Our crew has just arrived on the scene at Pope Lick Road where the deadly accident happened. (Source: Steven Richard/WAVE 3 News) 
 
 LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - An Ohio woman walking on an old but still active railroad trestle in east Louisville was apparently investigating a local urban legend with her boyfriend when she was hit and killed by a train, a deputy coroner said Sunday. 
 
 Roquel Bain, 26, of Dayton, Ohio, died of multiple blunt force injuries suffered in the collision and subsequent fall from the trestle, Deputy Coroner Jack Arnold said. The collision, which occurred near the 3100 block of South Pope Lick Road, was first reported to police at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. 
 
 Bain was pronounced dead at the scene. The coroner estimated that she fell between 80 and 100 feet. Her boyfriend survived with no injuries, police say. 
 
 Arnold said Bain and her boyfriend were visiting Louisville to take a "haunted" tour of the Waverly Hills Sanitorium. Before their tour started, they heard about the "Pope Lick Monster" myth. Curious, the two made their way up to the train tracks when the train surprised them, the man told the coroner. The man said that the two realized they couldn't make it to the end of the trestle so they decided to hang off the sides, but Bain couldn't move fast enough. 
 
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 Many thrill-seekers mistakenly think the trestle is no longer in use, author and historian David Domine told WAVE 3 News for a story in 2014. They are drawn by stories of a creature - half-goat and half-man - that tricks people into climbing onto the trestle. 
 
 Many residents in the area say the myth has been taking the lives of many over the past couple of decades. 
 
 "It's been around for years, even my nieces and nephews used to go and come out here," Denise Harris said. "The Goatman, when they climb up on the trestles and they cross it--he's supposed to come out when they cross it." 
 
 Little do they know, going up onto the trestles in itself is a deadly choice. 
 
 "If they're halfway through [the tracks] and the train comes, you either have to jump, run or basically get it," Harris said. She also added many people think they can outrun the trains that come by. 
 
 "when you're young, you think you live forever; it's a euphoria. Or they think they can outrun the train," Harris said pointing at the trestles. "That's a long way to run and you can't run that fast." 
 
 She's right. With Norfolk Southern trains passing by at an average speed of 24.1 miles per hour, you would have to be faster than Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world, just to keep up with the train. In addition, other residents say the specific area sees heavy traffic. 
 
 "I see a train pass every thirty minutes or so. It's shocking, people hear about so many deaths and they still take the risk," Michelle burns said. 
 
 Burns says she can only hope people will give it a second thought before they make the last decision of their lives. 
 
 "It's sad, I pray for the family, my thoughts are with them but I wis hthat people would think about what they're doing before they do it--it's definitely dangerous." 
 
 A chained fence and warning signs are in place to keep people away from the area. 
 
 The LMPD Homicide Unit is handling the investigation. The train involved is a Norfolk Southern train. 
 
 Funeral arrangements for Bain are being handled for Jones, Kenny, Zechman Funeral Home in Dayton. 
 
 Copyright 2016 WAVE 3 News. All Rights Reserved. ||||| Investigators say an Ohio woman fell to her death while trying to find the Pope Lick Monster @WHAS11 pic.twitter.com/sSPgceBH7J — Holden Kurwicki (@HoldenWHAS11) April 25, 2016 
 
 By the time the young couple spotted the locomotive, bearing down the railroad trestle at over 30 miles an hour, they had no choice. 
 
 Facing an 8-story drop on either side, with no way to outrun the train to the trestle’s end, the pair’s only hope was to cling to the sides of the tracks. The engineer later told officials, as the Kentucky newspaper the Courier-Journal reports, that he blared his horn and tried to slow down. Though the man on the tracks managed to make the split-second dive to the edge, the train was traveling too fast for his companion — there simply wasn’t enough time. 
 
 The train fatally struck Roquel Bain, a 26-year-old from Dayton, Ohio. She fell, some 100 feet to the ground. 
 
 Bain and her boyfriend, whose name has not yet been released by authorities, had traveled to Kentucky for an innocent bit of thrill-seeking — a tour of Waverly Hills Sanatorium, a former tuberculosis clinic turned haunted house. While in Louisville, they caught wind of another occult story, one which they decided to investigate in the twilight hours before their tour: the Pope Lick Monster. 
 
 Also known as the Goatman or the Sheepman, the Pope Lick Monster isn’t an icon of North American cryptozoology, lacking the national recognition of furry giants Bigfoot and Sasquatch. Still, within the confines of the woods surrounding Louisville, the creature has accumulated a rich history of lore and legend. 
 
 
 
 Pope Lick trestle (Google maps) 
 
 The monster’s origin stories are as varied as its name. To hear the Sierra Club tell it, the Pope Lick Monster was “exhibited as a circus freak in the late 19th century, escaping captivity when lightning struck the circus train and left him the lone survivor.” In 2014, local historian David Domine described the creature as something born out of a deal with the devil. He told Louisville’s WAVE news that: “The goat man arose as a tale of a local farmer back in the day. Tortured a herd of goats for Satan and signed a contract with him and forfeited his soul.” Domine depicts a muscular being that’s “part goat maybe even part sheep.” 
 
 In every telling, the Goatman remains fiercely attached to the trestle over Pope Lick Creek. “The Sheepman is something only told around here; it’s been around at least three generations,” filmmaker Ron Schildknecht told Louisville paper The New Voice in 1990. Schildknecht created a 16-minute short, “The Legend of the Pope Lick Monster,” that appears to come straight from the yarns a young Kentuckian might spin to impress a date — a part-sheep satyr that can hypnotize its victims, leaving them helpless in front of oncoming trains. 
 
 To a certain kind of young adventurer, the legend of the Pope Lick Monster is irresistible. Denise Harris, a Louisville local, said her nieces and nephews have climbed the trestle looking for the folkloric beast. “The Goatman, when they climb up on the trestles and they cross it,” as she told WAVE 3, “he’s supposed to come out,” 
 
 And though the trestle is old — it dates back to the 1800s — it’s still very much in use. When Schildknecht’s film debuted in December 1988, representatives for the Norfolk Southern train company feared it would erode the safety efforts in place to keep people off of the trestle. 
 
 Despite the warning signs and a tall fence that surrounds the trestle, Pope Creek has had several accidents and deaths, some possibly related to looking for the Goatman. Bain was pronounced dead at the scene, reports the Associated Press, with the coroner citing blunt trauma from the train strike and fall. 
 
 The incident has left the local community shaken. “I cried and I’m very upset over it,” Tina Mattingly, the owner of the haunted sanatorium Waverly Hills, in an interview with WHAS11. “I really wish it just hadn’t happened. It’s just not worth it.” 
 
 “It’s just so sad — a very pretty young girl who had her life in front of her,” deputy coroner Jack Arnold told the Courier-Journal. Her death, he said, is the first to be explicitly tied to the Goatman legend. 
 
 On the Waverly Hills Facebook page, a note posted late April 24 warns that all visiting ghost enthusiasts need to “follow local laws, danger warnings and no trespassing signs.” The Louisville police will not charge Bain’s boyfriend with trespassing, though simply climbing to the trestle itself is illegal, as the areas surrounding the tracks are private property. 
 
 For the Goatman, this satyr holds the tragic distinction of being one of the most dangerous mythical animals in North America. ||||| THE POPE LICK MONSTER 
 
 Something there is – the poet Robert Frost once almost said – that loves an urban myth, and in the case of the Pope Lick Monster that now faded love has lead to a 16-minute independent movie, a well-received play, thousands of teenaged memories and at least three deaths. 
 
 In its simplest terms, the monster was described in The Encyclopedia of Louisville as “a half-man, half-goat that has been rumored to live under the Norfolk Southern Railroad trestle across Pope Lick Creek and S. Pope Lick Road near Fisherville in eastern Jefferson County.” 
 
 
 
 “Stories of encounters,” the encyclopedia said, “ have abounded for more than three generations and have served as a mood setter for multiple romantic encounters between teenage boys and girls, many involving tests of “bravery” that require climbing out onto the trestle.” 
 
 
 
 “According to the legend, the creature hypnotizes trespassers into venturing out onto the trestle, thus luring them to their death before an oncoming train. Several people have been killed either on the trestle, or by falling from it, and many more have been injured.” 
 
 
 
 Various overwrought descriptions have given the monster the grotesquely deformed body of a man, fur-covered goat legs, an alabaster face with an aquiline nose, wide set-eyes, sharp horns protruding from his forehead and long greasy hair matching the fur on his legs. Other descriptions had him looking more like a sheep – with “Sheepman” the name being given to the beast. 
 
 
 
 Either way the creature is also said to be able to mimic familiar voices – luring people up onto the tracks – and if all else fails he dispatches his victims with a rusty, blood-stained axe. 
 
 
 
 The supposed origins of the beast include a local farmer becoming much too familiar with his goat, and a circus sideshow freak being freed when lightning struck the circus train. Other stories had the beast being an old chemist who became a recluse after his face was horribly burned in an explosion, or just a strange hermit living in an old shack. 
 
 
 
 All in all a totally incongruous tale set in a still peaceful but rapidly developing area just a few hundred yards off of Taylorsville Road and near where Pope Lick empties into Floyds Fork. 
 
 
 
 When viewed from a distance the skinny, rusted, and still heavily-used trestle seems inadequate for the job. Built in the late 1800s, it rises 90 feet above Pope Lick. It spans a distance of 772 feet. Much of this is covered by fields, brush, and small trees. 
 
 The trestle has no railings and no places to hide from trains. Photos taken at the top show the gleaming rails stretching off into the distance with only a few feet of black-brown railroad ties on each side – then only space and an abrupt, nine-story drop. 
 
 
 
 No one, of course, has ever seen the beast; actual sightings would only get in the way of the myth. Psychological studies tell us that such myths – or urban legends – are often rooted in some long-forgotten basis in fact. Exaggerated stories are repeated so often that they begin to bear the patina of truth. The associated movies, plays, television shows, and websites cater to our primal needs to believe and to follow. 
 
 
 
 Those needs in this instance became attached to a teenage rite of passage of facing up to the Pope Lick Monster, even walking across his trestle – particularly during Halloween. The activity became popular primarily among students from nearby Jeffersontown, but other high schools and even local colleges were well represented. To quote long-time Fisherville resident Martha Williams: 
 
 
 
 “There would be just mobs of kids out there near the trestle and climbing up on it. It used to be a favorite thing to do…the boys would con the girls into it. Most of the ones that came out here were no locals. The locals sort of knew better.” 
 
 
 
 In recent years this teenage bravado has also created tragedy. In February, 1987, Jack Charles Bahm II, a 17-year-old Spalding University student, was struck and killed by a train while walking on the trestle. In May, 1987, 19-year-old David Wayne Bryant died of injuries suffered a year earlier when he jumped from the trestle to avoid getting hit by a train. In November 2000 Nicholas Jewell of Mount Washington, 19, died after falling from the trestle. Four friends who were with him told police that Jewell had attempted to cross the trestle and was about halfway across when a freight train approached. Police said that Jewell had moved to the side and attempted to hold onto a railroad tie, but the train’s vibration eventually shook him off. 
 
 
 
 In the late 1980s the ongoing legend led to a 16-minute film, “The Legend of the Pope Lick Monster,” which was shot at the trestle by Louisville native and independent film producer Ron Schildknecht. The movie, which quickly drew anger from parents and railroad officials believing it would only draw more teenagers to the site, depicted a youth caught on the trestle hanging from a railroad tie to survive- a physical impossibility. 
 
 
 
 The Norfolk Southern Railroad also issued a statement, read at the movie’s premier, warning both of the trestle’s danger and that anyone caught on it would be prosecuted. Soon after the movie’s debut at Louisville’s Uptown Theatre – and the deaths of the teenagers – police security increased, a tall chain-link security fence was erected at the base of the trestle, and “Danger”, “Private Property”, and “Keep Off” signs were put up. Someone would later paint “JC, I Love and Miss You 3-16-76” across the concrete base of the trestle in tribute to Jack Charles Bahm. 
 
 
 
 The trestle would later find its way into a play written by Prospect, Kentucky poet and McArthur Foundation “Genius Award” winner Naomi Wallace called “The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek.” The complex and well-received play, which has been staged all over the country, is set in the late depression days of 1937. It features a scene in which two “horrifically confused” teenagers race across a trestle as they hear a train approaching, knowing they can only make it to safety if they don’t trip or look back. The play was originally produced at Louisville’s Actors Theatre. Courier-Journal theatre critic Judith Egerton called it “a complicated, interwoven play that moves back and forth in time between past and present, with layers of meaning that overlap and build on each other.” 
 
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– The search for a fabled "goatman" said to prowl an active 19th-century train trestle in Louisville, Ky., has led to tragedy. Roquel Bain, 26, who was visiting from Ohio, planned to go on a "haunted" tour of Louisville's former tuberculosis clinic with her boyfriend Saturday when the pair heard a local legend about the Pope Lick Monster, a half-man, half-goat creature said to appear to those who climb the trestle across Pope Lick Creek and cross its 772-foot length, per WTOL. They decided to attempt the crossing, but a train suddenly appeared blaring its horn, reports the Washington Post. Bain's boyfriend hung off the side of the trestle as the train passed, but Bain couldn't get out of the way in time. She was hit by the train about 40 feet from the trestle's end, per the Louisville Courier-Journal. Her body was found some 100 feet below. "It's just so sad—a very pretty young girl who had her life in front of her. It's just so preventable," a coroner says. "I see a train pass every 30 minutes or so," adds a local. "It's shocking, people hear about so many deaths and they still take the risk." The Parklands notes at least three teens have died from trips to the trestle. It isn't clear where the fable first originated, but it's been around for three generations. A local historian cites a story about a man who tortured a herd of goats for Satan. Others say the monster was a circus freak who escaped the circus train. The legend picked up followers in the 1980s with a short film. The "goatman" with furry goat legs and horns is said to mimic familiar voices to get his victims to the trestle and finishes off those who avoid a train with a rusty axe. (This urban legend inspired a stabbing.)