This monster is rumored to haunt an abandoned train track in the Kentucky wilderness.
You've probably heard the fairy tale about the troll under the bridge, but have you heard of the creature at Owl Creek? This monster is rumored to haunt an abandoned train track in the Kentucky wilderness.
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Artwork by Tyler Grobowsky.
This is an REI Co-op production
Pope Lick Creek. That’s a funny name for a creek. Not much of a creek, either-- it only runs for a few miles, south of Louisville, Kentucky. Just before the little creek empties into Floyd’s Fork it’s crossed by an old, high, single-track railroad trestle. People call it the Pope Lick Trestle. Funny name for a trestle. But other than the name, there’s nothing funny about it. There is something deadly up on the Pope Lick Trestle. It has a call that will shake you to your core, and if you’re on the trestle when you see it, it’s already too late to run.
This isn’t a legend, though, and it has nothing to do with the supernatural. The Pope Lick Trestle is a deadly place… because visitors don’t realize that it still carries a busy freight line. The stories people tell about some kind of goat-man creature haunting the bridge will be the least of your worries when a fully-loaded freight train is barreling down at you on a high trestle just barely wide enough for the track, with its headlight blinding you and the sound of its desperate horn reverberating in your chest. At least once every few years somebody gets caught by a train on that trestle and killed, out there looking for the “Pope Lick Monster”.
But there is no monster at Pope Lick. There never was. That story originated somewhere entirely different, a much more remote place about eighty miles to the east. We’re going to tell the original story, a story that starts on a little railroad bridge that really is abandoned. It’s a lonely little bridge and I hope… I hope once you hear this story that you’ll leave it lonely. There’s nothing that you’d want to see there, no earthly reason to go and… nothing good has ever come of the place. We’ll tell this tale as a warning, then-- a warning about the rare sort of spot that can fill even a bright, hot, sunny day with the chill of something old and dark... and evil.
This is the Camp Monsters podcast.
The wild places of this country are haunted by mysterious creatures-- creatures you might only have heard whispers of. Every week we’ll amplify those whispers: tell old tales, relate recent encounters, and share all the strange stories that you ought to know about the wilderness you love to visit.
These are just stories, of course. They’re based on things people claim to have seen and heard and felt, but then… witnesses can be mistaken. Listen to these stories and decide for yourself-- they couldn’t be true… could they?
I know one thing that is true-- Kentucky is the prettiest place you probably never planned to visit. But aren’t you glad we did? Just look at the night we’ve found here: bright stars smiling down, familiar faces around the campfire; the feel of the big Kentucky River down there through the trees.
It’s almost too warm for this little fire-- fall is still just a rumor you might only feel in a breeze right before dawn. I’ll bet tomorrow’s going to be another bright, hot, lazy day.
There’s a story they tell around here that begins and ends on a bright, hot day, with the heat of a late-summer noon running right through it. Maybe the story would be more frightening if it happened at night, but... I don’t think so. There are places that have a sort of darkness built into them. Such places are rare, and rarely found where you’d expect. But when you stumble on one, in some lonely spot in the middle of an otherwise pleasant day, you know it. You feel it. And you leave that place as quickly as you can… if you can.
There’s a railroad bridge just south of here. They call it the Owl Creek Bridge, although it doesn’t cross Owl Creek. It crosses the Kentucky River just upstream from where Owl Creek empties into it. It’s an old, old bridge with a tunnel at one end, abandoned for nobody remembers how long. It’s one of those places… one of those places that’s always seemed to have shadows around it.
In fact the shadows around Owl Creek were cast long before the bridge was ever built. Back before the dams raised the river level there was a ford on the river there, the easiest place to cross for miles around… but for some reason people preferred to go out of their way to Clay’s Ferry, or risk the high water at Boonesborough. There was something about the thick undergrowth that grew around that Owl Creek ford, something lurking in the greenish light that filtered through the leaves… Some people said it was an old hermit who had sold his soul to the devil… and become half-devil himself. In the 1840s a young doctor, taking the lonely ford as a short-cut between house calls, wrote that he was convinced the place was haunted by a satyr-- a nasty old goat-man nature spirit out of Greek myth. Other folks insisted it was just an ornery old billy goat whose bleat happened to sound like an old man’s laugh. But those same people would admit that they had never really seen the goat plainly, and that they didn’t like to use that ford themselves... and never alone.
When the railroad came in 1907 they didn’t listen to any local stories about a snickering goat-man lurking in the underbrush. They just saw an easy river crossing on the map-- they cleared the brush, blasted a tunnel through the far bank and built a bridge across the river there, right where the ford was. But there were so many problems building the bridge-- and so many accidents and derailments once it opened. Within a few years the railroad went to the trouble and expense of blasting another tunnel and building another bridge just a bit further south, and they transferred the main line down there. The old Owl Creek Bridge was left to stain the rain with its rust and... collect strange stories. Places that collect strange stories have an attraction to some people.
It was in late summer, some years ago, when two kids went out to the bridge. If you’re young, or if you’ve ever been young, you remember what late summer is like. The days so long and hot and you’ve done all the good fun things twelve times already. Some kids just sigh and try the good fun things for a thirteenth time, but… other kids look for fun that isn’t quite so good.
DJ and Reggie were good kids gone bored. They’d never been out to Owl Creek Bridge and it had seemed like an exciting way to spend an afternoon-- or at least kill some of the summer monotony. But now that they were here, standing at the mouth of the old tunnel, DJ cracked an uneasy smile. A breath of cool damp from the darkness chilled the sweat on his arms. The steady stream of talk that Reggie had kept up as they’d pushed through the bushes had died away, and here at the entrance to the tunnel they each waited for the other to start forward.
It wasn’t a long tunnel. They could see the sunny green of leaves on the other side-- but between here and there was a blackness with no bottom. It was such a bright day it seemed the sun should shine a little further along the tunnel than it did, but... it didn’t. The little they could see of the floor was lumped with debris from small cave-ins of the fragile limestone roof and walls. Not a safe place to be.
But wasn’t that the point? After all, they were going to an abandoned railroad bridge in search of a monster-- DJ looked at Reggie and tried to widen his smile, then stepped off into the darkness.
The tunnel echoed footsteps and breathing. Water was dripping, trickling somewhere. For three-quarters of the way through the darkness, things were alright. They tripped and slid on the uneven floor, bumped into each other, stifled nervous laughter and tried not to touch the walls for fear of bringing down more rocks. But just as DJ quickened his pace to reach the first light from the other side, he heard a voice close at his ear:
“Shhhh!”
He looked over and thought he saw Reggie standing there, but the blackness was so complete that as his eyes moved, the silhouette that he thought he saw beside him moved as well. He reached out where he expected Reggie to be and found nothing. Then again he heard a voice like Reggie’s:
“What was that?”
DJ wasted his most uneasy smile yet on the darkness. He wasn’t going to fall for some spooky kid trick. He squinted at where he thought Reggie must be and said, “Nooo, come on--”
“Shh!” the voice said again.
DJ waited for Reggie to go on, to start telling the tale of the Creature at Owl Creek Bridge or something, but as his eyes swirled with shapes in the darkness his ears heard only that faint trickle of water… and breathing that must be the echoes of their own. He felt his skin start to crawl, his mouth start to dry. Fear started to creep through his defenses. Before it could reach his voice he scoffed and said, “Whatever,” and stumbled toward the light, fully prepared for Reggie to jump on him out of the darkness.
DJ heard the running footsteps approaching from behind, echoing. He braced himself for the impact, for the “scare”... but it never came. Reggie sprinted past him in silence, not even looking at him, running as fast as he could run over the uneven floor, faster than seemed possible without tripping and sprawling on the sharp limestone. It was the most frightening thing Reggie could have done. And now in the echoes of the tunnel there seemed to sound another set of footsteps racing up on DJ from out of the blackness behind him, and without thinking or uttering a sound he found himself sprinting to catch up with Reggie, sprinting faster than he thought he could go without tripping and--
As DJ flew through the air and scraped to a stop through the dust and jagged rocks just outside the tunnel, he turned his body to face the echoes of the footsteps that were chasing him, and swung his eyes up to see-- nothing. Darkness down the length of the tunnel to the green light where they’d come from. Silence, now that the echo of his own footsteps had faded.
He sat and stared down that tunnel for a long time, craning his neck this way and that to sweep the light from the far end across the shadows that filled the tunnel, straining his ears for any sound other than that faint drip of water. He rubbed his knees and elbows and the side of his chin where the rocks had skinned him when he fell. Once the fear had subsided enough for him to look away from the tunnel, he glanced around to see where Reggie was.
Reggie was nowhere. The brush on this side of the tunnel was thick, bushes growing on the old rail grade up to the mouth of the tunnel and little trees crowding in on either side. The light through the leaves was green and the air was tremendously hot and still. The insects sang out of sight.
“Reg!” DJ called. No answer, no movement. Some of the closest insects quieted for a moment, then started their songs again. “Reg!” Nothing.
It’s terrible to be stuck on the wrong side of a prank. If DJ went back into the tunnel Reg would try to scare him in there, plus tell everyone that he’d turned and run away from the bridge. If he started out onto the bridge alone-- well, that was obviously what Reggie wanted him to do. But if this was the game Reggie wanted to play… DJ was forming a plan of his own to play it.
There was a little trail, probably made by animals, that slipped down the slope of ballast-- the little rocks that made up the rail bed-- right where the bridge met the hillside. DJ followed it down the side of the bridge, then ducked under the big steel plate and paused, letting his eyes adjust to the shadows under the bridge. It was perfect for the plan he had in mind. He moved a little further in, to where he could see up through the ties and reach to grab a leg when Reggie got tired of waiting and wandered out onto the bridge.
DJ stood there, his nose filled with the smell of hot creosote from the old rail ties baking in the sun. He kept brushing his hands across his arms to combat that tickle of imaginary cobwebs you get in dusty, still places. He glanced down the hill behind him, half expecting to see Reggie slip under the bridge too. These glances grew more and more frequent as that feeling crept up on him… that feeling you get when you sense someone sneaking toward you. You’re never sure what it is that tips you off, what triggers that primeval warning, but-- have you ever noticed how often that feeling is right?
All at once DJ knew where it was coming from. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but as his eyes adjusted to the dimness he saw that there was another, deeper darkness further under the bridge, beyond where the ties let the light through from above. The earth levelled out and continued back into where the bridge met the hillside, creating a dark little chamber. And DJ knew- just knew- that Reggie was in there, hiding, waiting to hear DJ start walking across the bridge above so that he could sneak out and scare him. Well well.
Silently now! DJ eased slowly against one of the bridge piers that framed the blackness within the chamber. His heart was pounding like he was the one about to be scared, rather than the one who was going to do the scaring. He tensed his body, leaning against the pillar at the side of the opening, and for a moment he had the crazy feeling that Reggie or… or something was going to jump out right now, just before he jumped in--
“Aaaa!” DJ jumped into the dark gap and staggered forward, reaching out, ready to throw his arms around the shouting Reggie and yell and laugh and push him over, and feel the tension go. But Reggie wasn’t there. And the dark little space was… not… quite… empty.
There was a smell… something was in there, or-- had been there, had been crouching in that darkness, living there in its own dark thick smell. There were sticks-- brush, little branches that DJ stumbled on, not fresh but not old, crushed: slept on. It was a den of some kind, of some animal, some… some creature, and he couldn’t see the walls, couldn’t see how far back it went or what was in there with him, until… until he sensed movement. He turned to run, blindly, but then-- then right in front of his face there was another face.
A hideous, twisted face; snuck up on him, pressing forward, pushing him back into the dark den. The face was screwed up into an unnatural smile and just as the shock wore off enough for DJ to realize that the face belonged to Reggie, the mouth split open and uttered a loud laugh that didn’t sound like Reggie at all-- “HA!” And then Reggie pushed DJ back into the darkness.
DJ tripped on the sticks and brush and fell into the middle of them. That thick, sour, animal smell rose up from the nest as he landed on it. He could feel little things scurry and scuttle away beneath him as he rolled and struggled, trying to scramble to his feet. The sticks and brush felt slimy under him at first, but as he rose and pulled his hands away strands of slick hair came up with them and he recognized the den wasn’t covered in slime but matted in greasy, whispy, long, pale gray hairs. He shouted and recoiled and crawled and ran out of the place. Reggie was nowhere to be seen as DJ scrambled out from under the bridge and ran back up onto the rail bed, shaking his hands and trembling in his whole body. He trembled in fear and rage, but when he saw Reggie running out across the old bridge, rage got the upper hand. He followed, as fast as all the adrenaline in his body could hurl him.
It would have been very wise for Reggie to keep running. DJ was expecting that-- he couldn’t wait to catch up to him, to grab Reggie by his collar from behind, to pull him back and down and feel him twist and tumble, and then pay him back good. So when Reggie stopped, right in the middle of the bridge, and stepped calmly over to the edge, and stood there looking out over the river below, DJ wasn’t quite sure what to do. It would be cowardly to shove him off. He wanted to fight him, but not out in the middle of this bridge. DJ stopped and shouted, “Hey!”, and waited for Reggie to turn around.
“Hey!” And then Reggie did turn around. But when he did… DJ didn’t want to fight him anymore. That smile was still on Reggie’s face-- that smile so big and tight it looked painful, almost hiding eyes that didn’t seem to hold any Reggie in them at all. Something was wrong, and for the first time DJ felt-- not startled as he had in the tunnel, or scared and disgusted like under the bridge-- but a deep, creeping, insensible fear. The need to leave, be gone, disappear from this place at any cost, to get away from-- not from his friend Reggie, but from whatever had happened to Reggie. To get away before it happened to him too.
Reggie stepped forward menacingly and DJ took a quick step back and tripped over one of the old rail spikes. He stumbled back a few steps and fell, smacking his head hard against a steel girder at the other edge of the bridge. There was a tremendous flash of light and a sound like a bell exploding, and when the world slowly came back into focus DJ was staring up at the sky. Steel trusses were holding the sky up, and they were rusty-- DJ was worried the whole thing might collapse. The sun was in full eclipse. But no: now he remembered. He was on a bridge, on the old Owl Creek Bridge, and there was something here he had to get away from. Why was he laying down?
And what was that blocking the sun? Not one of the rusty steel trusses, but sticking out like the head of someone standing on the old structure above them, looking down. A shaggy head, with long grey hairs haloing the sun. Just then the head moved and the face snapped into DJ’s focus: a leering, twisted, grinning face, with square yellow teeth too large for a man’s. The face seemed to be laughing maliciously at him but DJ couldn’t hear the sound.
And then there was another face, in front of that hideous one. It was Reggie’s face, twisted into an empty grinning mask mirroring the face above. DJs mind wasn’t clear-- his neck was wedged up against a rusted beam, awkwardly, vulnerably. Reggie’s foot came up and hovered for a moment over DJ’s head. DJ looked into Reggie’s vacant eyes and knew that he wasn’t in control of what he was about to do. DJ was helpless-- the only thing he could think of was point up at the face on top of the truss behind Reggie’s shoulder and shout: “Look!”
Reggie stopped, and there was a flicker behind the slits of his eyes. Then he slowly turned and looked, and when his eyes met those of the creature DJ heard two sounds, suddenly and incredibly loud: the screams of his friend Reggie, and the vicious laughter of the creature above. In the next instant Reggie leapt, clear over DJ and off the bridge, and the creature’s laughter became so loud in DJ’s head that he pulled himself onto his knees and clutched his hands over his ears-- this did nothing, if anything the laughter became louder. So he threw himself sideways and tumbled off the bridge himself.
It’s a long fall off the Owl Creek Bridge into the Kentucky River below, long enough to make your whole body burn where it smacks the surface of the water. Long enough to send you deep enough that you wonder if you’ll ever come up again. But then you do, and you’re floating, and you’re alright. The boys lost their shoes to the river, and let themselves go away downstream awhile before they swam to the far shore. They pulled themselves out onto the bank and sat there wet and panting in the sun, looking at each other. Then Reggie said, “What happened?” He didn’t remember anything after the tunnel. DJ just shook his head.
Once they’d dried out a bit, the two climbed through the woods and made their way back to town. Reggie started rattling on, chatting just like he always did, talking about the heat stroke that he figured he must have got on the way to the bridge and bugging DJ about how they ended up in the river with their clothes on. Once they made it to the road and started walking along with the cars whizzing by and the sun streaming down, everything that had happened at the bridge began to seem more and more unreal-- incredible. DJ was beginning to wonder if he’d been the one with heat stroke-- if maybe he’d dreamed the whole thing-- when Reggie reached over and plucked at the back of DJ’s shirt. “Whoa, who have you been hanging out with?” Reggie leered, holding up a couple strands of long, pale gray, greasy-looking hair.
Maybe tomorrow we’ll rent some kayaks, go out on the river. It’s a beautiful stretch along here. We’ll see birds and snapping turtles, and if we want to paddle upstream a bit past the old power station we’ll go under a rusted old railroad bridge, right there by Owl Creek. You can’t see the mouth of the tunnel from the river, it’s all overgrown. But I wouldn’t recommend getting out to explore. Kentucky may be the prettiest place you never planned to visit, but now that we’re here there are still a few spots you shouldn’t want to go to. There are places under the trees that stay pretty dark, even on the brightest summer day.
Well. Here’s a bucket. We’d better put the last of these coals out. Would you mind heading down to the river? Hmm? Oh… well... I’ll go if you go. OK, let’s go together.
Camp Monsters is part of the REI podcast network. Stick around for a second and we’ll listen to a little bit of next week’s story-- you’ll want to hear a little bit now... So you can prepare yourself. And if you’ve been warmed by our campfire, please take a second to rate, review, comment and share. It really is you spreading the word that keeps us recording. Thank you.
Next week we’ll be relaxing on a beach. Sun, sand, waves: and we have the whole place to ourselves, not another soul around… except… is that… is that a person over there, or…?
Camp Monsters is recorded around a digital campfire in the Overcast Room of Cloud Studios in Seattle, Washington. Find them at Cloud Studios Seattle dot com. The campfire was lit and is guarded by our very own legendary creature, our producer Chelsea Davis. All the sparks of audio magic are stirred up by our engineer, Nick Patri. The stories are written and told by yours truly, Weston Davis. Thanks for coming. See you next week.