Metroplex Monsters
Goat men, pterosaurs, and other monsters have long haunted the DFW area, whether in legend or otherwise. Pterosaurs, which are flying reptiles from the Jurassic period, have apparently been spotted in the Metroplex, mostly in the Fort Worth area; but perhaps the city’s most well-known creature is the Lake Worth Monster, often described as “part-man, part-goat” with clawed fingers and scales.
Jason McLean — an author, artist, and Biblical paranormal researcher — delves into each of these mysterious figures in his newest book, Metroplex Monsters: Dallas Demons, Fort Worth Goatmen & Other Terrors of the Trinity River, released Monday. He took some time to chat all about it with Fort Worth Magazine.
FW: What sort of research did you have to do about each cryptid?
JM: That’s going to be kind of hard to quantify because a lot of stuff has built up from over 20 years ago. It’s meeting people like [cryptozoologists] Ken Gerhard, Nick Redfern, and [researcher] Kent Hovind … There’s only so much you can find out in public information, and you have to go out there and do the research yourself.
It’s going and meeting the people at the history museums or the libraries. It’s going out to the location and taking some photographs trying to see what’s going on. It’s taking photos from a bridge in a moving car because you can’t pull off to the side of I-20. I spent an entire year asking random people really weird questions at the store. I tried my best to let people speak for themselves when I’m quoting them. The problem is, you still have to do the leg work and get out there and dig around. It’s a lot of interviews, putting all these things together and talking to witnesses multiple times to make sure I’ve got the whole story. I got multiple interviews on people midday when I was in the area looking for something. I’d ask if they have had any weird experiences with living pterodactyls or Bigfoot, and you’d be surprised how many people say, “Okay, I know this sounds crazy, but…” I got two pterosaur sightings out of that.
FW: Tell us more about the cryptids found around the Fort Worth area. Are they easy to spot?
JM: You’ve definitely got Bigfoot and flying pterosaurs. In fact, two encounters of pterosaurs come out of Fort Worth and Kennedale, like eight miles away. Basically, DFW’s biggest cryptozoological event was the Lake Worth Monster back in the ’60s. They tend to follow the creeks and the rivers; they use those as maps. I also argue in the book for what I call the “green wall.” People don’t realize that because our trees don’t get very tall most often, and because of how parched everything is, most of our real dense area isn’t around the creeks and rivers or areas off of the road. You have all this tall brush that will grow up, and now what happens? You can’t see into that area, and a lot of the Bigfoots I got were out of Grand Prairie. The green wall is a good explanation for a lot of things.
We’re distracted, we’re busy driving somewhere, we’re talking on the phone, we’re going to something, or we spend time indoors. Then we have this nice habitat that we’ve created for them where they can be 20 feet from you, and you can’t see them. Like the creek where I had my encounter, you could march an entire army of elephants down that creek, and no one would ever see it because there’s nothing but dense foliage. That’s how a lot of DFW is. Again, a lot of these things tend to be nocturnal, so that’s part of why you don’t spot them. But the other part of this is we have an entire ecosystem out there hiding behind this green wall, and most of us are never aware of it. It’s very easy for something to hide if we’re not looking for it.
FW: Have you had any monster encounters yourself?
JM: There was just one encounter with a Pterosaur. I may have glimpsed it once or twice more even more recently, but because I couldn’t get a good look at it, I couldn’t be certain. I’ve had one UFO encounter down in Glenn Heights coming home from work. I was working, and I didn’t get home until almost two o’clock in the morning. Most people only have like one or two encounters, and that’s because these are entirely chance observations. A small handful of people who have multiple encounters are a target. Usually Sasquatch will target people, and they will come to them. So, with Sasquatch, you have one of two versions: You have someone who was out in the middle of nowhere and he just walked across, or you have someone saying Sasquatch came to their house. They seem to be curious.
These are creatures that are determined to stay hidden. Every expert will tell you that they are very aware of their surroundings, and if you’re out there, they’re aware of you. There are plenty of people trying to make these encounters happen so we can get the evidence for them, and they can’t make it happen. These are creatures with very small populations and, again, they are trying to hide.
FW: What are some of the most intriguing things you learned about the monster legends in Fort Worth?
JM: I think it goes back to just how impactful the Lake Worth event was in shaping the mythology of the entire Metroplex. I spend a lot of time talking about the evolution of Fort Worth from literally this military fort on the edge of the U.S. border to this bustling industrial powerhouse by World War I. There’s these 50 years where it goes from being just a stop to being what we would see today. By the time 1960 hits, it’s post-World War II, and televisions are developing. Then bam — we get Lake Worth Monster, and it completely impacts all of our local urban legends and mythologies. Even studying this for a while, it did not occur to me how impactful that myth was, and it’s altered how I view a lot of those things as far as how to even approach those questions.
More information about Metroplex Monsters: Dallas Demons, Fort Worth Goatmen & Other Terrors of the Trinity River is available here.
