The Bunny Man
This tale of a costumed killer has been around for fifty years; shared at Halloween parties, sleepovers and around campfires.
It all began in Northern Virginia, on October 19th, 1970. Robert Bennette, a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy, was driving back from a football match with his fiancé when they decided to pop in to see Bennette's uncle. They parked the car on the road, opposite the uncle's home. While the couple began gathering their belongings to go inside, they saw a figure in the rear window. All of sudden there was a loud crash, and the front passenger window had been smashed. After the initial shock, a man in what looked like a bunny costume began shouting at Bennette. The man beneath the eerie outfit said, "You're on private property, and I have your tag number". From sheer shock, Bennette decided to drive as far away from the bunny as possible, leaving the costumed man behind in the darkness. Once the couple arrived home, they found a hatchet laying on the floor of the car. They reported the incident to the local police. Bennett told them the man was wearing a white, stained bunny costume. His fiancé believed he was wearing a pointed white hood. Was he a kkk member or a dirty bunny rabbit?
Ten days later, on October 29th, a construction security man named Paul Phillips, was patrolling a site of half-built houses. He came across one house, that had a person in their late twenties wearing a grey, black and white rabbit costume. It was a man, around 5'8 and 175 pounds, standing solely under a flickering porch light. He was just staring at the security man, standing very still. Phillips approached the figure but before saying anything the rabbit wannabe told him that he was trespassing and that if he didn't leave he would chop off his head. Phillips ran back to his station to grab his gun but when he arrived back at the porch, he saw the white costume disappear into the woods opposite. After this, the local police received over fifty reports of the Bunny Man.
The most believed origin story of the Bunny Man was from 1904. A bus transporting prisoners from an asylum in Clifton, a town nearby, crashed and the convicts escaped. The police found all but two of the prisoners- Marcus Walter and Douglas Grifon. As investigators looked for the other two men, they came across piles of rabbit carcasses near Colchester overpass, a railway bridge. They also found Wallster's body, clutching a handmade hatchet.
A year later the Bunny Man began appearing by the railway bridge. It was said that on Halloween of 1905, three teenagers went to Colchester overpass to drink in the tunnel. When it hit midnight there was a bright flash and the three teenagers were found hanging from the overpass; their throats slit and disembowelled. Next Halloween the same thing happened but to six teenagers. The people of Virginia began avoiding the tunnel on Halloween.
A band from Northern Virginia, Mantua Finials, released a few songs that surround this legend; 'Bunny Suite' and 'All Hallow's Eve'. One of the members, Jim Waters, grew up in this area. He told Washington Post that "some of the old homesteads in the land were adjacent to Kings Park West...the likelihood was that one of the kids who lived there may have been the Bunny Man...who would want a load of new people turning up to live on your old street". On the other hand, Officer W.L. Johnson, from Fairfax County police, said that the case will be left inactive. There was no significant information that would lead to the uncovering of the Bunny Man.
In 2011, the local police spent Halloween night turning away more than two hundred thrill-seekers, some of who came from as far as Pennsylvania. The locals also began putting up no trespassing signs, just to keep people or the Bunny Man away.
However, there has been no such evidence of these murders nor could I find any news reports of them or the prisoner bus crash. There was also no asylum in the area and the Bunny Man was not mentioned in the newspaper till 1970.
Let me know in the comments your thoughts on this tale. Was the Bunny Man a vicious killer? Or was he just a local kid, warning off newcomers?
Sources:
https://allthatsinteresting.com/bunny-man
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/558314/urban-legends-that-turned-out-to-be-true
(Pictures shown on my blog- allthingshorror111.wordpress.com(opens in a new tab)
