Beware of the Goat Man

“The way I remember it is there was a goat farmer back in the late 1940s who went to school in Plano,” said Kenny Smith, a former Plano resident who works at a radio station in Tyler. “Evidently he had a herd of goats and teenagers went onto his land and decapitated [them]. It screwed him up bad enough where there were incidents in 1950 [in which] a couple teenagers disappeared. It even got to the point where there were kids that were drowning in the creek where Dublin Road crossed at the time. Legend has it this farmer possibly could have been responsible for all these freakish disappearances and these problems with these teenagers around that time.”

Smith said the story eventually grew and infiltrated the high school, and high school athletes began using “Goat Man’s Bridge” for initiation purposes.

“If you had the [guts] to not believe the legend or myth about those specific happenings, then you could spend the night on the bridge,” he said. “I never heard of anyone who was stupid [enough] to do that. … If you spent a night on the bridge the ghost of the Goat Man would get you.”

The bridge, which was allegedly near where Plano East High School was built in 1981, was torn down, but the legend of Goat Man lives on in various forms.

“There was a story of a Goat Man at Los Rios,” said Tony Martin in a Facebook post. “We were told if we trespassed on the golf course that this half-goat, half-man would chase you and throw horse apples at you. He was a child of the former owners of the property when it was a farm. Supposedly several kids who tried it had died - don’t let the Goat Man catch you.”

Barbie Oliver corroborated Martin’s story and detailed her own personal encounter with the urban legend.

“He was half-man, half-goat, and lived in the woods behind Bob Woodruff Park,” said Barbie Oliver. “We snuck out one night and went there. There was something out there. We swear to this day we saw him. If it wasn’t him, someone was out there trying to scare us. We found a dead goat and got the hell out of there.

“The story is that he lived there before Los Rios was built. Like [Martin] said, his family owned the land and he wouldn’t leave after his parents died, and the land was sold for development. He roamed those woods at night and if you were caught out there after dark you would never be heard from again. There were rumors of several missing people that were last known going to that area after dark. All I know is I was a believer after that night - never would I even drive that way at night.”

Goat Man may be Plano’s most popular urban legend, but Russ Kissick, co-director and co-founder of the Plano Conservancy for Historic Preservation Inc., recalled a story about a ghostly Interurban railway passenger.

“The way I understand it, there was a woman who came in here and said she always liked riding on the Interurban [which closed down at the end of 1948],” Kissick said. “She and her mother always took the Interurban down to Dallas, and she said she loved riding on this one car because there was always this woman [with a] witch hat with little zodiac things. As a child she thought it was so neat because the woman would give her a little token when she got on.

“Later on, we had a [paranormal group] come in here and I was just joking and said, ‘Is this place haunted?’ She said, ‘Well, not haunted, but I get an impression of a woman dressed with a witch’s hat and some kind of zodiac sign.’”

Another ghost story details an encounter with “Jonathan,” a friendly ghost who frequents the area surrounding the Plano Mutual Cemetery.

“One night when it was storming, [my friend] went to the door to let in her dog, Bear,” said Janis Allman. “There was lightning that lit up the backyard and there stood Jonathan. Her German Shepherd ran right through him.”

Allman said her friend spoke with several neighbors, and ones with young children said Jonathan was a friendly ghost who would talk to the kids.

Historically accurate or not, Plano’s folklore will undoubtedly continue to be passed down through generations to come.