June 18, 1978

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I had an interesting talk with old man Hutchinson today. Since he’s lived in Bowie long before Levitt built all the houses in town, I thought I’d ask him about the Goatman. He said there were stories about the creature going back all the way to the civil war and even a little earlier. He shared one about the slaves that used to work on the Ogle Estate. He said there was an unusually beautiful one that the plantation owner took a liking to. When she had a baby that looked an awful lot like him, she had to escape for fear of being killed by the owner’s wife. As it turned out, the slave was also a powerful witch. Hungry and cold, the witch summoned a demon to exact her revenge on the owner and his wife. That demon turned out to be the Goatman. Something went wrong though and the demon was set free to do whatever it wanted to. I thought the story was much better than the one about the Goatman being some kind of lab experiment gone wrong or an ax-wielding psycho. When I asked Mr. Hutchinson whether or not he believed the Goatman was real, he smiled and said he didn’t think so.

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