That was the headline in The Fort Worth Star Telegram.
In Fort Worth, Texas the summer of 1969 will long be remembered as the summer of the Lake Worth Monster.
Robert Hornsby was a 9-year-old boy at the time when he remembered reading a newspaper article about a monster seen on Greer Island.
Hornsby said the story recounted the tale of about six people who told police they had been attacked by a half-man, half-goat covered with fur and scales on the Island.
Jim Marrs was one of the reporters on the scene investigating the so-called monster. He interviewed the witnesses at the police station. Marrs said the six were quite shaken up.
“I talked to them and it was obvious that something had just scared the devil out of them,” he said.
Hornsby recalled that each day more stories came out about the monster.
The monster hunt got out of hand with carloads of people coming in to try and kill it.
Sallie Ann Clarke was one of the people who claimed to have seen the monster.
She described it as 7 feet tall, with a flat-looking hairy face. Clarke, who claimed to have seen the animal four times in three years, wrote a book and sold thousands of copies on the so-called Lake Worth Monster.
Was it all an urban legend? Years after the first sighting, Marrs said police sources told him that some children from Brewer High School confessed and admitted they had paraded around in a gorilla costume and mask. - myfoxfw
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During 1969, there was a creature spotted by many people near the area of Lake Worth in Texas. The creature was described by many as a monster, "half goat half man". Some believe it was nothing more than a prankster, while others believe it was a real living being.
The story starts on July 10, when a man named John Reichart, his wife and two other couples went to a police station in Fort Worth. The police officers there noticed the people were so shaken up that they decided to investigate their story. The witnesses told the police while they were near the lake, a big creature jumped out at them and got on top of their car. They described the being as having scales and white hair, looking like a "half man, half goat" creature.
When the police went to the scene of this incident, there was nothing found. However, there was an eighteen inch scratch on the side of the car that the alleged monster jumped onto. The couples said the scratch was not on the car, before the incident happened. About 24 hours later there was another sighting of the lake worth monster.
About twenty four hours after the first sighting, a man named Jack Harris was driving near the Lake Worth Nature Center and said a creature walked right in his path. He said the creature was going up and down a hill. A crowd of forty people came and watched the mysterious beast. On this same day, the front page of the newspaper said "Fishy Man Goat Terrifies Couples Parked at Lake Worth".
During the months after this, people went looking for the lake worth monster with guns in hand. During one incident, it was claimed that the beast was shot, and a trail of blood was followed to the edge of the lake water. Another group of people looking for the creature claimed to have seen dead sheep with broken necks in the area. They say the sheep must have been killed by the beast.
It was later theorized after these events, that the lake worth monster was a bobcat. It was also thought that police might have caught pranksters with a costume, although this was never confirmed. If it was a prankster, he must have been very brave with all those people walking around with guns looking for the monster. The sightings died out in 1970, and no one has come forward to claim that they hoaxed the sightings. - Jerome Clark, "Unexplained!" 1993
Monsters of Texas
Monster Files: A Look Inside Government Secrets and Classified Documents on Bizarre Creatures and Extraordinary Animals
Monster Diary: On the Road in Search of Strange and Sinister Creatures
American Monsters: A History of Monster Lore, Legends, and Sightings in America
