In July 1969, tales of the ‘Lake Worth Monster’ terrified Fort Worth. But was it real?

(From columns first published June 21, 2018, and Oct. 16, 2021.)

You can’t keep a good monster down.

In July 1969, when the rest of the world was marveling at the moon landing, Fort Worth was fascinated with our own Bigfoot — described as a furry, scaly Goat-Man creature that attacked cars and terrorized teenagers near its boggy northwest Fort Worth home.

On July 10, 1969, only 10 days before humankind set foot on the moon, we were frightened by the “Lake Worth Monster.”

Then he vanished forever into urban legend.

He wasn’t new. In 1947, a lake serpent had bobbed up nearby.

But the 1969 monster was more of a furry Sasquatch or Yeti. A gawking motorist even photographed him that fall with a Polaroid camera on Shoreline Road near Greer Island.

In recent years, his legend is only growing through reality TV’s fascination with the paranormal.

But as his fame grew, another clue to his 1969 origin turned up.

Star-Telegram archives show that in December 1968, only months before the Monster marauded along Shoreline Road, front-page columnist George Dolan wrote a joking column retelling the story of that earlier 1947 sighting.

“A man who used to run a boat works on Lake Worth mentioned the other day that he can understand people thinking they see flying saucers,” Dolan wrote, referring to the UFO sightings of that paranoid, Cold War-wary era.

“Remember the ‘Lake Worth monster’?”

That earlier one was definitely a prank.

In 1947, workers at the boat works rigged an inner tube with a pulley and trotline to make it bob up and down in the water, Dolan wrote.

“The excitement went on for days,” Dolan wrote, before the joke was revealed.

But people still believed it was real.

“Some of them,” Dolan wrote, “might still think there’s a monster in Lake Worth.”

It was only months later, at the height of UFO sightings — and otherwise slow summer news days — when police officer James S. McGee was dispatched to take Fort Worth resident John Reichert’s account of a Goat-Man who scratched his car fender and was grabbing at his wife.

A Sansom Park man, Jack Harris, said he saw it throw a tire 500 feet.

Weeks later, Charles Buchanan said he threw a bag of chicken to ward off a gorilla-like creature.

(The owner of a nearby kennel has said a macaque monkey got loose about the same time.)

The only record we have is a blurry Nov. 19, 1969, Polaroid of a giant, white furball, like a monster labradoodle.

Allen Plaster of Fort Worth, then 22 and owner of the House of Allen women’s wear shop, took the photo.

He said he was driving west on Shoreline Road with two Weatherford friends at 1:35 a.m. when they saw the Fur Monster stand up on the south side of the road.

In a 2006 interview, he said he considered the sighting a “prank,” adding, “Whatever it was, it wanted to be seen.”

Plaster (1947-2019) was a Graford native. At the time of the monster’s rampage, he owned a chain of fashion boutiques.

He went on to own a pet store, Allen’s Ark, and managed local hotels, started a furniture manufacturer and worked as a bail bond agent.

In 2006, he said the idea of a real monster is “silly.”

“When we drove by, it stood up,” he said.

“Whatever it was, it wanted to be seen. That was a prank. That was somebody out there waiting for people to drive by. I don’t think an animal would have acted that way.”

He gave his Polaroid instant print to Sallie Ann Clarke of Benbrook, who said she had seen a “goat-fish-man.”

Her homespun book, “The Lake Worth Monster of Greer Island, Ft. Worth, Texas,” now sells for almost $150 on eBay.

There’s good money now in monsters.