begging Oscar’s neck, then mercilessly flung him over the side. But when the Night Riders stumbled down to the dark river’s edge to confirm their murderous handiwork, they were shocked to find only an inexplicably empty noose dangling over undisturbed waters.
The panicked Klansmen frantically searched the area unsuccessfully before rushing to Washburn’s shanty, setting it afire with the Goatman’s family shrieking inside, perhaps to bait a desperate rescue attempt by the vanished Oscar. Washburn was never seen again, they say, but a vengeful spirit has haunted the Old Alton Bridge ever since.
Local legend says if you knock on the steel bridge three times at midnight, or perhaps- turn off your car lights and honk three times in summons, then you dare a visitation from the vengeful Goatman that’s preceded by the stench of decaying flesh. Numerous reports tell of unholy glowing eyes that burn red from the darkness, eerie glimpses of a large snarling Goat-headed man-beast stomping in the wooded shadows, or a frightening apparition of a maniacal Satyr carrying the heads of goats or humans in his hands.
The terrifying encounters and reported vanishings have been so frequent as to warrant numerous investigations by paranormal groups. But like I said, there’s more than one version that attempts an explanation for a century of recurring frights and sights encountered at the bridge.
Some attribute the work of Satanists who opened a portal for a hellspawn demon, while others say the Goatman’s wife is eternally searching for her murdered children.
Read more here: https://wedentondoit.com/blog/2013/10/18/back-in-the-day-goatmans-bridge
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/and-thats-why-we-drink/e/56066290
