Aaron Mahnke

Made of plain white concrete, it just looks like your average underpass.

But it's home to one of the most absurd urban legends in the country.

Because locals claim that if you go there on Halloween night, you may be visited by the Bunny Man.

There are multiple versions of this legend.

One says that if you speak his name three times on Halloween night, then a man bedecked in a full-body rabbit costume will appear, and he'll slash your throat and hang you from the underpass.

Another legend claims that this bunny-suited man was once a mental ward escapee from the early 20th century.

He survived by killing rabbits and wearing their skins for clothing.

Eventually, his bloodthirst became uncontrollable, and he killed two children, hanging their bodies from the trees on Colchester Road.

And now his crazed ghost haunts the tunnel.

If you come too close on Halloween, he will throw an axe at you.

Or maybe he'll hack you to death like he did to those children all those years ago.

And of course, all of this is complete nonsense.

There was never a murderous escapee from a mental institution wandering the woods of Fairfax, and a ghost in a bunny suit will absolutely not appear if you try to summon him like Beetlejuice.

But there once was an axe-wielding man in a bunny suit, and he is the origin of the Bunnyman.

It can all be traced back to 1970.

On October 18th of that year, the Washington Post reported shortly after midnight that a couple was sitting in their car on Guinea Road and chatting, but their quiet evening was disrupted and the man in the car, Robert Bennett, was forced to go to the police.

His claim?

I quote here, A man dressed in a white suit with long bunny ears ran from the nearby bushes and shouted, You're on 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 the police.

As soon as he threw the hatchet, the rabbit skipped off into the night, police said.