Is Oklahoma Really Home to the Real Crybaby Bridge?
I didn't know it until I started moving around from job to job after college, but I'd bet every community around America has a "Crybaby" bridge.
The tale around my hometown was about a woman who was in a serious situation and being chased by bad guys. While she was hiding, her baby kept making noise so she smothered it for her own sake. As the tale goes, she felt so guilty for taking her baby's life that she took a suicidal leap off what we now call Crybaby Bridge.
Of course, the location of that bridge changed over the years, but as the legend continued...
They still say that if you go stand in the middle of (insert your local bridge here) on a dark, quiet night, you can still hear the baby crying.
We went one night way back when and I have to say, while we were all suffering the heeby-jeebies, there was no crying in the background.
It has to be one of the oldest scary story campfire tales in existence told the whole world over.
When I lived in Corpus Christie, it was the old bay bridge that people now use to fish off of.
In Houston, it was a dilapidated FM/County road bridge out in the middle of nowhere. Just up the road from the rumored place where "the Texas chainsaw massacres actually happened."
I'm pretty sure I've heard this tale a few times about Lawton too.
Once, the bridge was way out on Cache Road, closer to Cache than Lawton. Another time it was a wooden bridge a few miles South of town. We actually drove over it one dark and quiet night, the only thing we heard was the creaking of the super old wooden structure.
I'm pretty confident that if I ask you about it, odds are you'll know where Crybaby Bridge in your hometown is.
If you google "crybaby bridge Oklahoma" the results will guide you to a bridge on Bobby Creek Road just outside of Ada.
Rumor has it that a woman was crossing the bridge with your child in 1924, lightning struck her horse and carriage, and she dropped her baby. Frantically, she looked for it below in the Verdigris river, but accidentally fell over and was never seen again... which makes me wonder... if the secret died with her, who originally shared the story?
Just for fun though, where was your town's Crybaby Bridge?
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