Appalachian Folklore & Myths Series – The Sheepman of Waterford: Erie County, Pennsylvania’s Horned Roadside Legend
In the countryside around Waterford, Pennsylvania, the old stories did not place the monster in some distant wilderness. It was supposed to be close enough to see from a car window.
During the 1970s, young people around Waterford heard warnings about a creature that moved between farm fields, dirt roads, patches of woods, and an old covered bridge southeast of town. Some called it the Sheepman. Others remembered Goatman. In later retellings, it acquired the name Sheepsquatch, but the creature described by longtime residents was usually something simpler and stranger: a large humanlike figure covered in pale hair, with horns rising from its head and animal-like feet.
The legend became attached to Baghdad Road, Woods Road, Pennsylvania Route 19, and especially the covered bridge across LeBoeuf Creek on Niemeyer Road. Adults supposedly used the Sheepman to frighten children. Teenagers told stories about seeing it run across roads. One of the best-known tales placed it in the rafters of the bridge, waiting above couples who had chosen the secluded structure as a place to park after dark.
There is an important difficulty, however, for anyone trying to separate the history from the haunting. The surviving evidence strongly suggests that people in Waterford remember the Sheepman story circulating around 1970 and during the years that followed, but no verified contemporary newspaper article, police report, or government record has yet surfaced documenting an actual Sheepman encounter during the 1970s. Most detailed accounts were recorded decades later as oral history. Pasted markdown
That makes the Sheepman less a case of proving whether a horned creature walked the fields and more a question of how a local story became part of the folklore of Erie County, one of the counties included in Pennsylvania’s Appalachian region.
A Legend from Around 1970
The most extensive collection of Waterford Sheepman memories was assembled by Robin S. Swope, who began publicly writing about the creature in 2012. Swope explained that he first encountered the story after speaking with someone at a horror convention in 2011. Because he was familiar with the Waterford area but had not known the legend himself, he began asking local residents what they remembered.
Those inquiries eventually produced several recollections from people who said the Sheepman had been part of Waterford life during the 1960s and 1970s. Swope’s later 2016 account gathered memories from Marylin, Richard Galbraith, Herb Kinney, Sally B., and an anonymous person who offered one possible explanation for how the entire story began.
These are valuable accounts, but they have to be understood for what they are. They were collected roughly four decades after the period being remembered. They establish that Waterford residents remembered a Sheepman tradition, sometimes vividly, but memory alone cannot prove that the individual encounters happened exactly as later described.
One recollection provides an unusually specific date. An anonymous informant contacted during an investigation by Erie County historian and paranormal investigator Heidi Kirclich LaDow said that the person had heard about the Sheepman in 1970 while attending seventh grade. According to that version, the story had begun among Vocational Agriculture students before spreading into the wider community.
If the memory is accurate, the Sheepman was already circulating among Waterford-area young people by 1970.
Baghdad Road and the Farm Fields
Some of the most direct encounter stories center on Baghdad Road.
A woman identified as Marylin told Swope that she lived there as a teenager and remembered the Sheepman legend being widely discussed. On one occasion, she said she saw a figure run across a dirt road near an old sawmill. She later recalled a second experience when, at seventeen, she saw what she believed was the same creature cross the road near her driveway and disappear into the woods.
The stories fit the landscape around which the legend developed. This was farm country, a place of fields, livestock, wooded patches, and narrow roads where something glimpsed for a second in automobile headlights could quickly disappear.
In later versions, Baghdad Road became more than a place where the Sheepman might be seen. It became its home. Herb Kinney remembered hearing that the creature lived in a cave somewhere along the road, emerging to roam the countryside and occasionally making its way toward the covered bridge southeast of Waterford.
Like many details in the legend, the cave is part of the oral tradition rather than something presently documented by contemporary records. Its importance is folkloric. Giving the creature a home transformed the Sheepman from a vague monster into something belonging specifically to the Waterford landscape.
The Old Kissing Bridge
No place became more closely associated with the Sheepman than the covered bridge over LeBoeuf Creek.
The bridge itself is real, historic, and unusually well documented. Built in 1875 by brothers Charles and James Phelps, it uses a Town lattice wooden truss design and carries Niemeyer Road across LeBoeuf Creek. It has been called Brotherton’s Bridge and the Old Kissing Bridge, a name that gives the later Sheepman story an almost perfect setting.
The Historic American Buildings Survey documented the structure, describing it as an example of late nineteenth-century covered bridge construction. The bridge was later entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 for its significance in transportation and engineering.
By the time Sheepman stories were spreading, the bridge had already stood for nearly a century. It was enclosed, isolated, surrounded by rural countryside, and traditionally associated with young couples looking for privacy. Folklore could hardly have asked for a better stage.
Herb Kinney remembered that the creature was said to climb into the bridge rafters and wait for couples who parked beneath them. In this version, the Sheepman was not wandering randomly through Erie County. It knew where teenagers went at night.
That element places the Waterford story squarely within a much older American tradition of lover’s-lane legends.
The Mustang Under the Bridge
The most dramatic Sheepman story connected to the bridge involved two couples from Erie.
According to the account Kinney later gave, the four young people were traveling in a dark blue Ford Mustang convertible on a summer night when rain began to fall. They pulled beneath the covered bridge, supposedly intending to raise the convertible top while sheltered from the weather.
Then something attacked.
Kinney’s retelling described the young men struggling against the creature while the group escaped in the Mustang. The car’s top was supposedly badly damaged during the encounter. All four occupants were said to have maintained that the attack had happened, but according to the story their parents refused to permit a police report because they feared embarrassment.
That final detail is important because it explains both the strength and the weakness of the story. If no report was filed, researchers should not expect to find one. At the same time, the absence of a record means the story presently cannot be checked against contemporary police documentation.
What survives is a remembered story about a remembered event.
The structure at the center of it survives as well. After being closed to traffic in 2011 because of safety concerns, the Niemeyer Road bridge underwent a roughly $3.5 million rehabilitation beginning in 2023. It reopened in November 2024, its familiar barn-red appearance restored.
The Sheepman may have disappeared, but its most famous haunt remains.
The Sheepman as a Boogeyman
Not every Waterford resident remembered the creature as something they had actually seen.
Richard Galbraith recalled adults warning children, “Don’t let the Sheep-man get ya!” He also remembered being cautioned about the Route 19 outskirts of Waterford after dark. The warning turned the creature into something immediately recognizable in traditional folklore: the local boogeyman. The Paranormal Pastor
Sally B., another longtime resident, remembered a somewhat different version associated with Woods Road. She described the Sheepman as a combination of the sheep-like monster and the familiar hook-handed killer of lover’s-lane stories. In her memory, Woods Road was still a rough dirt route during the 1960s, and the creature’s purpose was largely to frighten away couples who parked there.
That recollection may be one of the most revealing pieces of the entire legend.
Instead of one fixed Sheepman narrative, Waterford appears to have had several overlapping versions. For children, he could be the thing waiting beyond town after dark. For teenagers, he became the creature stalking parked cars. For others, he was something glimpsed moving between farms and woods.
The Sheepman changed according to whoever was telling the story.
Did the Story Begin at School?
The most intriguing explanation for the Sheepman’s origin came from the anonymous informant contacted during Heidi Kirclich LaDow’s investigation.
According to that person, the legend originated among Vocational Agriculture students and was already spreading among schoolchildren in 1970. The earliest form was apparently a crude adolescent story about a creature born half human and half sheep. As it passed from student to student, the tale supposedly escaped the schoolyard and became a community legend.
There is no way, based on the surviving evidence, to prove that this informant knew the true origin. The anonymity of the source makes independent verification especially difficult. Still, the claim fits one interesting piece of Waterford history.
Agricultural education had unusually deep roots there. According to the Fort LeBoeuf Historical Society, Waterford’s school developed an agricultural course of study as early as 1901, combining classroom and field instruction with assistance from Penn State. Vocational agriculture remained an important part of local education for decades.
That does not prove agricultural students invented the Sheepman. It does establish that such a group was part of the community in which the legend arose.
If the anonymous account is broadly correct, the Waterford Sheepman may represent something remarkably ordinary beneath all the horns, claws, and fur. A joke told among students grew through repetition. Someone added a sighting. Someone else connected it with a road. Another storyteller moved the creature into the covered bridge. Parents began repeating it to children. Teenagers carried it to lover’s lanes.
Eventually no single person owned the story anymore.
Waterford did.
What the Contemporary Record Does Not Yet Show
The historical problem with the Sheepman begins when later retellings are treated as though they were contemporary documentation.
Claims that hundreds of people saw the creature, that livestock were mutilated, or that authorities investigated Sheepman attacks have become part of modern retellings. Yet the research collected so far has not produced a verified 1970s newspaper clipping, police report, government document, or other contemporary record substantiating those claims. Pasted markdown
That absence does not prove that no one reported strange experiences. Folklore often circulates for years without reaching newspapers, particularly when stories belong mostly to schoolchildren, teenagers, farm families, and local conversation.
It does mean, however, that claims about specific official investigations or newspaper coverage should not be repeated as historical fact without the original document.
This distinction matters because genuine Erie County newspapers from the period survive. The Erie Daily Times, Erie Morning Dispatch, Waterford Leader, Union City Times, and later Times-Leader provide potential places where a prank, livestock incident, strange-animal report, or local rumor might eventually be found. The research underlying this article identified these newspaper collections as among the most promising remaining avenues for establishing a contemporary documentary trail. Pasted markdown
Until such a clipping appears, the safest conclusion is also the most interesting one. There is strong retrospective evidence for a Waterford Sheepman tradition around 1970, but much less evidence for the spectacular events later attached to it.
From Local Rumor to Erie County Folklore
For decades, the Sheepman seems to have remained primarily a Waterford memory.
That began changing in the twenty-first century. Swope’s 2012 article brought the legend online, and that same year Rebecca Styn included the creature in an Erie Reader feature on regional supernatural stories. Styn repeated the covered-bridge account and reported LaDow’s conclusion that the Sheepman may have begun as a story among Vocational Agriculture students before being adopted by the broader community.
The legend was also embraced locally. A 2025 USA Today Network account reported that a Waterford historical organization staged a Sheepman ghost walk in 2012, complete with a Sheepman costume, and that local historian Anita Palmer preserved Swope’s collection of accounts within the broader effort to document Waterford history.
By then, the Sheepman had completed a transformation familiar to many regional legends.
What may have begun as a schoolyard tale or roadside scare had become heritage.
The old bridge was no longer simply a nineteenth-century transportation structure. Baghdad Road was no longer merely another country road. Each had acquired another layer of meaning created not by engineers or government records, but by people telling one another what supposedly happened there after dark.
Why the Waterford Sheepman Matters
Whether anything unusual ever crossed Baghdad Road is almost beside the point now.
The Waterford Sheepman survives because the story attached itself to real places and real memories. People remember being warned about it as children. Others remember teenagers talking about encounters. Some remembered specific roads where the creature supposedly lived or hunted. Later researchers collected those memories before the generation that knew the story in the 1970s disappeared.
That is what makes the Sheepman worth treating as history as well as folklore.
The strongest evidence does not show that a horned humanoid stalked Erie County. It shows that people in an Appalachian Pennsylvania community told stories about one. By approximately 1970, the Sheepman appears to have been part of local conversation. During the decade that followed, it became connected with Baghdad Road, Woods Road, Route 19, farm fields, and the Old Kissing Bridge on Niemeyer Road. Pasted markdown
Some remembered him as a monster. Some remembered him as a warning. Others suspected that the entire thing had begun as a joke among students.
More than half a century later, those explanations can exist together.
Drive southeast from Waterford today, and the covered bridge still crosses LeBoeuf Creek. Its timbers have been repaired, its road reopened, and its red siding restored. Nothing in the federal documentation of the old structure mentions monsters hiding overhead. Yet once darkness falls and the road becomes quiet, it is easy to understand why generations of Waterford teenagers placed one there.
The Sheepman belongs to that other history of Appalachia, the history that was rarely entered into courthouse books or government reports but was carried instead through warnings, memories, jokes, and stories told on dark roads.
And somewhere between Baghdad Road and the Old Kissing Bridge, Waterford gave that history horns.
Sources & Further Reading
Swope, Robin S. “The Sheepman of Waterford Pennsylvania.” The Paranormal Pastor, April 27, 2012. https://theparanormalpastor.blogspot.com/2012/04/sheepman-of-waterford-pennsylvania.html
Swope, Robin S. “Sheepsquatch of Waterford PA.” The Paranormal Pastor, April 20, 2016. https://theparanormalpastor.blogspot.com/2016/04/sheepsquatch-of-waterford-pa.html
Styn, Rebecca. “Eerie Erie: Seven Tales to Be Told After Dark.” Erie Reader, October 17, 2012. https://www.eriereader.com/article/eerie-erie-
Berkery, Patrick. “What Was the Mythical Creature Said to Have Stalked Erie County in the 1970s?” Keystone Newsroom, October 23, 2025. https://keystonenewsroom.com/local/what-was-the-mythical-creature-said-to-have-stalked-erie-county-in-the-1970s/
The Pennsylvania Rambler. “Weirdness in Waterford.” August 5, 2018. https://thepennsylvaniarambler.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/weirdness-in-waterford/
Historic American Buildings Survey. “Waterford Covered Bridge, Spanning Le Boeuf Creek, Waterford, Erie County, PA.” HABS PA-535. Library of Congress. Accessed October 12, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/item/pa0483/
Claridge, John R. “Waterford Covered Bridge.” National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form. 1979. National Register Information System No. 80003492. National Park Service. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/4df87a96-fa8b-4c32-92dc-fbdbdcabade3
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. “Work to Rehabilitate the Historic Bridge on Niemeyer Road in Erie County Starting Later This Month.” September 2023. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/penndot/news-and-media/newsroom/district-1/2023/work-to-rehabilitate-the-historic-bridge-on-niemeyer-road-in-erie-county-starting-later-this-month
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. “Niemeyer Road Covered Bridge in Waterford Township, Erie County Reopened to Traffic.” November 14, 2024. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/penndot/news-and-media/newsroom/district-1/2024/niemeyer-road-covered-bridge-in-waterford-twp–erie-county-reope
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. “Niemeyer Road Bridge Rehabilitation.” Accessed October 12, 2026. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/penndot/projects-near-you/district-1-projects/niemeyer-road-bridge-rehabilitation
Fort LeBoeuf Historical Society. “About.” Accessed October 12, 2026. https://fortleboeufhistory.com/about/
Fort LeBoeuf Historical Society. “Contact.” Accessed October 12, 2026. https://fortleboeufhistory.com/contact/
Fort LeBoeuf Historical Society. “Fort LeBoeuf Historical Society Newsletter.” Spring 2018. https://fortleboeufhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/FLB-Newsletter-Spring-2018.pdf
Library of Congress. “Erie Daily Times.” Chronicling America/U.S. Newspaper Directory. Accessed October 12, 2026. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn86083175/
Erie Times-News. “Erie Times-News Historical Archive.” NewsBank. Accessed October 12, 2026. https://goerie.newsbank.com/
Erie Times-News. “About the Erie Times-News Historical Archive.” NewsBank. Accessed October 12, 2026. https://goerie.newsbank.com/about
State Library of Pennsylvania. “Newspapers by County: Erie County.” Accessed October 12, 2026. https://pa-gov.libguides.com/c.php?g=1180939&p=8634966
State Library of Pennsylvania. “Newspaper A-Z Town List: Waterford.” Accessed October 12, 2026. https://pa-gov.libguides.com/c.php?g=1160553&p=8471440
State Library of Pennsylvania. “Newspaper A-Z Town List: Union City.” Accessed October 12, 2026. https://pa-gov.libguides.com/c.php?g=1160553&p=8471437
GenealogyBank. “Erie Morning Dispatch Historical Newspapers.” Accessed October 12, 2026. https://www.genealogybank.com/explore/newspapers/all/usa/pennsylvania/erie/erie-morning-dispatch
Mysterious Times. “The Legend of the Sheepman of Waterford, Pennsylvania.” September 16, 2014. https://mysterioustimes.co.uk/2014/09/16/the-legend-of-the-sheepman-of-waterford-pennsylvania/
Buried Secrets Podcast. “Who Is the Goatman? Goatman’s Bridge Series.” Accessed October 12, 2026. https://www.buriedsecretspodcast.com/who-is-the-goatman-goatmans-bridge-series/
Couch, J. Nathan. “An Encounter with a Ghostly Hookman.” Accessed October 12, 2026. https://www.jnathancouch.com/an-encounter-with-a-ghostly-hookman/
Couch, J. Nathan. Goatman: Flesh or Folklore? 2014. https://www.jnathancouch.com/
New World Explorers Society. “Wood-Eating Amish Country Goose Grabber.” August 2021. https://newworldexplorerssociety.blogspot.com/2021/08/wood-eating-amish-country-goose-grabber.html
Saluga, Fred, and Raymond A. Keller. Pennsylvania in the Paranormal Vortex. Terra Alta, WV: Headline Books. https://headlinebooks.com/product/pennsylvania-in-the-paranormal-vortex/
US Covered Bridges. “Waterford Covered Bridge, Erie County.” Accessed October 12, 2026. https://uscoveredbridges.com/listings/waterford-covered-bridge-erie-county/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian Counties Served by ARC.” Accessed October 12, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/appalachian-counties-served-by-arc/
Appalachian Regional Commission. Pennsylvania Appalachian Development Plan. Accessed October 12, 2026. https://www.arc.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/PA-ARC-State-Plan-2024.pdf
Author Note: The Waterford Sheepman survives primarily through memories collected decades after the legend reportedly circulated in the 1970s, rather than through contemporary police or newspaper records. This article preserves those local accounts while distinguishing documented Waterford history from claims that cannot yet be independently verified.