The Lake Worth Monster - Goatman or Bigfoot?

In the summer of 1969, something strange was seen around Lake Worth, which is located near Fort Worth in Texas. It was said to be something tall, hairy, and mean.

Sallie Ann Clarke's book

At the time, a woman named Sallie Ann Clarke wrote a book about the creature, called The Lake Worth Monster, as it is known. Clarke's book is actually mostly fictional, but it is still a fantastic book to have in your cryptozoology collection. (I'm lucky enough to have one in mine.)

I discussed the creature a bit in my book, Cryptid U.S.:

"… The creature was seen many times that summer [1969] and was commonly called the Lake Worth Monster. The monster was also commonly called 'the goatman.' But, according to eyewitness accounts, it looked more like a hairy ape-man.

"Charles Buchanan encountered the monster while camped out on the shores of Lake Worth on November 7, 1969. He said he awoke at two a.m. to find a strange creature fact to face with him! He said 'I looked like a cross between a human and a gorilla or some other kind of ape.' He said the creature pulled him out of the bed of his truck, where he had been sleeping, and threw him on the ground. The animal smelled horrible, and made Buchanan gag. To get it to go away, he did the only thing he could think of: he grabbed a bag of leftover chicken and shoved it into the creature's face. The creature then grabbed the chicken in it's mouth and ran off into the trees and then into the lake. Buchanan said it then swam off towards Greer Island.

"Many encounters had happened in the month's before Buchanan's sighting. On July 10, four units of the Fort Worth police went to Greer Island to search for a beast that had attacked six people. One, John Reichart, said it had tried to grab his wife. He had an 18-inch-long scratch mark on the side of his car to prove it. Soon after, 30 to 40 people, including police officers, went out to track the beast. Thew saw it at the top of an embankment. It howled at them, leaped off of the spot where it was originally standing, and then hurled an automobile tire at the terrified group! Everyone, including the police, jumped into their cars and left.

"Most witnesses agreed that the monster was about 7 feet tall, and weighed about 300 pounds. In the months that followed the first sightings, parties of searchers and hunters made many nighttime hunts in the woods around the lake. They once found 16-inch long tracks. On one occasion, searchers actually saw it and chased its trail of footprints until it went into the lake. Three men said the creature had leaped on their car one night and only jumped off after they had crashed into a tree. Dead sheep were found in the area with broken necks. Some thought that the monster had killed them.

"Allen plaster was driving down the road one night when he saw the Lake Worth Monster. He managed to get one blurry picture of a tall, white, humanlike creature.

Plaster's picture of… something

"No one really knows what the Lake Worth Monster was. Some say it was a group of hoaxers trying to scare people. Hoaxers would have had to have been either very brave or very stupid to be walking around with so many people carrying guns, trying to find the creature and shoot it. Other people said it was a bobcat, but it would be hard for someone to mistake one of the felines for a seven-foot tall ape-man."

So, what was the Lake Worth Monster? If the reports are genuine, and not a hoax or hysteria, the creature does not sound like a "goatman," but more like a white Bigfoot (an albino)?

To this day, no one has solved the mystery of the Lake Worth Monster that was seen in the summer of '69.

Dallas Morning News story, July 12, 1969