A transport department liaison confirmed a completed route analysis exists — then spent the next forty minutes explaining why no one should have it.

The Oregon Department of Transportation has confirmed the existence of a route analysis documenting the movement of what sixteen witnesses across three separate county road segments have described as the Headless Horseman — and has asked, in the same breath, that the analysis not leave the department. The request came from a DOT liaison who agreed to speak with WTC on background and then immediately regretted it in a way that was visible in his face and his hands and the specific speed at which he hung up the phone.

The sightings began six nights ago on a stretch of county road running northwest out of a rural community I am not naming at the request of two of the witnesses who still drive that road after dark and would like to continue doing so without additional attention. The entity — consistent in description across all sixteen accounts, which I have reviewed in full — appears on the road between approximately 11:40 PM and 1:15 AM, traveling at a pace witnesses variously describe as a canter, a gallop, and, from one retired veterinarian whose account I am weighting heavily, "a collected trot, which is actually the concerning part, because a collected trot is controlled."

Community Notice

What the Map Shows, According to Someone Who Has Seen the Map

A source within the county public works office, who has seen the DOT analysis and is not the liaison, confirmed that the route document plots six consecutive nights of movement and identifies what the analysis terms "a consistent directional pattern along mapped roadways." The route reportedly covers approximately 4.3 miles of county road in a loop that returns to its origin point. The source paused when I asked if the loop closed cleanly. Then said yes. Then said they needed to go. I noted the pause. It is in my first notebook, underlined once, with a small star.

There’s a document. I’m not going to tell you it doesn’t exist, because it exists. I’m telling you it’s an internal working document and it would not be appropriate to — look, I don’t know how you even found out about the document.

— DOT liaison, on background, via phone

That last point is the one I keep returning to. The DOT maps roads. It monitors traffic patterns. It responds to infrastructure concerns. The fact that a route analysis exists at all — competently assembled, apparently detailed enough to warrant suppression — means someone inside the department made a decision to treat this as a legitimate movement-pattern problem and assigned resources to it. I don’t know who made that call. The liaison did not know who made that call, or said he didn’t, and the difference between those two things is the reason I drove back to the field office at 11 PM and updated the timeline on the wall.

It went right past my truck. Not through the fence line, not across the field — right down the centerline of the road. Like it knew the road.

— Witness seven, cattle rancher, fifteen years on that route

The Headless Horseman as a cataloged entity has appeared in WTC’s active files intermittently since the network launched — mostly eastern seaboard accounts, a cluster out of upstate New York that we covered in 2021, one unconfirmed report out of coastal Georgia that I still have doubts about. What I do not have doubts about is this: sixteen witnesses in six nights on a documented route is not ambient noise. That is a pattern. The DOT apparently agrees, which is exactly why they built a map, and exactly why they don’t want anyone to have it. Those two facts are not in conflict. They are, in fact, the same fact.

WTC has filed a public records request for the route analysis under Oregon’s Public Records Law. The department has thirty days to respond. The sightings have occurred for six consecutive nights. Those timelines do not match, and I am not optimistic about which one is going to move faster. I’ll be parked on Forest Service Road 2840 tonight, which is adjacent to the county road corridor, ostensibly because I need to check on something near the radio tower. That is partly true. I have the county road atlas open on the passenger seat. The trail mix is holding.