Pope Lick Monster Legend Claims Another Victim
Kentucky’s deadly train track-dwelling goatman legend known as the Pope Lick Monster has claimed another life.
The Pope Lick “trestle of death” in Louisville. Photo credit: @amills4294
Over the weekend, Louisville’s Courier-Journal reported on the latest death on the deadly Pope Lick trestle, where several people have lost their lives over the years while searching for the legendary half-man, half-goat monster said to live there.
26-year-old Roquel Bain and her boyfriend where visiting Kentucky for a haunted tour of Waverly Hills Sanatorium and decided to check out the nearby legend of the Pope Lick Monster. The mythical goatman creature is said to live on a train trestle that towers 80 feet above Pope Lick Creek, luring curious teens to their death.
Cult contributor J. Nathan Couch, who investigated the Pope Lick Monster while researching his book Goatman: Flesh or Folklore? notes this legend holds the distinction of being the only goatman directly responsible for, at the time, at least three deaths. He writes:
The monster is said to possess a wide array of supernatural skills to lure people out onto the trestle including mimicry, telepathy, and/or hypnosis. Once a victim is lured onto the trestle, the Pope Lick Monster uses its abhorrent physical appearance to frighten its intended victims, causing them to leap or fall to their demise. Some versions of the legend insist the monster waits for a train to approach—then from beneath the trestle—holds its charmed victim down until the train runs them over.
From the short film The Legend of the Pope Lick Monster, 1988.
Bain is the latest victim of Pope Lick. She and her boyfriend were walking on the railway, which they believed to be abandoned, when they realized a train was quickly bearing down on them. Bain’s boyfriend dangled off the edge, then climbed down unscathed when the train had passed. That’s when he realized his girlfriend didn’t make it. She was struck by the train and thrown off the track, where she was later pronounced dead.
More: Pope Lick Monster: Searching for Louisville’s Deadly Legend
