The Bunnyman is an urban legend monster that was first seen in a 1900 newspaper article. It was a giant humanoid bunny or a man in a bunny costume holding a knife. It is mentioned in the cryptozoology book, Monsters of Virginia as well as Monsters of Maryland.
Legend[]
The Bunnyman is an insane murderer who has reports of killings or sightings only on Halloween every 10 or 20 years at 12:00 AM under a bridge. It is said that if you stay there beside the bridge in the town of Colchester, Virginia, you will see him. After 12:00, there will be a bright white light under the bridge. Under the white light will appear a humanoid murderous bunny with an axe or knife. There have been very few sightings of this murderer. There is little that is known about him except that some say he escaped from an insane asylum. The tale of the Bunnyman started with a series of unsolved, brutal murders that allegedly originated from an insane asylum that existed buried in the wilderness of Clifton, Virginia in the early 1900s. Just as the lunatics in the asylum were about to be brought to their death, it had shut down. More and more people were beginning to move into the town where the asylum was. The mayor issued a formal request for the head of the asylum to move the people somewhere else so they wouldn't escape and cause chaos in the town. According to the tale, in the autumn of 1904 the inmates were packed into 15 transports to be moved to the new facility. It is said that sometime during the journey to Lorton Prison, the driver of one of the vehicles violently swerved for the purpose of avoiding something in the road and the transport careened off of the road and crashed into the dark wilderness. Most of the inmates aboard, and the driver, were killed in the crash, but some survived and escaped into the surrounding landscape, disappearing into the black of night. The very next day the police were hard at work scouring the area to hunt down the escaped inmates. After an exhaustive and intensive manhunt that lasted for months, the authorities are said to have apprehended all but two of the estimated 10 convicts that had escaped; a Marcus A. Wallster and Douglas J. Grifon. As the police were still searching they saw a footprint in the mud, and in the footprint it said "You'll never find me, and you know it, too. Signed the Bunnyman" The police knew what happened to one of the inmates, but not the other.
One Night[]
One evening, on Halloween night of 1905, a group of teenagers went to the Colchester Overpass, near Clifton, Virginia, which was now known as the Bunny Man Bridge; the very one from which Wallster’s lifeless corpse had been found hanging. It is said that three of the teens would later be found dead, their throats slashed, and with long cuts up their abdomens as if they’d been gutted like a rabbit. The story apparently caused quite an uproar at the time, with parents warning their kids not to go anywhere near the bridge.
Another night on Halloween, the Bunny Man allegedly struck again. This time, seven teens were said to be partying under the bridge while one, a young woman by the name of Adrian Hatala, was still spooked by the stories and keeping her distance. According to her account, there was a dim light which approached the bridge, followed by a blindingly bright flash of light emanating from under it at around midnight, after which she could hear the anguished screams of her companions wafting towards her through the chilly night air. When she went running to investigate, she found the bodies of all of her friends hanging under the bridge, mutilated in a similar manner to the teens who had been found the previous Halloween. According to the story, she would apparently eventually be charged with the murders and locked away in a mental institution.
The murders happened again and again, In 1913, 1949, and again in 1976 the bodies of several teenagers were allegedly found hanging under the bridge, murdered and mutilated in a similar brutal manner.
Sightings[]
There is no one who actually survived to tell about the experience of facing the bunny man face to face but, people have had their cars hit with a supposed axe that was flung into their windshield. The police and some of the murder victims' friends and family were the only people to survive. Some people who lived close to the bridge but never walked near it have some things to say about the supposed Bunny Man: "You have been messing up my property, by dumping tree stumps, limbs and brush, and other things on the property. You can make everything right, by meeting me tonight and talking about the situation." This was a call to a police station in Virginia and they investigated the area and this was what they had to say about the investigation: "After a very extensive investigation into this and all other cases of this same nature, it is still unsubstantiated as to whether or not there really was a white rabbit. The only people who have seen this so-called white rabbit have been children of rather young ages, and the complainant in this case. Upon interviewing everyone in this case that may have had any knowledge of any incidents concerning a white rabbit, there has been no significant information uncovered that would lead to the identity of the person or persons that were posing as a white rabbit. This case will be marked as inactive."
In Popular Media[]
- The Bunnyman is featured in the popular trading card game MetaZoo: Cryptid Nation.
Fact or Myth?[]
The tally:
- Fourteen different geographic locations are mentioned
- Four tell of attacks on cars
- Nine claim he attacked a couple parked in a car
- Five accuse him of vandalism on homes or buildings
- Ten mentioned a murder
There are no police records of the ten mentioned murders and there is no way of contacting the girl who was accused of the murder of her friends and ended up in a mental institution. This legend will be passed on for generations in Virginia because it was a serious time in the 1900s and people never even went out on Halloween because they truly believed that the Bunnyman was going to get them.