The Bunny Man | Legend of Bunny Man Bridge | Episode 80
Welcome to another episode of Believing the Bizarre. This week, we dive into Urban Legend territory and cover The Bunny Man. There are many iterations of this creepy tale, all of which involve Bunny Man Bridge in Clifton, Virginia.
Legend says if you travel to Bunny Man Bridge, walk under the bridge at midnight, close your eyes, and chant, “Bunny Man” three times, a man in an off-white, ragged rabbit costume will approach you and quickly slash your throat with an ax or hatchet. Vicious, right?
And it’s just a silly urban legend, right? Surprisingly, there is a LOT more to this story than what you might expect. Listen now!
The Urban Legend Of Bunny Man
What has Clifton, Virginia residents terrified to pass a particular bridge at midnight? Could heartbreak and loss lead to an everlasting urban legend? Who would hang dead, mangled rabbits from trees for all to see?
What’s up Bizarros! This week we dive into the Urban Legend of the Bunny Man.
The Legend Of The Bunny Man
Who, or what is the Bunny Man?
According to the urban legend, it tells of an entity that stalks people around the area of Clifton, Virginia – specifically around the bunny man bridge, on Colchester Road.
People have reported seeing a tall figure in a baggy, off-white, dirty rabbit suit.
But it doesn’t look like a regular guy in a rabbit suit. They say you’ll get feelings of uneasiness and something just looks and feels incredibly off about this bunny man, who is typically holding either a hatchet or an axe.
Legend says that if you travel to Bunny Man Bridge exactly at midnight – especially on Halloween – and you walk by yourself underneath the bridge and out from the moonlight, close your eyes, and call out for the Bunny Man three times, the Bunny Man appears from the shadows.
A tall, misshapen bunny figure with an axe in his hand slides out of the shadows, and before you have time to run away, he slashes your throat and leaves your body haning from the bridge.
This is just one version of the many versions of the urban legend, thanks in part to the multiple origin stories that feed into the story. No matter what version you’ve heard these are the common threads to the Bunny Man Urban Legend:
- A tall man in a dirty white rabbit suit with an axe or hatchet
- The attacks are said to have happened at the stroke of midnight on Halloween at the Colchester Road Bridge—which is now known even to Google Maps as Bunny Man Bridge.
- The Bunny Man quickly attacks and slashes at you with his weapon of choice
- Sometimes folks say it’s not a man in a Bunny suit that appears, but rather a deranged man, hunched over that has dead rabbit pelts tied all across his body.
Now that we’ve covered the urban legend, let’s check out some of the origin stories and take a look at who is behind the mask.
The Origin Stories Of The Bunny Man
Origin Story #1: Driven Mad
The first origin story tells of a man that lived in a cabin with this wife and child. One day, he left his family behind at the cabin so he could hunt and bring back some dinner.
He was out for a few hours and when he returned to the cabin, he was horrified to discover the mutilated bodies of his wife and child.
Immediately, the man contacted the Clifton Sheriff, but due to the lack of suspects and his erratic behavior, he was arrested.
The man became so hysterical they ended up sending him to a mental institution.
He was there for years and years, maintaining his innocence and growing angrier and angrier about the injustice done to him and the fact that is family’s killer is still free.
Eventually, he escaped and made his way back to Clifton. He stayed in hiding but was routinely seen around the bridge.
Those that saw him claimed that they would find half eaten rabbit carcasses littered around the bridge, and when they’d catch a glimpse of the man, he’d even have the dead bunnies tied to his body like clothing.
Legend says one Halloween night, a group of children were hanging out near the bridge. They were confused and grossed out by the dead rabbit bodies that were not just littered across the ground – but also hanging from the bridge.
But soon enough something else grabbed their attention – they were confronted by the man, with rabbit corpses draped across his body.
The children screamed but in blind rage The Bunny Man was upon them in seconds.
For days the children were reported missing. It wasn’t until a single deputy drove past Bunny Man bridge that they were found.
The officer was shocked to find a terrible scene of dismembered children hanging from the bridge and nearby trees.
People say you can still hear Bunny Man’s haunting laughter late at night. Images of hanging children are known to appear in pictures taken of the bridge late at night.
Origin Story #2: The asylum patient
This origin story is similar to the mental asylum one.
In 1970 there was a bus that was carrying a group of individuals from a nearby mental institution. They were being transferred from a mental hospital which became defunct to the Lorton Prison.
It was a stormy night and the bus’ wheels started skidding on the wet road and crashed. Everyone on the bus died, except one man, who snuck away and took refuge in the woods near the bridge.
During a search of the area while investigating the bus accident, police found carcasses of dead rabbits hanging from the trees around the train overpass of Colchester Road Bridge before eventually locating the missing man.
He was wearing rabbit pelts and tried to escape the police, but before the authorities could apprehend him he was hit and immediately killed by an on-coming train over Colchester Road Bridge.
To this day, his spirit is said to haunt the bridge, appearing at midnight on Halloween, wearing a large rabbit suit like all of the bunnies he slaughtered, and will kill anyone who can’t escape his clutches.
Origin Story #3: The Man in the Bunny Costume
One thing that the first two origin stories don’t have is the famous bunny suit.
The Bunny Man in those stories is named so due to him killing rabbits and wearing their skin. However, the actual Bunny Man Suit has yet to make an appearance.
Until now.
The third origin story also takes place in 1970 around mid October and there are real reports, both police and journalistic, tied to these.
The first report involved Robert Bennett, an Air Force Academy cadet, and his fiancé.
The couple were parked in a field in the town of Burke, Virginia, which is about 14 minutes away from Bunny Man Bridge.
They had just watched a football game and were on their way to visit Robert’s uncle who lived nearby.
While on the way they decided to take a quick pit stop to do what young love birds do, some necking.
But their time for canoodling was cut short when out of no where a hatched smashed through the front window of the car.
Freaking out, they saw a flash of a man running by in what looked like at that moment an all white suit.
The man began shouting and running around the car screaming, “You’re on private property.”
Robert immediately shifted his car into drive and peeled off, accidentally taking the hatchet which was still in the car with them.
As they were driving away, Robert’s fiancee snuck a peak behind them for a final glance at the aggressor, where she said it wasn’t just a white suit, it was a furry white costume with long bunny ears.
As strange as this story is, that isn’t where it ended – over the next few weeks multiple reports starting coming into the police department and were reported in the Washington Post.
About 10 days later, a security guard named Paul Phillips was patrolling an under-construction housing development after hours late at night when he heard loud chopping noises.
He rushed to the front of the house and discovered a man in a bunny costume who was standing on the front porch of an unfinished home, chopping away at the porch post with a hatchet or a long-handled axe. The security officer was very clear that the man as wearing a “white bunny suit with floppy ears.”
When Phillips started cautiously approaching him, the Bunny Man threatened him, “You are trespassing. If you come any closer, I’ll chop off your head!”
At this point, The Fairfax County Police opened an investigation, and were flooded with tons of reports from people who claimed to have seen the “bunny man.”
Apparently, this drew the attention of newspapers from all over the area.
In early November, a group of children coming home from school reported seeing “a man on the street with a bunny rabbit suit on with a hatchet.”
The Bunny Man In The 21st Century.
While these origin stories all took place in the 1970’s this is where the Legend of the Bunny Man ends.
Here is a recent report that is tied to the Bunny Man.
FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (WUSA9) — The body of a man found along a rural Fairfax County road has been identified as Michael Cooker, 30, of Herndon.
He was found along the 6500 block of Colchester Road in Fairfax Station by a nearby resident just before 7 a.m. Cooker’s body was about 900 feet from what’s known as the Bunny Man Bridge.
The road was closed for hours as crime scene detectives poured over the spot where the body was found along the two-lane winding road.
“Responding units noticed upper body trauma to the victim summoned rescue. Rescue determined that he was dead on the scene,” said Sgt. Aaron Fife.
Of particular interest to investigators was the embankment. A crime scene photographer took many pictures of what he found there.
The homes in the area are spread out, each on several acres.
Police said no weapons were found on Cooker’s body. They also couldn’t say where the murder took place.
Besides upper body trauma, police are not saying how the man died. That will be determined by the medical examiner.
The Bunny Man Lives.
Bunny Man Personal Encounters
My dad and I went hiking a few days ago. My dad is a waterfall fanatic, and he wants to see as many as possible.
So, he and I are hiking along a very pretty trail. We’re hiking along a river, it’s flowing nicely, there’s mountains all around us, the trail is weaving around big, beautiful boulders.
I’m hiking at most 30 feet ahead of him looking for a spot to stop and have a sit down picnic lunch, and as I rounded a blind curve in the trail, I just freeze.
Sitting on a stump maybe ten feet off the right side of the trail is a guy. He is wearing one of those colorful baja hoodies with the hood pulled up and a half mask with rabbit ears.
He sees me and stands up right as my dad rounds the corner. We are all three sizing each other up in silence, and my dad addresses him.
“What’s up, buddy?”
The masked man tips his head as if he was deciding what to do with us, and then says back, “Not much. You aren’t the guys I’m waiting for. Have a good day.”
Then he turns and jogs off quickly into the woods. Strapped on his lower back was a large hunting knife, and he had a pistol on his hip.
We lost sight of him pretty quickly. We hadn’t seen a soul on the trail all day, and we had been hiking for almost three hours. Needless to say, we left the waterfall for another day and quickly turned around.
Once we were off the trail we reported it to the local forest service and the police, but they said they couldn’t do much aside from keep an eye out for any suspicious activity.
The masked guy didn’t have a backpack, or water, or anything, which makes me think he had either stashed it somewhere or was maybe camping and waiting nearby.
I hate to admit it, but I desperately wanted to go after the guy and ask who he was waiting for and why.
Is The Bunny Man Real?
What do you think Bizarros?
Is the Bunny Man a spirit meant to terrorize those who get close to Bunny Man Bridge?
Would you go to Bunny Man Bridge, in the dark?