Paranormal Persuasion

In the debut episode of the Mondo Bizarro podcast, your hosts take you through some paranormal experiences, why they are believers, some local legends as well as a listener submitted story!

Welcome to Mondo Bizarro, it's a weird world, someone's got to talk about it.

Music Credits - 

RAMONES - Motorhead

Metal Metal Land - Gwar

All music appears respective of their labels and owners, usage under fair use act. Mondo Bizarro is a copyrighted entity and none of the content may be used for, with or in conjunction to train AI in any way shape or form.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right, and let's get going. Thank you for tuning in to the very first episode of Mondo Bizarro. I'm your host, Thick Nick, and I'm accompanied by Andrew. Say hello, Andrew. Hello, everyone. All right, man. We are going to be talking about some paranormal shit today. We got a couple stories lined up. I've got a user-submitted story, and thank you to everybody that had submitted stories. For a second, it was slow, and then I was inundated with stories. So we are set for like the next month, but keep sending them in. You can send them in to contact at mondobizarropodcast.com. And every episode I want to feature one or two of them, uh, depending on how they fit and the length. So just let me know if you want to remain anonymous or what information you need me to omit or change, just whatever makes you feel comfortable. So today we're gonna be getting into some cool paranormal and maybe some cryptid stuff too, man. Um Andrew and I both have some experience in in this uh in this realm. So I admittedly, man, I was a chicken shit kid. I was terrified of everything. Like the Todd McFarlane toys at KB Toys scared the shit out of me. The cannibal corpse albums, terrifying, okay. The dark, fuck you. I still don't like being in the dark, man. When I was a kid, my nightlight had a nightlight, okay. I well, I was not about it. So things like aliens and Bigfoot ghosts and all that kind of shit, I I had zero belief in anything like that. I was like, this is stuff that Hollywood has come up specifically to scare the shit out of people. That's it. When I started getting a little older though, and started realizing that there are like animals that we're just now discovering or have yet to discover for that matter, uh, and how little we actually know about the planet, and we how we just kind of infer and guess what it is that we think we know, like the ocean. Right. Uh and like just learning about what how biology works. I'm like, okay, hold on a second. So you're telling me that there is a percentage, at least a percentage, that a hairy, eight-foot-tall man lives in the woods somewhere potentially could be an ape. We don't know.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

Like I mean, it's 2026.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Anything is possible. Anything is possible, man. So as I got older, I started, you know, going, man, there's a aliens could exist. This could be a thing. And as an adult, after having experienced certain things, and just the government recently coming out and saying, Oh, yeah, dude, aliens, fuck yeah. We just we just didn't want to bring it up until now. Well, okay. Um I'm glad that my childhood fears were correct. Like that's that's that's pleasant. So what's what uh what what was your paranormal journey? How did you like discover the paranormal? What what brought you into that?

SPEAKER_03 3:40

So growing up, I was afraid of a lot of things similar to you. I was afraid of the dark. Um aliens. I believed in aliens as a kid. Um I probably saw signs a little too early. Oh yeah. But where I got started was about 2001, I wanna say. I can't remember exactly when it was, what year it was, but um we had been living in this house for about oh two and a half, three years. I was twelve, maybe thirteen at the time. And recently had just come home from an inpatient facility because I am neurodivergent and I was having issues as a child and into my teenage years. And so my mom had this entertainment center. That thing was about six and a half feet tall, it was about three feet wide, it was jet black, it had speaker enclosures that we turned into uh knick-knack shelves, uh, it had all kinds of shelving on it. It was it was a really cool entertainment center. We loved that thing. But standing alone on top of that entertainment center was a porcelain doll with brown hair, pale features, and a pink and white uh dress. And to this day, we don't know where that doll came from. But at some point I began to hear voices, one specific voice talking to me, telling me things, telling me to do things, telling me what other people were saying, so on and so forth. And eventually, over time, it got worse, it got more aggressive, it got, dare I say, violent. And I didn't know how to explain it to anybody. And so this went on I want to say about six months or so. Um the family was constantly fighting, me, my brother, my mom. We were constantly getting into it with each other over the smallest things. We were perpetually angry. None of us were having were getting any sleep. And it was an all-around just awful situation. So after this time, we started doing my mom started doing some research and looking into some things, and what we learned and what we discovered was that somewhere in our home there was a demon. We didn't know where it came from, we didn't know how it came to be. Um I do know its name, which I will not say out loud, because to this day it still frightens me. But it got to the point where we called in a priest to essentially exercise the house. And he brought in someone with him. There was two of them total. And they went from room to room, starting on the o on the back end of the house where the bedrooms were, and they basically went through, blessed each room, and anointed each room, entries, exits, all of that. And then they got to the living room, which was the final room to do. And things got real dark, things got real heavy, the the air was it was bad. And come to find out whatever it was was inhabiting that doll. And so they blessed the doll, it was locked into a box, and it was removed from the home. And ever since then, I was like, Yeah, I get it.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Yeah, that's that dude, that's fucked. I mean, that's that is a crash course into there are things beyond which we can see and comprehend that. And I mean, it's you're living your own conjuring, you know what I mean? Like that's that's that's hard. That's harsh. You know, I that's I'm I'm lucky enough that my kind of my big paranormal experience uh w while it was uh terrifying, uh it it's not as um harmful as as a demon, you know what I mean? It it could have been, but it it didn't. Um you know, like growing up, you know, we I would watch like um oh, what was that show with Lunar Nimoy? Um not Star Trek, but the it was like uh fuck. Like the unexplained or something like that. Um I'd watch that, anything on sci-fi channel, you know, stuff, you know, just the paranormal shit. And I always thought it was cool, but I never really experienced anything. And I kept thinking as like a teenager, I'm like, you know how cool it would be to be able to tell people like, oh yeah, man, I saw a fucking UFO. Um and because I, you know, it's I I would watch stuff about like the Mothman, right? And how people are were afraid to come forward and say, hey, I saw this thing. Dude, fuck that. I would be running up and down the street being like, you guys are not gonna fucking believe this, but I saw the mothman. Like, I get it, like the 50s and the 60s were a substantially different time for people, and the odds of you saying, Yeah, I saw a giant humanoid moth, you know, chase down our car in West Virginia, you're probably going to end up in an asylum. Now it's different. But um, so for the longest time, I just was like, God, I want to have an experience like this. And uh one of my friends that I uh used to hang out with and and lived with at one point, um, Taylor, who, if you're listening, shout out my boy. Um, he and I were we uh we are uh extremely close, and we would uh go to family reunions together. So like I would go to his family reunions, and it was just like, oh yeah, that's you know, Taylor's stepbrother, Nick. Fuck it. And his family's from Oklahoma, which it for those to kind of help make sense of all that and why that's important, we live in Texas, so it's you know, right there, just across the Red River. And we had a family reunion to go to. Uh, it was a Friday night. We were leaving Dallas to get to just south of McAllister, Oklahoma, uh, which is most famously known for being the home of a prison. Um uh ironically enough, that has nothing to do with this story, thank God. Um and so we we left pretty late, it was dark already, and we we got to the we were staying in cabins and we had gotten there pretty pretty late, and they his parents wanted to just go inside and go to sleep. Um I and Taylor, of course, did not. We wanted to explore. And so we across from the cabins were a it was like a little, I don't even want to say a convenience store. It was like an old school, like they sell beer and fishing bait. That's it. Like, you want some pop tarts, you're shit out of luck, man. So and of course, yeah, it's just a bait shop. So at this point, it was super closed. It's like two or three o'clock in the morning, and I was a bad kid and I smoked. So I'm like 15, 16 at the time. So we're standing outside of this closed bait shop smoking cigarettes, and Taylor decides, hey, I'm tired, I'm gonna go inside. I'm like, yeah, dude, that's fine. I'm gonna finish this cigarette and I'll be in right behind you. So I'm sitting there, I'm smoking, I'm now by myself. And I I don't want to paint the picture of there's this road and then a store and then the cabins. It's the cabins, a two-lane dirt and gravel road that's not large at all. Like if two 18-wheelers tried to pass, they're gonna hit each other, and then the bait shop. I I mean it's two or three o'clock in the morning, right? So I decide I'm gonna go stand in the middle of the road and smoke because I'm an angsty teenager, and why not? So I'm sitting there, I'm taking a drag on my cigarette, and I see off in the distance car headlights, and I'm like, oh, okay. I've got probably five minutes to move before this car gets here. So I step back to the convenience store bait shop thing, beer shack, and I wait and the car passes. It just straight from the right all the way down the road where we had come in from. I'm like, whatever, put my cigarette out, go in the cabin, go to sleep, wake up the next day. We all we're all getting dressed, get ready to go to this family reunion. We're standing out next to his dad's truck, and I'm looking, and I'm like, man, why why does this road look weird to me? And I'm I'm looking to my left, which is where that car had come from, and I realize the reason it looks weird is because that road turns to the fucking right. There's no way for you to have come straight through. It's all massive trees. So I try to explain that to Taylor and his parents, and they're like, whatever, man, we gotta go. Taylor is kind of more interested. We talk about it later, and I just kind of just pass it off. You know, could I have maybe seen things incorrectly? Was light reflecting? I don't know. I think ghost car, but that's just me. Then I mean it makes sense. Well, that's I I hope so. I mean, um later that night we get back from the uh family reunion, and we are just kind of sitting outside having a little like bonfire thing. Time goes by, everybody starts going back home, and we're gonna stay in that cabin one more night and then leave the next day. So Taylor and I are sitting in front of the cabin, just kind of looking at the bait shop because it's again like nine, ten, maybe eleven o'clock, somewhere around there. And we're sitting there smoking because we're bad kids. And um I see behind the bait shop is like a barbed wire fence for like cattle, and I see a like a Volkswagen Beetle size white mass. And I'm like, is that a fucking cow? Like, I didn't see any cows during the day or the whole time we've been back. Where did this cow come from? Nothing out of the ordinary, but my thought is I want to pet this cow. Like, I that's the only concern that I have right now. So I feel that 100%. I still feel that. Like if I see an animal, I want to pet it. Like I want to touch it. That's what I'm saying. Alligator, I'll take my chance.

SPEAKER_03 17:50

Let me love you.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

I'll take my chance.

SPEAKER_03 17:52

Well, yeah, come on now.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

So we're sitting there, and his parents decide it's it's probably close to like 11 or midnight. Now his parents say, Hey, we're going to bed, just come inside whenever. So they go inside and we're sitting there, and I decide, Taylor, I have to go pet this cow. He says, Okay, man, let's go pet the cow. We get up and we start walking over, and it looks like if you could imagine like a Volkswagen Beetle moving from horizontal to like vertical. So as long as it was long, it is now that tall. And I'm like, cows don't cows don't fucking do that. So I get a little bit closer and I'm about halfway in the the dirt gravel road, right? Taylor's three feet behind me. So if I'm halfway in the road, he's just on the grass in front of the cabin. And I start to say something out loud to Taylor, like, I don't think that's a cow, homie. And that's when it stands up what I would assume all the way, and now this thing is closer to seven or eight feet tall, and it's all white. I can see the outline of shoulders, a head, arms, legs, and I turn around to get the fuck out of there with a capital PH. And Taylor is already at the door. I mean, he had as I as it was moving, he was like, Nope, fuck you, I'm out, man. We don't even we don't even try to open the door. We both run into the door so fucking hard, it just opens. And his parents are like, what the fuck is going on? And I'm just babbling incoherently. Like I sound like fucking porky pig. I could not explain what was going on. And I finally explained to his dad, David, who was like, David was like the old school hard, like country guy, right? And I explained to him, and he's like, oh no, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Just you know, shower and go to bed. Don't worry about it. Fuck that, I'm not going to sleep, man. So I shower and I'm laying there on the floor, because that's where we opted to sleep. And I would sit up every once in a while because I'm I want to know what the fuck this thing was. Where did it go? And David sat up watching this, or not watching this thing, but just looking out the window, not having the window open, but like he would sit up and and peek out the curtain. And I'm like, okay, you believe me. You you believe me, you know something. That's that's the vibe that I got. So they we don't talk about it, and before we leave, we stop by Taylor's grandpa's house. And again, Taylor's grandpa, much older dude, grew up in Oklahoma, you know, hard country dude, right? And I'm like, you know, hey, you know, I saw this thing, and I'm trying to explain this to him, and he said, No, you didn't. And I said, No, no, no, no, I did. Taylor and I both saw it. And he said, No, you saw a cow. And I said, No, I saw it stand up. He said, Well, you probably just saw it rear up. And I was like, What no, I'm I'm trying to tell you. And he got, he raised his voice at me and he said, You didn't see anything, leave it alone. I said, Yes, sir, I'm sorry. We get home. Taylor and I are outside of his house smoking cigarettes because we're bad kids. And I'm like And I tell him, I said, hey man, you know, your dad was sitting up looking out the window. Like he he like he believed what we were saying. And then your grandpa hit his Taylor was in the room with me when I was talking to his granddad, his it and he was like, Yeah, I don't I don't know what the hell was up with that. So, God, probably almost 10 years after the fact, um, Taylor's grandpa had cancer, and I went by to visit him, and I said, Hey, I said, you know, you remember when Taylor and I were kids and and we saw that white thing, and I was just, you know, trying to just make small talk with him. And this dude shot up like he wasn't sick, and he was like, Don't you fucking talk about it? And I was that that at that point, that's when I was like, I saw something that wasn't a cow, that wasn't a bear. He said it was a bear at one point. I'm like, in fucking southern Oklahoma, sir, please. Even if it was a bear in southern Oklahoma, that's still something to write home about. Why is it there? But regardless, that is what cemented my there is uh more to the world and more to what we can see and perceive than just our everyday mundane existence uh existence. So yeah, that's uh that's that.

SPEAKER_03 23:40

So to this day you still haven't learned what it was.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Fuck no. And you know what, man? I am I am 50-50 on this because part of me is like, dude, let's fucking load up, let's get some cameras, let's get some some firepower, let's get some flashlights, some drones, some night vision. Let's let's go, let's figure out where the fuck this thing is from and what it is. And the other part of me is like, dude, I've had two people who are not afraid of a motherfucking thing who have seen some shit say, leave it alone. So you know what? Here's your side. Yeah, I've I've seen enough horror movies, I've played enough games, and I'm like, you know what? That dude who doesn't leave it alone ends up fucking dead. I'm good.

SPEAKER_03 24:38

We've all seen that movie before. Like your your your initial thought of a cow, I want to pet it. My my first reaction was like, this is gonna turn into a weird offshoot to a final destination film, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Man, you know what? Part of me, part of me is still like, I don't give a fuck if that was a goddamn Bigfoot or not. I still would have pet that some bitch.

SPEAKER_03 25:05

I just wanted to give it a high five.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

I wish I could I could say truthfully that at the at the at that moment of me seeing it stand up. Now, and let me let me just clarify something. I don't know if it was in a ditch and it was seven, eight feet tall, or if that was on flat ground, like equal to where I was, but either way, at being like Yao Ming height, I was like, could I hit that dog? I still, I still I I just for a fucking second, man. I was like, you know, I could. It may be the last thing I do, but I don't know, man. I've seen Harry in the Hendersons, like that Bigfoot's a vegetarian, right? Like, and of course I'm assuming it's a Bigfoot. It could have been fucking whatever. It could have been three guys in a suit, for all I know. This could have been a Scooby-Doo shit, like old man Jenkins, what are you doing here? But I don't know. It it's it it terrified me and enthralled me at the same time to the point of I don't want to say becoming like obsessed with the paranormal and cryptozoology, but like for the last almost 20 years, it's been a core part of my personality. Like it is it is something that's really important to me. My my kids are educated in the in that realm. They've had their own experiences. My wife is the same way. Um it's just always it's just been something that I went from being afraid of as a child to having a terrifying experience as a teenager, and I guess that fear was just so great that I went, I have to find out what it is.

SPEAKER_03 27:08

Um so I I mean it could you call that potentially an adrenaline response? Uh maybe. Or would it be it's just your inquisitive nature?

SPEAKER_01 27:25

I you know, I've I've never been a an adrenaline junkie by any means. Like I have zero fucking desire to jump out of an airplane or bungee jump or anything like that. I think what it is, is that my brain and and and having somebody with me who experienced the exact same thing at the exact same time to confirm that what I did see was what I saw. But it's it's more of a I have to know, I want to know, I want to believe. Um I I and I just like is it there's I'm a skeptic by nature. Like that's let me kind of put that out there. Um I do not just believe things because you're supposed to, or or even just taking somebody's word. Like I just I just don't. I am a skeptic. So the idea of me saying, like, do I believe Bigfoot exists? I believe that something exists that we have mistaken for Bigfoot exists, um, but it may not be what we have perceived this pop culture sasquatch to be exactly what it is. Like we we know that we have had prehistoric primates that resemble what we would call a Bigfoot, like uh the orang pindeck, um Gigantopithecus. But you know, we have had a I would say fossil record of things that are very similar to a Bigfoot existing. So it's not too far off uh for me to say, hey, the chance of this being a thing is it's possible. It may be one percent, but there's a chance. Like panda bears are somewhat recently discovered. Uh we are constantly discovering things in the ocean, so it's just not that far-fetched to me that a Bigfoot would exist, or something along the lines of a Bigfoot could exist. Um but I know I saw something. I don't know what the fuck I saw, but it was something. Um, and it stuck with me. Like that was it was like almost 20 years ago. Um 18, 18 or 20 years ago, man. And and that was it, it was it was scary, but you know, if if somebody if somebody said, hey, we will go right back to the same place and investigate, I would I would probably raise my hand and say, Yeah, let's fucking go.

SPEAKER_03 30:32

I mean fair point. I would probably jump in on that first chance I get because something I've always wanted to do is I've never actually done a ghost hunt or anything of the like. And that's something for me that I would love to have the chance to experience.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:55

You know, I've seen all all the videos, I've seen TV shows, Facebook reels, YouTube videos, and in the same instance, you know, I'm a believer, but it's also difficult to tell what's fabricated and what's not, because in those circumstances you don't know what's going on behind that camera. You don't know what's going on with the editing process, you know. And so this this is one of those things that I would love to, for me personally, be able to experience myself because I've had other experiences. And that's why I'm a believer.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Yeah. Man, I I can't remember the name of the channel, and I wouldn't throw the channel under the bus anyway, because I there are people out there who watch these paranormal channels and need to believe that these videos are real. Um, and and we don't have to dive too deep into that, but um their videos are super well done and they're very entertaining. Love watching them. Uh, but they're they're fake. They're the the people that are behind the videos are they're videographers. They are I would say masterful when it comes to editing. Um, they hide their jump cuts so well, and you know, I again it's it's part of having that skeptic brain, and it's part of the you know, if if if every ghost video was real, if every Bigfoot sighting was real, we would have a problem. Like that that would be bad. Um and then there are people out there who do make paranormal videos purely for entertainment, and they don't try to pretend that they're real, but then they get mixed in with like the top five paranormal videos to make you poop your pants, volume three compilation, and a bunch of people see this and go, oh my god, that's real. Like the Loch Ness monster did go to the Diddy party or whatever the fuck. Like when the content when it originally was being created was purely for entertainment. I've seen a lot of that. Um yeah, I mean, and and don't get me wrong, I it the entertainment factor, 100%, man. I love that shit. But it it does a lot of damage to the people that I would consider being really credible and who have had what I would consider legitimate experiences. It makes other people go, oh, yeah, no, the ghosts and Bigfoot and aliens, that's all bullshit.

SPEAKER_03 34:17

I mean, to piggyback off of what you're saying is I've got several YouTube channels that I subscribe to and that I watch myself. And some of them are uh compilation videos of videos that have been sent into them or videos that have been found online.

SPEAKER_04 34:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:38

Um there's a couple of groups that do urban exploration. There's a couple of groups that just go out in the world. And so even if it is fabricated, because I'm I'm in a similar mindset as you, to where it's like, is that real? Uh is it real? But at the same point, I've had my own experiences, I do believe in it. But it's also you finding that line between what actually happened and what has been fabricated. Right. Just for just for those views, those clicks, that entertainment. Which, again, I'm with you. I love that kind of thing. But at the same point, there are those people out there that go, that's real. No. If I watch this video all the way through, he's gonna eat me. He's gonna nibble on my toes while I sleep. You know, it's you know, there are those people out there.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Yeah, that's there's uh there's one person I watch specifically, and and and this is in a positive light, so I'll use their name. The channel is called Dead Appalachia. And this dude names Luke. Um, he goes and does like cryptid hunts and stuff like that. And I would say 90% of what he encounters is just normal creepy shit that happens in the woods. Packs of coyotes or wild boar, which are terrifying. Um, and he's up in Tennessee, so he's got bears to worry about. And you know, so are there a couple things that I that have happened that I'm like, oh, that's that's a little weird. We should investigate that further, absolutely. But more times than not, nothing really happens. It's not any less entertaining because the places he goes are really cool or beautiful. Uh he is incredibly entertaining. If you haven't watched him, Dead Appalachia on YouTube. Fantastic guy. I love his stuff so much. Um but that's that's that is kind of the reality. You go on a hundred paranormal investigations, you're maybe going to have one experience in all of those. You go looking for Bigfoot for a hundred days, you're going to maybe hear or see one thing. It's these things aren't constant. We just live in this really weird digital age of instant gratification. So if I want to see a hundred Bigfoot clips, I can find it. And we've had decades, if not a century, of people compiling every finding that they can get. So it it's hard. It makes it feel like, well, why are all these people experiencing Bigfoot? But I'm out here every weekend and I'm not. Well, we aren't seeing all the times that they haven't had an experience. We just read that one time that they did, and then people run with it. And that's we we I think inherently everybody wants to believe. I mean, why would you want to live in a world where it's just human? That's it. Human animals, done. That's it. No aliens, really, no Bigfoot, no Loch Ness monster, no uh beast of Bray Road, no Mothman, no ghosts, no goblins, no not even demons. Like you just want the only thing to that is sentient to be human and animal. That's boring as shit, man. I don't want that. I want to live in a fantastic world.

SPEAKER_03 38:56

Absolutely. I mean I want the monster under my bed to tickle my toes if I my feet hang over the side. I don't want him to not exist. That's no fun for me.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Right. That yeah, absolutely, man. Absolutely. I want I want to to have that that creepy experience. Because and and I really feel like it's only creepy because we don't understand it or we're not expecting it to happen, which I think is funny because most of the people that we see reacting like, oh my god, it's a fucking ghost. Is I'm like, dude, you went to the haunted house. You that is what you were looking for. Like your channel is called like Puxitawny Paranormal. You this is what you signed up for. Why why are you surprised that the EMF reader is going off? Like, I I don't understand that. We're gonna take a quick break here. I'm gonna play a short song. We're gonna grab some water, and then we will be right back with a couple local legends for you. We're gonna talk about some local legends. I mentioned before, real briefly, that we live in Texas. We live in North Texas, Dallas-Fort Worth area, uh, which is a massive amount of real estate. That's a lot of area. Now, there are paranormal stories from all over the state, from the Alamo to El Paso to all the way out east, uh, but we don't talk about it out there. Um, up to Amarillo. And the couple of stories I've got here are both um from the I don't man, I the best way to explain this is the the the North Texas area. Uh one of these is gonna be a little bit further west of where we are, the other is a bit north. So uh this first story, you know, admittedly, kind of trigger warning, uh, it's it's a rough story. So this first story is uh the goat man's bridge or old Alton Bridge. And if you if you live in Texas or are you're familiar with Texas folklore essentially, then you know the story. But the uh the abridged version goes like this. Oscar Washburn was a goat farmer that was affectionately named the goat man. He had fantastic goats and he was a fine businessman. Now, Oscar Washburn was a man of color, he had uh three children and a wife. Uh one night the clan showed up and wanted Washburn out. Uh, this is in Denton, Texas. Now, this is, I believe, it's 1836, I think was about the the year that I was able to find when I was doing research. Um, Washburn exited his house and he raised his shotgun in the air and fired a shot. And the clan said, Okay, we get it. And they left. Um, he went back inside, and his wife said. That you know they are not going to stop until we are dead. And uh Washburn took that as a personal challenge. So time goes by, six months, eight months, and he hears his goats bleeding frantically outside. And he runs outside and sees a man cutting the goats' throats. And uh he runs off. Washburn chases after him, runs on to Alton Bridge, and that's when he realizes that he just ran into a trap and he is completely circled by the clan, where they beat him and then hang him from the bridge. Afterwards, they leave the bridge, they go to Washburn's house where they kill his children, his wife, and then burn down his home. They left his body hanging from the bridge, and after several days, the body disappeared. And over the span of from what I was able to find the next year, one by one, each person that was involved with the murder of Washburn and his family all died. Some choked, some were in car accidents, one of them allegedly uh was uh developed cancer, an incredibly aggressive form of cancer, and died. Um now, due to the age of the bridge and the age of the story, there is nobody alive that is left to be able to verify any of this information. So, as far as we know, it is just folklore. Now, people have talked about going out there and feeling uh the sensation of being choked or pushed. People say that if you stand where his house was, you would your skin feels like it's burning. I have been out to Old Alton Bridge. This is technically it's Argyle. You can still get there. The bridge is still there, it's part of a nature trail you can walk. Um, despite the heavy graffiti that's out there, it's actually incredibly peaceful. It's very quiet. Um it's it's an intense feeling when you first get there. I went there at night with my friends because, again, I was a bad kid. Um and it's it's a little little little creepy, but then it's a very calm feeling. But I I've always kind of felt that way in outside spaces. Um it's just it's a very solemn place. Um, so I don't know if it's a true story. Um, I could not find anything. I spent a little less than a week doing research on Oscar Washburn, and I couldn't find anything definitive. Just a lot of people telling the same story with slightly different variations. Um I I hope that it's not true because that would be awful that that happened to this gentleman and his family. Um, but it's certainly not the goat man story that we are used to. Now, the goat man story that we are used to uh is more attributed to the Lake Worth monster. Um the Lake Worth monster was a cryptid that was first spotted in 1969 in Lake Worth, Texas. And they stated that they saw a half man, half goat with fur and scales, which to me sounds a little bit more than a 50-50 mix. Like the math is not mathing on that one, but it's Lake Worth, it's 1969. I don't think they were too concerned about that. So over the next summer, essentially, the local paper had reports of goat man jumping onto a guy's car from a tree. Another guy said that the monster threw a fucking tire at him, which is just wild to to to have the balls in 1969 to tell the local paper that a half man, half goat with fur and scales threw a fucking tire at me. Like, good on you, I guess, man. Um, like that's just a cryptid that just wants to fuck your shit up. Like, there's there's no like he's defending his home or or he's there for ancestral reasons. No, dude, homie just wants to throw fucking tires at people. So after 1969, things went completely quiet. There were not any sightings at all. Now, again, me and my dumbass friends, we went to Lake Worth at night to uh try to find the Lake Worth goat man, and uh there is nothing there. I can I can tell you from first hand experience. Uh it is there's nothing there. It is very quiet, it's very serene and peaceful. It's also a wonderful place to fish. Um, but the reason why there is nothing there, uh in the mid-2000s, the city of Lake Worth and Fort Worth received letters from people who were teenagers at the time, as well as one man who confessed to dressing up and uh jumping on people's cars, as well as the one man that I mentioned who did throw a tire at somebody, which somehow makes that so much fucking worse to me. Because that means that a full-grown adult said, I've got an idea. Cindy, follow me. And then proceeds to dress up as a half man, half goat with fur and scales and throw a fucking tire at somebody and then have the balls to go to the newspaper and say, hey man, somebody threw a fucking tire at me, and it was a half man, half-goat with fur and scales. That is fucking wild.

SPEAKER_03 50:39

I mean, I'm all for a prank, but it would become a false tire.

SPEAKER_01 50:46

Um but now the uh the Lake Worth monster is is revered and celebrated. Uh everybody knows it's not a real thing, but the story goes on. Uh and for the anniversary, there's a a Lake Worth monster festival that's held at Lake Worth. Uh it's very fun, it's very cute. The schools come out, it's it's a whole thing. Um because you know, we can't just do anything normal in Texas. Football is a massive thing, as well as dressing up as a cryptid and throwing tires at strangers. So those are those are just a couple of the local legends that that I liked. Um, you know, there's there's so, so many. There's an entire town that is, for the most part, uh haunted. Mineral wells, Texas. Um, which, you know, that's actually uh it's funny. Um the first time I ever went through Mineral Wells, I was actually on the phone with Andrew because I was just feeling so weird as soon as I like I got to a certain point on the way there, and I just felt off. And then Stephenville also is really weird in a hot spot for UFO sightings, which okay, that makes sense. Sure, why not, man? I mean, so I've been I've been to Stephenville, I've been to Mineral Wells, I've been to Lake Worth. Um the Lake Worth isn't haunted. The worst thing that you have to deal with is junkies, you know, and even then they're not really gonna bother you.

SPEAKER_03 52:32

A little bit of looking into the uh Oscar Washburn story. And it's showing from what I'm seeing here is he was hung from the bridge, uh it happened sometime in the 1930s. Um the rope was found empty a few days later, and now supposedly a half-man, half-goat creature now haunts the area, causing car accidents and demanding that visitors knock three times. Um it also says that from what I'm reading here, is that his house was found burned down, presumably with his family inside. Um knock three times. The legend dictates that if you drive to the middle of the bridge at night, turn off your lights, and knock on the bridge iron three times, the goat man will appear. Unruly teenagers having a good time at 3 a.m.

SPEAKER_01 54:00

throwing little rocks at your ass.

SPEAKER_03 54:03

And so and it also shows, you know, the the people involved with the with the murder all do uh died in bizarre circumstances afterwards, and some of them died in car accidents on that itself.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

So that and that's one of the things that I love about folklore, and is that you can look at several different things, and there's gonna be the the same beats from like the name, what happened, where it happened, and then like the general legend. And then somebody is gonna listen to this, and then they're gonna try to tell the story of Goatman, and they're gonna confuse the two or mix the two together, or just completely opt to create their own version of it. And, you know, almost a hundred years later, we're still talking about it. You know, and I say like every every place has got like a crybaby bridge and you know, shit like that. And it doesn't make it any less interesting, um, because there's always that that bit of truth in in folklore, you know, and and would I put it past some shitheads like the KKK to to kill a person of color because he was he had cornered the market on goats? Absolutely not. They're assholes, they're pieces of shit, they're scum of the earth. Like, you know what I mean? So, you know, it's not uh it's not that far out of the realm of reality in either situation until we get to the half man, half-goat situation, and we're like, okay, what's going on here? But then we look at something like the Lake Worth Monster, where those people were specifically stating half man, half-goat with fur and scales. And I'm like, that's not 50-50, that's not half and half, that's not how that works, but okay.

SPEAKER_05 56:07

So it's a loose costume of Halloween.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

But you know, it's it is interesting nonetheless, and as long as you take these things with a grain of salt and you know, trust that people have the experience and not necessarily we we we don't know, right? So at the end of the day, when we are saying, oh hey, I saw a eight-foot-tall white thing, I don't know what I saw. But I know I saw something. When it comes to people seeing half man, half goat, that is what they were reporting until somebody said, Oh no, actually it was me and my dumbass friends because we were bad kids smoking cigarettes, dressing up, and jumping on people's cars. Oh, okay. So this thing did happen. It just wasn't a supernatural creature, it was just some shithead teenagers. Got it. Like, you know what I'm saying? It what does what does the thing doesn't take away from the fact that somebody had the experience that a motherfucker threw a tire at him. Like, that still happened, but it just wasn't what we had thought until somebody came forward and said, Okay, actually, I threw a tire at a guy at the lake. All right, man, good for you, I guess. But here is a story, though. Right. Here is a story that was uh submitted by a listener, Stacy. Thank you, Stacy. Uh this is um a story from when she was a young teenager, 12 or 13, um, and she wanted to share her experience. So uh her story, as she wrote, is when I was around 12 or 13 years old, I went to Maine or Massachusetts, somewhere in the northeast. I went to stay with a friend that I had met in space camp. While I was up there, I bought my brother this hand puppet monkey, the kind that you could stick your hand in, and when you squeezed the mouth shut, it would squeak really loud like a dog toy. The house that my friend lived in was about a hundred years old. It was a really, really old house. We were all asleep, but then we both woke up when the monkey started squeaking over and over and over again. We we both ran out of the room and were super freaked out. It never did it again, but it was super weird and very, very real.

SPEAKER_00 59:01

Especially being in the fucking Northeast, man.

SPEAKER_01 59:05

Like so St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States, which is in Florida, but everything else is is old as fuck is is Northeast, right? So Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ma, all of New England, right, is old as hell. So when shit goes down, I if if somebody says, Oh yeah, I was in mass, I'm like, Yep, yes, you were, I fucking believe that. Like that is that is wild shit. So thank you so much, Stacy, for sharing that story. And if you want to have your story shared, be sure to send an email to contact at mondobizaropodcast.com, and you will be featured in an episode. So, but that is it. That is all we have for you today. This is the first episode that we have done. We're both sitting in closets right now, sweating our asses off. Uh, and and we are so thankful to have you here on this journey to listen to us talk about the paranormal encrypteds, horror and heavy metal, and all those things in between. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Mondo Bizarro underscore podcast and Facebook. Uh, the link is on the Instagram. I think it's Mondo Bizarro Podcast. My apologies. I'll link it in the details of the podcast so you can find it if you're so inclined. A Patreon is in the making, a website is in the making on all that good stuff, as well as a YouTube channel so you can see our mediocre faces and and be able to watch as we go and do weird shit together. Thank you so much. Andrew, do you have anything you want to add?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:04

If you're in the woods at night and something calls your name, don't answer it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

That's very sound advice. Thank you so much. I'm Thick Nick, he's Andrew, and like I always say, be good to yourselves, be good to each other, but most importantly, keep it creepy.