It began with an incident that sounds like a scene from a 1960s B-movie. John Reichart and his wife Linda were down by the shore of Lake Worth, an artificial lake which serves as a reservoir for the nearby Fort Worth, Texas community, in the early morning hours of July 10, 1969. John was hoping to do some night-fishing while Linda sat in the passenger seat of their parked car, reading a book. Suddenly John heard Linda scream and, rushing back to see what happened, was confronted with the sight of a large, man-like monster covered in white fur trying to get at his wife through the window. John jumped in the driver’s seat and the two quickly sped away.
John initially described the creature as resembling the mythical satyr, so the Lake Worth Monster also came to be known as the Greer Island Goatman. In recent years more attention has begun to be paid to these extremely localized cryptid cases, especially as the attending communities seek to capitalize off them with tourist attractions and festivals. Texas-based researcher Lyle Blackburn has emerged as the preeminent authority on such incidents, having previously authored excellent books on the Fouke Monster of southern Arkansas, the Lizardman of Bishopville, South Carolina, and Momo the Missouri Monster.
Being a native of Fort Worth, it was only a matter of time before Blackburn turned his attention to the Lake Worth Monster, the subject of his latest book — and now the definitive document on this legend — Lake Worth Monster: The True Story of the Greer Island Goatman (LegendScape Publishing, 2024).
Meticulously researched via primary sources found in the archives of the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge, the University of North Texas, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Blackburn has assembled a comprehensive, albeit brief (less than 200 pages), survey of the Fort Worth Monster flap of 1969, complete with copious black and white photos, illustrations by artist Jonathan Dodd, and maps of the area.
As Blackburn explains, the police were initially skeptical of the Reicharts’ story until two other couples showed up at the café that same morning, claiming to have also seen the creature. Word quickly got around, a piece appeared in that day’s edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and by the evening as many as 200 people – plus the local TV news – were on the shore of Lake Worth, looking for the alleged monster.
What Blackburn’s uncovered is that, while no one else at the lake that night claims to have seen the creature, nearly everyone seems to have known someone who knew someone who did.
What everyone did see, though, was a truck’s spare tire, which came careening out of the nearby woods and into the crowd. A picture of the offending tire appears in the book and legend says it was tossed at the trespassers by the monster, though Blackburn acknowledges it could have just as easily been rolled into the crowd by some mischievous teens – more on that later.
After this initial 24 hours of excitement, the Fort Worth Monster would have likely been forgotten, if not for local aspiring romance novelist Sallie Ann Clarke. Having read about the monster in the newspaper, Clarke hatched the plan to self-publish a book about the creature. Remarkably, this was accomplished within a week, allowing Clarke to capitalize on the zeitgeist and sell as many as 1,000 copies, which financed a vacation to Australia.
Clarke’s opus has also become the canonical version of the Lake Worth Monster’s story for subsequent cryptozoologists, with her role as a local often being touted as an indicator of her reliability. The problem with this, Blackburn notes, is that Clarke’s book intentionally mixes fact and fiction, including manufacturing her own sighting of the creature. Even stranger is that upon her return from Australia, Clarke claimed to have “actually” seen the monster not just once, but a total of five different times, on two occasions having fed it!
One of the people who read Clarke’s book was 22-year-old Allen Plaster, who subsequently began patrolling the shore of Lake Worth with a Polaroid camera. Four months later, on the night of November 19, Plaster took one of the all-time great blurry photos of cryptozoology. Curiously, he gave the photo to Clarke, and though it’s readily available online today, her family refused to allow Blackburn permission to reproduce it for his book. The only other alleged photo of the monster was taken by another young man named Bobby Brooks, who just so happened to be Clarke’s illustrator. This equally ambiguous photo does appear in Lake Worth Monster: The True Story of the Greer Island Goatman.
Plaster’s Lake Worth Monster photo
Blackburn spends several chapters of the book looking at the modern American folklore of “goatmen” in Texas and elsewhere, ultimately concluding that such creatures should be regarded as urban legends. He’s also careful to note that while the Lake Worth Monster has a few similarities to such creatures, it also possesses key differences — the most striking being the lack of a fanciful origin story.
Picking up on an observation made by Maryland historian and folklorist Mark Opsasnick, Blackburn also explores the possibility that the Lake Worth Monster could be a variation of the nationwide Bigfoot phenomenon, which was in full swing at the time, with the infamous Patterson–Gimlin film having been released just two years prior.
Then there’s the possibility that the whole affair was a hoax, or maybe a kind of communal practical joke. Blackburn dedicates an entire chapter to documenting the numerous individuals who’ve come forward over the years claiming to have either been the Fort Worth Monster, or to have known the people responsible for the sightings. While none of these claims have been verified, and some even stretch credulity as much as the idea of six-foot-tall, albino goatman, the fact that so many people have wanted to claim credit suggests a community in love with a good prank, just as much as a good monster yarn.
AIPT Science is co-presented by AIPT and the New York City Skeptics.
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