Cry Baby Bridge In April I sat down with a friend at my house and asked about any urban legends or ghost stories he had encountered. After a couple legends he had seen in movies, he mentioned a haunted bridge about ten minutes away from downtown. He is a twenty-one year-old White male; his father owns an appliance store and his mother helps out with the books. He first heard this story in the ninth grade from a couple of friends. Supposedly, they had heard from kids who had actually been to the bridge and heard strange things at night. The bridge is located off of Uniontown road, between a couple old farms. He has not encountered the bridge first hand but still remembers the story surrounding it: About thirty years ago there was a young girl in love with her boyfriend. One day, he convinced her to take their relationship to the next level, telling her how deeply he cared. A couple weeks later, she found out that she had become pregnant, and decided it was best to hide it from him. They kept in close contact over the next few months, and he told her that they would be together forever. When her father realized that she was having a baby without marriage, he made her leave the house until she came back with a husband. When the baby girl was born, she decided to tell the boyfriend about the child, by bringing her to his house. He lived on a small farm right outside town and you had to pass over a small river on a bridge to get back to his house. As she opened the door, she walked in on him with another girl. Filled with anger, (pause) she gets in her car and speeds off. Now she could not return home unmarried and had lost her only love because of this one child. As she looked over at the baby, she is only reminded of her boyfriend and the image of him with the other girl. (tone increases) Finally, she reached the bridge, then slammed on the breaks. She got out and in a moment of rage threw the baby over the bridge to rid her of the baby girl’s troubles. Later that night, the police were tipped off about a murder at the bridge and came to find the girl hanging from the bridge.
The Jericho Covered Bridge in Kingsville, Maryland was built in 1865 and restored in 1982. The bridge is 100 feet long and cased in cedar planks and timber beams. Legend has it that after the Civil War many lynchings occurred on the bridge. Passersby were supposedly captured on the bridge and hung from the upper rafters. The bridge is very close to my house and I have driven over it several times. The storyteller, age 19, also lives a couple minutes away from the bridge. He has lived in Kingsville, Maryland his entire life. He recalled a dramatic story he had heard from his older brother involving the haunted bridge.
My teammate originally heard this story from her classmates during her junior year in high school. My teammate had no problems remembering the story; she was more worried that I would think she thought it was true. There were pauses in her story telling as I wrote down what she said. She related the story with little emotion or suspense. The laughter in the background also affected the impact of the legend because it is difficult to be scared when there is laughter all around. My teammate also did not make a significant effort to enhance the effect of the story through hand motions or vocal tone inflections.
Although their love has endured through many years, it has come to an end in the story. All throughout the story the couple is reminiscing about their life and while they are there are some odd details that are strewn throughout.
This story speaks of a married woman who fell in love with a man who was not her husband. She bore this man a child and realized that she could not live without him. In the event, she decides to leave her husband to be with the child’s father. However, there is only one problem and that is that she has two other children by her husband. She has a daughter who is 9 years old and is very mature for her age, and a darling son who is 5 years old. As she leaves to restart her life again with this other man, the 5 year old son is left behind to stay with his dad, and the little girl is tragically killed by a pack of wolves. The little boy is devastated by his mom’s decision to leave him behind. He is constantly haunted by dreams and images that come to his mind surrounding his mother’s...
In Miss Porter’s short story, Maria Concepción, the title character finds her dream shattered when she discovers her husband is having an affair. The husband runs off with the other woman, but they return the next year. Maria Concepción loses her baby during the year, but the rival gives birth when she returns. Maria Concepción stabs her rival to death. Her husband (and the entire village) protect her and proclaim her innocence, even though they know she is guilty. In the end, she takes the rival’s baby as her own, and reclaims her husband. He is miserable, but she is happy. She has gotten what she wanted, and restored her dream. (Porter, Maria Concepción 9-27)
On December 29, 1876, a train was crossing over a railroad bridge spanning the Ashtabula River when the entire bridge collapsed, sending most of the train into the frigid water below. This disaster would be the deadliest bridge disaster in the United States. Investigators quickly tried to determine why this bridge, after eleven years of service, collapsed. The investigators would ultimately place the blame on the president of the Ashtabula Railroad Company, Amasa Stone. The bridge was constructed with many flaws, both known and unknown. This disaster would lead to people realizing the need for structural standards for bridges and qualified engineers.
This tale was told by a twenty-year-old Caucasian male from Boonton, New Jersey, who was very excited to share his paranormal experiences. According to the narrator, Split Rock Road runs through a nice residential neighborhood. However, at one point the pavement stops and turns to gravel. At this point, there are no lights on the road, which is surrounded by woods. As you continue down the road, you come to a bridge on top of a dam and an abandoned guard tower. Legend has it that if you turn off your headlights and stop the car while on the bridge, everyone in the car dies. The narrator attempted this once with his friends late at night. He managed to turn off the headlights and stop the car, but all of his friends started screaming and begging him to go back, so he left very quickly. He said that it was one of the scariest experiences of his life. Additionally, there is rumored to be a ghost that wanders on Split Rock Road, a young girl in a white sundress. However, the narrator had never personally seen this ghost.
Over the recent break, I mentioned to a friend that I needed to write about a ghost-related urban legend. He offered to tell me about Glenn Dale Hospital, which is supposedly a famous ghost legend in Maryland. Since I am a lifelong Maryland resident and did not know about the hospital, I was eager to hear the story. The story was told in the living room of a house by a 19 year old white male native to southern Maryland. He is from a middle class family and his father and mother are a construction worker and a homemaker, respectively. He heard the story from another friend who claims to have visited Glenn Dale Hospital.
The following ghost story was told to me by a friend when I had a small group of friends over to my house in Massachusetts during spring break. He is a 20-year-old white male. The story was told at night after we had finished watching the show Lost on television, so the atmosphere was a little bit tense. It did not simply come up in context; I prompted all of my friends to tell any ghost stories or urban legends that they knew. I wrote the story down a few hours later after my friends left. This is as close to the story he told as I could remember at that time:
The news of Grandma Singer dying had hit me like a punch to the gut. I quickly became so wrought up that I hadn’t even noticed when my mama began consoling me when she’d wrapped her arms tightly around me. At that moment it was as if I was a million miles away and all I could feel was this impenetrable wall of sadness welling up inside of me. Looking back, I don’t think I’d ever felt more abject in my entire life than I did right then, curled up in my mama’s arms crying like a baby. But then my mama said something to my step daddy that had changed everything. She said, “So, what do you think is going to happen with her house up in New York
This story was recounted to me by a 20 year old female student at my University. She is a Communications major, coming from an upper middle class family in the rural suburbs of New Jersey. I interviewed her in her apartment sometime in the late afternoon in an informal setting. Although she is skeptical about things such as urban legends and ghost tales, she explained to me that this story always unsettled her in an inexplicable way.
When she comes home from work she shuts all the drapes and sits in the dark drinking. She wants badly to terminate the pregnancy. At work she inquires with a doctor about receiving an abortion. His direct response is of shame. He resents her for even asking him. She is desperate and pleas for his help. His response is, “you put yourself in this situation”. In extreme desperation she returns home that night and takes an abundance of migraine pills. It only results were vomiting.
She knows of the story after hearing it from fellow students at the University of Washington, where she went for her undergraduate studies. The story was told during a regular hangout, by a girl from a town near Port Townsend. The person I heard the story from doesn't really pay the myth and "ghost story" idea any attention because of its common presence in that area. Washington state is a region known as the "Haunted North West." Capitol Hill has so many "ghosts" that companies offer ghost tours year round.
Cry Baby Bridge is a local legend in my hometown of Carmi, Illinois. The stories of this bridge have been passed down from generation to generation. Our parent always warned us not to go to the bridge after dark. A young women once hung her child, and then proceeded to hang herself from the bridge. On any given night you can hear the cries of a baby who is struggling for its life. Those who have been brave enough to go out there have horror stories of the things that happened. This bridge is in the middle of nowhere with the nearest town being Carmi, and the closer you get to the bridge the less cell phone signal you have till you reach the bridge and have no signal.
There was an impending doom coming to the small town of Calamity. Unbeknownst to the citizens it would come firstly upon a church on the outskirts of a town. A few people were inside as the doom came closer. Preacher Tom was the first one in the church to sees what would haunt the town and was scared out of his wits. He pushes a young woman out of the doorway as he speeds into the church. He continues to bar the door and close up all of the windows as the surprised group stares on at him with suspicion. He dropped to his knees and prayed as a loud noise echoed through the building. The crowd began to scream as the windows rattled and the building swayed. All of a sudden, a whimper could be heard from the back side of the building. The sound was unmistakable, it was the tiny voice of little Lisa Cunningham. Mrs. Hamm hobbled quickly over to the door before anyone else could react. She threw the door open as Father Ted finally came to his senses. Lisa flung herself through the door into the arms of Mrs. Hamm. Father Ted lunged for the door and slammed his shoulder into it right before an unknown force bashed against the other side. Mrs. Hamm grasped the child as and attempted to console her as a sharp pain erupted in her breast. She looked down and saw a dark stain growing on her blue dress and jerked the child away. Everyone’s eyes went wide as they saw the scene unfolding before them. Lisa stood smiling; face covered in blood, and began to laugh hysterically. Mrs. Hamm was becoming hysterical as well, as she noticed that one side of her chest had become smaller than the other as a huge chunk had been bitten away by the child.