So, unless you were completely offline for Thanksgiving weekend, you probably noticed that Goatman was all over the Internet, even becoming a top trend on Facebook and Twitter for the duration of the weekend. Within a few hours many of the articles about my favorite caprine cryptid were claiming that there was an outbreak of sightings in three different states! Not quite.

I followed this all VERY closely (hey, I had a 4 day weekend, and it’s rare Goaty gets this much publicity) so I can map this whole thing out for you with a good deal of accuracy.

The whole mess started when, for no apparent reason, MoviePilot.com posted an article on November 27th suggesting that someone should make a horror film based on the monster (oblivious to the fact that several have already been made). That article linked to a CultOfWeird.com article about my 2014 book Goatman: Flesh or Folklore, which stated that the creature has been historically seen in Kentucky, Texas, and Wisconsin.

By the time Uproxx.com posted about it on the morning of November 28th, various websites with little-to-no journalistic integrity had worded their MoviePilot.com plagiarisms to make it all sound as if a sudden outbreak of sightings had just occurred in three different states within a short amount of time, completely misrepresenting the situation. With each new article, the phrasing changed ever so slightly until it seemed as if a heard of man-goats were roaming America’s heartland! This is no slight against Uproxx, mind you. Their article was the best out of the whole bunch, and provided a nice snapshot of Goatman-mania as it swept the Internet.

Not a single article provided any information about these apparently fictitious sightings. No times, dates, locations, or witnesses. As best as I can tell, there has not been one new sighting. At least none that have been reported, anyways. The most recent sighting I’m aware of took place in September, 2014, and this photograph of a strange hoof print from Oak Creek, Wisconsin, was just sent to WPI Hunts the Truth.

Of course, what truly caused all this trending was that MoviePilot.com introduced a new, strange concept to what I can only call the main stream, people whose only normal exposure to unexplainable phenomena is seeing a cardboard Bigfoot at a gas station beef jerky display. Most only shared the story because of how odd it was, or to mock the very idea of these legitimate, but puzzling encounters. None of them stopped to look and see if anything was actually happening. Please people, question everything. Don’t just assume something happened because you read a news story about it. Especially on the Internet.

But should any of you actually encounter Goatman. I’m right here waiting to hear from you.