BACKROADS • DECEMBER 2021
Page 12
Morton’s BMW Motorcycles presents Dr. Seymour O’Life’s
MYSTERIOUS AMERICA
HAUNTED PENNSYLVANIA
IS THIS PENNSYLVANIA’S MOST HAUNTED BRIDGE? The thing is with hauntings … You really never know what you have ‘til it smacks you in the face. Stories abound around the eastern part of Pennsylvania; but we were startled to learn that this one particular bridge was just it bit more haunted than the rest. I picked this up from our friends at Atlas Obscura – one of the most interesting websites around. For those who have ridden around Van Sant Airport you have likely crossed this bridge many times. But now we will just call it the Crybaby Bridge. Have you ever heard the stories that have made this the most haunted bridge in the Keystone State? As the legend goes, many years ago a young woman got pregnant out of wedlock. Her family wanted nothing to do with her and her child. So upset was she by this that after giving birth, she crept out in the middle of the night with her baby in her arms and headed to the nearby bridge. Once there, she flung her baby into the water and then hung herself from the bridge’s rafters. This particular legend refers to the Van Sant Bridge in southeastern Pennsylvania, but different iterations of it are associated with several different so-called “Crybaby Bridges” across the United States. Whatever the particular details might be, the core elements of the myth remain the same: a child (or multiple children) met an untimely death at the bridge sometime in the past; the bridge is therefore now haunted, and the haunting manifests in the form of ghostly cries of the departed children that can still be heard to this day. In the case of the Van Sant Bridge, the story goes that if you park your car in the middle of the bridge you can hear not only the wail of the poor forlorn babe, but also the toes of the hanging woman scraping your car roof. One intrepid ghost hunter, however, surmises that the crying sound
actually comes from red foxes that apparently inhabit the area. That can’t be right. The bridge was built in 1875 and spans Pidcock Creek. It is also known as Beaver Dam Bridge. Apart from the unwed mother of the crybaby legend, the Van Sant Bridge is also reputed to have been a hanging place for horse thieves. Are they not all?
So even in these days… superstition and rumor hold sway. Why ride through something boring, when you can travel through something that might be amazing? But there are other interesting haunts in the Keystone state. For sure there are tea pot and shoe homes galore…The Haines Shoe
