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 a woman was being chased by bad guys, her baby kept making noise, so after she smothered it for her own sake, she felt so guilty 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 story continued... If you go stand in the middle of the bridge on a dark, quiet night, you can still hear the baby crying.

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, is 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 we ask, odds are you'll find a crybaby bridge in just about every town and state across these United States. So, where was yours?

 

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