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.
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.
"An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge." Classic Reader. 2009. BlackDog Media, Web. 2 Dec 2009. .
In Aurora, Colorado, there is a legend about the Third Bridge. The Third Bridge can be found on Quincy Road heading east out of town. The bridge is next to a power plant in an otherwise, dusty, and deserted area of land. The legend states that a van of young children crashed and everyone was killed.
OWLCREEK BRIDGE" ." ABP Journal. 1.1 (2005): n. page. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. Bierce, Ambrose “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. The Norton Introduction to
In the novel, The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson, the author capitalizes upon society’s expectation of a character to emphasize the struggle to achieving his goals. Ian, one of the central characters in the plot line, is heavily impacted by these expectations, which hold a substantial influence upon his decision’s regarding his future. To teenagers an expectation: a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future, is nothing but a restriction upon them. Ian believes he is contained within these expectations; to the point where he does not wish to follow this given path. In a time of adolescence, teenagers are compelled by the strong desire to denounce that which is expected of them; Ian is no exception to this. Societies expectations create a negative influence upon Ian’s struggles to achieve his goals. These effects are due to the following expectations: to leave Struan for a superior education, to obtain the opportunity to become successful; to strive for a medical career, since he excels at the trade already; and to settle into a happy relationship, to raise a family.
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...
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.
Plot: Woman gets call at work from her father, telling her that her mother is dead. Father never got used to living alone and went into retirement home. Mother is described as very religious, Anglican, who had been saved at the age of 14. Father was also religious and had waited for the mother since he first met her. They did not have sex until marriage and the father was mildly dissapointed that the mother did not have money. Description of the house follows, very high ceilings, old mansion it seems, with chimney stains, it has been let go. Jumps in time to narrators ex-husband making fun of narrator fantasizing about stains. Next paragraph is the father in a retirement home, always referring to things: ‘The lord never intended.’, shows how old people have disdain for new things, the next generation appears to be more and more sacreligious. Shows streak of meanness when ‘spits’ out a reference to constant praying, narrator claims he does not know who he is talking to, but appears to be the very pious mother. Following paragraph jumps back in time to when narrator was a child, she asks her mother constant questions about her white hair and what color it was, mother says she was glad when it wasn’t brown like her fathers anymore, shows high distaste towards her father, the narrators grandfather.
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.
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:
Terrible heartbreak plagues the reader: “And the mother’s shrieks of wild despair / Rise ...
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.
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
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)
A 19-year-old new mother, named Sheryl asked her boyfriend to watch her 8-month-old baby while she went shopping. Her boyfriend kindly agreed assuming that the baby would fall asleep, and he would continue watching the game. However like most newborn babies, Sheryl’s child was a little fussy and was crying. That caused Sheryl’s boyfriend to get annoyed and agitated. He went over to the baby, picked him up and shook him hard. When Sheryl came home she found her baby injured, unfortunately what happened to Sheryl’s baby it’s something that happens to many children in America every day.