T. Peter Park
Wed, 31 Oct 2007 05:42:03 -0800
Goatman story prompts responses from Bowie residents By JANE MCHUGH Staff Writer http://www.bowiebla de.com/vault/ cgi-bin/bowie/ view/2007B/ 10/25-37. HTM <http://www.bowieblade.com/vault/cgi-bin/bowie/view/2007B/10/25-37.HTM> ____________ _________ _________ ______ Memories are lighting the corners of people's minds - misty, Halloween-colored memories of the Goatman. In e-mails to the Blade-News, teenagers from the Me Generation, now grown up and with kids of their own to pass the Goatman legend along to, fondly recalled their hunts for the mythical monster in Bowie and its environs. "As a child of the '80s, I grew up hearing horror stories of the Goatman around camp fires," said Caitlyn Chamberlain of Bowie. But mere words weren't enough for Chamberlain; she wanted actual proof of existence. Organizing a "Goat Tour," she and her friends drove around the woods where the Goatman supposedly hung out. "We even filmed it," she said. The hunts paid off with two pieces of physical evidence, Chamberlain recalled: "a pair of mangled sunglasses in a pile of beer cans" and "a bunch of scratch marks on the doorways" of some abandoned buildings behind Crescent Market on Race Track Road. Chamberlain admitted these traces probably came from human "transients" - but that didn't stop her and her friends from thinking that "there was only one guy it could have been." Greenbelt writer and researcher Mark Opsasnick outlines the Goatman story, one of Maryland's most famous folk tales, in a new, self-published book, "The Real Story Behind the Exorcist." Through personal interviews and library searches, he documented the source of the legend to the late 1950s, when people first started talking about what appeared to be a half-man, half-goat hybrid roaming the woods of a now densely populated part of Bowie. According to Opsasnick, some claimed the Goatman was a mad scientist at the nearby Beltsville Agricultural Research Center who did experiments with goats that went awry; others envisioned him as an old hermit, while others pegged him as a Bigfoot-type. Opsasnick interviewed two Bowie residents who insisted they saw a frightening, hairy creature near Zug Road in 1971, and that it decapitated a little girl's dog. A fourth version of the Goatman's possible origin was offered by Mark Townend of Forest Hill, a 1981 Bowie High School graduate. "The way we heard it as kids was that he was a teenage boy who was horribly disfigured" at the old Glenn Dale Hospital. "He blamed the doctors at the hospital where he lived as a child in seclusion." Built in the early 1930s for tuberculosis patients, the old Glenn Dale Hospital off Route 450 consists of multiple medical buildings connected by a maze of underground tunnels. Condemned by the government, asbestos-laden and no longer useful in the antibiotic age, it was abandoned a generation ago but never torn down. If Hollywood needs inspiration for a horror movie about a vast haunted hospital, Glenn Dale is the place to go. Within the crumbling rooms of its large and small buildings you can find busted-up tables, beds and chairs; dirty bathtubs filled with dead leaves and scummy rainwater; and a morgue. Popular for years with thrill-seeking teens who sneak onto its grounds, it is considered one of the scariest sites in the state and is featured in the new novelty books, "Weird Maryland" and "Weird USA." An excellent video of the creepy complex, synchronized to a dull beat sounding like music from hell, has been posted on Youtube by one "kuragarichild. " Back in the '80s, Townend was stopped by a security guard while trying to crawl into one of the hospital's tunnels to find the deformed boy. "Reports were," he recalled, "that the guards were stationed there to prevent curious kids from getting down in the tunnels, which were still infected with TB from World War II." As for the boy, "we knew he was horrible to look at," Townend said. "His feet were clubbed and hoof-like in appearance, making proper shoes an impossibility, and he had footprints that were nearly animal in appearance. His teeth were jagged and rotten and his face was thin and angry. In the days when Bowie was rural, it was believed he ate whatever he could take from outlying farms. My friends at Somerset Elementary around 1970 were warned that he would steal into town at night and move from wooded area to wooded area, looking for food or people to frighten." Townend's wasn't the only reference to Glenn Dale Hospital. Nicole Ojeda of Bowie said she and her friends would drive around the fenced-off facility at night in the '80s while playing Michael Jackson's "Thriller." Whatever his disputed origins, the Goatman brightened many a teenager's dull suburban days and nights. He "played a significant part in my childhood," said David Piper of Glenn Dale. Piper's recollections also go back to the 1980s, especially one time when his mother was driving him and his siblings along Fletchertown Road. "I was looking out the window blankly, just watching the trees go by, when I noticed a white shape further up the road. As we drove by, I was shocked to notice it was a white goat that was lazily chewing grass by the side of the road. I remember thinking that it was strange to see this random goat, out there in the middle of nowhere, since there were no farms I could see nearby," Piper said. Whether people are seeing a goat, a man or a combination of the two is beside the point for Barry Lee Pearson, an English professor at the University of Maryland. Pearson specializes in folklore and is versed in the Goatman legend and Opsasnick's research. "Folklorists like myself don't think of these things as real. They're like the narratives of the legends of the Catholic saints, where you associate different miracles with different saints. If you believe in those saints and their miracles, you believe. If you don't, you just see it as a story people like to tell," he said. In his research, Opsasnick documented that a Goatman story has been circulating in Bowie and Prince George's County since the late 1950s; back then, the creature was referred to in Washington newspapers as the "Abominable Phantom." And Opsasnick dug even deeper into the legend, unearthing references to a magical creature Piscataway Indians believed could change into animal form. The book, written in 1666 by a Jesuit priest, shows a hairy, Bigfoot-like creature standing on two legs next to a map of wildlife in Charles County. Pearson cites an even more ancient source for the Goatman - Roman mythology and the satyr, a half-man and half-goat hybrid associated with sex, fun and partying. William Wallace Jr., a Bowie resident who grew up in Hyattsville, used to drive around the Route 450 corridor in the mid-'60s in his mother's Volkswagen bug looking for the Goatman. He recalls the vehicle getting stuck in the mud and having to be towed. "We never did see the Goatman," he said, "but we had a great time just cruising around." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythfolk/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythfolk/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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