The Pope Lick Monster

The Pope Lick Monster is said to be a savage, large humanoid creature. The creature is always reported as looking the same. A large human-goat hybrid with a grotesquely deformed body of a man, fur covered legs, wide set eyes, sharp horns protruding from its head, and an alabaster skin tone. The creature lives beneath and around a Norfolk Southern Railway trestle over Pope Lick Creek in Louisville, Kentucky. There is two stories of how the creature came to be and how it came to reside at Pope Lick Creek.

The first is the beast was originally captured in the wilds of Canada around the end of the 19th century for a reward. The Goatman then became the star of a traveling circus’s freak show but was badly mistreated and grew a strong and evil hatred towards its caretaker and the other members of the circus. The creature escaped from captivity after the circus train derailed during a lightening storm up the tracks from Pope Creek. Not knowing where it was it used the trestle as shelter.

The other story is told by locals of the area that the creature is really the twisted reincarnated form of a farmer who sacrificed goats in exchange for Satanic powers and uses the trestle as shelter.

The creature lures people out onto the trestle and to their doom.

The pope lick monster lures its victims by mimicking voices and attracting them onto the trestle where they are killed, hit by a train, pushed or forced to jump 100 feet to there deaths, or even held down on the tracks until the next train comes. It is even said the creature will toss rocks at people below to try and make them come closer or climb up on top of the trestle, It has also been reported that the creature will jump down onto cars that are alone at night that pass under the trestle.

The creature using the trains to kill its victims is the most common.

The train trestle is 772 feet from end-to-end and 100 feet high. If you are on the trestle when a train comes it is literally impossible to outrun the train leaving you with two options. Stay or jump.

the Pope Lick Monster has killed at least three people. That’s a fact.

But is believed to be responsible for all the deaths at the trestle.

The December 30th, 1988 Louisville Courier-Journal ran a front page article entitled Trestle of Death, in which it records two tragedies. Jack “J.C.” Charles Bahm II, a 17-year old Spalding University student, was struck and killed by a train February 18, 1987 while crossing the trestle. He has since been eulogized at the site of his death. “JC we love and miss you” is spray painted on the trestle’s base. In May 1987, 19-year-old David Wayne Bryant died of injuries obtained in 1986 when he jumped from the trestle to dodge an oncoming locomotive. Police asked families and to this day do not understand why these people went onto a trestle knowing they had no way back down and also since they did not even live near the trestle to begin with.

Since so many deaths have happened at the location a large fence 8 feet high has been put up to keep people off the trestle but that hasn't stopped the death toll and authorities urge people to stay away from the area on foot.

Trains go over this bridge many times on a daily basis so it is easy for someone to get caught atop the bridge while an oncoming train barrels down on them. The trestle may look old but it is not abandoned and the death toll at it continues to rise even today.

Some bodies have never been found and probably never will be.

Locals believe the death toll will never stop rising as long as the Goatman continues to live at the trestle.