The Pope Lick Monster and the Trestle That Keeps Killing

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated October 16, 2026 · How we verify

No ghost in this guide has a body count quite like the Pope Lick Monster. The creature is said to live under a railroad trestle that carries freight trains over Pope Lick Creek in the Fisherville neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky, and the stories told about it are the ordinary stuff of regional folklore: a goat-headed thing, a circus performer gone wrong, a voice calling your name from the dark. What is not folklore is the trestle itself. It is a working piece of railroad infrastructure, it is 772 feet long, and people keep dying on it.

Quick Facts on the Pope Lick Trestle

• Location: over Pope Lick Creek, Fisherville neighborhood, Louisville, Kentucky
• Also known locally as the Goat Man
• Trestle length: 772 feet (235 m)
• Height above the creek: roughly 90 feet
• Status: active rail line, crossed by heavy freight trains several times daily
• Owner: Norfolk Southern Railway, which has an 8-foot fence in place to keep people off
• Deaths and injuries recorded at the site: several, including four fatalities tied directly to the legend

Four Stories About Where the Goat Man Came From

There is no single origin story, which is usually a sign that a legend grew by retelling rather than from one documented incident. The accounts collected around Fisherville describe the creature as part man, part goat and part sheep, and they disagree about everything else.

• The circus freak. In the most widely repeated version, the monster is a human-goat hybrid who was exhibited and mistreated, and who vowed revenge.
• The derailment. A variant holds that the creature escaped after a train derailed on the trestle.
• The farmer’s bargain. A version told commonly by locals makes the monster the twisted reincarnated form of a farmer who sacrificed goats in exchange for Satanic powers.
• The thing that was simply always there. Plenty of tellings skip the backstory entirely and keep only the silhouette under the bridge.

None of these is a historical record. They are stories, and they contradict each other in ways that are worth noticing before you treat any of them as evidence.

How the Legend Says the Goat Man Takes People

The methods attributed to the creature are as varied as its origins. Some accounts say it uses hypnosis or mimics a familiar voice to draw trespassers out onto the trestle, timing the lure so that they are stranded when a train arrives. Others describe it dropping from the bridge onto the roofs of cars passing underneath. In another telling it attacks with a blood-stained axe. One strand of the legend claims the sight of the creature is so unsettling that anyone who meets it partway across the high trestle is driven to jump.

Local accounts add glowing red eyes to the description. All of this belongs in the category of reported experience and retold story. There is no verified sighting, and the consistent through line in every version, the part that holds up, is the trestle and the train.

The Trestle Is Not Abandoned, and That Is the Whole Problem

A common misconception has it that the bridge is disused. It is not. The structure carries a major rail artery into Louisville, and heavy freight trains cross it several times daily. That single fact explains most of what has gone wrong here. The deck gives you nowhere to go. A long train takes five to seven minutes to clear the 772-foot span, and the vibration as it passes is strong enough to shake the ground beneath the bridge, which makes the popular idea of simply hanging off the side and waiting it out far less survivable than it sounds.

Norfolk Southern Railway has urged people not to climb the trestle and has said that anyone caught on it will be arrested. An 8-foot fence stands at the approach. People go over it anyway.

The Deaths at Pope Lick Creek

Several people have died on or near the trestle in pursuit of the legend. These are the documented cases, and they are the reason this entry carries a warning rather than an invitation.

• 1988: Jack “J.C.” Charles Bahm II, 17, was struck and killed by a train while trying to cross the trestle. Another young man was injured.
• 1994: A man was killed by a train after his ATV overturned on the trestle and trapped him on the track.
• 2000: A 19-year-old man fell to his death after encountering a train.
• April 23, 2016: Roquel Bain, a 26-year-old tourist from Ohio, was hit by a train and killed while searching for the monster. Her boyfriend survived by hanging on the side of the trestle.
• May 26, 2019: Savanna Bright, 15, was pronounced dead at the scene after she and another teenage girl, Kaylee Keeling, were on the tracks near the trestle. Keeling survived and was taken to University of Louisville Hospital.

The 2016 case is the one that gets cited most often, because the victim had traveled from out of state specifically because of the story. That is legend tripping with a fatal outcome, and the trestle has produced more than one.

Ron Schildknecht’s Film and the Railroad’s Objection

In 1988 the Louisville filmmaker Ron Schildknecht made a 16-minute short called The Legend of the Pope Lick Monster, produced for $6,000. It premiered on December 29, 1988, at the Uptown Theater. Most of it was shot at the Pope Lick Trestle, though the scenes showing characters up on the bridge were filmed at a safer location.

Norfolk Southern officials were angry about the film, believing it would encourage teenagers to visit the trestle. They singled out one scene in which the high school protagonist narrowly escapes an approaching train by hanging off the side of the bridge, a maneuver few people could actually sustain for the several minutes a long train takes to pass. Worried that the film would add to the death toll, the railroad issued a statement that was read aloud at the premiere, warning of the trestle’s dangers and telling the audience that anyone caught on it could be prosecuted for trespassing.

The monster has also appeared on television, in an episode of Destination America’s Monsters and Mysteries in America titled “Ozarks.”

Seeing Pope Lick Without Getting on the Tracks

The honest advice here is short. Do not climb the trestle. It is fenced, it is patrolled, climbing it is a trespassing offense, and the people who have died doing it were, in most cases, doing exactly what a first-time visitor would be tempted to do.

The surrounding parkland offers trails and views, and the bridge can be seen and photographed from the ground without stepping onto railroad property. That is the whole of the experience that is available to visit legally, and given the record at this site, it is the only version worth having.

See Pope Lick Monster for Yourself

Sources

• Pope Lick Monster
• Monstro Bizarro: Monsters & Mysteries in America
• Three Louisville-area monster legends for Halloween
• Legend of the Pope Lick Monster
• The Bizarre Legend of Louisville KY's 'Pope Lick Monster'
• Wikipedia: Pope Lick Monster

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