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.
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.
When I was a small child, I remember my parents crossing the James River on the ferry in Surry County while taking my brother and me to Jamestown. At the time, I thought it was thrilling to ride the ferry. It was fun to stand out at the bow and watch as we went over the river to the other side where the boats are docked at Jamestown. We fed the birds on the front deck, and I also remember going up into the top of the ferry where they had a seated area that allowed someone to get out of the wind and still be able to see out. As an adult, I no longer have this glowing admiration for the ferry services in Surry. It never fails that when I am approaching the dock; the ferry is pulling away. Thereafter, it will be at least a thirty-minute wait for the next ferry to arrive. As well as, the actual ride across which could be an additional thirty minutes depending on which ferry pulls into the dock. One ferry is extremely slower than the other is. I will go to great lengths to avoid the ferry services to cross the James River to Williamsburg and will rather drive around Newport News than to use the ferry. My husband and I moved to Surry County two years ago, and it would be nice to be able to travel safely to Williamsburg without the added time it takes to cross the James River on the ferry. There has been talk over the years about replacing the ferry services with a bridge; however, those notions are always disregarded. The residents of Surry County would be better served if a bridge were put in place of the ferry at Scotland Wharf.
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.
Terrible heartbreak plagues the reader: “And the mother’s shrieks of wild despair / Rise ...
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.
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.
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
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.
"An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge." Classic Reader. 2009. BlackDog Media, Web. 2 Dec 2009. .
Nancy was only four years old when her grandmother died. Her grandmother had a big lump on the lower right hand side of her back. The doctors removed it, but it was too late. The tumor had already spread throughout her body. Instead of having a lump on her back, she had a long stitched up incision there. She couldn’t move around; Nancy’s parents had to help her go to the bathroom and do all the simple things that she use to do all by herself. Nancy would ask her grandmother to get up to take her younger sister, Linh, and herself outside so they could play. She never got up. A couple of months later, an ambulance came by their house and took their grandmother away. That was the last time Nancy ever saw her alive. She was in the hospital for about a week and a half. Nancy’s parents never took them to see her. One day, Nancy saw her parents crying and she have never seen them cry before. They dropped Linh and her off at one of their friend’s house. Nancy got mad because she thought they were going shopping and didn’t take her with them.
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.