My Sighting of the Pope Lick Monster

The Pope Lick Monster

There is a Train Bridge outside of Fischerville Kentucky, near Louisville. My family moved in about 10 miles from the bridge in way back in 1959. A new neighborhood in the middle of what had been farmland for over a century. It was not a well-developed area at the time, there were only a few houses on each street, with large farms on the main roads in the area. Our property on a converted farm was apparently a potato farm in the past, because when we dug a garden we always found potatoes, that were almost fossils. Since Louisville was settled by a lot of Irish and German Catholic families, potatoes were a staple of both diets.

The bridge may have been 10 miles away, but the monster apparently had or has been seen as much as 15 miles from the trestle. The Trestle is the home of what many call the Pope Lick Monster. He supposedly is part goat, part man, and part sheep. I was not aware of the monster when in 1959 outside my bedroom window I saw a rather bizarre figure I took to be the devil, straight out of hell. It had mountain goat horns that curled back behind his head, a burnt orange face with a look of meanness, with what appeared to be green jeweled reflections, possibly even green crystals on the face. I may be imagining but he had fur on his shoulders.

I was 5 at the time and I still did not like sleeping alone, so I had trouble going to sleep. The figure did not look into the window but simply walked past it. As if it was surveying the area, trying to figure out what was happening with all the new homes beginning to pop up on the old farm he once roamed without obstruction. I screamed and my father came in and lovingly told me it was a nightmare but I was not nor had I been asleep. Today I am 67 years old and to this day I believe I saw the goatman of Pope Lick Creek. I am sure something walked past that window and the window sill was 8 feet off the ground, with his head and shoulders visible. I should not believe, but it is still ingrained in my memory. I have not dreamed about it before or since, but I remember that monster. I remember the distinct impression of the Devil coming to take me away. No smell accompanied the specter, yet the window was likely open as it was summer. (1959 was pre air conditioning. It would be 1963 before we got that) No smell of fire or brimstone followed his passage. No smell of urine or feces accompanied him. I imagined him with hooves, but since I could only see the head, I would not have seen them. It would though have made him similar to the monster on the Island of Crete.

It was many years later when a friend in Alaska asked me about the monster, knowing I was from Kentucky. Almost instinctively I told her not only had I heard of it but seen it as a child. She scoffed at me and it hurt a tad but it was not a lie. Until that time I had never put the vision and the monster together, though I knew of the stories. I have driven past the trestle at all times of the day and night but never since have I spied the specter that I saw that night. Part of the legend is that the monster will talk to you from the other side of the trestle just as a train is coming trying to lure you onto the bridge. The purpose is to get you on the trestle and to make you jump off. Whether it is to steal your soul or to make a meal of you I am not sure. So if you visit the Pope Lick Creek area, watch for the goat man and do not go near the trestle there. Many people have gone onto the bridge only to die when a train crossed the trestle and they could not get off in time and fell to their deaths. STAY OFF THE BRIDGE. You are not safe there ever.