Railroad Bridge - 8/20/07

Railroad Bridge - Columbus, IN
8/20/07

Legend:
Back in the 1920's a woman had a baby out of wedlock. She couldn't handle people and their objections. She took herself and the baby to the middle of the bridge and jumped. They found the woman's body, but not the body of the baby. People have said they have seen a creature on two legs with yellow eyes guarding the bridge around Midnight . If you are by the bridge at night you can sometimes hear the baby cry. On a full moon you can sometimes see and hear the ghost of the woman on the bridge looking and calling for her baby. More often than the other two you can see the creature with yellow eyes blocking the path to the old forgotten railroad bridge not wanting anyone disturbing the bridge or the area.

Directions:

From Interstate 65 North take Exit 68 for IN-46 toward Nashville/Bloomington/Columbus. Keep right at the fork follow signs for Columbus and merge into IN-46/W Johnathan Moore Pike. Take a slight left at Brown St/IN-11 N/IN-46 E, follow that until you see Jackson St. on your left and turn into it. Keep going down Jackson and be sure to stay on the right once the road starts to split. Jackson should turn into Lawton St, and then take a left onto 11th St which you follow into a park. Once you arrive in the park drive your vehicle to the section of the parking lot in the back right near the woods. From here you continue on foot, you should be able to find the concrete path that leads into the woods. You don't stay on the path too long, you should be able to see the rocky embankment that you climb to the tracks directly on the path. Once you climb the embankment and reach the tracks at the top proceed to the right and you should hit the bridge. WARNING: some parts of the bridge seem a bit unstable, PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

Investigation:

This sounded like just another one of those "Cry Baby Bridge" ghost stories that are plentiful in just about every state in the US, but it was pretty close and it looked pretty secluded so we decided to check it out. I believe we arrived around 10:30 PM, which is still early according to the legend, but I was a bit tired that night. It's actually very easy to find and I, even after looking at far off the trail it sat on Google Maps, was surprised how quickly we came to bridge walking on the tracks.

I didn't see any ghost woman with her baby, nor did I see the troll with yellow eyes that supposedly guards the path to the bridge. However after exploring the bridge itself we went to go check out the trails below it, and we heard a sound coming from the top of the bridge, heard it a few times actually. It sounded made the same sound that it did when we were walking on it, at first me and someone else were the only ones that heard it, but then several seconds later when we were all listening we heard it again. We went back up to the top, which took a couple minutes, and we saw nothing. I'm also not sure how safe the bridge is to walk on after the steel walkway on the left side ends and is replaced by wooden planks, they felt like they were getting worse as I walked on it further, so I turned back.

The one thing that kind of bothers me about the story is that the bridge isn't as high as I thought it would be. No doubt it would kill a baby, but I'm not sure about woman. Of course I'm not sure how this place would've looked back then, but I'm guessing unless she jumped into the rocks near the side it wouldn't have killed her. Next time we come back here we'll make sure to do it around midnight.

Also another thing about the park on 17th street, it seems kinda shady at night, lots of people just sitting around in there cars doing who knows what. I'm guessing that this place is probably frequented by the police pretty often, just to make sure nothing illegal is going down, so I'm not sure what they would do if they spotted your car just sitting there with no one in it while you're on the tracks.