The haunted bridge...

The meal had ended hours before, yet we sat there talking. The conversation had turned to one of the favored topics, ghosts and haunted houses. We were spinning tales when a new one was sprung on us. It seems that the bridge on Roscoe Road was haunted by the spirit of a woman that had lost a child there before the new bridge was built.

Before the current bridge was built the road hugged the sharp curve to the right as you went down hill around what was a small quarry on your right, where stone had been cut to use in Dunaway Gardens, an area directly across the road, that once played host to a theater that featured shows starring people like Minnie Pearl. When you rounded the curve a guardrail was to your left, topping a bank that led down to a deep creek on the edge of a swamp. You had to make an immediate left to get on the bridge, which was an old affair, with a framework above the bridge, a rather rickety old thing to look at. The new construction had called for a straightening of the road as well as the bridge being replaced, so that now it flowed from a smooth curve to the right onto a straightaway heading over the bridge.

The story we were presented with went that a woman had rounded the curve at a high rate of speed and gone through the guardrail, ending up in the creek. She had been traveling home with her child, a baby in the front seat with her, when the accident occurred. She was never able to find her baby despite an intense search by the local sheriffs department and a small army of volunteers. According to legend, two things were supposed to happen at the bridge. First you had to sit in the middle of the road and wait for a car to come screaming around the curve, the car would speed up and begin blowing its horn for you to move, but you were to hold fast to your position and the car would disappear a second before it struck you… No one was brave enough, or thick enough rather, to try that one… The second thing reported to happen at the bridge was the appearance of a ghostly figure in the swamp next to Dunaway Gardens. The apparition was said to be the lingering spirit of the mother, doomed to search the swamp for her beloved child for eternity…

Yeah.. We couldn’t pass this one up.

Shortly after midnight we loaded a truck with people and headed over to the haunted bridge, a short ride of just a few miles. We knew the layout well, having been on and around the bridge many times. Having traveled north on Roscoe Road for years, the sight of people backed down the little dirt road next to the bridge so they could fish from their tailgates had become a common occurrence. We had all been down there before and knew that you could walk under the bridge on the north shore of the creek and see the graffiti left there over the years. Indeed, that place was the setting for one of the more harrowing horror stories of my youth that was told to me by a guy on a school bus years before. When I was younger the old quarry was clear of the growth of shrubs and trees that stand in it now, back then you could clearly see where the stone had been cut away from the hillside. I was told that just a few summers before our afternoon bus ride, a scene of horrific devil worship had been found there. A goat had been found hanging upside down from the stone wall, with its throat cut and a pentagram drawn on the ground below it, next to a circle of stone where a fire had been built. He went on to tell me that the area was full of people that were part of a local satanic cult. That set my young mind into a frenzy of paranoia about the area that lasted for several years… My grandfather had added to my childhood fears by telling me that a Sheriff, made famous in a book and later a movie about a local crime kingpin’s arrest and execution, had dumped the bodies of people he had gotten rid of in the same swamp that sat next to the bridge. “He would come down here and turn his dogs out, claiming he was going coon hunting, but we knew what he was doing… He was keeping an eye on everybody around while his boys were out dumping the bodies of anybody that got in the way of his own illegal liquor business..” These thoughts and images were running through my mind as we rode on the back of the pickup down Macedonia Road and made the right turn onto Roscoe towards the bridge.

We crossed over the bridge and turned around where the dirt road started on the right hand side, making sure the car was pointed south towards our home, in case the need for a quick getaway should arise… We piled out of the back of the truck and stood there in a line staring at the bridge, that was an eerie place. Facing south, we looked onto a scene straight from an old werewolf movie. The moon was shining bright, illuminating the fog rising from the swamp as it wafted over the side of the bridge. To the left you could look down the short dirt road and see the light dancing off the surface of the water as it made its way under the bridge to feed the tepid swamp. A cluster of trees hung over the right hand side reaching over the rails of the bridge. Vines had grown down from the trees onto the surface of the road, running into one of the drains cut through to allow water to drop into the creek below. The air wasn’t moving at all, the silence was deafening as we walked slowly toward the bridge.

We didn’t speak as we walked the bridges length, once at the north end we turned and started back, stopping in the middle to look around. Nervous conversation had started on the walk back, daring one another to sit in the middle of the road and wait for the reported ghostly car to round the curve, and tempting any ghosts that may be hanging about to come out and speak to us..

I walked to the right side of the bridge and looked out onto the swamp, I was thinking about the tales my grandfather had spun as everyone around me talked loudly in a much more relaxed fashion when suddenly a loud crash sounded out, the entire bridge began to vibrate as the sound echoed across the swamp. The blood drained from everyone’s face as we stood transfixed, unable to consider moving. The adrenaline was pumping and the heart rates increasing as we looked from face to face for a reaction, slowly we began to move toward the truck.. Shortly we were all running as fast as we could, diving over the sides into the bed of the truck shouting to the driver to get the hell out of there… He decided not to cross the bridge, so we headed north towards Roscoe. We took the first left and sped as fast as we could to a church parking lot down the road… we sat there for a while breathing hard as we discussed our next move… It was decided that we should go back. Since no one was brave enough to walk on the bridge again we wound up driving across it slowly several times to see if the sound reoccurred. The driver once stopped in the middle of the bridge, but was loudly castigated for his actions (while many cans and insults about his mother were hurled at the cab…)

We eventually found the nerve to return to the bridge and repeat the steps that we took that night, and… oddly enough, we were never let down. Each time we went there we would hear the loud bang, it would be different, some times one loud bang, sometimes several at once. You may hear it once during the night hours or many times, never at the same time and never the exact same sound, but with each episode, your blood would run cold and the bridge would vibrate as if pounded on by a large sledge hammer…

We agreed that the sound was the residual haunting of the moment the car broke through the guardrail and hit the water of the creek below us. That place became a haunt for several months worth of late night hours, even including an excursion into the old quarry to seek out the spot where the goat had been sacrificed… and yes.. we did find it, there was a pentagram spray painted onto the rocks at the foot of the wall, almost dead center in the quarry, exactly where the guy on the bus had pointed to years before...

I told my son these stories one night and found myself suddenly in need of a can of soda from the vending machine in front of the Roscoe General Store… I made my way quickly over the bridge, not slowing down or looking, bought a can of soda and began the drive back. I remember the feel of the night air as I let the windows down in the car and slowly drove across that bridge, thinking of those nights so many years ago… I did stop the car on the middle of the bridge and listen for a few minutes. I didn’t hear anything, but damn, that place is still creepy…