Long before the Lake Worth Monster became the stuff of North Texas campfire stories, reported sightings of the half-man, half-goat creature began at Greer Island in the summer of 1969.<\/p>\n
Now, the local legend is on display at Fort Worth City Hall, with stories, sketches, footprints and even a fur sample showcasing the tale and the natural landscape that helped inspire it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the place where the local legend was first seen, ever,\u201d said Laura Veloz with the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge.<\/p>\n
Veloz said one of the first reported encounters happened in a parking lot at Greer Island, which is part of the nature center.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it was this parking lot where a couple, John Richter and his spouse, were just parking at the time, 1969, and a creature came out from Greer Island, the water, and tried to pull the spouse,\u201d Veloz said.<\/p>\n
The stories only grew from there. Veloz described another account in which the creature reportedly threw a tire an estimated 500 feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came out around that area, walking, pacing, back and forth and that\u2019s where he threw the tire. Estimated 500 feet, that\u2019s what people stated,\u201d Veloz said.<\/p>\n
For North Texas resident Danielle Bateni, the legend has been part of her life since childhood, thanks to an older sister who used the Goatman to scare her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis started when I was back in elementary school, maybe five to six years old,\u201d Bateni said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd she would torment me telling me about the goat man and that he would come for me if I didn’t do certain tasks or stay out of her room, you know, older sister stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The legend continues to draw attention to the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge and its habitat.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody in the community, you know, gets excited to hear about this. But, it also brings light to the nature center, the habitat,\u201d Veloz said.<\/p>\n
The nature center will celebrate both the legend and the landscape with the Lake Worth Monster Bash next month.<\/p>\n
Bateni plans to see it for herself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI immediately messaged my sister and was like, oh my gosh, we have to go see this because I lived my childhood knowing about the Goat Man and turns out it\u2019s, It\u2019s real,\u201d Bateni said.<\/p>\n
Real or not, Bateni has made peace with the creature that once scared her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe actually, we live on a farm now and we have 15 goats.\u201d<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC DFW. AI tools helped convert the story into a digital article, and an NBC DFW journalist edited it again before publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long before the Lake Worth Monster became the stuff of North Texas campfire stories, reported sightings of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117,2091],"class_list":["post-424497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-lake-worth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}