Knock. Knock. Knock.
A few knocks echoed in rapid succession down the steel bridge and into the darkness beyond the bridge on Old Alton Road in south Denton. Over the years, hundreds have gathered on the Old Alton Bridge to knock three times on the trusses as the local legend suggests, despite the terrifying encounters said to have occurred there.
Paranormal groups have even scoured the area to investigate what’s been called “the most haunted bridge in Texas,” racking up millions of views on their YouTube channels.
Goatman, created by local filmmaker Trey Murphy, is now streaming on Amazon, Vudu, Tubi and other platforms. Murphy also has a screening event scheduled for Nov. 10 at the Gold Room.
The film takes inspiration from the tale of Oscar Washburn, the “Goatman” in Denton’s most famous spooky story, and imagines a present-day news crew that wants to get to the bottom of the legend.
Not many would want the Goatman to answer their knocks — especially if they’re descendants of the local Ku Klux Klan members who supposedly hanged Washburn, a local Black goatherd, from the bridge in the 1930s and got angry when his body vanished. The legend goes that they then killed Washburn’s wife and children and set fire to the family’s nearby home.
Satanists were blamed, according to legend, for conjuring a portal that returned Washburn’s ghost from the grave to haunt the local Klan’s descendants. About 9 feet tall, with goat legs replacing his own, sharpened claws and goat horns, Washburn’s ghost — now called the “Goatman” — reportedly has eyes that burn like a campfire in the dark.
The news crew in Murphy’s Goatman isn’t deterred by the terrifying legend; instead, they visit the bridge to report on recent murders that have happened nearby, suspecting that the local legend may be to blame — only to discover something far more terrifying than a mutant goat man.
“Nobody has done a film on the legend of the Denton Goatman,” Murphy said. “We had a limited budget but really liked the idea.”
Murphy compared his latest film to drive-in movies from the late 1970s and early ’80s when a person could enjoy a double feature. The second feature, he said, was often cheesy like the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, yet better than expected after a few beers.
Made on a small budget of under $20,000, with a cast and crew mostly from Denton, Goatman stars Micha Marie Stevens, Chance Gibbs and Richard Haskins, who is the lead vocalist of local punk rock band the Wee-Beasties.
“At the end of the day, I’m a terrible actor,” Haskins said. “So, it’s like I was having so much fun doing it, and I think that’s what comes across. I’m more sadistic because I am playing a bad guy and really enjoyed it.”
Murphy had Haskins, his longtime friend, in mind when he created the part. Their friendship dates back to the 1990s, when Haskins said they were “little kids on the playground and cursing up a storm.”
They later worked together at the old Blockbuster store on University Drive and were always discussing horror movies.
“I’m great onstage with the band and comfortable,” Haskins said. “This was just nerve-wracking because everyone else is so good and trained and learning lines. I’m, like, in a good 30-minute chunk of the movie with big monologues. … I’m more like a bullet-point guy. That is what I do on stage. I’m used to that.”
Murphy, a Texas Woman’s University graduate, moved to Denton in the late ’80s and recalled driving on to Old Alton Bridge in high school, honking three times and waiting for the Goatman to show up.
When he decided to do a movie about the Goatman, Murphy researched the story online and came across information about Washburn and spent about three months filming most of the movie around the Old Alton Bridge.
“He is not a real person,” Murphy said of Washburn. “We used the idea of the Black goatherder who was murdered by racists and his vengeful spirit comes back, and built a story around it and the news crew.”
Released in April, the film chronicles the news reporters’ journey through sexual harassment in a dark woodland and the strange cast of characters they come across — like Haskins’ — as they investigate the disappearances at Old Alton Bridge.
Their reasoning for the investigation in the film can be summed up in this paraphrased line: All horror stories have some basis in truth.
In the Goatman’s case, the truth doesn’t so much lie with the story itself but when the story occurs.
About a century ago in Denton, successful Black residents were forced to move from their vibrant community of Quakertown near TWU due to the racism, fear and bigotry of the city’s white residents.
Also in the 1920s and early 1930s, Confederate statues were being erected all across the South, including in Denton. Black people couldn’t attend the same schools as white people, go to the same theaters, use the same bathrooms or drink from the same water fountains — including the two fountains on the Confederate soldier monument in downtown Denton.
But Murphy’s film isn’t a think-piece on racism in Denton — it’s simply a horror movie, and one in the vein of the cheesy B-movies by the likes of Roger Corman and Ed Wood, with undertones of social issues.
“It’s a fun genre to play with,” Murphy said. “You see more in regards to social issues being talked about in horror films. Look at George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. The racial issues are hidden under gore.”
As for the underlying message in Goatman, it would be threefold: Karma is real and sexism, racism and bigotry feed off those around them (literally in this case).
Oh, and that the Goatman’s vengeful spirit is still on a mission to eradicate the Klan’s descendants.