The Mac Weekly recently sat down with the one and only Dewey “Horsewithnoname” Bunnell for his grand reveal.

Well, first things first: could you state your name? My name is Evan Myers [’14].

Why haven’t you revealed your identity in the past? I don’t know. I thought the sense of mystery to go along with it was part of the fun. It was obvious that I was a student because I’d always have Macalester gear on and I think there were people who knew that it was me. But I thought, ‘Everyone’s trying to figure it out a little bit,’ and that added to the fun of everything.

Did you hear people speculate about who you were and why you were giving them bread? Not so much myself, but I have a lot of friends who know that I do the Horseman thing. And they’ll always have stories to tell me, that they were sitting at lunch and people would start speculating. They’d be amused at some of the guesses, so it’s been fun to hear secondhand.

So, for you, it was the fun and mystery of it that drove the Horseman? Yeah, definitely! And I had a lot of fun coming up with new activities to do. Like, we have a really good slam poetry team so I thought it would be funny to write a poem about horses and perform it at an open mic before one of the competitions. And Kagins are great and everyone enjoys Winter Ball, so I thought it’d be fun to just show up there. People would be like, ‘How did the Horseman show up at a closed-off event?’ If the response hadn’t been so positive, I wouldn’t have kept doing it.

Why do you think it was so positive? Why were people so excited about a Horseman, rather than thinking it was a weird kid with a mask? Well, first of all, everybody loves free bread. Free food is great. But I don’t really know. I didn’t expect the response to be quite so positive and so…people would give me high-fives and stuff and that kind of fuels me. I guess maybe just the idea of someone doing this in their spare time is a weird and funny thing.

Why create the Facebook page? That started last spring. I saw a picture on Facebook because a lot of people ask to take pictures with the Horseman. I wanted to have a place where a lot of the things could come together. I could connect with my fans – people would chat me on Facebook, which is kind of hilarious – but just to like have the photos and the memories. And it’s allowed me to have a voice, since you really can’t hear anything – the mask muffles things. But I’ve been able to do a couple fun things through Facebook this semester like an April Fool’s joke and stuff like that.

So why did you choose now to tell everyone? I’m graduating, so this is the end of my time doing this. I don’t know, I think there’s enough people who know – and there are definitely some people who’ve figured out who I am, even people I don’t know very well – so I figured that I might as well tell myself rather than having the word spread. I also wanted to let people know because I’d made it clear I was a senior and that might be the end of the Horseman. But the Horseman will actually continue in the future. The Horseman is in capable hands.

How about you? Do you think in your life, the horse mask or something similar will make an appearance again? Oh no, I think I’m done with it. I’m always looking to have some kind of strange fun, but I don’t foresee myself doing anything like that again.

Every college campus has its quirks and for us, the Horseman was one of them. How does it feel to be part of the stories people might reminisce about when they’re older? One of my housemates has told me, ‘Yeah, when I have kids, I’m going to tell them that I had this friend who did this thing.’ I don’t know. I guess it kind of adds to the…I think it just adds a really tiny piece to what Macalester is. I know if I was a PF or something and I was touring and I just saw a guy in a horse mask handing out bread, that might make me come to the college.

Now that your secret is out, do you have any last words for the Macalester campus? I guess I’d just like to thank everyone for being receptive and interacting with the Horseman. If the community hadn’t embraced it, it wouldn’t have happened. It was a pleasure to do this for a little while and to give back in a very small way to the Mac community. I really liked my time here and I’m going to miss it. I’m glad I could make that contribution.