Newspaper clipping from The Louisville Times, courtesy of Ron Schildknecht
“The natural vehicle of folk belief, perhaps of most belief, is stories that show what is true by what is said to have happened” (Hufford, 1995). In his article “Beings Without Bodies: An Experienced-Centered Theory of the Belief in Spirits,” David J. Hufford examines how experience impacts belief. He gives several examples of phenomena that have occurred historically across different regions and cultures, long before any discussion among these cultures existed. Hufford writes, “The conventional expectation has long been that folk belief creates experience (and the illusory appearance of experience) in a self-fulfilling process.” By this, he means that traditionally, those studying folk beliefs thought people had certain experiences due to what they believed.
Through these examples, Hufford aims to explain the idea that “a host of traditional beliefs actually seem to be produced by a particular kind of experience.” He points out that previously-unexplained situations have occurred with remarkable similarity throughout the world. Hufford’s claim is that belief is based on experience, and this is what gives it credibility. When belief can be “rationally founded on experience,” it will survive some skepticism (Hufford, 1995).
As with many other legends, then, the survival of the Pope Lick Monster is drawn from people’s experiences. When Ron Schildknecht set out to make his film, he talked to many people about their experiences at the trestle. Because his film predates the Internet, his research mainly involved talking to locals about their stories and drawing on whatever he could find in libraries and archives.
“As you say, with any folk legend, there’s variances in the story, and that was probably the most frustrating aspect of the research, for me, because everybody I talked to had a really different story. And nobody really had any kind of, like—at least nobody that I talked to—had any real definitive story. As I was doing the research and talking to people, the more I got was about people’s experiences going to the trestle rather than the legend itself,” Ron told me.
Here is an extended clip of that section of the interview, in which he tells me how the focus of his film shifted from the story of the monster to the experience of visiting the trestle.
So here we have a legend whose story became less and less important than the experiences people sought due to the story. The legend-tripping is more prevalent than the actual legend. The perceived danger of the monster is backed up by the indisputable danger of the trestle, where, as previously stated, many people have been injured or even killed by a train or by falling. As someone from the area, I think I would be hard-pressed to find many people who genuinely believe in the existence of a half-man, half-animal who lives by the trestle, but not many would deny the fact that visiting the trestle often results in dangerous, and sometimes life-threatening, activities.