Evening. I'm calling from Louisville. Been listening to your show for years and I finally worked up the nerve to share this. I'm sixty-seven years old now, and I've carried this with me since 1959. That's the thing, you carry something like this your whole life. People don't believe you. Your own family thinks you had a nightmare. But I know what I saw. So let me set the scene. Summer of 1959. I was five years old, living with my folks in a house out near Pope Lick Creek in Jefferson County. Now if you know anything about that area, you know about the railroad trestle. Big rusty thing, ninety feet up, stretches over seven hundred feet across. Been there since the late 1800s. And you probably know the stories too. The Goatman. Half man, half goat. Kids been telling stories about that thing for three generations at least. I'd heard the older boys talk about it. Didn't think much of it.
Now this was before air conditioning, you understand. Summer of '59, we didn't get window units until '63. So my bedroom window was open. Had to be. Hot as blazes otherwise. I was five, still didn't like sleeping alone, always had trouble falling asleep. I'd lay there staring at the ceiling, staring at the walls, staring at that window. The window sill was about eight feet off the ground on the outside. I remember that because my father measured it once for some project he never finished. So I'm laying there. Wide awake. And something walked past that window. warnings about the area going back decades is notable - Ethan' Not quick, not running. Walking. Like it was surveying the property. Like it was trying to figure out what all these new houses were doing on land it used to have to itself. And I saw the head and shoulders clear as I'm talking to you right now. Eight feet off the ground, the head and shoulders visible above that window sill.
I'll never forget the face. Burnt orange color, like rust, like dried clay. And mean looking. Not angry exactly. Just mean. Like something that had been mean its whole existence. The horns curled back behind its head, mountain goat style, not pointing up like the devil in picture books. Curled back smooth. And there was something on the face I still can't explain. These green reflections. Almost like crystals. Like little green jewels catching the moonlight. I don't know what that was. I don't know what any of it was. It had fur on the shoulders. Dark fur. That's the thing, the window frame cut off everything below the shoulders, so I couldn't see the legs, couldn't see the hooves. But everyone who's ever described this creature says it's got goat legs, goat hooves. And with the head eight feet up, that thing had to be standing on something taller than human legs. I screamed. Screamed so loud my father came running in. He told me it was just a nightmare. But I wasn't asleep. I had not been asleep. I know the difference between awake and dreaming.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]