By Evan Natale
In Fairfax county, there is an urban tale that likes to spring up every October, that being of The Bunny Man. Most variations keep the similar theme of a man in a bunny suit threatening people who come to his bridge, a railroad overpass near Clifton, Virginia, typically with the weapon of choice being an axe. Usually the backstory of the Bunny Man is that either he is an escapee from a local mental asylum, or that he is the spirit of a patient from an abandoned mental asylum. In another rendition, the reason why he is attracted to that bridge is because that is where a bus on its way to an Asylum crashed, causing either him to escape and ‘hunt’ in that area or that is where he died and now is haunting that area. In either case, rabbit corpses would occasionally appear, dangling from the nearby trees.
The origin of the urban legend stems from two news stories that were written in October of 1970 in the Washington Post. The first story was an Air Force cadet telling about how he and his fiance were attacked while trying to park their car. They claim that a man in a bunny suit came out of nowhere and flung an axe into their windshield. Following this a week later, a police officer saw the Bunny Man on top of a newly built house, hacking away at the roof’s support, then when the officer turned his back, he ran away.
The legend would grow to a point that in 2011 a direct to dvd indie slasher movie that was made called “Bunnyman.” that the director would go on to make 2 sequels. In these movies The Bunnyman would proceed to go on to kill a group of teenagers. In 2014, a local band from Fairfax, Mantua Finials, made a rock opera album based off of the story entitled “The Legend of the Bunnyman”.
Works Cited:
Pugh Kari. “Bunny Man Bridge: The scary truth behind an infamous urban legend” Insidenova, https://www.insidenova.com/headlines/bunny-man-bridge-the-scary-truth-behind-an-infamous-urban-legend/article_a27c7000-dca4-11e8-ad84-af51d935cbcb.html, 30 October 2021,
Conley Brian A., “The Bunny Man Unmasked” Fairfax County Library, https://research.fairfaxcounty.gov/local-history/bunnyman, 22, October 2022
Kelly John, “With ‘Legend of the Bunnyman,’ a local band celebrates a quirky urban
myth” Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/with-legend-of-the-bunnyman-a-local-band-celebrates-a-quirky-urban-myth/2014/06/02/0252e9e6-ea65-11e3-93d2-edd4be1f5d9e_story.html, 2 June 2014
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