The road trip crosses the Ohio River into Kentucky, and this stop is unlike any other we've made, because this legend has a real body count. On the eastern edge of Louisville, a massive railroad trestle spans Pope Lick Creek, and for roughly eighty years locals have said something lives under it.

Half man, half goat, with short horns and a voice that isn't its own. The Pope Lick Monster doesn't chase you. He calls you, mimicking the voices of people you trust, luring trespassers out onto seven hundred and seventy feet of open steel with no walkway, no railing, and no escape when a freight train enters the span.

In this episode I dig into the trestle's history and the three competing origin stories, from the escaped circus freak to the goat-sacrificing farmer, and trace the goatman's much older family tree through Maryland, Texas, and all the way back to the goat-legged wild gods of the ancient world. I cover the 1988 short film that put the monster on the national map and the fight it started with the railroad, and I walk carefully through the real, documented deaths on that bridge, including the young woman killed there in 2016 while visiting Louisville for a haunted attraction tour.

You'll hear encounter accounts from the Floyds Fork bottoms, including teenagers who heard a voice calling one of them by name, a driver who watched a horned figure stand up on the rail at dusk, and a survivor who says she never decided to walk onto that trestle at all.

Then the episode takes a turn most people don't expect, because Kentucky is quietly one of the best Sasquatch states in the country. I cover the famous Spottsville Monster case of 1975, encounter reports from Land Between the Lakes and the Red River Gorge, and a recent sighting from the same watershed as the trestle itself, and I make the case that the oldest layer of the Goatman legend may have started with something much more familiar to this show.

I close with my verdict on what the Pope Lick Monster really is, whether it's supernatural, psychological, or the deadliest warning legend in America running in reverse.A serious note before you listen.

The Pope Lick trestle is private railroad property and an active freight line, and real people, including teenagers, have died on it.

Do not visit the trestle, do not climb the fence, and do not ever walk railroad tracks anywhere. This story works from the safe side of the fence, and that is the only place I want you enjoying it.

Have you experienced a Bigfoot sighting, Sasquatch encounter, Dogman experience, UFO sighting, or any unexplained cryptid or paranormal event deep in the woods? We want to hear your story.

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Backwoods Bigfoot Stories is a paranormal storytelling podcast featuring real Bigfoot encounters, Sasquatch sightings, Dogman reports, cryptid experiences, and true scary stories from the backwoods.

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