According to some accounts, the creature uses either hypnosis[1] or voice mimicry to lure trespassers onto the trestle to meet their death before an oncoming train.

Yet other legends tell that it attacks its victims with a blood-stained axe and that the very sight of the creature is so unsettling that those who see it while walking across the high trestle are driven to leap off.

Another version commonly told by locals of the area claims that the monster is really the twisted reincarnated form of a farmer who sacrificed goats in exchange for Satanic powers.

[2] There is a common misconception that the trestle is abandoned and no longer used; in reality, the bridge carries a major rail artery into Louisville.

In the scene, the main character, a high school student, narrowly escapes an approaching train by hanging off the side of the trestle.

[8] On May 26, 2019, Savanna Bright, 15, was pronounced dead at the scene after she and another teenage girl, Kaylee Keeling, were on the train tracks near the Pope Lick trestle.