The Legend of Pennsylvania's Green Man

In 1924, a railroad tunnel was built named the Piney Fork Tunnel to service the coal mines of western Pennsylvania. By 1962 it had been abandoned, which is when it became known as the Green Man Tunnel.

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Piney Fork Tunnel

The tunnel became known as a spot where teenagers dared each other to drive into the tunnel with their headlights turned off, and call out to the Green Man who would appear out of the darkness. He was horribly disfigured due to an electrical accident, which also caused his skin to glow green. If he touched the car it would stall out.

This is but one of the legends of the Green Man, who it turns out was a real person.

In the 1950s, for those growing up in western Pennsylvania most had heard of the monstrous creature known as the Green Man.

The reasons given for his strange color was that he was electrocuted, struck by lightning or suffered an extreme industrial accident. 

He was said to haunt the country lanes of South Park, North Hills or Washington, Pennsylvania.

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Ray Robinson, Pennsylvania’s Green Man

According to Mike Diehl an Allegheny County parks superintendent, stories circulated for decades about the strange man. His assistant who graduated in 1968 from a local high school, said she heard about the Green Man from her older brothers. According to them, "You had to be aware of him along South Park's Snowden Road -- a twisty, woodsy, unlit stretch popular for necking and other pubescent tricks and treats. The legend goes that he roams that hollow late at night, and chases the parkers and the loafers." She went herself to the area several times when she was a teenager, but never saw him. Some of her friends did though.

Jo Pelesky, a South Park historian who grew up in that area in the 1930s said as far back as the 1940s, stories were circulating about the strange figure wandering around.

Pat Temple saw, talked and photographed the Green Man in the 1950s, when he lived on the outskirts of Beaver County in the mill town of Koppel.

He describes his encounter back to 1956, when he was 16 and his friends Ray Griffin, Guy Muto and Jim Walsh decided to go find the Green Man. The four teenagers headed out in Pat's 1951 Ford towards Koppel.

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As soon as we started up the road, Ray announced that is the road the Green Man always walked on. There was a long silence and I could feel the goosebumps and when we finally did say something, we seemed to be whispering.

It was a bit foggy and the visibility was not real good at times. As they came around a bend, Ray yelled, 'There he is!' and the car lights shined directly on the Green Man.

Piney Fork Tunnel

They drove pass him, and then turned around, despite being terrified that he turned out to be real.

That summer, Pat Temple returned, sometimes with those same friends to talk to the Green Man. The word got out and traffic jams occurred because passerby were stopping to speak to him.  Eventually Temple was able to take a picture of him.

Temple came to learn that the Green Man was a nice person who as a boy had a terrible accident where he was shocked, which is why his face was disfigured and one arm was missing.

In 1957, Pat Temple joined the Air Force and when he returned in '61 he tried to find Ray, but never saw him again.

A former newspaper photographer, Pete Pavlovic did a story about the Green Man for a local newspaper. His real name was Raymond Robinson and he died of natural causes in 1985.

Frank Pelegrine who in 1940 delivered groceries to the Robinson family, dropped his boxes and ran the first time he saw Raymond.

Eventually all who came to know him better, overlooked his appearance and realized he would not hurt anyone.

Others who saw him regularly on the road at night would give him a pack of Lucky Strikes, and on a occasion some liquor to drink.

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Ray Robinson age 9 c.1919

Charlie No Face: The Story of Ray Robinson

Much is known about the Pennsylvania urban legend known as the Green Man, but much less is known about the real person who was nicknamed Charlie No Face by the locals where he lived.

Excerpted from The Beaver County Times:

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Raymond T. Robinson was born Oct. 29, 1910, in Beaver County, but little is known about his early years. He was a son of Robert and Louise Robinson, and the family lived on the outskirts of Beaver Falls.

Robinson's father died in 1917, when Raymond was 7. His widowed mother married Orin Newton Robinson, her brother-in-law, who was a widower. Between them, they had at least seven children, including Raymond.

Until the spring of 1919, Raymond Robinson was a typical kid. He swam the Beaver River in the summer, hung out with his playmates around the Morado section of Beaver Falls and, like a typical boy, took dares.

On June 18, 1919, he and several friends were heading for a swimming hole on the Beaver River when they came upon the Pittsburgh, Harmony, Butler and New Castle Railway Co. bridge spanning Wallace Run. The bridge, which was torn down years ago and has been replaced by a Route 18 highway bridge, had connected Beaver Falls and Big Beaver. The massive wooden structure was an attraction for local youths.

In September 1918, another Beaver Falls boy - Robert Littell, 10 - died from electrical burns he received while playing on the bridge with friends. Harmony trolleys were powered by 1,200 volts DC. The line from Ellwood City to Beaver Falls, which opened in 1914, also featured a main transmission line carrying 22,000 volts AC.

Robinson and his four companions knew about that fatal accident when they ventured onto the span at twilight on June 18, 1919. But a newspaper account the following day reported that the boy had spied a bird's nest high on the bridge structure. Robinson began climbing a "girder" or a box and was horribly burned by high voltage. Robinson hovered between life and death at the former Providence Hospital in Beaver Falls. After a month, he began to improve. Doctors called it a miracle.

He survived, but his face looked as if it had been melted with a blow torch. His eyes were gone. His nose was gone. His lips and ears were terribly disfigured. His left arm was burned off at the elbow. His upper torso was scarred. Robinson wore a prosthetic nose that was connected to a pair of dark glasses. He also received some help from the sparse social services available at the time.

He knew rudimentary Braille and passed his time at home weaving rubber door mats and making leather wallets and belts. He also had a collection of metal puzzles consisting of horseshoes and other hardware that he deftly worked to the amazement of his young nieces and nephews.He loved to listen to the radio. He kept a shortwave in his bedroom and an old Philco on a stand by his favorite easy chair in the living room. He spent hours listening to them.

​Most of his time was spent indoors, but he occasionally ventured outdoors to "help" with chores. Robinson liked to push an old-fashioned manual mower across the family lawn. He missed spots, but his relatives never minded going back over them. One of his favorite pastimes was hiking the woods around his home.He carried a stick and guided himself by walking with one foot on the path and the other on the edge of the path. He would later use the same system while walking the Koppel-New Galilee Road: one foot on the pavement and the other on the gravel berm.

Robinson lived in obscurity. Neighbors and other locals knew him, or about him, but they never bothered him. Family members cared for Robinson until the last few years of his life, when he moved to a nursing home. The family didn't talk much about how he looked, and nobody really thought much about it. Uncle Ray was Uncle Ray, and that was that, the nephew said."He never discussed his injuries or his problems at all," he said. "It was just a reality, and there was nothing he could do about it, so he never spoke about it. He never complained about anything.