Bunny Man

The Bunny Man is a rare cryptid-style legend that began with a short, strange run of real police reports. In mid-October 1970, according to the Fairfax County Public Library’s research on the case, an Air Force Academy cadet named Robert Bennett and his fiancée were parked on Guinea Road in the Burke area of northern Virginia when a figure in a white, rabbit-like costume ran out of the bushes. The man shouted that they were on private property and that he had their tag number, then threw a hatchet through the car window. Neither of the couple was hurt. The Washington Post carried the story on October 22, 1970.

About ten days later, on October 29, a private security guard named Paul Phillips told police he had confronted a costumed figure on the porch of an unfinished house on the same road. The man was chopping at a support post with an ax and complained that people were trespassing, and he ran into the woods when the guard reached for a handgun. More than fifty people contacted the police within weeks, but no suspect was ever identified, and an investigator marked the case inactive in March 1971.

The legend that most people tell today is not the one in the police files. In the 1970s, folklore students collected dozens of variants – a 1973 University of Maryland paper by Patricia Johnson gathered 54 – and by the 1980s the tale involved murdered children and teenagers on a lonely railroad overpass. A widely shared internet version from the late 1990s added an escaped asylum inmate, a prison bus crash and a string of earlier killings. Fairfax County’s archivist, Brian Conley, spent years checking county newspapers and court records and concluded that none of those details is supported: the county never had an asylum, the named convict does not appear in court records, and the supposed murders cannot be found. The two real incidents of 1970 remain the only documented core.

The place most associated with the Bunny Man, the Colchester Road railroad overpass near Clifton, was a teenage hangout rather than the site of the original incidents. Map services now label it “Bunny Man Bridge.” Crowds of Halloween visitors became large enough that authorities began controlling access around the holiday in the early 2000s, and the town of Clifton has leaned into the story with shirts and seasonal events.

A person in a white or light-colored costume with long rabbit ears, sometimes described as wearing a hooded white garment. In the 1970 reports he carries a hatchet or ax and shouts about trespassing; later legends add a bloodied rabbit suit and a growing list of victims.

The suburban lanes of Burke along Guinea Road in 1970; in legend, the railroad overpass over Colchester Road near Fairfax Station and Clifton, Virginia, usually at night around Halloween.

The Bunny Man inspired the 2001 television episode, horror films, a rock opera by a Northern Virginia band, and a steady stream of Halloween visitors to the Colchester overpass. The overpass is a working railroad structure, so visitors are asked to respect local rules and private property; access has at times been controlled around Halloween. The Fairfax County Public Library’s local history pages treat the case as a real piece of county history and a case study in how legends grow.