The Bunny man



"The Bunny Man is a local legend based in Clifton, in Fairfax County, Virginia. It goes from a mild folkloric tale to an extreme urban horror legend. The story is about an allegedly real-life man-sized creature or a man-in-a-bunny-suit going around and killing people. The incidents seem to be based factually on some mysterious deaths. One University of Maryland researcher, Patricia Johnson wrote a 1973 folklore paper entitled “The Bunny Man.”The Bunny Man is one of the strange tales explored in Weird Virginia, due out in March 2007. (The incidents are not told comically, as might be assumed from the image on the Weird US site, but with more Fortean respect, as per all of the Weird books’ treatments.)

An intriguing movie was released in 2001 that has strange images and links to the Bunnyman folklore, not the least of which is the giant figure of Frank (seen at top). This is not your grandfather’s Harvey. No, not at all. All month, February 2007, cable television channels have been broadcasting this independent film, entitled Donnie Darko, sometimes as often as four times a day. The setting for Donnie Darko is in the fictional town of Middlesex, Virginia, so certainly Fairfax County’s Bunny Man seems to have had some influence (perhaps if only in location).
The following cartoon review of Donnie Darko is courtesy of Mark Monlux and his site, “The Comic Critic: Home of the Creative Mind”. Source: www.cryptomundo.com