I’m writing this to give the public an explanation about the horrors they’re seeing about our town. Some have been lost, more will follow.
When you grow up in a small town there is an unseen enemy that waits behind every corner. Boredom. People will do absolutely anything to break the monotony, there in lies small town drug takeovers and the disproportionate amount of alcoholics. We’ve seen towns bigger than ours develop an opioid crisis in a matter of weeks, bad gas travels fast in a small town. Now plenty of small towns throughout the country are founded and thrive upon faith. I live in one of those towns, and because everyone is so preoccupied with being a good Christian, we haven’t been hit too hard by any drug epidemics. The Hutchinson kid had to go off to a rehab in the big city and the Fuentes’ nephew came to live with them cause he was selling drugs 4 towns over, but that’s about where it ends for us. Even the drunks are functional and working, hell the pastor is one of ‘em.
Boredome, however, doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t spare anyone, especially in the age of the internet. So when an old urban legend that originated in our town started gaining some traction online, it became the focus of anyone under the age of 25. “Goat Man’s Bridge” is a covered bridge that connects FM 476 to the main highway that runs through town. FM 476 is no longer in use and the bridge has been left to rot. The mining town it used to lead to, “Calucas” has been abandoned and the land is no good to anyone. Young people with their first car cross the bridge and head to Calucas to ghost chase and get in trouble. The Sheriff’s office’s lowest ranking deputies make the round trip every night to keep people out, but people still cross the bridge just to play “The Goat Man’s Game” and try to freak each other out.
The legend of the Goat Man goes that he lived about 20 miles from the mines in Calucas. He lived by himself, but he worked in the mines, he only kept goats for his company. He would come to work, never talk to anyone, and then leave home to tend to his goats. The other men would bully him, down here you make fun of what you don’t understand and he made some pretty persistent enemies in time. Making fun of him soon turned into stories about all the unholy things he could be doing out in the middle of nowhere with a herd of goats and eventually that turned into fear from the townsfolk. Some particularly hateful individuals were drinking at the town bar one night and got themselves worked up into a frenzy, they decided they were going to go teach the freak a lesson and run him out of town. They drove out to the Goat Man’s land and slaughtered his goats. Put every round they had between them into the goats on the land and then drove away laughing maniacally back to the bar.
Now Goat Man wasn’t in the house at the time of the killings, but he came home and found his goats dead, and naturally he snapped. The Goat Man called the bar and said one of the men’s brothers had gotten into an altercation a town over and they better get onto FM 476 as soon as possible. The Goat Man got to the bridge first, seeing as he was closer and waited at the end. He couldn’t be seen because of the cover, you can’t see shit except the end of that tunnel when you’re in there, some hell spawn designed bridges that way. Anyhow, The men came driving down the bridge like bats out of hell and about 20 yards form the exit they hit a spike strip. They came to a halt just outside the exit of the bridge where the Goat Man was waiting and he sliced them all to bits with a grass hook. They’d emptied their rounds into the goats, they were sitting ducks.
All of that to say that when you play the Goat Man’s Game you go to the Cayucas end of the bridge, you turn your headlights out, you yell to the Goat Man that you’re crossing the bridge and then you drive across slowly. It’s our town’s version of Bloody Mary, or Candyman, adds a little spice to the lives of teenagers, nobody ever thought it would cause any harm. Then that Youtube fella talked about or town and Goat Man’s Bridge and everything changed.
Mr. Watcher is a 40 year old man that makes his living talking about old haunted places on Youtube. There’s a thousand of those channels and not all of them have any kind of following but Mr. Watcher is different. He has a smoke show for a wife and absolutely no conscience, he lies about and exploits every haunted legend in the US and his sensationalism wins. So Mr. Watcher does a video about or town and Goat Man’s bridge and it becomes one of his most watched videos. He makes all sorts of stuff up about a demon being summoned through a goat sacrifice and then attaching itself to the bridge to guard, says the bridge is a portal to hell. Whoever writes this stuff for him is underpaid, I guarantee it. Then the kids in our town “clout chase” with fervor in their eyes and foam at their mouths, all of a sudden there are 3 new videos a day of people crossing Goat Man’s Bridge. Always a lot of effects, and scary music and yelling but never anything of any substance. Until there was.
Matty Lutton was a burgeoning star in our small town. The kid sang a mean tune, edit a mean video, and captivate a female audience. Him and his friends decide this is a great opportunity to get more Tik Tok views for him and they set out for Goat Man’s Bridge. The video takes about a minute to get started, they’re turning the car around to cross back over, they’re yelling at the Goat Man that they’re about to cross. They start to drive over and they’re all trying to scare each other. And then it gets interesting.
The kid filming is in the backseat and he focuses the camera largely on Matty, it is his Tik Tok after all, and about 10 seconds into their drive across the bridge you see a figure step out into the Bridge’s exit and stand there. You can see it clearly cause the only light is coming from the street lights outside of the bridge and the driver sees it right away too. He hits the breaks and Matty looks over and they all start hootin’ and hollerin’. Now this had happened in another video, someone pretending to be the Goat Man and then they run away and everyone is ok. In this video, however. The Goat Man starts to run towards the car. The driver screams and turns the headlights on and then kicks the car into reverse. You can see him hit the gas and then you hear the sound of all of his tires pop as they go over, what I can only imagine, is a spike strip. The rest of the video only lasts about 20 seconds. You hear screaming and then you see blood, and then eventually the screaming stops. The last image on the video is a man wearing a goat mask leaning over the phone and turning it off.
Now I take no joy in sharing this information, I take no joy in explaining what happened to these poor souls, but it had to be done. To warn kids from potential harm that may befall them all because they were so starved for attention. They just need to remember a couple of things; That no amount of attention is worth something terrible like this happening. And the second thing is to stay off of my fucking bridge.