01: The Goatman | Red Thread
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Picture this: you're walking down a dark road at midnight, surrounded by the silhouettes of leafy trees rustling in the waning wind. The road ahead is lit only by the full moon above. Why are you walking this road at midnight on your own? That's only for you to know. Suddenly, out of what feels like nowhere, you come to a trestle across a stretch of river. The water is shallow, but in this light, you couldn't possibly tell.

*laughs*

At any other time, any other location, this would be endearing. Right now, it's terrifying.

Whoa.

Why is it not an option? It's just the sound of a goat. It's not the most horrifying screech. Like, that wouldn't be super uncommon. It would be scary. You'd be scared. You'd be scared. You'd be so scared. If you heard a goat sound, I'd be like, oh, it sounds about right. Even turning around and seeing a goat would be terrifying at that point. Eventually, as luck would have it, you make it to the other side. The noise has disappeared, replaced by the sound of silence.

Little did you know, you have just successfully crossed the infamous Pope Lick Trestle, nestled in Louisville, Kentucky. A bridge infamous for the Pope Lick Monster, one of the many forms of the Goatman legend. You're lucky to have escaped with your life, for not everyone has been so fortunate.

Welcome to The Red Thread, a brand new show where we talk about deeply interesting things like cryptids and conspiracies, and we deconstruct them and discuss them for you in detail to figure out why. Why does this thing exist and why has its impact been so large to so many? I am one of your hosts and resident short story writer, Jackson, and I'm joined here by my fellow co-hosts, Isaiah and Charlie. Do you guys want to introduce yourselves or anything? Tell your own stories perhaps?

I want to say that was beautiful. That was incredible. Thank you. It was great to be here, really. That was stunning. Yeah, I messaged my boys here and said, hey, you guys want to sit around the campfire and hear a story I've been concocting? That was incredible. He dropped that on us, like, right before we started recording, too, and it couldn't have been better. That was fantastic. I mean, it was quite the adventure we went on. I love how you, like...

Didn't explain a lot. It's like you're walking on this road, but why I don't know I'll tell you what guys I wrote this like while I was waiting for you guys to join the call about like 10 minutes before we started like Started recording here. I wrote it literally like as I was waiting. It's like truth. Oh, well now You have to do one of those for every episode, you know that right? Yeah. Yeah, I'll make them progressively darker and darker. Okay, right

It'll start to genuinely get concerning. I'm so excited. Well, what a fantastic start to the show. Well, thank you everyone for being here. This is The Red Thread. As Jackson mentioned, we're going to be breaking down and discussing a lot of horror stories, urban legends, conspiracy theories, and what have you, talking about why they're there and why they're so scary. I, of course, am Isaiah, but you probably know me as Wendigoon, and it's an honor to come on board with...

as part of the official podcast brand and start this show with you boys. It really does mean a lot. Thank you. Well, that was so sweet. Now, Charlie, you do something as nice as that, please. Hey, I'm resident goat man enthusiast Charles. I like to keep my finger on the pulse of anything Pope Lick related, so it felt like the right fit. Finger on the pulse of Pope Licking. Look at the resident expert.

Yeah, I brought Charlie in because I know no one knows Goatman as well as Charlie, so that's why he's here. I'm expecting every subsequent episode of Red Thread for him to interject about certain things and relate it to Goatman only. That's going to be his only input going forward, I think. Yeah.

How does this creature tie into Goatman? So just for some information, some behind the scenes stuff for the people at home. Red Thread started with us basically. We all have here have a shared love for this kind of stuff. I think these cryptids and the darker elements of like internet folklore, I'd say. Things that kind of like really...

were expanded upon during like the internet's boom like people my first my first interaction with Goatman uh was the 4chan thread um the Anansi is it Anansi's Goatman story is that how you pronounce it yep

I think it's Ananansis or whatever. They know what we're talking about. Yeah, that was definitely the biggest one. And I think that happened... I read that one during high school and I was like, shit, this is so fucking cool. I love shit like this. And my contribution to the field, as some may know, is...

the Ghosts of Halo 3 documentary which is on my YouTube channel. So I have been in the field. I've gone exploring for these kinds of cryptids and stuff. So not to like, you know, boost myself up or anything, but I am a bit of an expert on the matter. I spent many days in that game trying to find that ghost. Yeah, you got him too. I did get him. I had a documentation on it. You can check that out.

So what was your guys's first kind of interaction with Goatman?

I remember... Well, actually no, Charlie is the Goatman expert. He should go next. Yeah. Yeah, go for it. Sorry, yeah, I just get pretty passionate. I understand. I learned about Goatman when he killed someone. So back in 2016, there was a Goatman expedition and there was a fatality. So it was in Ohio. A woman and her boyfriend were exploring, looking for like the Pope Lick monster. And then the woman fell off the bridge and died.

Yeah, yeah. As we'll get into in this episode, there are many different Goatmen I've noticed in my research. It's interesting because there seems to be a Goatman for pretty much every state. And even within states, there's multiple Goatmen across different counties. It's kind of like a folk legend thing.

that has spread and created additional variations based on where people have migrated to, I guess, or where they've moved to. And this is pre-internet, by the way. This is like during the 70s, 80s. So it's existed for a long time, this kind of legend. It's important that you also recognize that it could just be one Goatman and he happens to be nomadic. Yeah, he could be migrating. I guess we've never seen two Goatmen at the same time.

We've never seen one Goatman at one time, actually. True. I guess that... Hey, watch your mouth. Yeah, I didn't mean to discount all the episodes. Don't say that about her. She's beautiful to me. I guess that kind of ties in quite nicely to the appearance of Goatman. I figured that's where we might want to start this episode because it's the kind of the basis of the character itself or the living legend itself.

So did you guys want to get into the appearance at all? Anyone here well versed in the appearance? Can they paint a picture? I think I'm pretty familiar with it. So...

My first interaction to Goatman, similar to Jackson, is when I was in high school, I came across the story. I think it was the Mr. Creepypasta narration of it, actually, if I remember right. And I remember listening to it and being just scared out of my mind for like days on end. And then I made all of my friends listen to it. And then they quit talking to me after that. Not because they thought it was scary. They just thought I was weird. Which, I mean, fair play on that. Yeah.

But the story of Goatman has creeped me out ever since. It also has held a particularly special interest to me

Where I'm Christian and naturally fear things like demons, supernatural, all that kind of thing. Goatman is obviously very demonic in nature, the whole goat head, head of horns and whatnot. So because of that, regardless of how many cryptids or mythologies I read about, he always has a particular place of fear to me. He always creeps me out.

Anytime I'm in the woods at night and hear something that sounds out of place, he always comes back to memory and not in a good way. And I think that speaks a lot to the mythology he's kind of built around the people that live in the regions he's near. Because I have family who live near Louisville, Kentucky, and the legend of Goatman to people who go out at night isn't so much tourist destination as much as it is something to be afraid of, something that keeps them up at night. And of course, one of the reasons for that is his appearance. Mm-hmm.

So to paint a picture, he's usually portrayed as obviously half man, half goat. It's usually the bottom half is human and the head part is goat.

What's the Greek god Pan? What are they called? Satyrs, right? Yeah, yeah. Like Tumnus. Yeah. I knew you were going to go the Nadia route. I'm trying to tie this in to actual...

Greek, you know, historical ties and stuff, and you go straight for Nadia. Well, can you imagine, like, let's flip it. What if it was, like, a man body on a goat legs? That would be really scary. Well, wait, yeah, that is, that's Tumnus. So it is the opposite of Tumnus, really. Oh, wait, yeah, wait, you're right. Tumnus is man top, goat bottom, isn't it? So, yeah, Tumnus is anti-goat man, if anything. Ha ha ha!

Reverse Goatman. He's the good Goatman. So yeah, he's definitely, Goatman definitely has like historical kind of context within that, even within like ancient Egyptian mythology with the Egyptian god Noom.

who was also portrayed with like a ram's head. This seems to be something that's prevalent in just human history in general, taking a human figure and attaching an animal's head to it. And goats are like no exception. It's definitely happened a lot in the past.

Satyrs and Noom are just one example of that. And what I find interesting is that we, for all these, for all these stories of Goatman, believe it or not, we do not have a confirmed picture of Goatman currently. So I can't actually show you anything, but what I can show you is a, I guess, recreation of Goatman by an artist, um,

who goes by the username Vigart on DeviantArt. So this is, I think, this is probably the most...

prevalent image I've seen of Goatman, like the one that's most shared, I guess, of Goatman kneeling over a assumed victim in the forest, reaching out for the camera. You guys have seen this one, right? Yeah, it looks like a Mr. Beast thumbnail. Thank you, Charlie. That's my contribution. Yeah, your contributions have been on fire.

I just relate it to pop culture. He's our pop culture nerd. Speaking of which I haven't actually looked into it. Is there a goat man movie? So there's like some lower budget, not as great stuff. Goat man more so pops up in a lot of other movies and stuff. One of the, uh, one of my favorite movie scenes that my wife can attest to is one of the few times I've screamed out loud while watching something was during the movie ghost stories. Uh,

It is a kind of three-part anthology horror. It stars, not to bring it back to pop culture, but the guy who played Frodo in the Hobbit trilogy. Oh, right. That guy. No, no, no, not the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit. Oh, oh, oh, oh, whoops. Frodo's now, whatever it is. You know what I'm talking about, the little blonde British man, that guy. Anyway, him, he's in that movie. Hugh Grant, I believe.

What? It's not him, man. It's the only blonde British man I could think of. He's not blonde. He has been blonde in the past. I only know him as a blonde.

Okay. So yeah, not Hugh Grant, that guy. He's in the movie. It was a popular film, but the second short is about a young boy who is being terrorized by visions of the Goatman. He keeps seeing Goatman getting closer to his house.

He keeps imagining him and it culminates in an encounter he had on a dark road at night. And it ties into a lot of the lore because a lot of the stories around Goatman involve people getting lost in the woods at night, people trailing too far off the path. They kind of ascribe him as a hook hand figure of sorts. So...

The story of Ghost Stories kind of ties into that, but there hasn't been a ton done with it. I think the fields of Goatman, so to speak, are ripe for the picking, I think. More people should do stuff with him.

It definitely, from what my research kind of gleamed, it definitely seems like most of the stories to do with Goatman are just like local legends. You know, people within high schools or folklore communities within those kind of small counties take this story that has already existed from other places and kind of co-opt it to their own kind of, you know, location. But they always, the legend itself always shares the

a few core kind of characteristics beyond just the Goatman himself being, you know, half goat. There's this quote from a book by David J. Puglia, I think. I don't know how to pronounce his last name, but it's from Contemporary Legends Series 3, Volume 3, Getting Maryland's Goat Diffusion and Canonization of Prince George County's Goatman Legend. And he says, The seven legends that form this most common type share numerous typical motifs.

Each includes most, although not necessarily all of the following. Number one, the goat man is an old hermit with the head of a man and the body of a goat or the head of a goat and the body of a man. Two, who lives in a shack near a one lane bridge. Three, he was a goat herder in the past. Four, during one of the moon's liminal moments, so like full moon or like an eclipse or something, he shows up.

He stands at the bridge. Number five, six throws bricks or rocks at passing cars. Seven while bleeding like a goat. Eight. He has damaged passing cars and forced a few off of the bridges themselves. Nine. The goat man may have killed.

been killed when children set fire to his shack originally and 10 the informant this is probably the most important point number 10 the informant has never seen goat man but knows others who have so it's definitely a legend that's just been shared uh through like kind of like oral history i guess that form of legend folk telling just telling a friend that you've you've had you've known a friend who's seen goat man and that's enough proof

And what's fascinating about that is growing up in Appalachia, there were so many stories that never existed outside of colloquial legend, right? Like you knew someone who knew someone who knew the story, but it was never written down. It was never documented anywhere. So a lot of these stories only exist in the minds of people near them. And every now and then you'll have a story like Goatman that kind of makes its way into the greater consciousness. But there's so many legends like that that only exist from people passing it down to each other.

Yeah, exactly. And...

I think most legends start that way. And what that does is it makes it very difficult to pinpoint exactly when and how it started. But the earliest document, like documentation I could kind of find on it, like their first proper media documentation was in the early seventies, October 27th, 1971 in the Bowie based Prince George's County news in which in the article writer, Karen Hostler wrote,

She took a deep dive into the University of Maryland folklore archives and mentioned the Goatman along with ghosts and something called the Boa Man, who is someone else that also haunts the woods around Fletcherton Road in Bowie. So that was the very first kind of written documentation I could find on the Goatman. But who knows how many decades before that people have just naturally been spreading the story.

You have one listed here from the 50s to 60s in Beltsville, Maryland. So, yeah, like I said, the first written records that I could find. Oh, this is more. OK, yeah. Rumors. But those were like the earlier kind of. Yeah, because even that article from 1971 references earlier legends. Yeah, just can't be found anywhere. So the stories definitely existed somewhere for a while before 71. But 71 was the first documentation.

Yeah, yeah, that's definitely seems to be the case. And I think it's an interesting point also to kind of take into account the role the media plays in spreading these legends. I think that's probably the most likely way that these legends spread from town to town after all. Because if an article, let's say that article by Karen Hosler,

uh, Hosler gets, you know, quite popular and spreads to other cities and stuff. Then, um, children or teenagers who kind of want to recreate that legend in their own town, have something to base it off of and they have some kind of inspiration to do so.

Not even just that, but throughout time, it's shown many, many, many times that if you start putting an idea out there, people like run with it subconsciously, like mass hysteria type thing. So maybe you have a bunch of people out near the woods and they start hearing things like, oh, it must be the goat man because I heard about the Beltsville goat man on the news or whatever. Yeah. So it's not always people doing it on purpose. Sometimes it's just the idea gets planted in their head and then they start hearing it and seeing it.

I definitely think it's a combination of both. I think like I remember during like high school and stuff, people loved making up stories to like frighten people, I guess, or create interesting stories and stuff that you could clearly tell weren't true. Maybe not high school, more probably more like high school.

whatever primary school is in America, the first school that you go to. It was definitely like something that I experienced myself. Like I definitely convinced a few of my friends that I saw like UFOs and aliens and hey, even the ghosts of Halo. That's true. Yeah, you just gaslit an entire generation, don't worry. You are the media now. It's you. I am.

And another thing that's interesting about this is that, like I said before, my first experience with Goatman was through the Anansi 4chan story thread. So some fucking nobody in Australia heard about the Goatman through what is...

you know, media, I guess, like written record or whatever, written storytelling. So that's, I think that does, it is a testament to how quickly that kind of stuff can spread. And the internet has exacerbated that. Definitely. Why don't you go over the 4chan story? I don't know that one. You don't know the 4chan story? No, I saw it was listed here, but I didn't read the whole thing. Lovely. You should go into that, Wendigoon. I think you'd be better at it.

Absolutely. So the true 4chan story is pretty long. I'll give a condensed version of it here. So the story involves a group of high schoolers who are going out into the woods. I believe it's in Georgia is where the story is set. They go out into the woods one night to basically go out drinking, try to hook up with each other, what have you.

while they're out there in the middle of the woods, they begin to, uh, notice these strange occurrences. Now the story itself is an early 4chan, you know, like a creepy pasta thread basically. So it's got a lot of tropes in it. One of the people in the group is a native American. Uh,

And he's like, oh, I sense a presence here or whatever. He starts to get freaked out. They begin to hear what sounds like scratching on the wood around them. They begin to hear stuff falling over. At first, they're able to convince themselves that it's just animals. But eventually, people get freaked out enough that they huddle inside of a little trailer. It was a trailer or a cabin one.

That's out in the middle of the woods and they begin to hunker down for the night. Now, what's interesting about the story of Ananasi's Goatman is it incorporates a lot of themes from other legends surrounding the Goatman and kind of weaves it together. But because of the story's popularity, some of those themes are impossible to separate from the Goatman in modern culture. So, for example, the author pulls a lot of stuff from the Wendigo. Things like it can mimic people's voices, um,

It can mimic creatures that it's killed, things like that. Another point to mention that I should have mentioned a second ago is while they were on their way into the woods to go party, they noticed what looked like someone following them down the trail, and they initially just assumed it was another hiker, but as they called out to them, the hiker wouldn't respond. That didn't mean anything to them then, but it does now.

As they're sitting around inside the trailer asking about the hiker that they met earlier thinking maybe that's connected somehow, they start to hear what sounds like

someone trying to call out for help or someone trying to ask for assistance. And the phrase it eventually begins to muster this voice is let me in. Now, the particular characteristic about this voice, the way the author describes it, is it sounds the way a cat does when a cat kind of makes human voices. You know how sometimes you'll see a video on YouTube

you know, TikTok or YouTube or whatever. And it'll be like, oh, my cat says hello. And it's a cat meowing, but it's voices. It's like breaking through the meow and kind of makes a hello noise. Yeah. The voice of this videos. Yes, exactly. The voice outside of this cabin sounds a lot like that, but it keeps saying, let me in. It's like something trying to mimic human vocal patterns, but it can't quite figure it out.

At the same time, suddenly everyone within the cabin begins to smell the intense scent of blood, of like dried blood, the way it feels when you get a nosebleed. Everyone smells it at the same time. It's overwhelming. It's making them sick. People are starting to throw up. The women are crying. Everyone's scared.

Eventually, they stay down in this cabin, and if I recall how the story goes correctly, one of them runs out into the night, I think, freaks out, takes out out of the cabin, and they never see that guy again. He just ran out of that cabin, went straight to heaven. But the rest of them stay hunkered down within the cabin itself. With morning light, they all decide to get out of there, and as they make their way out of the woods...

they see that hiker again, the same one who was there the day before. And this time it looks like he's trying to follow them, whoever this hiker is. Everyone freaks out and begins running, but no matter how fast they run, the hiker's always the same distance behind them. It's almost like he's teleporting to follow them out of the woods.

Eventually they get out, they never see their friend again, and the story of the Goatman is left as is. So it takes some of the elements, like the Goatman is a creature who terrorizes people who are out in the woods at night, but it also adds elements like the mimicry of humans that it's killed potentially, or mimicry of human voices that's in the blood. And because the story got so popular, a lot of people just associate those details with the Goatman in general.

But it was certainly one of the first instances of Goatman making its way into online media.

Yeah. So like I said, this was my first foray into Goatman originally, and it was my only image of Goatman up until the time when I started doing research into Goatman, when Charlie suggested this as our first topic. So I did have that kind of image of Goatman going into this, something that could mimic the voice of the sound of humans, basically to kind of draw out its prey and stuff like that, like you said, with the shape shifting and such. So yeah,

When I really got down into the core legend itself, the cryptid that existed before the 4chan thread, I was pretty surprised to see that he is just...

basically a goat man hybrid with an axe usually that's how he's usually portrayed in old history is someone who someone who was either like killed by townspeople or his shack had been set on fire by children or something like that and he had been a goat farmer and then through some act of vengeance or like need for revenge he became the goat man after death and he terrorized that town

Since we mentioned like the 4chan story, do you want to talk about the original legends of like the Maryland and Texas Goatman?

Yeah, sure. So, I mean, like I was saying before, there's so many different goat men. It's kind of hard to separate them at a certain point. But the very first one that I could find was the Beltsville, Maryland goat man who he... I believe the story with this one was that he...

what was it? He would, he would basically just attack pets, livestock, and occasionally humans. That's the story that people tell, but he was just a dude that became the goat man. Any, any haunted Mary, like Beltsville, Maryland around like the bridges there.

Well, he also threw rocks and bricks at cars, right? Yeah. Or is that the different variation of him? Yeah, I mean, there's probably stories about him throwing rocks and bricks at cars as well. I think that's something that, again, is like shared among most of them. Did you have any more information about this particular one?

Yeah, so the Maryland Goatman, it's interesting how different cryptids work their way into different cultures depending on where they're at. Like, for example, a lot of cryptids that are found in the American South tend to be much more violent, typically, whereas cryptids of the American North or Northeast tend to be more nomadic, kind of like harbingers of sorts. And that's even seen in the Goatman because there's a Texas variation and a Maryland one. So the Maryland one...

is typically described as sort of a scarecrow of sorts. Like it appears in the woods. Maybe you'll catch a glimpse of it. Mostly you'll just hear it running around at night, but it never overtly attacks people. The only time it does attack people is when people have lost their way, gone somewhere that they shouldn't have. Similar to stories like what Charlie mentioned. They're driving their car in the middle of the night and a rock gets thrown at the car.

There's other stories of, there's a lot that tie into old hookup culture. Like, you know, a couple drives their car down a dirt road to make out. And then they'll hear scratching around the car. They'll drive away. And then when they get home, they see these giant claw marks going alongside the vehicle.

There's stories of people's tires getting slashed, windows getting broken, things like that. But for the most part, the Goatman is ascribed as a creature who sticks to his own and only breaks stuff if you begin to mess with him. He's not an outright killer as some variations of the creature are, like the Texas one is. But the Maryland Goatman is often depicted as maybe a bit more...

I won't say supernatural because the Texas one is too, but a bit more spectral, so to speak, than others. He kind of appears and disappears at whim. He can be right in your face. You can't see him. He can kind of be out on the plane, so to speak. He's much more aloof than like his Texas variation. Right. So but they both are pretty violent.

Yeah. So, well, I mean, the Maryland one's violent, at least as far as the stories go, as far as like throwing rocks at vehicles, slashing tires, stuff like that. Most of the stories around the Texas Goatman is that he outright kills you. He just shreds you into pieces. What?

I've got an interesting update on the Maryland Goatman. So as of 2023, January 21st, it seems that something has snapped in his brain and he's lashing out. According to a folklore expert named Thomas Markham, he believes that

the Goatman is responsible for at least five deaths recently. Oh, recently. Yeah. Recently? Yep. He says since 2019, there's been a lot of murders and grisly sightings reported near where Goatman is reported to hang out. And he attributes all of that to Goatman kidnapping and killing them.

Oh, wow. Interesting. There's another... I'm pretty sure... What if this researcher is just killing people and he's blaming it on the good name of God? LAUGHTER

Goatman killed this woman and buried her body over here. I saw the whole thing. I've been tracking Goatman for days, found all of these bodies, arrest him immediately. Goatman's gonna have to sue for slander. That's how we finally catch sight of him. He's like, guys, look, I throw rocks. I wouldn't do something this disgusting. God, good lord. I

I don't like vehicles. Okay. This is preposterous that I would ever. I'm imagining Goatman in a little suit at court, like he's got on an old like boiler hat from the thirties, but it's got holes cut for his horns to come out the top of.

Yeah. It sounds like something out of The Wolf Among Us. Yeah, it does. Yeah, pretty much. So with the Maryland one, there was an interesting one because there's a few Maryland ones from what I found. There's the Beltsville one, the Bowie one, the Hyattsville one, and they're all kind of different. But what was interesting to me was I read it.

a story. I'm not sure which one it was, but I know it belongs to one of the Maryland ones where it's believed that the story itself, like the story of Goatman in that region kind of emanated from teenagers making up a story about or an explanation as to why there was a road in the city that was used as a dumping ground for dead bodies from like actual like, you know, criminals and stuff like mobsters and stuff.

So that's kind of like a anecdote about how communities can kind of take something really dark and kind of depressing, like a fucking body dumping ground for mobsters and kind of concoct this story around it. Ooh, the goat man. Yeah.

the bobsies were never caught because of the goat man having stolen their limelight. Yeah, meanwhile, it's just a super depressing story. Like, mobsters are just, like, slaughtering poor people in the region. It's like, oh, by being the goat person... It was genuinely, like, depressing stuff. Like, prostitutes who had OD'd and stuff. High schoolers had taken that and, like, it's the goat man. Yeah.

These high schoolers showed up to body dumps throwing rocks at it. Like, oh man, I bet a goat did that. They would go out to these locations as well and perform their own little goat man hunts and stuff and then find more dead bodies from what I recall from the story, from the stories. So yeah, definitely. It is fascinating. Like there's a lot of legends that kind of birthed themselves that way out of some real tragedy. Um,

and then they kind of make their way into the, the lexicon as these supernatural creatures or whatever. Uh,

So yeah, that tracks with a lot of older beliefs and practices too, that something horrible happens. So it's ascribed this supernatural detail rather than the reality of it. Right. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And also it makes sense when it comes from high schools and stuff. Like I'm assuming most of the Goatman stories like are born in that kind of way. So yeah, it does make sense to me.

Absolutely, yeah. So with the update, with Charlie's update, it looks like the Maryland Goatman does have the potential to just absolutely shred people, pull them into the woods and whatnot. So I take back what I said. He's awesome. He's not a friendly goatman at all anymore. He's lost his mind now. He's killing indiscriminately. He's taking scalps.

So yeah, this all came up because this topic came up as the first episode of this podcast because A, Charlie's love of Goatman, but that itself is born from the fact that Goatman is actually one of the very few, maybe the only cryptid with a confirmed kill, correct? Yeah.

It's very rare when it comes to cryptids, except for something like Sasquatch, where someone loses their footing and dies on a Sasquatch hunt or something. It's very rare for a cryptid to lead directly to a death, and Goatman is responsible for that woman falling from the bridge during that hunt for him. And I just find that to be extremely interesting, because I don't think any of us here are true believers in the legend of the Goatman being real. How dare you? Yep.

How dare you? Not to put words in your guys' mouths, I mean, of course. Did you not hear my short story? That clearly came from a place of belief. Came from love. It's just, I don't know, I find it so interesting that even if something doesn't exist, it's very present as like a story or as a like, um...

idea can lead to something like that happening. Though I guess it wasn't directly him. It's not like she felt Goatman push her or anything. It's just on the location where he's reported to be. She kind of just lost her footing. I think it was a train, like she heard a train coming, panicked and fell. So it was in 2016 in Ohio, based around the Ohio public monster, as you said before. It was a... She and her boyfriend were...

as you said, seeking out Goatman, trying to find him. And they found themselves on the top of a trestle, which is like a, I think it's like a tall train track, basically like a train track that's lifted up over water. So they were on the train track crossing it because that's kind of how locals say that you can summon Goatman is by invading his bridge and crossing over the bridge. We can talk about how bridges play a role in kind of

these kind of entities, because it is a prevalent theme.

But yeah, they were crossing over the bridge and I guess they didn't know that trains run on train tracks and this train track was operational. And sadly, a train came barreling towards them and they didn't have enough time to get off the tracks themselves. So they tried to dangle over the edge and that led to the woman sadly being struck by the train and falling off the trestle itself.

So that's what led to her death. And I think you're right in that you can attribute this in some degree to Goatman because the drive to find Goatman led her to this situation. So I think that's totally fine. I think that's fine attributing it to him. And I guess also trains, I guess. What's fascinating too about that case is it's kind of morbid, but it seems to have worked its way into the legend around the public monster itself.

So the public monster, for some reason, it doesn't always get grouped with the other two goat men as much, even though it's literally a goat head on a human body. I mean, it's goat man, duh. But the stories around the public monster, they're kind of their own entity because in them, the public monster is more described as a creature that doesn't necessarily kill you. It just like lures you out into the woods until you get lost. Right.

Like it will, it will find kids who are wandering too far from their parents and have the kids chase him into the woods and the kids are never seen again. Or perhaps goat man causes you to get lured off a cliff. Like he'll mimic the voice of someone, make you stand too close to the ledge and you fall.

It's more so of like a trick that it plays on people rather than maliciousness. So when this woman went out looking for the goat man and she was killed by a train, there were firm believers in the story who were like, yeah, that's what it does. It uses some kind of hypnosis or suggestion to put you in dangerous situations in the woods. And it's kind of morbid. That's a really interesting perspective. Yeah.

It's kind of morbid, but as soon as that happened, a bunch of the stories began to incorporate elements of bridges more often and elements of like it tries to lure you onto a road at night to get you hit by a vehicle or something like that. So a bunch of people just heard that story and just went, yeah, that tracks. That makes sense. And then they wrote fan fiction about it. That's weird. That brings me to something else that's kind of interesting on this topic. So I don't know if you guys know this, but there's a Goatman cult.

So I feel like there is potential for down the line Goatman enthusiasts to like end up being, you know, killers or something to follow in the ways of the Goatman or whatever. And it reminds me of Slender Man. If you guys remember the Slender Man stabbings where two girls believed they were doing something on behalf of Slender Man, ended up stabbing a classmate like 17 times or something. She miraculously survived.

but the killing is something that's attributed to the legend of Slender Man now. I feel like Goatman's not far off considering there is a cult formed around him, and in fact, one of the cult leaders, I suppose, his name is Olly Asser. He dresses up in Goatman garb and stands at the Alton Bridge

And according to him, he said, the last time I was here at night, I had one guy pull a knife on me. So either the cult will end up killing someone or they'll get killed under the belief of goat man. The goat man got robbed? He got robbed like that.

He just got his wallet stolen. What kind of lunatic tries to rub Goatman by his bridge? I want to know more about that guy. That's the toughest crackhead you'll ever meet. That guy was trained. He knew Goatman's weakness, which is a knife.

It does seem like... Either way, if the cultist or the person dies, that's a win for Goatman, according to the legend. That is Goatman for you. Someone dies, yeah. I was going to ask Charlie, you wouldn't happen to know too much about this Goatman cult, would you? You wouldn't be like a leader or anything? I don't know too much from it. I was just reading. So I found this article going over the cult of Goatman, and it's mainly an interview with their big enthusiast, Ollie. Yeah.

I don't know how big it is. Maybe it's, you know, just Ollie. Maybe it's a hundred people that think just like Ollie. Do you know how serious it is as well? Do you know if they're joking, if it's like a fun, like they go play land games or whatever, and that's the cult or are they actually a cult with like, is this actually a cult that you started and you're currently running? This is just my Facebook group. Yeah.

I feel like all the power of a cult would dissipate when the cult leader himself is literally robbed in full garments. Or just because we don't want to join more. Like we need more goat men. That's not a cult leader I'd respect. I'd be like, you just got robbed by a mortal. I'm out of here.

I guess. But he dresses up. He made his own custom gear. I feel like he's in kind of deep. I feel like it's probably not that popular, though. It's probably just him and maybe a couple of buddies. Yeah, he's in. He's fully in. I get that. I get why like a cult leader would be fully in. I'm just not sure how like indoctrinated the cultists are. Well, when this podcast episode comes out and we point, you know, 300 new inductees to the cult, we'll find out.

Oh, true. We can start seeding the cult. That sounds like a fun side project. We can just check in on them every now and then and see how they progress. Hope no murders happen that we get tied to in like a CNN report or anything. Yeah.

That'd be fucking wild. The red thread is directly tied to the goat man cult. In their first episode? Bro, we would... That could genuinely be our first sponsorship.

We get the cult leader of the Goatman cult to pay us to shout it out. If he sends us... What's our price, boys? I do it for free. That message is great. If he sends us a nickel, we'll put a link in the description. How's that? Sounds good to me. So that's the Maryland Goatman and a bit about the Kentucky the Popelik monster.

However, I think the Goatman most people are probably familiar with, because it's certainly been the most popular in recent years, is the Texas Goatman, or more specifically, the Denton Texas Goatman. So are you familiar with the... There's a lot of legends around how it came to be, but are you familiar with the most famous story revolving him? Yeah, if you mean the black goat farmer who was killed by the KKK. Yes.

That is the one that Ollie Asser worships, I suppose. So this is at Alton Bridge in Texas. Yes. Just as a little heads up.

Yep, yep, that's this one. So the Alton Bridge, or the Goatman Bridge, or I guess it's now called the Shane Medage Bridge because he stole it. In Denton, Texas, there is this old bridge known as the Alton Bridge. It's, again, a kind of trestle design bridge. And I believe what's now a decommissioned road, but at one point was frequently used. So the legend around it is that back in the Reconstruction Era South, shortly after the Civil War...

There was a black goat farmer who lived in the region who was very popular with the locals. He was very kind to children. A lot of people in the area loved him, but the one group that didn't love him was the Ku Klux Klan because it was a black guy who was... Did you like that?

Did you like that punchline, Jackson? It just goes hard, I guess. It was literally like when we started this show, how quickly we'd tie a fucking cryptid to the KKK, and it was immediately. It was, what's that, 36 minutes? So, yeah.

The clan did not like him being a successful businessman. They had terrorized his property before, but this old goat farmer refused to leave the area. A bunch of people began to remark that he was as stubborn as a goat, just as kind as one to children, so he garnered the nickname of Goatman.

He was, again, a kind figure, but he didn't want to move his family and lose his home just because he was afraid. And over a series of events, eventually the KKK captured him one night and hung him on the old Alton Bridge.

But it was said that when he was died, a curse was brought upon the members of the clan by his family or by the townspeople, depending on what story you put together. And a creature was summoned out of hell itself to rain terror on these men. Now, as the story goes over the next decade, each one of them, uh,

met some tragic end. One was found thrown off a cliff. One was found gored to death in his home. All these different stories, but it effectively implies that this goat man went one by one and killed everyone. Some renditions of the story have it that it was the actual body of the goat farmer that became possessed and became this. Others say it was an actual summoning from hell, what have you. But one way or the other, this thing killed the people responsible for the hanging in the next several years to come.

However, the price that they did not take into account when they caused this summoning was that the spirit did not go away. Once it was summoned, it could not be unsummoned. So ever since then, the Goatman haunts the forest and the area around the old Alton Bridge and terrorizes anyone who comes too close and in most stories, kills them if it can get them by themselves.

yeah i think this one uh this is this one's an interesting one but i think most people even in terms of goat man enthusiasts themselves uh like they don't necessarily believe the the whole black goat farmer angle because again that's something that kind of like uh

massive amount of killings and stuff can easily be disproven when there's just no records of it ever happening. Right. No, no. And also the, the other thing about it is like, it is a particularly grim legend around the goat man. Cause most of the other ones are like, Oh, it's, um,

It's some old Greek legend or maybe it's some scientist who did an experiment and created this. Yeah, I love the experiment one. It was a man murdered by the KKK during a very brutal time in American history. It's much more dark than the other legends. But again, most of the time legends of the American South are way, way worse than they are other places.

Yeah, there's some kind of discussions related to Goatman about how the different interpretations can be flavored by...

By the environment, I guess. So during the 1960s, car culture was huge in these towns. People were finding, teenagers especially, were finding that they could go places with cars and they loved their cars and stuff. They'd just drive around and stuff like that. They loved cars. And so I think it was during that time period where Goatman morphed into that role of throwing rocks and stuff at cars.

because that was just what was big at the moment. That's what was important to society. So I think a lot of these different things can be flavored by how or what is important in society at the moment. One of my favorite goat men when I was doing my research was the Maryland goat man because there's a prevalent rumor there that a scientist would perform experiments on goats in the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.

And he fucking like, he tried to fuse his own DNA with that of a goat, which then caused him to mutate into the goat man. So I'm assuming there was some like, kind of like a science drama going on in Maryland at the time when that's kind of theory. Or they just watched Spider-Man. That's definitely the goofiest one. That's like my personal favorite story. The idea that this guy was just like goofing off.

It's like, oh no, I have become goat. Yeah, there's like depressing stories about black goat farmers being like killed by KKK, old hermits becoming the goat man, stuff like that. And then there's fucking this scientist that fuses his own DNA with the goat. That's so great. Yeah, that's the best. That's the goat man I believe in personally. That's the one I want to believe. Maybe he's like actually a superhero out there saving people from falling and stuff like that.

Like an angelic presence around the area. He's a guardian angel. I guess that is a good segue, Isaiah, if you want to get into kind of the more...

I guess, religious connotations of the goat man, because it's hard to ignore kind of the symbolism there with a goat's head, which is like pretty inherently satanic, right? Right. Yeah. So beliefs of like goat head imagery or animal imagery in general related to demons date all the way back to the Old Testament.

So it was said that during the Old Testament, these fallen angels, which are demons effectively, these followers of the devil, would trick the tribes surrounding the tribes of Israel or God's people. They would trick the surrounding tribes by appearing to them as these gods. They would claim themselves to be gods and they could perform miracles. They could perform supernatural things as long as the people would worship them.

So these lesser gods, as they're called throughout the Bible a lot, would present themselves always in these kind of human-animal hybrid forms. So, for example, Baal was often described as a bull, the head of a bull with the body of a man. Other figures like Moloch are similar to that. Figures like Dagon were described as kind of a half-fish, half-man creature. And it's believed by a lot of people, at least within religion,

that these creatures would assemble themselves as a combination between nature and humanity or a combination between humans and animals. So human-animal hybrids being used for demonic things dates all the way to back then.

Um, specifically goats were used a lot throughout the Bible as kind of a symbolism of sin or a symbolism of the other. For example, in the book of Leviticus, I believe it's in chapter 16. It describes the protocols that the priest of Israel were to have whenever they take the sin of human, uh, the sin of the tribe, uh,

and put it on the blood sacrifice. There was a goat who it says the sin of the people would be put onto. And then the goat was to be driven out into the wilderness, that the goat was to be sent away from the camp as a symbolic gesture of sending your sin out from you. But physically a goat would be placed as kind of the sin debt, uh,

and then forced to leave and just wander out in the desert. So goats all the way back then were kind of seen as a sort of evil. And then even into the New Testament in places like Matthew 25,

when Jesus is describing judgment day and he's describing the sinless sheep or the followers of God versus the goats, the goats who are placed on the other side. So the sheep are kind of seen as the righteous and the goats are seen as the other. So goat symbolism has been used a lot for things like sin and that for a really long time. Now, particular things,

Goat-human hybrids are often associated with the devil. And one of the big reasons for that is because of a cultism that developed a lot during the middle, you know, Dark Ages, times like that. Creatures like Baphomet, these things that were described as, particularly in witchcraft, as kind of a medium. The connection between the supernatural realm and our realm, as above, so below, that kind of thing.

They were seen as the bridge between the two realms. And naturally, the church especially believed a lot of these occult practices to be demonic, to be satanic. So a half-human-animal hybrid that is the bridge between these two realms that can give you blessings as long as you pray and worship it, people ascribe that to the devil.

So figures like Baphomet, these half goat, half human creatures, were seen as satanic directly. And as mentioned, that lines up with a lot of the beliefs in the Old Testament and stuff like that. Right. So goat head imagery, especially during like the Enlightenment period and early American like colonial times on, the goat imagery was explicitly demonic. It was always seen as that. They're...

there's been a lot of horror stories and stuff that have played upon that idea, but really what it meant for the people at the time was goats were seen as an omen of satanic, uh, worship. Uh, there's stories of people becoming afraid of churches or locals around the area who had, uh, who goats would appear around their house. It was seen as like sort of the, the orbiting of demonic forces around their presence. Uh,

Goats are used a lot in early American folklore as like if the devil's trying to take your kids or whatever, you'll start to see goats or hear goats around the house. So that has been in the human consciousness for hundreds and hundreds of years. And then these stories of goat men, these urban legends begin to crop up around the United States. And a lot of the time they are explicitly tied into demonic imagery, like mentioned with the Texas Goat Man.

Legends around that of a creature wrought out of hell or something that was sent by the devil himself to destroy parts of humanity. Whereas even the Maryland Goatman, while that one is much less explicitly demonic, a lot of the reason people or one of the reasons that people believe the story may be cropped up originally is because around the 50s and 60s, you know, it was a particularly...

Protestant Bible Belt time in the United States. And these kids that are going out, like you said, car culture, looking to go hook up, they want to be the counterculture to that. They want to do something different. Hey, mom and dad say goats are satanic. What if there was a goat man running out here in the woods? What if it was the devil himself? Kind of builds off of that. So naturally, the two go hand in hand with each other.

But it's interesting how influences that date as far back as the Old Testament to ideas of half-human animal gods can, through culture, through stories, through legends, go all the way now to a scientist who did an experiment and turned himself into a ghost person. It all ties in. Charlie, you were raised religious, right? I remember you telling a story on the—

Oh, okay. I thought you said on the official podcast that you... I was religious for a couple of years. I wasn't raised that way. My parents never forced it on me or anything like that. Oh, right. It was your choice. Yeah. Yeah. It was my neighbor's... Or my friend...

he was one of my neighbors. He was the son of a pastor and he would constantly be talking about like the, the Bible and all of that. So eventually I got real deep into it for quite a few years. And you, and you were never scared of goats.

No, I actually never really understood where that came from until just now when Isaiah explained it. Like, I actually never knew why goats were in particular viewed so demonic. So what I want to know is, usually, isn't it during like satanic rituals and stuff, they sacrifice goats?

Yes. So... Yeah, but it doesn't have to be goats. It's any kind of sacrifice. Okay, but in most situations that I've seen, they sacrifice a goat. If that's the symbol of Satan, why are you sacrificing it? If you're doing a satanic ritual, wouldn't you worship that? So modern Satanism is pretty different from like traditional Satanism. Um,

There's not a lot of blood sacrifices and stuff like that in Satanism. Like, frankly, modern Satanism for the most part is like posers nowadays. It's not as legit. It's not as cool as it used to be. But it used to be... Today is like begging for proper Satanism. Look, I just want some good old-fashioned Satanism, okay? It's just...

I need a challenge. I haven't had a challenge in a while. But older Satanism, like in the Dark Ages and whatnot, was more explicitly ritualistic in the sense of like you could send up offerings to the devil. You could pray to him. You could do sacrifices and get what you want. And most of it was in direct opposition to Christianity. So, for example, what is the primary symbol of Christianity?

God, Jesus, the Lamb? Like a literal symbol, like a sign. Oh, a cross. A cross, right? What's the primary symbol of most Satanism?

Cross upside down. Upside down cross, right? One of the primary signs of God's people is a star. One of the primary signs of satanic followers, upside down star. A lot of Satanism was just inversions of whatever Christianity was doing. So in Christian practices within the Old Testament, if you wanted to have your sins forgiven, you would lay your sins on the sheep, on a lamb, which was symbolic of Christ being the lamb of God or whatever. And the counter to the lamb in the Bible is,

It's the goat. So if you wanted to have your sins, I guess, magnified and become greater to get what you want, instead of sacrificing the lamb, you sacrifice the goat. But if it was a true opposite, wouldn't you be giving life to the goat instead of sacrificing? Well, so the...

Go ahead. I get what you're saying. It's just like I'm just – it's weird to me. So in old religious practices, they were all built around blood sacrifice of some kind. The idea was humanity naturally has evils. There must be blood spilt to pardon those evils. So that was like the thorough baseline. Yeah, it's integral that some blood must be spilt.

So if the Christians spilled the blood of, well, they weren't Christians yet, the followers of God, if they spilled the blood of the lamb, then we spill the blood of a goat. There's also symbolism to the lamb in Christian tradition being, because the whole point of Christianity is eventually Jesus was the final lamb, right? The blood of the lamb was spilled up until he came and he was the lamb of God, so to speak. He was the final blood spilling.

In spilling the blood of the goat, you are building up the symbolism for Satan as he is the Christ figure in your story. So it's the sacrifice into the goat is the inversion as praise to Satan, whereas sacrifice into the lamb is praise to God. So if Jesus, we're getting really deep in the weeds here, but so if Jesus was the final lamb, who was the final goat then?

It would be Satan. It would be the Antichrist, so to speak. Whereas, so that's what the Antichrist is. I mean, they got that. That one's just lazy, right? Like the inversion of Christ, Antichrist. It's all pretty lazy. So we've got Jesus, who is the descendant of God, come to earth.

the descendant of Satan come to earth would be the Antichrist. So the one to finally embody the goat imagery, be the final goat, so to speak, would be the Antichrist by that symbolism. Gotcha. Gotcha. Can you imagine if that is actually goat man though? Like when the time comes, the Antichrist appears, it's goat man from Alton bridge marching out. Well,

What's really funny, too, is in the Book of Revelations, when the Antichrist is described, he's supposed to be a leader of the free world. He's like a politician who everyone gets behind. So could you imagine the goat man in a suit, like the UN, speaking of, uniting the world?

And he's also a scientist on the side We have to have that And he's also Of course, of course Absolutely He's just always had beakers with him Like he's just mixing chemicals and shit

He's desperately trying to make himself more of a goat. I didn't mean to cut you off a second ago, Jackson. Were you about to say something? You said, see, this is why something. No, I probably wasn't saying anything nearly as insightful as you were saying. But yeah, basically all those occult practices that kind of went around like the sacrifice of the goat and all that were an inversion to whatever Christianity was doing.

And now current Satanism is like the satanic Bible is just like, if God real, why bad thing happen? And that's like their whole. Well, I mean, it is a good point. Yeah. You're right. We never thought of that. Oh, no. They can invert that as well. Like you Christians could invert that and also say, if good things happen, why Satan or the other way around?

Now you're making some big moves If good things happen Why Satan That was an inversion of the inversion actually It should be if Satan Why good things happen right

If Satan real, why good thing happen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. There's the one. That's it. I did too many inversions. That's also an inner, like I know you said, we're getting into the weeds, but hey, it's too late now. That's also an interesting thing about Satanism in general. The Satan is never really described at least biblically as

as giving bad things to those who worship them. As a matter of fact, quite the opposite. He gives people riches, you know, blessings, love, romance, whatever they want, as long as they turn their backs on God, as long as they turn their backs on salvation. That's why a lot of legends around Satanism involve selling your soul or stuff like that for wealth or what have you. That tends to be the more satanic thing. So a more accurate inversion would be if...

Satan real why good thing happened to not Satanist. Yeah, that's it. Now that is an intelligent argument. We got him now. His whole system is going to be gone tonight. We got it together. I didn't realize how deeply the whole religious construct is based around inversions. That's pretty fucking great.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean like the, most like religions involve some kind of dualism, right? The yin gang light, dark, contrasting forces. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like the original one to that would have been God and the devil, right? Uh, which all the way when it was first room would have been Yahweh and the opposer, the opponent or what have you. Um, so, um,

It's interesting how that idea has kind of pervaded its way through all of culture, so to speak. Um,

But yeah, because one side is the light, the other side's naturally the darkness. So what is darkness? It is the absence of light. So everything they have is just an inversion of what the light already was. We were talking about Goatman. I didn't mean to get stressed. It all ties in. It definitely ties in. Like I can definitely see the religious connections with Goatman. It's kind of like...

from my perspective, integral to the identity of him. It definitely feels like something that was born in that kind of image. Also, isn't there something to do with bridges and crossing over into the other world? That's why I originally thought bridges showed up so much in the Goatman kind of lore is because I've always heard of bridges in the supernatural element as a threshold into the other world or the other existence. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So the belief with most traditions or mythologies or what have you is that the realm of the supernatural isn't in a place separate from us. Instead, it's all around us. We just can't see it. It's kind of like we both exist in the same space, just on different planes. So in most traditions, the way you cross over from one plane to the other is by...

entering these sort of overlaps or these sort of gateways that exist. And most of the time, these are described as being some kind of liminal space. And by liminal, I mean the true definition of like an intermediate places where you're traveling, you transfer from one thing to the other. Uh, for that reason, staircases are used a lot in these legends. Crossroads are used a lot in these legends. Uh,

Rivers. Rivers are used a lot because they're always, it's the transition from one state to the other, the cross between two different paths. Whereas a bridge is,

is an example of that. It is the connecting point between one piece of land to the other. So naturally, if there's to be an overlap with our realm and the spiritual, the bridge is going to be one of those overlaps. So that's why in a ton of traditions, you'll see bridges being the hotspot for supernatural activity or the place you go to perform a supernatural activity, to pray, to give offerings, something like that. So yeah, you'll see bridges pop up in a lot of these stories because they are a sort of liminal space.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think there's a lot of stories of people going to Goatman related bridges to try to coax him out like with the death, obviously, because it's like a place of high activity with like the supernatural, I think. Yeah, it's been that way for things even outside of Goatman though. A lot of like old school ghost stories and stuff always revolve around a bridge or like someone living under a bridge, something around the area.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, it goes back all the way to, like, old Irish traditions, like the troll under the bridge. Under the bridge, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It connects back a lot longer than Goatman. But it is interesting how Goatman is kind of this...

Goatman's almost this end point for a lot of different beliefs, right? Like old religious beliefs to old beliefs about bridges and whatnot to local legends to modern culture of the time. It all culminated in the story of this goatman who roams around the woods and throws rocks at your car. Exactly. He's kind of like a melting pot of ideas. Like they're all culminated in the goatman. He is the apex cryptid. He takes everything that works and he's perfected it.

It's fascinating. That's what I think of when I think of Goatman 2, the apex cryptid. Actually, that could be a good segment for these episodes. Where would you guys rank Goatman on a tier list? Of cryptids? It's hard for me to say S tier. He's definitely A tier, though.

I think. Yeah, I was thinking A tier. I wouldn't give him S tier either. I'd probably give him A tier. I think S tier would be reserved for the ones that had like a legitimately huge impact on culture. Things like Slender Man or I think Bloody Mary would be a really fun one to look at if you guys ever did that in school where you put a penny on the side of a sink, spin around three times saying Bloody Mary. Yeah.

Yeah, Bloody Mary would be a good one. I did do that too. I was scared out of my mind while I was doing that. I was too scared to do it originally, but eventually I did it. She might still pop up one day. Maybe she's working her way through everyone one at a time. She's got a queue system. She's got like a support call center working for her to try to like optimize it. Yeah, you take a number, stand in line.

I never did it. I couldn't bring myself to. When people were trying to force me into it, I went into the bathroom and I just stood there for what I felt would be long enough to make them believe I did it. And Bloody Mary still gets you because she thinks you're a pussy. She's like, you bitch.

I think I'd put like Mothman S tier, but I can't. Mothman's great, yeah. Mothman's not a good one. I would say Goatman's an A tier for sure. I really do think that... You said that Goatman didn't have an impact though. I think he honestly... Like outside of like movies being made about him, of which there are some like independent ones, I still think he had a pretty large impact on...

on his own individual communities at least maybe not like widespread or anything but I think he definitely had one of the larger impacts to be honest my biggest problem with Goatman now that we're getting into critiquing cryptids my biggest problem with Goatman is I don't feel he's unique enough

from a lot you know he ties into a lot of other cryptids of like standing in the woods scaring people maybe he'll kill you maybe he won't yeah uh but as we discussed he's kind of the culmination of just a lot of other beliefs that existed before him um and he's cool and all but i would say a well now that i say all that maybe i'd have to drop him down to b tier now that i say that out loud we're just progressively insulting goatman yeah we're just we're just making a mad yeah yeah

I mean, I think the legend needs more unique elements. Like the scientist thing is great. Like that kind of stuff. Fantastic. But you're right. It does kind of fall into just general tropes, really most of the stories. And while they are interesting and fun, I do think there's more cryptids out there that have more of an original spin on stuff.

Yeah, absolutely. And as far as impact, I still don't think Goatman has the same level of impact. Like even Mothman. Mothman fuels an entire community's ecosystem for a little while. Like tourism, because of Mothman, is a huge part of that local town's economy from what I recall. Yeah, but you look at Goatman and stuff, where that person died, they've had to fence that place off and they've got Goatman isn't real signs around and stuff like that. Yeah, but that's still just like...

Goatman is there. Yeah, actually, that's fair. Fair enough, fair enough. It does have a bit, like, maybe they're not selling Goatman merch as much as, like, Mothman yet, but it's clearly still had an impact.

Oh, that's another funny thing. As a kid, I would like... I say kid, like high school. I would wear like Mothman stuff, Wendigo stuff, stuff like that. I'd never wear Goatman stuff because it was too demonic. I didn't. It made me feel weird. It definitely makes sense, yeah. So is that... I'm curious about you, Isaiah. Is that what kind of drew you to cryptids originally? Just kind of like the...

I guess the satanic elements of it. Is it interesting to you? What really like pulled me towards cryptids originally was when I was a kid, my grandfather, uh, would tell me all the stories about, I'm from Appalachia. Um, so he would tell me all the stories about like the culture and the people stories like, of like, uh, the native Americans, monsters, stories of like, um,

of his dad, of his grandfather running into things that go bump in the night. He just told me all this folklore and legends. And I remember as a kid being so fascinated with him and that passion kept up with me until I got older. But in a way, kind of what I do now is similar to how Goatman's the culmination of a bunch of different ideas.

My own passions now are the culmination of a bunch of different threads that were getting built throughout my life. Like I was a Christian. I was raised in church. So I understood those stories. I understood the stories, the legends my grandfather would tell me. I understood all of these like the sciences, the cultures, the colloquialism. And I kind of started to putting the pieces together of like all of these facets of my life are connected.

in some way or the other. There's no part of humanity that exists in isolation. Everything's kind of the combination of each other. So it's been fascinating to me

to take these stories and legends that I've loved growing up and whatnot and get to pull them apart and piece them back together. It's very fascinating to me. Right. That definitely makes sense now why you're so invested in those things. Why I am the way that I am. What's your excuse, huh?

What do you mean, what's my excuse? He's got this fucking awesome backstory and shit. Why did you choose Goatman? Just because someone died? Fucking...

Well, I mean, I think that is interesting, but it's a fucking goofball. I like that kind of stupid shit. It's beautiful. I love it. Talking about fucking inversions, he's got this fucking cool backstory about how his grandfather used to tell him stories and it tied in with all the religious elements of his life and stuff like that, the cultural upbringing. And then you're like, oh, it's just cool shit. Yeah.

Haha, goat guy. You know what? That is equally as valid as mine. 100%. It's the exact same. I don't disagree. First word, thread disagreement. And to everyone watching, you're just as valid too. If you're a weird Appalachian boy who grew up on religion or if you're just like Charlie and want to see people die on bridges. Wait just a minute. That's not what I said.

But hey, that's the beauty about the red thread, right? We could take all these stories, we could tear them apart and trace the thread, right? That's the whole thing. That is the name of the game. Did you guys have any last minute questions or discussion points or kind of additional pieces of information about Goatman that you wanted to share?

Nothing on my end. I think we hit everything, right? I think we about nailed it, yeah. Yeah, appearance, legend, the earliest documentation. I never like to...

a story, even though I don't like, I obviously don't believe in goat man. Right. As far as the legend of Maryland, stuff like that. I still at the same time think it's lame to be like, uh, here's actually why this creature isn't real. And here's why you're stupid for thinking that like going through the details. But I think we, we effectively talked about the real elements of it with the different traditions and beliefs that led up to it. So as far as the skepticism goes, I think we covered that pretty well in our own way without being,

nerds about yeah i i don't want to like i'm like personally i don't believe in any i don't believe any cryptids are real but i still find engaging with them extremely fun i like the idea of going out and hunting the like hunting for them and finding evidence of them i've always loved that so i'm totally totally cool with people uh being into this kind of stuff like it's just it's just fun it's interesting why wouldn't why would you want to curtail that kind of

Yeah, why do you want to be boring and lame? Creative elements, yeah. I love that shit. So, I didn't want to come into this on the angle of disproving Goatman or anything either. Absolutely, yeah. I just wanted to, you know, talk about Goatman. Give him the respect that he deserves.

Yeah. All right. Well, if that's everything you guys want to share, that's going to do it for this episode. The first premiere episode of The Red Thread. We've been going for an hour and 20 minutes now. So I think that's a good amount. We've hit everything. Thank you to my fellow co-hosts, Charlie and Isaiah, for joining me on this journey. I really appreciate you guys joining the show. It was a lot of fun, you guys.

It was a lot of fun. Thanks for putting it together. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love it. Thank you so much for having me. Cannot wait for the next one. Yeah, this is exciting. And thank you very much for everyone listening at home. Let us know your thoughts. Let us know what you thought of the episode, if you enjoyed it. Your support definitely means the world. We all really appreciate it. Yeah. And otherwise, we'll see you in the next episode of The Red Thread.

Bye, everybody. See you. Thank you all for being here. Yeah, thank you.