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In October 1970, Fairfax County, Virginia police logged two genuine, separate reports describing a man in a partial rabbit costume threatening people with an axe. That's an unusually solid documented starting point for an urban legend — most modern American ghost stories don't have actual police paperwork behind them. What happened to the story afterward, though, is a near-textbook case of a legend drifting away from its own facts.
Verified History: Two Real Police Reports
The first documented incident occurred on October 18, 1970, when a young couple parked on Guinea Road in Fairfax Station reported that a man dressed in white, wearing what looked like partial rabbit ears, shouted at them and then threw a hatchet through their car's windshield. Ten days later, on October 29, a security guard at a house under construction on the same road reported a similar figure — again in a rabbit-like costume, again armed with an axe — who used the weapon to chop at the structure's porch supports while yelling that the property was private and that trespassers weren't welcome.
Police did respond to both reports, searched the surrounding area, and reportedly checked local hospitals and psychiatric facilities for anyone who might match the description, but no suspect was ever identified or charged. Both incidents remain, to this day, unsolved — a genuinely rare thing for an urban legend to be able to say, since it means an actual law enforcement record exists documenting the reports as filed, even without a resolution.
The Legend That Outgrew Its Own Location
Here is where the story splits from its documentation. Decades of retellings have relocated the Bunny Man to the Colchester Overpass, a stone railroad bridge in Fairfax County that has since become a magnet for ghost tours, urban explorers, and teenagers daring each other to visit at midnight. The problem is straightforward: neither of the real 1970 incidents happened anywhere near that bridge. The original reports both centered on Guinea Road, a separate location entirely.
How the legend jumped locations isn't fully documented, but it fits a familiar pattern in local folklore — a genuinely eerie, isolated-looking landmark becomes a magnet for a nearby unsolved story, regardless of whether the geography actually lines up. Over time, retellings added invented backstories entirely absent from the 1970 police reports, including a recurring version involving an escaped mental patient or prisoner from years earlier who supposedly lived in the woods — claims that have never been traced to any actual historical incident or institutional record.
What's Actually Verifiable
The two October 1970 police reports are the documented core of this legend: dated, filed with Fairfax County police, involving a costumed figure and a hatchet, and never solved. What is not verifiable: any connection between those incidents and the Colchester Overpass, any of the invented backstories about escaped patients or prisoners, and any sightings reported in the decades since 1970, which exist only as secondhand local storytelling rather than filed reports. Local historians who have looked into the case generally treat it as exactly what the record shows — two real, unexplained incidents — without endorsing any of the elaborate mythology built up around them since.
FAQ
Did the Bunny Man really happen?
Two real police reports from October 1970 describe a man in a rabbit-like costume threatening people with a hatchet in Fairfax Station, Virginia.
Was the Bunny Man ever caught?
No. Both 1970 incidents remain unsolved, with no suspect ever identified.
Is the Colchester Overpass connected to the real incidents?
No. The original reports took place on Guinea Road; the bridge's association with the legend came later and isn't part of the documented 1970 record.
Was there really an escaped mental patient behind the legend?
No historical or institutional record supports this popular addition to the story; it appears to be invented folklore layered onto the real reports.
Can you still visit the Colchester Overpass?
Yes, it remains a public railroad underpass in Fairfax County and a well-known local landmark, though it has no documented connection to the actual 1970 incidents.
Are there other Bunny Man sightings on record?
Various local sightings have been reported informally over the decades, but none carry the same documented, filed-police-report status as the original 1970 incidents.
Gear & Further Reading
For more documented Virginia hauntings and legends collected the same way — separating recorded history from embellishment — see L.B. Taylor Jr.'s The Big Book of Virginia Ghost Stories, a compilation drawn from decades of the author's regional research.
Related reading: our International Ghost Stories & Haunted Places guide has more legends with a real, documented starting point like this one.
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