Crybaby Bridge (2)

One of my good friends, Dylan, reminded me of this thing me and him did way back in eighth grade, October or September, 2008.

Me and him and our friend Dan were reading through this book of America's urban legends. Dylan's dad Ron found one in Bowie, Maryland. It was the legend of Cry Baby Bridge. Apparently some young woman became pregnant and the man left, back in the twenties and unable to deal with the child, she threw the infant off the old bridge. The legend had it that if you go to the bridge (not at night, but it helps because it's a cut-through to RT-100) and waited you can hear the sounds of an infant crying and/or see a light move through the underbrush.

It is also part of the thirty mile radius of woods known to have the legends of Goatman, who, according to legend is known to walk through the woods and screw around with people's parked cars that are on the side of the road back by the bridge.

So, us being thirteen year old kids in the fall wanting the same excitement of the summer, got Mr. Ron to take us one night to mess with things that aren't real.

I don't believe in what I can't see, and Dylan is even more skeptical than I am. Dan, was Christian and believed highly in the afterlife. So we all went into this expecting a little traffic and maybe few deer, then going to get some food.

It was around 9 PM when we got there, and pulled over on the side of a one lane road by the rusty truss bridge. Mr. Ron read something about the Goatman stealing keys off the hood of the car, so when the four of us got out he left them on the hood.

Dan and Mr. Ron stood by the car, and Dylan and I went with an old tape recorder to the bridge. We sat on a side rail for a good fifteen minutes, talking, bored. I looked down at the overgrown pond under us, and saw nothing glowing other than a few pieces of trash shining the moon off them.

But then a car came, so Dylan and I ran off the bridge to get out of the way, leaving the recorder until we went back to get it. This is when it all got unreal.

It had been around a half hour, and we were too young to have patience to wait all night. We casually walked back to wait another maybe ten, and tried talking and asking questions to the ghost. At this point, Dylan asked me if I was looking into the woods. I turned my head, and saw what he was talking about. About thirty feet up in the trees I saw this light, bright as day, moving. It could have been a bag or something, but it was so bright, and moving too paced in the still air to be the wind.

After that, we both heard in the distance this shrill, hysterical laughter. Shrill, only in the madness it voiced. But it was by far the creepiest sound I have heard to this day. It was a deep rumbling, that three years later I still remember. But, I thought it was Mr. Ron messing with us like he always did. Until he called over to us cursing and asking if it was us.

We ran. Probably the fastest I've ever run in my life.

Mr. Ron said it was so loud he thought it was right next to us. So me and Dylan weren't crazy and hearing things. Dan heaved himself back into the backseat, locking the doors. Dylan and I took out our phones, and tried to get to the camera mode. During that time, I looked into the woods and saw this movement. It was quick, if I would have blinked I may have missed it.

Are there any deer around here?

I asked, being the only one who saw this. But I knew it wasn't a deer. It stood too high, and moved without even the slightest crunch on the forest ground. We were done. We threw ourselves into the car, and drove away as fast as we could. As soon as we got back on the main highway, we all started laughing and told the stories of what we just saw and heard, playing it off, but silently trying to recreate through one another what happened, not trying to sound crazy.

Once we got back to Dylan's house, we played over the hour of audio we got.

You could feel the excitement when we heard the car go over the bridge on the tape. As soon as it passed, you could hear this sound, this faint sound of footsteps walking past, louder (but still near silent) and then fade back. Then you heard Dylan and I return to the bridge and talk like we were.

You couldn't hear the hysterical laughing, which I was disappointed with, but at the end of the tape that didn't matter. After you heard us run back to Ron and the car, you heard this rustling behind us, that we didn't hear at the time. Then you heard these incomprehensible growl-like sounds. Five seconds of this just animal-like snarling. But it wasn't an animal, we would have reacted to it. Instead, right after it happened, you heard me ask, "Are there any deer around here?"

And it all went silent.

That was the craziest night I had that year, and for a while, actually.

We went looking for a ghost of an infant, and, well, we might have found the Goatman. Or whatever "he" really is.