The Lake Worth Monster: Guns, Tires, and a Goatman in TX

It was just after midnight on July 10, 1969, when three couples parked near Greer Island at Lake Worth discovered that their evening was apparently about to include a monster.

According to the story they gave Fort Worth police, something suddenly came out of the trees and landed on their car. They described it as part man, part goat, covered with both fur and scales, with clawlike hands. Driver John Reichart said the creature tried to grab his wife before he sped away, and when the group later returned with police, he showed officers an eighteen-inch scratch along the car that he attributed to the creature.

Police found no monster. Patrolman James S. McGee suspected someone might have thrown a dummy onto the vehicle or dressed up in an ape costume, but he also told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that officers had taken the frightened witnesses seriously enough to investigate. More intriguingly, a police dispatcher said they'd been receiving strange reports from the area for about two months and had dismissed the earlier ones as pranks.

The following night, the monster allegedly returned... and this time, it brought a tire.

Something Strange at Greer Island

Lake Worth sits along the western edge of Fort Worth, but the landscape around Greer Island was considerably wilder in 1969 than today's metropolitan surroundings might suggest. The area contained wooded shoreline, bluffs and undeveloped stretches that made it a popular nighttime destination for teenagers and young couples. The larger preserve that developed there is now part of the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge. Maps of the area in the late 1960s can be seen HERE, on the Friends of Fort Worth Nature Center website.

After the first newspaper story appeared, curiosity seekers began descending on the lake. During the early hours of July 11, witnesses reported hearing something squalling and howling around the bluff. Jack E. Harris told reporter Jim Marrs that he watched a large, whitish-gray, hairy creature moving around the area. He estimated it at roughly seven feet tall and perhaps 300 pounds and said it walked like a man without looking like one.

Then things went full-blown Texas. According to Harris, some members of the growing crowd began getting aggressive with the creature. The thing responded by picking up a spare automobile tire—with the rim still inside—and hurling it toward the assembled cars. Harris estimated the throw at more than 500 feet.

FYI - Five hundred feet is roughly one-and-two-thirds football fields, and there doesn't appear to have been any measurement establishing that the tire actually traveled that far. What we have is an excited eyewitness estimate made during a nighttime monster hunt. Still, I don't know the last time that YOU threw a tire with a rim, but if you could throw one 15 FEET, that would be impressive.

People scattered and the Lake Worth Monster became famous.

What Is the Lake Worth Monster?

Descriptions changed as the story developed, which is our first clue that we should be cautious about constructing too precise a creature.

The original witnesses described something half man and half goat, covered with an improbable combination of fur and scales. Subsequent descriptions emphasized a large, hairy, whitish creature standing approximately seven feet tall, while later versions increasingly turned it into the horned “Goat-Man” commonly depicted today.

So, we go from scaly goat guy to Yeti to straight up devil looking creature in descriptions.

If we strip away decades of artwork and folklore, the contemporary reports don't give us a particularly clean picture of a literal goat-headed humanoid. What they give us is something large, pale or whitish-gray, hairy, apparently capable of moving upright, and strange enough that witnesses struggled to describe it.

The scales are especially odd. Fur and scales don't usually come as a package, although frightened people glimpsing something at night aren't exactly conducting a zoological examination. Maybe he just had bad eczema?

Whatever people thought they were seeing, the reports spread rapidly.

Goat-mania

Fort Worth went monster hunting.

Hundreds of people reportedly began driving to Lake Worth at night, some carrying guns (shocker) and others bringing beer or wine(shocker #2) . Police eventually stationed an officer near Greer Island to handle traffic, and one sergeant expressed considerably more concern about armed monster hunters stumbling around in the darkness than about the monster itself.

Sightings continued through the summer. Stories circulated about strange cries, shapes moving through the brush and encounters around the lake. The Star-Telegram later estimated that more than seventy people eventually claimed to have seen the creature, while news of Fort Worth's Goat-Man spread well beyond Texas.

Local resident Sallie Ann Clarke even published a book that same year, The Lake Worth Monster of Greer Island, Ft. Worth, Texas. Her involvement illustrates how quickly the story became complicated: later reporting notes that Clarke acknowledged she had not actually witnessed the encounter she initially described, although she subsequently maintained that she saw the creature on other occasions.

And then somebody finally photographed it. Well, sort of.

The Photograph

At approximately 1:35 a.m. on November 19, 1969, twenty-two-year-old Allen Plaster was driving near Greer Island when he noticed a large white shape in the vegetation. Allen, luckily, had his trusty Polaroid camera with him.

The resulting photograph shows a bulky pale form rising above the brush. It's blurry, indistinct and nearly useless for determining scale or anatomy—which, naturally, makes it an almost perfect cryptid photograph. For years, the image was presented as the only known photograph of the Lake Worth Monster.

But Plaster himself wasn't particularly impressed. When interviewed decades later, he said he believed he'd photographed a person pulling a prank, saying that “Whatever it was, it wanted to be seen.” His reasoning was straightforward: when the car approached, the figure deliberately stood up as though it wanted to be noticed. Plaster didn't think a frightened or unknown animal would behave that way.

You can see the original Polaroid photograph of the Lake Worth Monster HERE, in a 2024 article from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

While that doesn't prove the entire Lake Worth affair was a hoax, it does, however, create a fairly serious problem for its best-known photograph.

So, What Were People Seeing?

The hoax explanation was there almost from the beginning.

Fort Worth police considered the possibility that pranksters were using an ape costume, dummy or animal hide. Later accounts accumulated stories of local teenagers admitting involvement, and the timing is certainly suggestive: reports declined dramatically around September, approximately when students returned to school.

There's also an extraordinary bit of Lake Worth history that makes the prank theory even stronger.

This wasn't the first "Lake Worth Monster".

In 1947, employees at a Lake Worth boat works reportedly created a fake lake monster by rigging an inner tube with a pulley and trotline so they could make it rise and fall in the water. The prank caused a brief monster craze before being exposed. In December 1968—only months before Goatmania began—Star-Telegram columnist George Dolan actually reminded readers about that earlier Lake Worth monster hoax. Coincidence?

Animals remain possible for at least some sightings. Contemporary naturalist speculation included a bobcat, while later stories mention an escaped macaque from a nearby kennel. A large animal seen briefly in darkness could certainly become something considerably stranger once fear and expectation took over.

There was even a particularly colorful local explanation involving the nearby New Liberty Mission Rehabilitation Center, reportedly nicknamed the “Goat Farm” because goats were raised there. A police investigator later suggested that a tall resident known as Foots Fowler sometimes went out wearing goat skins to frighten couples parked around the lake. It's a wonderful story, but we'd treat it as a later recollection rather than the definitive solution to the mystery.

Yes, allegedly a tall guy named "Foots Fowler" had a proclivity to dress in a goat skin to frighten people by the lake. I can't tell you how awesome it was just to write those words. I love it. God bless America!

Our Take

We're leaning heavily toward hoax, hysteria and misidentification on this one.

The police suspected pranksters almost immediately. The only known photograph was eventually regarded as a prank by the man who took it. Lake Worth already had a documented history of monster hoaxes, and the 1947 prank had conveniently been resurrected in the local newspaper shortly before the 1969 monster appeared.

But we're reluctant to stamp CASE CLOSED across the file.

The original witnesses were frightened enough that police took their complaint seriously, and officers apparently had received earlier reports before the story exploded publicly. Those facts don't prove there was an unknown creature wandering around Greer Island, but they make the origin of the flap a little less tidy than “some teenagers put on a costume.”

Our guess is that the Lake Worth Monster eventually became bigger than whatever started it. Maybe the first encounter involved a prank. Maybe it involved an animal. Maybe something genuinely strange happened and opportunistic pranksters joined the party afterward.

By the end of that summer, separating one from another was probably impossible. And frankly, we're delighted Fort Worth kept the monster.

The city still recognizes the legend as part of Lake Worth history, and the Fort Worth Nature Center has celebrated it through its Monster Bash. A creature that once sent armed Texans charging into the woods has become part of the local identity.

Just remember one thing if you encounter it. DO NOT let it near your spare tire!

Does the Lake Worth Monster get your goat? Take a look at these other posts: The Pope Lick Monster and The Lizardman of Scape Ore Swamp.

Field Notes: Lake Worth Monster Quick Facts

📍 Location: Lake Worth / Greer Island, Fort Worth, Texas
👀 Famous Flap: Summer 1969
🐐 Classification: Humanoid / Goat-Man
📏 Reported Height: Up to approximately 7 feet
👁️ Reported Features: Whitish-gray hair or fur, sometimes described with scales, clawlike hands and a vaguely human or goatlike appearance
💀 Threat Level: 4/10 — Mostly harmless unless the tire story is accurate
📸 Evidence: One famous 1969 Polaroid; photographer Allen Plaster later believed the figure was a prankster
📖 Status: Unexplained folklore / strong hoax and misidentification possibilities
🛞 Special Ability: Allegedly capable of launching automotive parts across unreasonable distances

1969 Report from WFAA Dallas-Ft Worth The Lake Worth Monster

2019 Report from WFAA Dallas-Ft Worth on the 50th Anniversary of The Lake Worth Monster

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