The New Monsters: The Bunny Man - Part Two

THE DEVIL WITHIN THE NEW MONSTERS: THE BUNNY MAN Episode Two: The Bridge There is a railroad bridge outside Clifton, Virginia, where Colchester Road narrows into a single lane and disappears beneath the tracks. For generations of Northern Virginia teenagers, it has been known by another name: Bunny Man Bridge. According to the legend, this is where the Bunny Man lived, killed and perhaps died. Some versions claim he was an escaped asylum patient who vanished into the surrounding woods after a transport bus crashed. Others add mutilated rabbits hanging from trees, murdered children, bodies suspended from the railroad tracks and a killer who eventually returned from the dead. It's a spectacular horror story. There's just one problem: almost none of it appears to have happened. In Episode Two of our three-part investigation, we follow the Bunny Man away from the documented encounters on Guinea Road and into the place that transformed him from a bizarre local mystery into a full-fledged American monster. Research by Fairfax County historian and archivist Brian Conley found no evidence of the asylum, the escaped inmates or the Bunny Man massacre supposedly connected to the bridge. The two documented incidents from October 1970 happened miles away. So how did the Bunny Man get to Clifton? We travel back through the history of the village itself, from the arrival of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad in 1858 to its importance during the Civil War, when the tracks became part of the military infrastructure connecting a country tearing itself apart. After the war, a railroad village grew here, preserving a pocket of older Northern Virginia even as suburban Washington expanded around it. That landscape gave the legend something Guinea Road eventually couldn't: permanence. Construction sites become houses. Woods are cleared. Empty lots acquire addresses. But a secluded railroad overpass surrounded by trees can remain unsettling for generations. Better still, it gave teenagers somewhere they could actually visit. The Bunny Man stopped being merely something people heard about and became something they could go looking for. From there, the mythology began building backward. An asylum appeared where historical research has found none. A bus crashed. Patients escaped. Rabbits were slaughtered. One fugitive supposedly died while another became the Bunny Man. Eventually murders, Halloween rituals and supernatural encounters were attached to the bridge, creating an elaborate origin story for a monster whose real identity had never been established. We'll explore why those additions were so effective, how the abandoned asylum became one of American horror's favorite shortcuts for hidden evil, and why the Bunny Man's axe survived the transformation from reported weapon to unmistakable horror icon. Most importantly, we'll see the moment when folklore becomes interactive. Teenagers began driving beneath the bridge after dark, turning off their engines and waiting for something to happen. Every movement in the woods, unexpected car or freight train thundering overhead offered another opportunity for the story to reproduce itself. Because the Bunny Man didn't become immortal when somebody died beneath those railroad tracks. He became immortal when people started going there to find him. NEXT TIME In the final chapter of our Bunny Man story, Midnight at the Overpass, we follow the legend through the 1980s and 1990s and into the early internet, when a regional Virginia ghost story suddenly gained access to a global audience. We'll explore Halloween pilgrimages, stranger danger, Satanic Panic and the peculiar rituals that taught generations of teenagers how to summon a monster. Then we'll return to October 1970 and the question that none of the mythology has ever answered: Who was actually inside the rabbit suit? LISTEN • WATCH • FOLLOW Listen & Follow: Follow The Devil Within wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss the final chapter of The Bunny Man. Rate & Review: Leave us a 5-star rating and review. It remains one of the best ways to help new listeners discover the show. Watch & Subscribe: Watch The Devil Within on the Evio Creative YouTube channel, subscribe, and turn on notifications for new episodes and videos. Join the Conversation: Follow @thedevilwithinpod and tell us: Would you spend midnight beneath Bunny Man Bridge? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices