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Mike Conley's Tales of the Weird: Summer of '69 prime time for paranormal

By Mike Conley | The McDowell News

Published: June 17, 2009

This summer will mark a series of 40th anniversaries for events associated with the paranormal, some of which will be featured in this column. The summer of '69 seems to have been a prime time for some really weird happenings.
During the summer of 1969, folks living near Lake Worth, located near Fort Worth, Texas, were talking about a strange creature that supposedly lurked around the lake's woods. Local newspapers carried stories about "the Lake Worth Monster" and that made for some interesting reading back then.
In the early morning hours of July 10, 1969, three young couples arrived at the Fort Worth police station to make a report about what they had just experienced. It didn't take long for the officers to realize the terrified young people had indeed seen something that really scared them.
The couples told the police that they had been parking along the edge of Lake Worth at around midnight. As to exactly what they were doing down by the lake at that hour, the young men and women did not elaborate.
According to their story, a large hairy creature suddenly leaped out of the darkness and landed on one of the cars parked by the lake. The couples described it as being covered with both fur and scales and looking something like a cross between a goat and a man, according to a Web site.
The police officers checked out the scene but found nothing. However, they did find an 18-inch scratch running alongside one of the cars. The young man and woman who were in that car swore that it had not been there before and were certain it was a scratch from the creature's claws.
Other reports of a "monster" down by the lake had been turned in before but the local police had dismissed those as pranks. But they took this report more seriously.
A day or so after that incident, Jack Harris was driving on the road to the Lake Worth Nature Center when he spotted a hairy creature crossing in front of him. It ran up and down a hill and was soon being watched by 30 to 40 people who had come to the area hoping to catch a glimpse of what was already being called "the Lake Worth Monster." The Fort Worth Star Telegram had run a front-page story about the previous incident with the headline "Fishy Man-Goat Terrifies Couples Parked at Lake Worth."
In no time, law officers were on the scene and they too saw the strange creature. One of the witnesses tried to approach it but the creature gave out a howl and threw a car tire 500 feet towards the crowd. It quickly escaped into the nearby woods and vanished from sight.
The newspaper's next headline read "Witnesses Watch Monster Cavort."
During the next few weeks, parties of armed searchers made nightly treks into the woods and fields around Lake Worth. Some of them found footprints reportedly 8 inches wide and 16 inches long. At one point, three men claimed the monster jumped on their car and only leaped off after the car ran into a tree. Other searchers looked for the creature but never saw it. However, they claimed to have heard its terrifying scream and smelled a foul odor.
Charles Buchanan probably turned in the most incredible sighting of the Lake Worth Monster.
On the night of Nov. 7, 1969, Buchanan was camped out on the shore of the lake. He awoke at around 2 a.m. to find a large hairy creature towering above him. He said it looked like a cross between a human being and an ape or gorilla. Buchanan said he had been sleeping in his sleeping bag in the back of his pickup truck when the monster attacked him. The creature suddenly jerked him to the ground, sleeping bag and all. Gagging from the stench of the monster, Buchanan shoved a bag of leftover chicken into its face. The beast stuffed the chicken into its mouth, jumped into the lake and swam towards nearby Greer Island, according to the book "Mysterious America" by Loren Coleman.
Some folks in the area believed that the creature was really a Sasquatch or Bigfoot. Others thought it might have been an ape that had escaped from a circus. The Lake Worth Monster caused quite a scare in that area of the Lone Star State back in the summer and fall of 1969. But by 1970, the reports had died down. People there believed that it had either moved on or had died.

Contact Mike Conley at 652-3313, ext. 3422 or e-mail nconley@mcdowellnews.com.