Bunny Man Bridge
A man in a rabbit costume reportedly attacked people with a hatchet in Fairfax County, Virginia, in 1970. The real incidents happened miles from the railway overpass that internet legend has since adopted as the 'Bunny Man Bridge.'
Field Guide Entry
Origin Story
On the night of October 18, 1970, U.S. Air Force Academy cadet Robert Bennett told police that, while parked with his fiancée on Guinea Road in Burke, Virginia, a man wearing a white suit with what appeared to be rabbit ears smashed through the passenger window with a hatchet, shouting that they were trespassing on private property. Eleven days later, on October 29, a construction-site security guard named Paul Phillips reported a similar figure, again dressed as a rabbit and again wielding a hatchet, chopping at a porch post while yelling that trespassers would be "chopped." Both incidents generated official Fairfax County police reports.
Evidence & Claims
Neither original incident occurred anywhere near the Colchester Overpass, a Southern Railway bridge spanning Colchester Road near Clifton. As the story spread through decades of retelling, the legend attached itself to that bridge specifically, perhaps because of its isolated, train-track setting. Local teenagers have used the bridge as a dare destination for generations, and embellished versions of the story added escaped asylum patients, a string of murdered children, and bodies supposedly found hanging from the overpass, none of which appear in the original 1970 police reports.
Skeptical Explanations
Fairfax County archivist Brian Conley has researched the case extensively and confirmed the two original reports are genuine, even if bizarre, but found no evidence the suspect was ever identified, caught, or connected to any of the later, more elaborate bridge mythology. The disconnect between two real but unsolved 1970 police reports from Burke and a permanently relocated legend several miles away at Colchester makes the Bunny Man one of the rare urban legends with a documented kernel of truth underneath the decades of embellishment.
Visiting Information
Most of the land around the bridge is private property, the railway overhead is active, and Fairfax County police actively cite trespassers. View only from a vehicle on Colchester Road; do not stop, park, or walk onto the tracks.
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