A murderous ‘Bunnyman’ legend emerges from the fog of Halloween Eve at and next to the Virginia Beer Museum

It was a pretty scary Halloween Eve, Saturday evening, October 30, at the Virginia Beer Museum at 16 Chester Street in Front Royal. Museum proprietor David Downes began what was referred to as “The Bunnyman Tour” with a video presentation on the Beer Museum’s second floor. Then he took what he estimated at nearly 10 tours of 12 to 15 patrons each next door to 14 Chester Street, to explore the basement “laboratory” site utilized by an offshoot urban legend local mortician/mass murderer known as the Bunnyman.

David Downes begins a recounting of a local variation of the ‘Bunnyman’ urban legend, this one based out of his law office at 14 Chester Street. Royal Examiner Photos by Roger Bianchini

We later asked Downes about the Bunnyman legend and its ties to his law office building at 14 Chester Street. This is what he told us: “The urban myth of the Bunnyman comes from Clifton, Virginia, based on some strange incidents in 1970. wikipedia.org/Bunny-Man

“The creative minds of the Virginia Beer Museum felt that they could create an entertaining prequel to this urban legend based loosely on the life of a local undertaker (Amos Beahm Scott, 1891 to 1966) that lived next to the museum (now known as the “Scott House”) from 1936 until some time shortly before his death in 1966. Scott’s daughter, Barbara Louise Scott, married Calvin Warren Turner. She inherited the funeral home after Scott’s death and it became Turner’s Funeral Home and, later, Turner Robert-Shaw’s Funeral Home until it closed a few years ago.

“While exploring the basement of an undertaker’s home might be scary enough, suggesting that he might be the original Bunnyman would add an additional element of fright to the legend created over several beers at the museum. And that is how the Legend of the Front Royal Bunny Man began,” Downes explained of the mixing of reality and fiction to create a spooky Halloween Eve.

There’s even a Playboy magazine twist to this new urban legend resulting in the 1960 unsolved murders of several Playboy bunnies visiting Skyline Drive. But why would our Bunnyman harm bunny girls, you may ask?!? – Don’t ask me, I’m just repeating what I heard on a very spooky Halloween Eve at Front Royal’s Virginia Beer Museum.

Arriving a tad late at the 14 Chester St. mortuary/lab site we were greeted by a barely visible hooded entity and dense first-floor fog obscuring the way to the basement stairs – ‘I’m not trying those stairs in this fog – they’ll be working on my body next down there.’

Above, a youthful Amos Beahm Scott, who was born on a Virginia rabbit farm in 1891. (Urban) Legend has it he swore vengeance on rabbit killers. Was it an oath he kept throughout his life, including an R-MA chef who was murdered the day after making rabbit stew for the student body, Scott’s senior year? Guess they won’t be making rabbit stew in that building again.

A 1939 photo of the adult Amos Beahm Scott, who passed away in 1966 after a career as a mortician on Chester St. in Front Royal – well, THAT part is true.

And the new Front Royal Bunnyman urban legend wasn’t the only scary thing at the Beer Museum on Halloween Eve, as one can see. Above, a scary angel, below, witches, menacing kitties, werewolves, and an alien abduction.