During part of my childhood was in Annandale, Va, my sisters and I, along with the other kids in the neighborhood delighted in threatening each other with the Bunnyman. The Bunnyman was an axe-wielding psychopath that kidnapped children and chopped them up while wearing a furry grey and white rabbit costume.

I never knew where the story came from until a few years ago when I was talking with a colleague at work who grew up not far from there and got on the topic somehow. “You know, ” he said, “there was a place called Bunnyman Bridge.”

Say what?

Thank God for Google and Wikipedia!  It’s all documented here. From Wikipedia:

Fairfax County Public Library Historian-Archivist Brian A. Conley extensively researched the Bunny Man legend. He has located two incidents of a man in a rabbit costume threatening people with an axe. The vandalism reports occurred a week apart in 1970 in Burke, Virginia.

The first incident was reported the evening of October 19, 1970 by U.S. Air Force Academy Cadet Bob Bennett and his fiancée, who were visiting relatives on Guinea Road in Burke. Around midnight, while returning from a football game, they reportedly parked their car in a field on Guinea Road to “talk“. As they sat in the front seat with the motor running, they noticed something moving outside the rear window. Moments later the front passenger window was smashed, and there was a white-clad figure standing near the broken window. Bennett turned the car around while the man screamed at them about trespassing, including: “You’re on private property and I have your tag number.” As they drove down the road, the couple discovered a hatchet on the car floor.

When the police requested a description of the man, Bob insisted he was wearing a white suit with long bunny ears, but his fiancee remembered something white and pointed like a Ku Klux Klan hood. They both remembered seeing his face clearly, but in the darkness they could not determine his race. The police returned the hatchet to Bennett after examination. Bennett was required to report the incident upon his return to the Air Force Academy.^{[citation needed]}

There are also these stories at WeirdUS.

Somehow I think it is delightful that my worst childhood fears were kind of real. Of course, this story is not nearly as scary as a college president that talks about students as cuddly bunnies that need to be drowned or Glocked. (Glocking them is probably the way to go since you leave a tiny suicide note in their paw.)

And some topical music: