What you might not know is that The Green Man, also known as Charlie No-Face, was a real person — a Pennsylvania man named Raymond Robinson.
Personal Photo“Charlie No-Face,” a.k.a. Raymond Robinson.
In Western Pennsylvania, a terrifying legend spread throughout the 1950s and ’60s of a figure known as The Green Man.
As the story went, The Green Man, also known as Charlie No-Face, would be seen haunting a lonely stretch of road in the Pittsburgh area. He was said to be the spirit of a factory worker who fell into a vat of acid, disfiguring him and causing his spectral form to glow green. Some claimed he would chase away parked teens or possibly stall cars that he touched, thanks to an electrical “charge” he could produce.
Perhaps the most shocking part of the urban legend, however, is that The Green Man really existed — not as a ghost, of course, but as a human man by the name of Raymond Robinson.
And while Robinson was by no means dangerous, his solitary nature and disfigurement unfortunately spawned the legend of a boogeyman that stalked State Route 351. The real story of Ray Robinson is not one of a ghost, but of a quiet man who experienced a horrific childhood accident and spent his life on the fringes of society.
The Green Man Of South Park Urban Legend
The legend said that if you drove down the dark country roads near Koppel on a moonless night, you might see him — a figure shambling along the shoulder, staying just beyond the tree line. The Green Man, they called him. Charlie No-Face.
A ghost without a face, glowing pale green in the darkness.
The stories varied, but they all agreed on the basics: he was the spirit of a young man who died in a terrible accident decades earlier. Some said he touched a downed power line during a storm. Others claimed he was struck by lightning while walking across a trolley bridge. A few whispered that he was hit by a train, his face torn completely away.
Whatever the cause, he was supposedly cursed to wander those roads forever, a faceless specter searching for something he’d never find — perhaps his own lost reflection, perhaps peace.
Some local teenagers made a game of it, driving slowly down Route 351 after dark, headlights cutting through the humid summer air, searching for a glimpse of the Green Man. They said he glowed with an eerie phosphorescence, that where his face should be there was only smooth, featureless skin stretched tight over bone.
Personal PhotoThe face of the “Green Man.”
No eyes. No nose. No mouth. Just a terrible blank nothingness.
Most who claimed to have seen him said he was harmless — he simply walked, never speaking, never approaching. But on certain nights, when the fog rolled in thick from the river valley, some swore they heard a low, mournful sound coming from where no mouth exists. A sound of longing and sorrow that followed them long after they’d driven away.
And every now and then, someone would find a beer bottle cap on the roadside, or a cigarette butt still faintly warm, and wondered: Was it really just a legend after all?
As it turned out, the answer to that question was no.
The Truth Behind Charlie No-Face
The legend of The Green Man claimed that he also haunted South Park, the North Hills, or the country lanes around Washington, Pennsylvania. But while the bits about him deliberately chasing or scaring people were pure fabrications, the legend was otherwise shockingly accurate.
According to a 1919 report in The Daily Times, when an eight-year-old boy named Raymond Robinson was reaching for a bird’s nest at the top of an electrical pole, he was suddenly shocked with 11,000 volts of electricity and sent flying to the ground in a blinding flash. He suffered severe injuries to his face and arm that would ultimately change his life forever.
Prior to that incident, though, Robinson had been a normal kid. According to The Times Online, Raymond Robinson was born Oct. 29, 1910 in Beaver County, to Robert and Louise Robinson. Robert Robinson died in 1917, when Raymond was seven, leaving him in the care of his mother.
Young Ray Robinson spent his time as any kid would have back then, hanging out with his friends and, of course, taking dares. So, on June 18, 1919, Robinson and several friends were at a nearby swimming hole when they stumbled across an old railway bridge known as the Harmony Line, which, at the time, carried people between Ellwood City and Beaver Falls each day.
Personal PhotoRaymond Robinson as a teenager, with his friends.
The bridge was terribly unsafe, though. Just one summer prior, a 12-year-old boy named Robert Littell had been playing on the bridge with some friends when he touched a live part of the line and subsequently died from electrical burns.
Robinson and his friends knew about the incident, but when he spotted a bird’s nest high up on the bridge structure, Robinson grew curious. So, he climbed up onto a box and reached out for the birds — accidentally touching the metal and receiving a shock so great that “his face looked as if it had been melted with a blow torch.”
Doctors did not expect him to survive, yet he lived on — at the cost of his eyes, nose, and one arm. Reports at the time noted that he was in “good humor,” however, and that he could still hear and talk.
So, for the next 65 years, he would sequester himself in his family home in Koppel, Pennsylvania, making belts, wallets, and doormats and selling them to generate a small income.
He would only leave his house on walks he took in the dead of night to avoid scaring people with his appearance. Unfortunately, this did little to quell the rumors, and the story of “Charlie No-Face” spread far and wide.
The Real Raymond Robinson Was No Monster
It was from these walks that the legend of The Green Man started to develop, as high school kids spotted him from their car walking along State Route 351. It’s likely that the name “Green Man” came from how car lights would reflect off of Ray Robinson’s flannels when they passed him in the night.
One Koppel resident of the time remembers seeing Raymond Robinson on her way back to town from a swimming hole down the road. She recalled, “I was so scared it was unreal.”
Paul BauerMost people agreed that Ray Robinson was a very kind man.
Though some people were frightful or cruel to him, others befriended the injured man and would bring him beers and cigarettes for his night walks.
“We used to go out and give him beer,” said then-60-year-old Pete Pavlovic in a 1998 interview with the Post-Gazette. He stated that people would often meet at the diner he worked at before heading out to try to spot The Green Man.
Pavlovic added that people who didn’t know about Robinson were often shocked and terrified at the sight of him: “They wanted to call the police. You’d have to explain. Then they’d usually go back up looking for him.”
Others would sometimes give Ray Robinson a ride, only to drop him off at a location he didn’t know as a cruel joke on the blind man.
“Helluva a nice guy,” said Phil Ortega, a Koppel native and schoolmate of Robinson’s sister, in the same interview. Ortega remembered bringing his dates to see Robinson and bring him Lucky Strikes cigarettes.
Raymond Robinson passed away on June 11, 1985 at the age of 74 from natural causes, but though he may be gone, the legend of The Green Man and Charlie No-Face is as alive today as ever.
Enjoy this article on Raymond Robinson, also known as Charlie No-Face? Next, learn about Bedlam, the real horror story asylum. Then, read about the scary truth behind the phantom social worker legend.
