Old Brit Bailey

James Briton Bailey was born in North Carolina in 1779 and married at a young age. He and his even younger wife, Edith Smith, had 6 children over the next 10 years. Sadly, his wife died of an unspecified illness. A year later, "Brit" as he became known, married his deceased wife's sister, Dorothy (nicknamed Dot) which wasn't uncommon in those days. He took his new wife and 6 children with him when he moved to Kentucky where he managed to get elected to the state legislature. He earned a bad reputation for being quarrelsome and confrontational while he served, but apparently everything was fine at home as he fathered 5 more children with Dot. He eventually resigned from the legislature and moved with his large family to Tennessee. There is some indication he was about to be prosecuted for forgery when he left, but no definite proof has been found for this. 

While in Tennessee, Brit enlisted in the military and fought in the War of 1812. In 1818 he once again moved his family along with 6 slaves he had managed to acquire, this time to the wild and wide open spaces of south Texas (still a part of Spanish-ruled Mexico.) Bailey purchased his land from the Spanish government in what would later become Brazoria County between the present-day towns of West Columbia and Angleton south of Houston. On the prairie land in the middle of his property he built a house large enough to accommodate his family and painted it barn red. He built quarters for his slaves, barns, outhouses, sheds, and several storage buildings over the next year and had them all painted the same barn red color.

Everything was fine until 1821 when Mexico won its independence from Spain and the newly installed Mexican government refused to recognize Brit's claim that the land belonged to him. Legal wrangling ensued over the next several years with Bailey refusing to back down an inch and daring anyone to come and try to take his property. In 1824, Mexico granted Stephen F. Austin the right to settle up to 300 Anglo's on land which included Bailey's. Austin tried to force Brit to give up his claim and move along, but Bailey didn't back down from the imposing and strong-willed Austin any more than he did the Mexican government. After numerous confrontations, Bailey informed Austin he was unwilling to move, but more than willing to make him a corpse with his Kentucky rifle. Soon after, Austin recognized Brits claim to a league and labor of land (4,605.5 acres). This land became known as Bailey's Prairie.

There is nothing left of the Bailey
homestead and nobody knows exactly
where Brit stands in his grave.

Over the next 8 years, Brit once again gained a reputation for his eccentric behavior, hard drinking, and being quick to engage in brawls. He remained a constant thorn to Stephen Austin, loudly and often proclaiming his dislike of him. He fought several duels and in true Texas fashion, did things his own way and dared the world to have an opinion about it. 

In late 1832, he became very sick, probably of cholera. On December 5th, while on his death bed but still lucid, he dictated his last will and testament and gave specific directions for his burial. He insisted he was to be buried standing up, "for I never lied to a man in my life and I want no man, on passing my grave, to say, 'there lies old Brit Bailey.'" He wanted to be buried with his face to the west, for he had begun going west when he left Carolina and had never ceased looking toward the setting sun. He wanted to be buried with his trusty rifle at his side with a full horn of powder and his pouch filled with bullets and fresh flints; with his possibles bag filled with pipe, tobacco, strike-a-light and a large chaw and a full jug of whiskey at his feet. He proclaimed the reason for his demands was because, "a man doesn't know how long the road may be and what hazards may be along it and my rifle has never failed me yet and I may be in need of refreshment along the way." Brit died the next day.

"Uncle Bubba," one of Bailey's slaves, dug a shaft grave 8 feet deep in order to bury Brit standing up as he requested. The funeral was held and Brit was prayed over by a local preacher. His body was placed in the hole feet first facing west. Into the grave his wife placed his long rifle, a full horn of powder, his bullet bag full of bullets and flints and his possibles bag loaded with a pipe, tobacco, a strike-a-light and a chaw. However, Mrs. Bailey was a devout Methodist and she simply could not in good conscious put a full jug of corn whiskey in the grave with Brit. She hadn't been able to stop his drinking while he was alive, but she sure could keep the jug away from him now that he was dead.

Very shortly after Brit's death, Dot moved the family to Harrisburg (now part of Houston) and rented out the red house. The first family of tenants moved out suddenly and without explanation just a few weeks after moving in. So did the next and the next and the next. There was a reason. 

The first couple who moved into the Bailey house practiced the most effective form of birth control of the time - they slept in separate bedrooms. Just a couple of nights after moving in, the wife came flying into the husband's bedroom one night and jumped into bed with him. "What's wrong with you, woman?" the husband asked. "There was a man in my room," she exclaimed. "I thought it was you. He was on his hands and knees feeling for something under the bed. I reached out to touch him and my hand went right through him!"

The husband was, of course, skeptical, but the wife refused to spend the night in that room again. Finally, the husband had had enough and decided to sleep in the wife's room to prove it was just her imagination. Shortly after midnight, the husband came running from the room and said, "Not only is there a man in there, but I recognized him. It was old Brit Bailey himself!"

It turns out, the bedroom in question had been Brit's and it was his habit to keep his jug under the bed. Each and every tenant moved out of the house saying they saw Brit Bailey walking around the room that used to be his, obviously looking for something under the bed or in the closet or behind furniture. Eventually, nobody would rent the property. The house and buildings fell into disrepair and crumbled to the ground. Today, no trace of the house remains and nobody knows the exact spot where Brit still stands facing west, but Brit has never left. 

For years afterward, he manifested himself in various ways in and around Bailey's Prairie. His appearances became so well known that even the most skeptical of the hardy settlers believed whole-heartedly in the ghost at Bailey's Prairie. He was still making appearances in the late 1930's when a passing traveler reported seeing a gauzy apparition of a man alongside the darkened road he was driving on. His car abruptly stopped running. The radio came on without his touching it and the antenna started waving around in the air. The windshield wipers, which in those days worked off manifold pressure and wouldn't work at all if the engine wasn't running, began to quickly sweep back and forth. The horn honked and the lights flashed, all without any human actions. The traveler said the phantom looked right at him, then appeared to look into his car before shaking his head and disappearing. When the apparition vanished, the car stopped going crazy, could be started again and driven normally. 

In the late 1940's, an oil well being drilled near the site of the old house collapsed in upon itself every time the bit was removed. When casing was placed in the hole, the casing collapsed inward. There was no known physical reason for either the collapse of the hole or the casing. No other wells in the area had any trouble like this and no fault was found in the casing pipes. The well was finally moved just 20 feet away and no further problems were experienced. Old-timers said the well was being dug too close to Brit's grave and he didn't appreciate it.

Today, a mysterious light is often seen floating around Bailey's Prairie. It appears as a bright, white ball moving about 4 - 6 feet above the ground, the same height a man would hold a lantern. Too many sober, well-respected people have seen it for the phenomena to be dismissed. No scientist has been able to explain what causes what is known as Bailey's Light. Perhaps they should just accept the explanation that has been verbally handed down by generations of area residents - old Brit Bailey is still out there, looking all over for his missing jug of whiskey.

Doing Eternal Time at Alcatraz

The end of the line for scores of America's worst criminals was the prison called Alcatraz, aka "The Rock." For almost 30 years, the damp, dank, fog-enshrouded prison on a rocky outcrop 1 1/2 miles out in the San Francisco Bay kept the public safe from over 1,000 of the baddest of the bad. With the heavy fog, the swirling currents of the freezing water of the bay which totally surrounded the rocky island, the searchlights sweeping the barred windows all night every night and the ominous foghorns, it was a most lonely place to be incarcerated. Those who survived often did so at the cost of their sanity. For some, the cost was even higher - their very souls.

Alcatraz tested the limits of men's endurance, both physical and mental. Over the years, many prisoners reached their limits and attempted suicide. Many of them succeeded. Many more were driven to insanity. One prisoner who worked in the machine shop took a hatchet and, placing his left hand on a wooden table top, methodically began chopping off each finger and then his hand at the wrist, all the while laughing maniacally. He then handed the bloody hatchet to one of the guards, placed his right hand on the table and began begging the guard to chop off his right hand while calmly saying he had no more use for hands. Another inmate used the small blade from a disassembled pencil sharpener to slice the inside of his arms into strips of spaghetti. A third man broke the lenses of his eye glasses and used one of the shards to cut open his jugular vein.

In May, 1946, six of the prisoners managed to overcome five of the guards in an organized escape attempt. The guards were locked in cells 402 and 403 and when the inmates could not find the key which would let them out of the cell block, they used rifles they found in the guards office and shot them, killing two and severely wounding the other three. Other guards, trained troops and even Marines were brought in and began firing into the doors and windows of the cell block. In addition to bullets, the cell block was barraged with tear gas and rifle grenades. Three of the convicts ran back to their cells and lay on the floor behind their water-soaked mattresses while the other three took refuge in a small corridor that ran off from the main passageway. After the guards retook the cell block, the bodies of these three were found riddled by bullets and shrapnel.

 Not long after, prisoners began complaining about noises, moaning and screams, which seemed to come from the corridor where the 3 men had died. Eventually, the iron door was welded shut. In 1976, long after there were no more prisoners or anyone living on Alcatraz, a night watchman heard strange sounds coming from behind the door. After much effort with special tools, the door was once again opened, but nothing was found. Several nights later, the guard heard the noises again and immediately opened the door. As soon as the door was opened, the noises stopped. Shining his powerful flashlight into the maze of pipes and conduits the guard found nothing that could have caused the noises. As soon as he shut the door, the noises began again. For several years, different guards all reported hearing the noises as they made their rounds, but the noises always stopped as soon as they opened the door and nothing was ever found. When the guards began to refuse to go into the area at night, authorities decided to re-weld the door shut. Today, Alcatraz visitors walk right past this door every day and never hear anything, but in the dark of night, long after the last visitor has left the island, guards say if you are brave enough to put your ear to the door, you sometimes will hear the muted sounds of moaning and desperate voices crying out.

Sounds coming from behind welded-shut doors are not the only signs of haunting. Through the years, night watchmen have told of hearing footsteps echoing from upper walkways and voices of long dead men talking. Upon investigation, no rational cause can be found. In the machine shop where the insane prisoner chopped off his own fingers, unexplained loud crazy laughter is often heard.

In the late 1990's, a female National Park Ranger told of working one cold, rainy day when the number of visitors was few due to the weather. She went for a walk in front of A Block and was just past the door which leads down to the infamous dungeons, the cells of solitary lockup where severe and unusually cruel punishment was administered, when she heard a loud scream from down below. Knowing this area was locked and off-limits to tourists, she ran away. When asked why she didn't report it , she stated, "I didn't dare mention it because just the day before, everyone was ridiculing another worker who reported men's voices coming from the hospital ward and when he went to check it out, it was completely empty."

A number of the Rangers and guards talk, off the record of course, about one particular cell in the dungeon, 14D. They all speak of a sudden feeling of intensity, a strange, heavy feeling immediately upon entering the cell. They all will tell you that cell 14D, even on the hottest summer day, is always cold, much colder than the other 3 cells right next to it. 

A guard who worked there in the 1940's told the off-the-record story of solitary confinement in cell 14D. About 1946, one particularly hardened prisoner was locked in 14D for some infraction. Within seconds of being locked in the dark cell, the convict began screaming in terror. Upon being looked in on, he was found to be shaking uncontrollably and crying. He said a a creature with fiery eyes was locked in the cell with him. He begged to be locked up in a different cell, but the guards, used to hearing claims from the prisoners about ghostly spirits walking the catwalks at night, ignored the man's pleas and locked him in the dark again. The man's screams continued on into the night, shouting that he was being attacked by "a devil." Finally, just before the sun rose, there was silence in the cell. When it was time for the man to be fed his breakfast of a single slice of bread and a cup of water, a guard found the man dead, his eyes wide open, a look of horror frozen on his face. There were clear marks of finger prints around his neck. An autopsy showed the man had been strangled to death, but the indention of the prints proved he could not have strangled himself in such a way. Rather than try to explain how someone could have strangled a man while he was by himself in a locked, tiny cell with multiple guards monitoring the cell door all night, his death was officially declared to be of "natural causes." Even stranger, the morning after the man's death, two other guards who had been informed of the man being sent to the dungeon but knowing nothing of his death, reported they were 1 over on their count as the prisoners lined up for their walk to the cafeteria for breakfast. They found the man who had been sent to cell 14D the night before standing at the end of the line. When they began to approach him, he vanished right in front of the guards and several of the prisoners standing close by.

Could it have been just a coincidence that cell 14D was the exact cell where a notorious bank robber and murderer, Henry Young, was locked up for several months after an escape attempt? Guards reported Henry had gone quite insane during his stay in 14D, his eyes "crazy looking" and constant incoherent babbling. He was finally moved back into the general prisoner population where he later murdered another inmate by strangling him. Did Henry leave a piece of his insanity behind in 14D? Or perhaps, did an evil something that already inhabited that place give a part of itself to Henry?

It is said the ghosts of people return to places where they suffered traumatic experiences when alive. Prison guards from the 1940's through 1963 when Alcatraz was finally shut down as a prison, told of experiencing many strange happenings. They told of hearing disembodied voices speaking out, of hearing sobbing and moaning, inexplicable smells, cold spots and spectral prisoners and soldiers who inhabit all parts of the island. Phantom gunshots sent seasoned guards ducking to the ground in the belief that prisoners had escaped and acquired guns. The deserted laundry room sometimes filled with the smell of acrid smoke, but upon investigation, the air would be clear with no evidence of fire. 

James Johnston, the first Warden of Alcatraz, did not believe in ghosts, but even he experienced several unexplained events.  He was once in the middle of personally giving a tour of the facilities to several important visitors when they all heard the unmistakable sound of someone sobbing as they walked past the 4 empty solitary confinement cells in "The Dungeon." Trying to find the source, the warden put his head right next to the wall before quickly leading his visitors from the area. He later swore the sounds were coming from the wall itself. 

One of the most famous prisoners on "The Rock" was Al Capone. Warden Johnston refused to allow any special treatment for Capone, insisting he be treated just like all the other criminals in his prison. As time passed, Capone had very few friends among the other prisoners because he refused to take part in several strikes the convicts tried to stage for better treatment and since he wasn't allowed any privileges the other prisoners didn't have, he wasn't able to dispense gifts or favors to anyone. One of the jobs he was assigned was to mop the halls and he was quickly given the nickname "the wop with the mop" by the other prisoners. Capone learned to play the banjo and for a short time, even played in the prison band, but as the years went by, he slowly began losing his mind due to the harsh conditions of confinement in Alcatraz and an untreated case of syphilis. He was finally admitted to the hospital ward where he would sit unresponsive to people, playing simple snippets of music on his banjo. Guards, tour guides and tourists sometimes hear soft banjo music coming from the hallways Capone called home and the infirmary where he spent his last days on Alcatraz before being transferred elsewhere. 

Could it be the famous gangster himself, his lonely and broken spirit returned to where he lost his sanity? Maybe it's the spirit of a long-forgotten soldier from the days when Alcatraz was a military fort. Or perhaps it's simply one of the other countless spirits condemned to eternally do time on The Rock.

The Late Night Call

It was late one night when the knock at the door of the little house sitting at the edge of town came, the sound soft, but insistent. The house was shared by the town's only doctor and his young wife and when the doctor came out onto the porch, he found a man standing off to the side deep in the shadows, his hat pulled low obscuring his face. He said the emergency was to the south in the woods several miles beyond the houses at the edge of town. Little did he know, but the young doctor and his pretty wife were embarking on a most interesting house call, an enduring unsolved mystery.

It was a fine night, soft with a glowing full moon and the green scent of spring. The year was 1900, a brand new century had begun just a few months before and the little town in West Texas was growing and full of optimism. It was very late, but the doctor's wife said she would accompany him so instead of riding his horse, the buggy was hitched. The doctor turned toward the stranger to reassure him only to find he had retreated even further into the shadows, sitting on his horse impatiently waiting. As the wife came from the house and climbed into the buggy, the shadow man led them away, heading south past the last little cluster of homes marking the town's edge.

"I think there's something wrong with him?" the doctor's wife asked him. "He's very strange."

"His friend is hurt and he's worried," replied the doctor. "I could tell by his voice. If it's a big enough emergency to come get me after dark, then people are always very worried."

"But even the way he's dressed is strange, so old fashioned, " she said.

The good doctor flicked his reins, urging his horse to a faster pace in order to keep up with the horseman ahead of them in the dark. "I didn't really notice," he replied to his wife. "He stayed in the shadows."

They continued on their way, much further than the doctor expected. There were no more houses and eventually even the road turned into nothing much more than a trail that seemed seldom used. Finally, just as some clouds slipped across the moon blocking what little light it provided, the shadow rider led them down a narrow side trail leading into a dense grove of trees. 

Deep in the woods, they came upon a small cabin with a dimly-lit window. The strange rider got down from his horse in the deep shadows of the trees surrounding the somewhat foreboding little house. Although it was hard to see him, the doctor could make out that he was standing motionless and without saying a word, pointed toward the cabin. It was a struggle, but the doctor managed to quell his uneasiness enough to get his medical bag and step down from the buggy. Turning to his wife, he told her she should stay there. 

Approaching the cabin, the doctor found the front door slightly ajar. A lighted room was to the left of the entrance hall, but the rest of the cabin was so dark he could see nothing within it. He took a step into the dim room and froze at what he found there. Blood was spattered on every wall and lay in wide pools. What appeared to be pieces of torn flesh was mixed in with the blood. a chair with a leg broken off laid on its side in the corner beneath a particularly gory spatter of blood. A table was overturned next to a bed. On the bed lay a woman, naked, her eyes open, intently watching the doctor. Her right leg below the knee was covered in blood.

The doctor knew someone had just died here, a horribly violent, painful and gruesome death. He could feel it oozing from the darkness, he could smell it in the stale air of the cabin. But here in front of him was a wounded woman and she needed to be treated. He shouldn't be alone in the room with a naked woman so he called for his wife to join him, but a gruff voice from the darkness outside said, "No, she stays out here." The doctor turned to his task.

The wounded woman was fortunate. She had been shot, but the bullet had gone through the meaty part of her calf. The doctor cleaned the wound as best he could with what he had, an action that usually made even hardened men cry out with the pain, but the woman didn't flinch or make a sound, her eyes never left the doctor. He didn't look her in the face, but though he couldn't even hear her breathe, he could feel those eyes watching him. He happened to glance up once and caught a fleeting glimpse of a face in the window, but when he turned to look, it was gone. The hair on the back of his neck stood up and he hurried to finish bandaging the wound.

When he was done, he quickly stood and told the woman to come see him tomorrow and he would make sure the wound is clean and bandage it again. Without speaking, her eyes not blinking and still watching him intently, she slowly nodded. The sense of imminent violence suddenly came upon the doctor again so he plunged into the dark hall and safely out the cabin's door. With great effort, he forced himself not to run for the buggy. As he stepped up to the seat next to his wife and took the reins, a small rawhide coin purse landed on the floor next to his feet with the sound of several heavy coins inside it. As he urged the horse to a quick trot, he turned just once to look back at the cabin. The darkness had swallowed it completely, the light at the window extinguished.

His wife was shaking with fear. She told him a different man, not the one who had come to their house, had stood at the window watching. she was sure he held a gun and his face was smeared with blood. The doctor told her what he had seen in the dimly lit room. He was sure someone had been murdered there and dragged out. "You have to tell the sheriff," his wife told him.

The doctor waited two days for the wounded woman to come in, but she didn't come and somehow he knew she never would. His wife was right, he needed to let the authorities know.

When he reported what he had seen, the sheriff told him he must be mistaken as the cabin he was talking about was abandoned. Nobody had lived in that old run-down cabin for years, he said. "It was not old," the doctor insisted, "I was there." He would show them if they would just accompany him back to it.

The sheriff and a deputy agreed to go with him. He remembered the way exactly and there was no mistaking the lonely side trail. The cabin was there as he said it was, but it was an old, abandoned wreck with the windows broken out. The deputy stayed outside to look around as the sheriff and doctor went inside the structure. Carefully making their way across the rotten floor boards, they went into the little room the doctor remembered. The bed was still there as before, the table overturned next to it and the broken-legged chair in the corner. An old, moth-eaten coverlet was on the bed. It was not stained. Thick dust covered everything. It was obvious no one had been here for many years. Looking down, there were stains on the flooring that looked like they had been scrubbed many times, years ago. The doctor shook his head in confusion.

All of a sudden, the deputy called out to them. Meeting him outside, they found the deputy shaking and wide-eyed, He said he had been walking around the trees looking for anything that might seem suspicious when he looked up and saw a man watching him. "There was blood all over his face and his shirt was soaked with it!" When the deputy started toward the man, he vanished! "Not twenty feet from me, plain as day," the deputy said. "Then he simply vanished into thin air while I stood there and watched!" All three men searched through the trees all around the cabin, but nothing was there.

"You believe me, don't you?" the doctor asked when they arrived back in town. The sheriff remained noncommittal and the doctor began to have doubts as to just what he had experienced. The deputy though, he knew what he had seen - a dead man still on his feet. The sheriff said he would take more men out there the next day to look around more closely. Neither the doctor nor the deputy returned and the sheriff reported they found nothing and the cabin was still empty as it had been for so long. Shortly thereafter, the case was officially closed.

There was talk, just rumors really, that the sheriff and two other deputies had gone back to the cabin and all three had seen the bloody figure waiting in the woods. Among themselves, they decided it was best to leave that part out of their report. 

Several months later a flood took the cabin ruins away. Where the foundation had been, some people said a grave-sized hole remained. Others said the grave hole was closer to the trees, a few feet from where the cabin once stood. It was hard to tell. Floodwaters do strange things to bottom land.

And some insist, even today, that the doctor's descendants still possess three silver dollars - payment for one particular late night house call.

Mary's Bridge

There’s a rural bridge in Louisiana between the little villages of St. Martinville and Broussard with a terrible story attached, a sad tale of a young girl’s horrible death.  The bridge on Bayou Tortue (Turtle Bayou Road) crosses an eerie stretch of swamp where tall cypress trees draped with Spanish moss grow in profusion and alligators and deadly water moccasins wait for their next meal in the dark shadows.  But dangerous creatures of this world are not what keep the locals away from this particular bridge when darkness falls.

In the late 1940’s, a teenage Cajun girl named Mary was, against her parent’s wishes, dating a non-Cajun boy. Not only was he not a Cajun, he had an unsavory reputation for a bad temper and had been locked up in the county jail a number of times for minor, but troubling offenses. Mary was in love with him though and like a lot of teenage girls, thought her parents didn’t understand how much he meant to her. No matter the tension it created at home, she couldn’t stay away from her bad-boy paramour.

In spite of this, Mary was a good Catholic girl and wouldn’t give in to her boyfriend’s sexual advances. No matter how much he pleaded and cajoled, she always stopped him from going beyond what good girls should allow.  One night after meeting up with him in town, she consented to go for a drive. Cruising around the local dirt roads, the boy was drinking moonshine from a quart jar he pulled from under the seat. Mary demanded she be taken home, but as they came to the little Bayou Tortue bridge, her now dead drunk boyfriend stopped the car and demanded she give him what he wanted or he would throw her in the swamp. Poor Mary, totally frightened, began crying and begging for him to just take her home, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. When he reached out and tore the front of her dress, Mary jumped out of the car and began to flee.

As Mary ran across the bridge, her boyfriend managed to catch her and when she began to struggle against him, he smashed the heavy quart jar over her head, knocking her unconscious. In his drunken mind, he thought he had killed her and in an attempt to hide all evidence of his crime, he dumped her into the swamp. The water must have shocked Mary back into wakefulness and her moans let the boyfriend know she wasn't dead after all. As he tried to think what his next move should be, he heard several splashes from the banks of the swamp and saw a glint of light from the car's headlamps reflected in 2 pairs of eyes moving low in the water. Mary's screams indicated the alligators had not gone hungry on this night.

In spite of an intense search by police and volunteers, Mary’s body was never found.  The boyfriend was brought in for questioning, but even though everyone knew he was the last person seen with her when she was alive, police were unable to gather the proof needed to arrest him. Word got out that he had confessed the awful details of his crime to a confident, but bragged he would never be convicted because the police would never find Mary’s body. Several weeks later, the boyfriend himself mysteriously vanished, leaving behind all of his belongings at his parent’s house. It was widely rumored that Mary’s father had seen to it the boyfriend suffered the same fate as his daughter, but the police never saw fit to question him and unofficially seemed to say good riddance.

The case of missing Mary has never been solved or closed and nobody expects it ever will. To this day though, if you go to the bridge at midnight, the same time poor Mary was being thrown to the alligators, turn off your car and call out, “Mary, Mary, Mary,” your car will not start and you will have to push it off the bridge before it will start running again. That’s strange enough, but the locals say if you go there at midnight on the anniversary of her terrible death, you will see poor Mary frantically running up and down the bridge, wearing the long white dress she was wearing when she died, her soul forever imprisoned on the Bayou Tortue Bridge when her life was brutally cut short by a murderous boyfriend.

The Most Haunted House in America

There are many haunted homes in the United States and Louisiana seems to have more than its fair share. However, only one can legitimately lay claim to being “the most haunted house in America.” The Myrtles” has earned that title in part by being the abode of as many as 14 ghosts. Serving as a respected Bed & Breakfast establishment now, even without the ghosts, the place would be creepy merely due to its bloody history and the mysteries it holds secret.

In 1791, General Daniel Bradford, a hero of the American Revolution, was a leader of the Whiskey Rebellion, a violent protest of the new U.S. government’s imposition of a tax on whiskey. In July, 1794, a government militia force of over 13,000 men marched into western Pennsylvania to put down the rebellion and enforce the tax laws that were being protested by 500 distillers. Bradford decided discretion was the better part of valor so, after retrieving a small fortune in funds and leaving his wife and 5 children behind, he high-tailed it out of the government’s reach down to Spanish-held Louisiana.

In 1796, General Bradford purchased a 650-acre tract of land to begin a plantation and chose to build a large house on the highest point of the estate.  What he didn’t know, however, was that the spot was the exact site of an ancient burial ground of the Tunica Indians. It took several years for the construction crew and artists to complete Bradford’s mansion and for the plantation, which he named Laurel Grove, to be established. Stories handed down indicate that before building began and also during the construction, he spent a number of nights at the site. During those nights, his sleep was often disturbed by the appearance of a nude Indian maiden who would slowly shake her head from side-to-side while looking at him. He said he somehow understood the apparition was trying to tell him not to build on the sacred ground, but not believing in omens, he chose to ignore the warning.

In 1798, President John Adams pardoned Bradford for his actions in the Whiskey Rebellion. That same year, he travelled back to Pennsylvania and brought his wife and children back to live with him in Louisiana. They lived there, peacefully building a life together, until 1808 when Bradford died in bed. After his death, the house passed ownership to his oldest daughter, Sarah, who soon married a lawyer, Clarke Woodruff. Over the next few years, the couple had 3 children and owned a large number of slaves to work the plantation and take care of the house.

One of those slaves was a beautiful, young mulatto girl named Chloe who the master of the house forced to become his mistress. Clarke treated his slave mistress better than any of the other slaves, making her the family’s cook and the children’s nanny.  A year later though, Clarke took a different slave girl to be his new mistress and threatened to put Chloe back in the fields if she told anyone of their coupling. Being fearful of being relegated to backbreaking work in the fields or being sold and separated from her family, Chloe began listening at keyholes to her master’s private conversations for information concerning her fate. One day Clarke caught her and in a fit of rage, cut off her ear. She survived and for the rest of her life wore a green turban on her head to hide the missing ear.

Chloe was sure she would be dealt an even harsher punishment even as time passed so when an opportunity finally presented itself, she concocted a plan to get back into Clarke’s favor. The family was having a birthday party for one of the young daughters and she was instructed to bake a cake for the occasion. Chloe laced the cake with oleander, a poisonous shrub. She only meant to make the family sick so she could then nurse them all back to health and prove how essential she was. Unfortunately, she used too much poison and Sarah and 2 of their children died lying in their beds in spite of Chloe’s efforts to nurse them back to health.

The night of the funeral, Chloe was very distraught and when her fellow slaves asked her what was wrong, thinking they would keep her secret, she confessed to what she had done. However, in those times, a serious infraction of the law by a slave would bring quick and painful retribution not just to the perpetrator, but also to the other slaves on the plantation and Chloe surely had broken a major law of the white man.  Before a white mob could come for them in revenge, the other slaves decided to take matters into their own hands. Later that night, pulling Chloe from her bed, they dragged her to a tall oak tree near the house and hung her until she choked to death. Just before dawn when they were sure she was dead, they cut her down and threw her body into the nearby river and let it wash away.

After the death of Sarah and the two children, Clarke left the plantation in the hands of a caretaker and moved with his surviving daughter to Covington, Louisiana and in 1834, sold the plantation, the house and the slaves to Ruffin Stirling. Before he and his wife Mary and their 9 children moved in, they spent a considerable amount of money remodeling and adding to the original structure. Renaming the plantation & house to “The Myrtles,” by the time they were finished, the house was twice as big. No matter as the ill will of the house did not abate. Five of the Stirling children died in the house at a young age and Ruffin himself died there in 1854.

In the early 1860’s, the eldest surviving Stirling daughter, Sarah, married William Winter and in 1865, Mary Stirling, who had inherited The Myrtles upon Ruffin’s death, hired William to manage the plantation. William and Sarah lived in the house along with her mother. The Winters, not faring any better than previous occupants, had a daughter, Kate, who died at the house from typhoid when she was only 3. Facing hard times after the Civil War, the family was forced to sell The Myrtles in 1868, but William began making a good living as a lawyer, won several big cases, and they were able to buy the plantation back by late 1870.

The following year, a man on horseback rode up to the house and called to William for the purpose of hiring him as a lawyer. When Winter came out onto the porch, the man shot him in the chest and rode off into the night. William staggered back into the house and, evidently trying to reach his wife who was upstairs, began climbing the staircase. He made it to the 17^th of the 20 stairs where he collapsed. Sarah ran to him and cradled his head in her lap as he died. The sheriff and the doctor were summoned and when they arrived, they found a sobbing Sarah sitting on the stairs still holding the corpse of her husband. When his body was removed, a large pool of blood remained on the step where he died. The gunman was never found, the case never solved.

The bloody history of The Myrtles did not end with William Winter’s murder. William’s widow Sarah remained at the house with her mother Mary until she died there in 1878. Mary died in the house 2 years later in 1880 and the plantation went to her son, Stephen. By this time, the plantation was heavily in debt and Stephen sold it in 1886. Shortly thereafter, a man was stabbed to death in the hallway over a gambling debt. The Myrtles then changed hands a number of times over the next few years until in the early 1900’s, the land was divided up among the last buyer’s heirs after he died and the house itself was sold to a new buyer. In 1927, the overseer of the large house was stabbed to death during a robbery attempt. With its history of violence and death, the house changed hands numerous times, seeming to bring ill will to most of its owners until the 1970’s when James and Frances Myers purchased it. After extensive repairs and remodeling, they turned it into the Bed & Breakfast it is today.

With all of the deaths experienced in the house, it’s no wonder the home has earned its reputation as being extremely haunted. Not long after the death of the slave girl named Cloe came the first reports from residents and visitors of an apparition wearing a green turban. She apparently is still hanging around and still very active over 200 years later. Many guests have awakened from a sound sleep to see the green-turbaned specter standing over them. Often, a baby’s cry is heard when Chloe appears. By standing over the person’s bed and gazing down on them, it is thought she is still carrying out her duties as a nanny, checking on the children she used to care for.

Two other spirits are sometimes seen looking through bedroom windows or standing at the foot of beds in the dark of night – two blond-headed girls with long corkscrew curls wearing antebellum dresses. Children’s happy voices are heard playing in the hallway, laughing and squealing as they invisibly run from one end of the hall to the other. Sometimes, guests return to their locked room after the service staff has carefully made their bed only to find the bed clothes rumpled with the unmistakable indention of a child’s footprint, as if a child had been jumping on the bed. Apparently, Cloe’s young victims are still hanging around.

One of the most reported mysteries is a thumping sound, as if someone is staggering across the foyer and climbing up the stairs. The sound always stops on the 17th step and then the thud of a falling body is heard. Upon investigation, there is nothing seen, nothing at all, except for the dark blood-colored stain on that step, and no amount of scrubbing or bleaching has ever been able to remove it.

Other spirits seem to have made The Myrtles their home as well. Guests of the current Bed & Breakfast have told the owners they witnessed a lady softly playing the grand piano late at night. However, the owners do not know how to play piano and when asked, none of the other guests at the time claimed to know how either. A slender young man in a fancy vest and top hat has been sighted on numerous occasions wandering around the grounds. The clothes and appearance of the man exactly match the description of the gambler killed in the foyer over his gambling debt. There is also the female apparition dressed in a long black skirt who floats about a foot above the floor, dancing to music nobody among the living can hear.  Occasionally, after everyone has gone to bed and all is quiet in the dark of the night, the sounds of laughter, music, and the clinking of glasses can be heard coming from the parlor. Perhaps the ghosts are enjoying a lively social gathering.

The media has often reported on the many phantoms at The Myrtles. It has been featured in Life magazine, Southern Living, and numerous tabloids. A number of television documentaries have featured the old house and its stories through the years. With its location on a Louisiana bayou, surrounded by huge oak trees, Spanish Moss hanging from their branches providing an eerie atmosphere, it has even been featured as the setting for a number of big-budget movies.

A group of paranormal investigators recently spent time at the place and with their video cameras and assorted electronic sensing equipment, they succeeded in documenting several paranormal phenomena. Unexplainable drops in temperature, tape recordings of footsteps in empty rooms and on the stairs, strange whistling sounds emanating from unoccupied rooms and video recorded glowing orbs of bright light strangely whizzing around unseen by the naked eye were a few of the things they documented. Two of the investigators were returning to the house after walking around the grounds when they noticed a gray cat looking at them from the porch. Not knowing what it was at first, they shined their flashlights on it. The cat did not run away, it just sat there looking at them. One of them said, “That cat is creepy” and then both noted something really strange – the cat’s eyes did not reflect the light the way a normal cats would have. One of them grabbed his digital camera and took a picture of it. As soon as he did, the cat disappeared. Looking at the picture later, there was no cat, just a small white orb that seemed to be streaking toward the edge of the photo. When the owners were asked about the cat the next day, they reported it was a family pet named Mert. There was just one problem – Mert had died the year before.

The Bizarre Case of Alien Abduction in Italy

On the night of December 6, 1978 in Torriglia, Italy, a 26-year-old night watchman on routine patrol stumbled into a strange, terrifying encounter with alien lifeforms. The encounter would forever change his life and become the most infamous account of an alien abduction in Italy's history.

Torriglia

Pier Zanfretta, a husband and father of two, was navigating his patrol car along an icy road just outside the little mountain town of Torriglia heading toward the unoccupied country home of a client, Dr. Ettore Righi. He was just turning into the home's driveway when suddenly his car's engine, lights and radio all stopped functioning. When the confused Pier looked toward the house, he saw what he thought were 4 flashlights shining their beams around right next to the home. Thinking there were burglars attempting to find an entrance, he quietly exited his vehicle with his gun and flashlight at the ready. 

After slipping through an open gate, he bent low and proceeded toward the intruders while hiding behind a low rock wall that surrounded the property. Carefully peeking from behind the wall, he started to jump over in order to surprise and get the jump on the criminals, but just as he began his leap upwards, a hand grabbed his shoulder from behind. In spite of the tremendous shock, he twirled around with his revolver in hand, but it wasn't an ordinary person standing there. He was just inches away from "An enormous, green, ugly and frightful creature with undulating skin as though he was very fat or dressed in a loose tunic. The monster was no less than 10 feet tall, had points on the side of his face, monstrous yellow triangular eyes and red veins across his forehead."

  Pier was so startled that he dropped his flashlight, but as the creature reached toward him again, he had the sense to duck, grab the flashlight from the ground and, no doubt propelled by a burst of adrenaline, made a hasty retreat back toward his car. Afraid the being would be right behind him, he ran as fast as he could without looking over his shoulder. Just as he reached the front of his car and was reaching for the door, a brilliant beam of light appeared which illuminated everything around him as if it were a bright, sunny day. Shielding his eyes with his arm, Zanfretta dared a look toward the light source and saw a huge, triangular UFO slowly rising from behind the house. As it arose with a loud hissing sound, he could see the craft dwarfed the Righi home in size. Suddenly, Pier was hit by a blast of searing heat and the spaceship zoomed up into the sky at an unbelievable speed.

With all quiet now, he managed to get into his car and call the office on his 2-way radio. At 12:14 am, Carlo Toccalino, the security company's radio operator, logged the call. His report indicated Zanfretta spoke in a confused and very agitated fashion, almost babbling. Carlo had a hard time understanding Zanfretta, but he was able to figure out he was describing the appearance of strange creatures that were not human. When Carlo asked him who was attacking him, Pier shouted, "No, they aren't men, they aren't men! They are so ugly! My God, they are so ugly!"

The call suddenly broke off and Carlo, afraid for his officer, immediately dispatched another car with 2 guards as backup. Due to the icy conditions, the additional car took almost a full hour to reach Zanfretta. When the men arrived, they found Pier laying stiff on the frozen ground in front of the house. As they approached him, Zanfretta looked over at them, leaped up with a wild, scared look on his face and with eyes bulging, shined his flashlight on the men. More alarming, he also aimed his pistol at them. The two men, Walter Lauria and Raimondo Mascia, later said they were both shocked to see the normally timid and restrained man to be babbling irrationally, and despite having worked together for several years, showed no sign of recognizing them. When they began asking him to lower his weapon, he looked totally confused as if he didn't understand the language. When he continued to aim his gun at them, they split up and slowly advanced, one on either side of him, and were able to tackle him and wrench the gun out of his hand. They were both shocked to discover that although he had been laying on the frozen ground for over an hour, his clothes and body was very warm, almost hot.

The guards made a call to the police who were then dispatched to the scene to perform a thorough investigation. Much to their surprise, they found two very large, very deep unexplained indention's behind the Righi home. The indention's were measured to be 9 feet in diameter and shaped like horseshoes. The ground around the marks was found to not be frozen, but muddy from thawing. 

Over 52 calls from Torriglia citizens were received at police headquarters with all reporting seeing a bright light coming from the direction of the Righi home. Most of them reported watching the light ascend into the sky and all of them came in within minutes of when Zanfretta made his first call.

Before long, the press got wind of this strange tale and almost without exception proclaimed Zanfrettta must be either crazy or a liar. Pier shunned all notoriety possible and rarely left his home except for work. He refused offers of payment for his story and did not want his picture taken. He told all who would listen that he wished he had not had this awful experience, but he was neither crazy nor a liar. In hopes of proving himself to be sane and truthful, he agreed to be hypnotized.

On December 23rd, 17 days after the incident, Zanfretta submitted to the session at the office of Dr. Mauro Maretti in Genoa, a fully accredited psychoanalyst of high regard in the field. 

Under hypnosis, in addition to confirming he had seen beings from another planet, Zanfretta was able to recall that he had actually been abducted by them! He stated the beings had taken him into "a hot, luminous location" where they stripped and thoroughly examined him. He also reported the creatures did not speak Italian, but used a strange-looking device to translate what they said into thoughts which he could understand. They told him they were from the planet "Teetonia," located in "the 3rd galaxy" and that they want to talk to us and will "soon" return in large numbers.

Dr. Maretti later said on a personal level he, like everyone else, found Pier's story to be so incredible it was hard to believe, but on a professional level, Zanfretta's demeanor, his voice, his reactions - all indications were that he was telling the truth.

Just three days later at 11:45 pm on December 26, Zanfretta was back at work patrolling when he once again radioed into dispatch. He frantically told the radio operator that his car was driving itself and he could not get it to stop or respond to turning the wheel.  He said he was driving in the Bargagli tunnel near the Scoffera Pass when the car came under the control of someone else. In a panic-stricken voice, he described mashing on the brakes, trying to turn the steering wheel and even trying to turn the engine off, all to no avail. Emerging from the tunnel, the car swerved off the dark road and up a steep embankment. Suddenly, Zanfretta's voice became very calm and measured as he reported, "The car has stopped. The light is back. It has me. I'm getting out of the car now."

Like before, another car with 2 more guards was dispatched, but due to a pouring rain, it took a while to find the car. Finally, at 1:10 am, Sergeant Emanuele Travenzoli radioed in that they had found Pier's car, but there was no sign of him. The police were called to the scene and a few minutes later Sergeant Travenzoli said they had just found Zanfretta in an open field they had already searched before. First he wasn't there, then a few minutes later they saw a movement and he was standing in the middle of the field. Upon reaching him, the guards were astonished to find that despite the downpour of rain, his clothes were dry and very warm. They claimed he was in shock, his body quivering uncontrollably and he was crying. He said, "They say I must go with them, but I don't want to. What about my children? I can't leave my children!" He then began repeating over and over, "I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to."

When the police arrived and began investigating, they were astonished to see steam rising off the roof of Zanfretta's Fiat. They found that despite being in the heavy rain for an extended time, the roof was extremely hot. Inside, it was "hot as an oven," as if the heater had been on full blast, but the control was only in the low position and the car had been turned off for at least an hour or more. They then noticed the car was surrounded by very large footprints measuring 20" long and 8" wide, with a distinctive bare spot between the sole and the heel. Searching the field where Zanfretta had been found, they discovered his revolver, a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver laying in the mud. The gun had been fired 5 times, but Pier later insisted he couldn't remember who or what he had fired it at.

For the next 6 months everything was calm. Gradually, poor Pier began coming out of his house for an outing with his family or for drinks with the fellows at the local pub. He claimed he was relieved to have shed the notoriety. His request had been granted by his employer to be assigned to sectors in Genoa, far from the area of the encounters. Life was good. Until he once again disappeared. 

On the night of July 30, 1979, Pier was on motorcycle patrol in the residential area of Quarto in Genoa. Several residents reported seeing him riding down one of the streets, turning a corner onto a second street and then just vanishing! When he failed to report in at the scheduled time and couldn't be raised on his 2-way radio, a notice went out to the patrols in the area and the proper authorities were alerted. 2 hours later, Zanfretta was located on the top of nearby Mt. Fasce. There was only 1 road leading to the top with numerous houses along the route, but residents claimed they had not seen Pier or any motorcycle on the road. 

This time the shaken Zanfretta seemed to be more mad about the abduction than frightened. He insisted on another session with an expert of unquestioned credentials and he also insisted on being given sodium penathol, the infamous truth serum. Two days later, Pier was injected with the sodium penathol in a session with Professor Marco Marchesan at the Center of Medical and Psychological Hypnosis in Milan.

While under the effects of the truth serum, Pier claimed that he and his motorcycle were lifted into an alien spaceship by a green light. He said his abductors had stripped him and forced him to wear a strange helmet that allowed him to understand their language, but gave him a tremendous headache. He said he was then given a short tour of the spaceship accompanied by one of the large aliens. During the tour, he saw a number of large, clear cylinders filled with a blue liquid. In one of the cylinders was a large frog-shaped body. The alien told him it was "an enemy of ours from another planet." Another cylinder contained a large bird-like creature and a 3rd contained the body of a being that looked like "a Neanderthal or a caveman." The alien then told Pier that he needed to come with them, but Zanfretta told him, "No, I don't want to. I know you need me, but I have two children and I don't want to leave them. I don't want to go with you because you aren't human. You are horrible!" Pier then found himself on top of the mountain with no memory of how he got there. 

When the session was over, Professor Marchesan stated, "No human is able to knowingly lie while under sodium penathol so I have to say it is most probable Zanfretta had these encounters."

Four months later, at 10:30 pm on December 2, 1979, Zanfretta disappeared yet again. As before, he failed to call in at the appointed time and an alert was sent out. This time however, the worst was yet to come. This time, Zanfretta would not be the only one to have an encounter with the aliens.

While out looking for Pier in the hills around Genoa, four different guards claimed they had clearly seen a very large, strange craft floating above them before it quickly rose and vanished into the night sky. A few minutes later, two patrol cars were stopped next to each other to discuss matters when suddenly two rays of incredibly bright lights beamed down from a "strange cloud" illuminating the vehicles. Both car engines suddenly quit and the lights went out. Although frightened, the guards, Lt. Cassiba and Germano Zarnardi, got out of the cars and looked up. According to Zarnardi, Lt. Cassiba suddenly screamed in terror as he looked upward, pulled his gun and fired several shots at a huge craft that seemed to be hovering within the cloud. At this point, the lights were extinguished and the cloud and strange aircraft rose up "at an incredible speed."

A few minutes later, Zanfretta was again found. Standing in an open field as before with extremely warm clothes in spite of the winter chill, he was shaking and crying, "Make it stop! Make it stop!"

Both Lt. Cassiba and Zarnardi sought counseling after their encounter, but unfortunately, Zarnardi never seemed to regain mental stability. 3 months later while sitting in a chair at his home, Zarnardi took his own life by shooting himself in the head with his service revolver. A short note in his handwriting was found on the table beside the chair. "I saw it." was all it said.

 In the years since, Zanfretta reports he has been abducted a total of 11 times. He had to retire from his job as a guard due to the repeated disappearances and the notoriety resulting from 2 books which have been written and a 2-part documentary broadcast on Italian television. In his last hypnosis session, Pier said he warned the aliens, "I know you are trying to come more frequently, but you have to stop. No, you can't come to earth; people get scared when they look at you. You can't make friendship." Evidently they listened because they did not appear again.

At least not until recently when Pier reported, "They're back. I'm not sure what for."

Goatman and the Haunted Bridge

The Old Alton Bridge

The one-lane, wooden-floored "Old Alton Bridge," as it is now known, was constructed in 1884 to connect the Texas towns of Lewisville and Alton. It well served the communities and surrounding farms until it was replaced by a new bridge in 2002. My family and I lived just a few miles from the old bridge and before it was replaced, often drove over the creaking, rather scary structure to visit friends on the other side of the creek. Although the bridge shaved three miles off the closest alternate route from our friend's house to ours, I rarely drove over it after dark. 

For several miles the little 2-lane black-top road on either side of the bridge goes through an isolated area with almost no houses and no street lights to break up the dark. Large trees grow in thick profusion on both sides of the roadway and their tops have grown together above it so you feel as if you are driving through a dark, forbidding tunnel in a jungle. Very pretty in the daytime, extremely spooky in the dark time. The bridge itself takes courage to drive an auto across. The bed is made of wooden boards laid crosswise and you have to steer your car just so to keep your tires on the thick lengthwise boards. While you cross, the bridge creaks and pops, the boards moan and you see water rushing by in the creek below through the spaces in broken slats. It's impossible to not hold your breath and clench your hands on the steering wheel until you reach the far side. Unsettling in the daytime, positively unnerving in the dark time.

One night, for some illogical reason, I did dare to drive that spooky route. As if to prove to myself that I'm not afraid of the dark, I stopped my car on the road just before reaching the bridge. As usual, there were no other cars in sight and it was extremely dark as even the moonlight was blocked out by the overhanging trees. I turned off the headlights and rolled down the window, but even though my car was rather new and the engine was very quiet, its hum was all I could hear so I turned the key off. The silence in that blackness was total; no birds chirping, no dogs barking in the distance, no traffic noise on some distant road, no nothing. I marveled at how loud silence can be. 

Suddenly, there came a noise from the woods and it was very close! It sounded like some animal, maybe a coyote or a feral pig skulking through leaves. It was just a short sound and before I could react, all was quiet again. I looked as closely into the woods as I could, all my senses on high alert, but for a number of seconds there was still no sound. The seconds seemed to be minutes until with no warning, I heard a sound like a twig breaking under a footstep and then a rustling of leaves several times in procession. It sounded for all the world like somebody, a 2-legged somebody, was slowly walking through the leaves in that black jungle. I didn't wait to see if I could find out what it was. It took about 2 seconds for me to start the car and begin rolling up the window, put it in Drive and get the heck on down the road!

I made it to the bridge and didn't take my foot off the gas even where it is usually prudent to slow to a crawl to be sure your car is situated correctly on the boards for the drive across. Fortunately, I made it over safely, fearing at any moment that something, man or beast, would pop up in front of me at the end of the bridge. That was the last time I ever drove that route after dark. I decided to see what I could find about that bridge and the area around it. I figured it was just too spooky to not have some kind of history associated with it. I figured right.

Graffiti under the bridge

In the early 1860's as the Civil War raged, a bunch of area cowboys took it upon themselves to punish an slave goat-herder named Jack Kendall for some offense which has been lost to history. They tied one end of a rope around his neck and the other end around a sturdy tree limb  of a large oak tree which was growing next to the creek right where the Alton Bridge would later be built. They drug him to the top of the creek bank and threw him out toward the water. It was a long fall and the rope used was thinner than it should have been so when poor Jack Kendall hit the end of the rope, his head was severed and his body dropped into the creek. Stories of a headless apparition wandering up and down the creek, apparently in search of his missing head, have been told for over 150 years now.

The story which has taken hold and gained the most notoriety though is of Oscar Washburn, an African-American man who gained a reputation in the 1930's as an honest, dependable business man who raised and sold goats and goat products. He and his wife and children lived in a small cabin in the woods a short distance from the Alton bridge. He was popular with many of the locals for the quality of the goat meat, milk, cheese and hides he sold at a very reasonable price. To help the unfamiliar easily find him, he hung a big sign on the end of the bridge which read, "This way to the Goatman." Unfortunately, this popularity came to the attention of the local Ku Klux Klan who didn't take kindly to a black man taking away business from other local goat raisers.

The middle of the bridge where the Ku Klux Klan put the
noose over the Goatman's head and threw him over.

One dark night in 1938, with their car's headlights off, the Klansmen drove across the bridge to the Goatman's little cabin and dragged him away from his wailing wife and crying children. They took him back to the middle of the bridge to a noose they had prepared ahead of time and after roughly slipping it over his head, flung the pleading Goatman over. Much to their surprise, they heard a watery splash below the bridge and when they looked over the side, they were shocked to see an empty noose and no sign of their victim. 

The Night Riders split up and quickly ran to both ends of the bridge where they scrambled down the embankments to the water's edge. After frantically searching for half an hour with no sign of their intended prey, they returned to the Washburn residence. After a quick search proved he was not there, the men barricaded the front door and with mother and children huddled together inside, the cabin was set on fire. They hoped the screams of his family would bring the Goatman into the open where they intended to capture him, securely tie him up and throw him alive onto the raging inferno, but their plan didn't work. The screams of the innocent mother and children were silenced as the burning walls crumbled.

Oscar Washburn was never seen again. Some believe that just like poor Jack Kendall, the Goatman's head popped off that night when he was hung and his body was washed away by the quickly flowing waters after it dropped through the noose. Others believe he survived the botched hanging and ran far away from the area, leaving behind his poor family to suffer a horrible death. To this day, what is certain though are the eerie and strange happenings on and around the Alton bridge. 

Many say the unforgiving spirit of the Goatman still haunts these woods. Locals warn to not cross the bridge with headlights turned off for if you do, you will surely be met on the other side by none other than the vengeful Goatman himself. There are persistent reports of a ghostly apparition herding a bunch of almost transparent goats being seen in the dark on the road leading from the bridge. The apparition and goats disappear as quickly as they appear. Others have seen a pair of unholy red, glowing eyes staring at them from the tree's or have glimpsed the fleeting image of a large goat-headed-man-beast in the shadows of the forest which is usually accompanied by the revolting smell of rotten flesh. Often there are tales of unexplained noises such as hoof beats of goats running across the bridge, loud splashing in the waters below the bridge or a low non-human growl coming from the trees near the bridge.

Graffiti under the Old Alton Bridge

There has been a rash of documented cases by the police where people have vanished with no trace around this seemingly cursed bridge. In the 1950's, a local high school boy and his girlfriend were reported missing when they failed to return from a Friday night date. The boy's car was found the next morning parked in the woods beside the bridge with both front doors open. They have still never been found and the case is a total mystery. On November 15, 1967, a Ford Mustang was found by police parked at the end of the bridge. They eventually found out who owned the car, but the person has never been found.

In 2002, a new road and bridge was built to replace the old one. The original Alton bridge is still there, but since then, the odd happenings and reports of strange apparitions and unexplained phenomena seem to have decreased some. Daring teenagers like to hang out there at night in groups, spray-painting graffiti and trying to scare each other. But even the most daring teenagers do not go there at night alone.

I don't know what I heard the night I stopped on that dark, lonely road. I didn't stick around trying to find out. One thing I do know for sure though, it wasn't just my imagination...something was out there.