Goatmen and Goblins: Kentucky’s Monster Festivals Have a Big Year

Kentucky has two monster stories that people outside the state actually know: the goat-legged thing said to haunt a railroad trestle east of Louisville, and the small, glowing-eyed “goblins” a rural family said besieged their farmhouse in 1955. In 2026 both became the centerpieces of growing festivals – one marking a decade, the other only in its second year.

Ten years of the Goatman Festival

The Goatman Festival returns to Pope Lick Park, part of Louisville’s Parklands of Floyds Fork, from Thursday, October 15, through Sunday, October 18. The Lane Report and WDRB both describe this year’s edition as the festival’s 10th anniversary, but a LEO Weekly listing billed the 2025 event as only the “3rd Annual” Goatman Festival, so the ten-year count is the organizers’ own framing. General admission is free and covers live music, a “Creature Market” of more than 50 vendors, creature-feature films and talks, while guided tours, a haunted trail called the Legend at Pope Lick and other attractions are ticketed.

Founder Michael Book said in the festival’s announcement, carried by the Lane Report, that the event “is about more than just being scared,” framing it as a celebration of Kentucky’s stories and strange history. The 2026 speaker list reads like a regional field guide: Pope Lick Monster researcher Rod Whitenack, Allen Sircy, author of Below the Trestle, Mothman speaker Steve Ward, Bigfoot researcher Charlie Raymond, Lauren Connolly, director of Finding Frogman, Matthew Jackson on Indiana’s Mill Race Monster, and Mike Smith on the Beast of LBL, the “dogman” said to roam Land Between the Lakes.

The legend – and the real danger

The festival’s namesake is the Pope Lick Monster, usually described as part man and part goat (some versions add sheep) living under the Norfolk Southern trestle that crosses Pope Lick Creek. Depending on who tells it, the creature lures trespassers onto the bridge by hypnosis or by mimicking voices, leaps onto passing trains, or swings an axe. Origin stories range from an escaped circus performer to a farmer who traded goats for dark powers. None of it has ever been documented as anything but folklore.

The trestle itself is real and dangerous. It is about 772 feet long, carries an active main line, and is private railroad property. People drawn by the legend have died there: a 17-year-old in 1988, a man trapped by his overturned ATV in 1994, a 19-year-old in 2000, a 26-year-old visitor from Ohio in 2016 and a 15-year-old in 2019. WDRB notes that the trestle stands in Pope Lick Park itself, but neither festival announcement lists it as an attraction; the Lane Report places the haunted trail in the woods around the legend’s setting, not on the tracks. If you go, stay off the trestle.

GoblinCon grows up

Across the state in western Kentucky, Hopkinsville spent August 22 and 23 celebrating the anniversary of the Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter with the second GoblinCon UFO and Paranormal Expo at the James E. Bruce Convention Center. Christian County Now editor Daynnah Carmona reported that hundreds of people came on the first day alone and that the expo was noticeably larger than its 2025 debut, with podcasters, ghost hunters, cryptid enthusiasts and vendors from across the region.

Visit Hopkinsville, the local tourism office, hosts the event. Its executive director, Amy Rogers, revived the town’s paranormal ties by rebooting the Alien Invasion Day once held in Kelly, which grew into GoblinCon, according to the outlet. Speakers included Dave Schrader of Travel Channel’s The Holzer Files and Geraldine Sutton Stith, whose family was at the farmhouse in 1955. The weekend also offered a costume contest, themed tattoos, alien-themed specials at local businesses and a family puppet show featuring the Kelly Green Men.

Interest is not limited to August. On March 19, a crew from Small Town Monsters, the Ohio-based documentary company, filmed interviews at the Hopkinsville Visitors Center for a film on the encounter, Christian County Now reported. Sutton Stith retold her family’s account, and Bill Thomas, a neighbor at the time, was also interviewed; according to Visit Hopkinsville, he heard gunfire from the Sutton farm that night and saw the aftermath the next day. No release date had been announced as of that report.

What happened at Kelly

On the night of August 21–22, 1955, five adults and seven children at the Sutton farmhouse near Kelly said small, dark figures kept appearing at the doors and windows, and that the men fired at them for hours before driving to the Hopkinsville police. (Details such as big pointed ears and glowing eyes were added in later retellings.) City police, state troopers, sheriff’s deputies and military police from Fort Campbell searched the property and found broken windows and holes in screens, possibly from gunfire, but no creatures. The Air Force’s Project Blue Book files classify the case as a hoax.

Skeptics have offered a more down-to-earth suspect. Investigator Joe Nickell proposed that the family saw great horned owls – aggressive, nocturnal birds with large, reflective eyes and feather tufts that could be mistaken for pointed ears – and writer Brian Dunning has noted that the owls’ height roughly matches the witnesses’ descriptions. Sutton Stith and other relatives have long maintained that their family told the truth. Whatever came to the farm that night, Hopkinsville has decided its visitors are welcome, and so far the visitors agree.