The Lonely Bridge

Haunted Bridges are a common thing in ghost lore.  Throughout the South, stories of cry baby hollows and  bridges that lead to hell can be found in every other town.  As a collector of ghost stories, I've heard so many of these stories they begin to blend together in my head so I can't remember which town and which bridge held which story of ghostly sorrow.  It is rare for one of these stories to stand out to me, but the story of a bridge in Gadsden, Alabama that I heard recently left an impression.  

According to local legend, there is a bridge in Gadsden, Alabama that is haunted.  It is an old bridge with an old history.  According to the story, there was a young couple who lived near the bridge.  They had just had their first baby and times were hard for them.  They were pressed upon by economic concerns and the stress of their newborn baby.  Such stress is common in young parents and it is also common for these stresses to lead to fights.  The couple had been fighting often enough, but one night the fighting escalated to a fevered pitch and the young wife couldn't take it any longer.   She packed up her baby and walked out into the night.  She stepped out to get away from the tension and get away from the fighting.

After a while, her husband felt bad about the fight and about his wife and child walking alone in the dark night.  He grew concerned and took the carriage out to look for his family.  His wife and daughter were just crossing over the bridge when he caught up with them in the carriage.   It was dark and his wife was in black.   In the darkness, the poor young man didn't see his beloved and it was his carriage that pushed her and her baby over the edge into the dark waters below.  Both wife and baby died that night on the bridge.    Since that time,  people have described seeing a woman in black wandering the area around the bridge.  She wanders the bridge looking for the baby she dropped in the dark.   People have also described hearing the baby cry out.  People have also seen the husband wandering the bridge looking for something, heard carriage wheels, and heard the sound of a lonely woman screaming in the dark.  Many locals also say that the house near the bridge that is thought to belong to the young couple is also very haunted.