THE BUNNYMAN

"I'm just a ghost in this house
I'm shadow upon these walls,
As quietly as a mouse
I haunt these halls."

- Allison Krauss, Ghost in This House

They say that behind every good story there's a kernal of truth. As it turns out, the Bunnyman tale hopped into the collective conscience of the people of Fairfax County because of a very real (and really bizarre) case.

Brian Conley, a researcher ar the Fairfax County Public Library, began tracking the Bunnyman's roots at the Marylan Folklore Archive. There, he found research by University of Maryland student Patricia Johnson that recorded the earliest reports of the Bunnyman around Halloween of 1970. Conley researched newspaper archives of the time and located a Washington Post article that may just uncover the origins of the cotton-tailed terrorist.

"Fairfax County police said yesterday they are looking for a man who likes to wear a 'white bunny rabbit costume' and throw hatchets through car windows," the article stated. "Air Force Academy Cadet Robert Bennett told police that shortyly after midnight last Sunday he and his fiancée were sitting in a car in the 5400 block of Guinea Road when a man 'dressed in a white suit with long bunny ears' ran from the nearby bushes and shouted 'You're on a private property and I have your tag number.' The 'rabbit' threw a wooden handled hatchet through the right front car window, the first year cadet told police. As soon as he threw the hatchet, the 'rabbit' skipped off into the night. Police have the hatchet, but no other clues in the case."

The police speculated that the Bunnyman was a local resident who resented the explosion of development in the Fairfax County area. This theory was validated two weeks later, when the Washington Post detailed another sighting of the Bunnyman in an article entitled "The Rabbit Reappears."

"A man wearing a furry suit with two long ears appeared again on Guinea Road in Fairfax County Thursday night, police reported this time wielding an ax and chopping away at a roof support on a new house.

"Paul Phillips, a private security guard for a construction company, said he saw the 'rabit' standing on the front porch of a new, but unoccupied house." 'I started talking to him,' Phillips said, 'and that's when he started chopping.' "'All you people trespass around here,' the Rabbit told him as he whacked eight gashes in a pole. 'If you don't get out of here, I'm going to bust you on the head.' The Rabbit, carrying theh long-handled ax, ran off into the woods."

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Tale from Vivisect
Tale from Kathy
Tale from Katie Roberts

The Bunnyman's Own Bridge

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