Sam (111:21)
That was good. I liked that. Okay. This particular investigation is near and dear to my heart because it illustrates that sometimes when things seem redundant or ordinary, there's a world of complexities buried beneath it. During the early days and the formation of our team, we would take pretty much any lead that we could and figured that getting out there in the field would benefit us. There was a local legend about a bridge on a road known as Sink Hollow. The local legend seemed quite gimmicky and followed a similar structure to a lot of other low effort tall tales, simple formula, but we had nothing to lose. So we figured, why not? One, drive out to the bridge. Two, park your car and turn off the engine. Three, turn your headlights on three times while everyone in the car invited something to be seen. 4. At this point in the local legend, it was stated that you would see a ghostly apparition. We couldn't find any actual accounts of anyone seeing anything other than hearsay or. And this follows a very predictable pattern with young kids going out into the country and scaring themselves. But again, for the sake of brevity we decided why not. If my memory serves correctly, it was a brisk and damp early morning at the beginning of fall. Somewhere between the hours of Saturday night and Sunday morning, we ventured out along with Derek and Eric, my teammates from the previous story that would be the base of our team moving forward from this point. We arrived at the bridge and the road itself is very difficult to get to as you have to drive through several winding gravel roads to get to the bridge that spans a small creek running through the middle of a field. As far as we can tell, the bridge was mostly used for farm field access and other locals getting from point A to point B quickly, as it is not a bridge that would be traversed, often being quite a ways away from any paved roads. We arrived at the bridge and joked about how there would be many more encounters like this to come where it would be more road trip than actual encounter. We jokingly completed the mock ritual and then sat. To absolutely no one's surprise, nothing happened. No one was disappointed, as we knew that the gimmick was just that. So instead we got out of the car, grabbed a few beverages, and sat on the hood of the car while we talked about our lives and our goals for the group. We talked about why we were drawn to things like this and why we even came out here. As strange and as unlikely as it was that anything would happen for me, I've always seen things from a young age that I couldn't comprehend, so I feel like the pull for me was obvious. My friend Derek was the thrill seeker of the group. Any chance he could get to have some sort of excitement, he would chase it. While he had never seen anything that he couldn't explain up until this point, he was a good sport about it. Lastly, we had Eric. Eric was just kind of built different. He was a staunch critic and skeptic. However, he felt the allure and draw of the possibility of seeing something that he didn't understand. He loved to put himself in circumstances that it was hard for him to justify logically. He enjoyed the mental puzzle of the investigation that went on. He was also one of the most fearless people I've ever met. When everybody was on the edge and creeped out. When he heard a noise or something that he couldn't explain, he would run to the potential danger. We'd all been friends for some time, but only previously, a week prior, had decided to embark on this journey together by forming this team. A few drinks down and we've lost sight of the investigation altogether. And we're just some Midwest kids hanging out on a Saturday night when we first heard a voice off in the distance, we thought it may be a really loud radio traveling from one of the far off roads, but we were quite a ways away. It was also very obvious to hear any types of cars or vehicles approaching due to the crunching of the gravel and there was none. The voice got louder and this time we heard was crystal clear Quote hey, what are you all doing out here? The sudden clear tone of the voice made us scramble as at the time we shouldn't have been out there doing what we were doing. Drinking. Lol. After a few seconds of jumping down off the hood and scrambling about, we heard the voice again. Hey, I'm not trying to scare you at all, I just want to know what you're doing out here. Eric turns towards the direction of the voice and said something along the lines of we're out here investigating a local legend. What about you? We all sighed a collective breath of relief when a younger girl about the age of 13 came into the view of the headlights. She had freckles all over her face and strawberry blonde pigtails comically similar to what you would picture the Wendy's logo to look like, complete with overalls. After seeing her age and seeing that we were kind of in the middle of nowhere, we asked her who she was and if she needed help as it was kind of strange for a 13 year old girl to be out there all alone. She explained that she lives not too far from here and that despite people driving through here often, this is private property. She pointed to a dark silhouette on the horizon. She had explained that she saw our headlights and after they had blinked a few times she was worried that we were in trouble so she came to check. We explained the absurdity of the local legend to her and she looked quite perplexed and thought that it was silly that we would come out here in the middle of the night to test something so far fetched. In this moment we felt quite silly ourselves. She stayed polite, but after a few moments she reiterated that it was private property and that we really should be leaving as we are technically trespassing. We started the process of packing up a few things that we had gotten out of the car and let her know that we'd be on our way and asked her if she would like a ride back to her house. She calmly explained that while it was sweet to offer, we really should be going and that her father has a really bad temper and does not take kindly to strangers on his property. She mentioned that while she had never heard the local legend. Her daddy, the exact words that she called him, would often have to chase away strangers in the middle of the night. And his patience was wearing thin. And with one final warning, she said, please leave before daddy comes out. You may regret it. We got into the car and quickly drove away, seeing her slowly walk off the side of the road near the bridge into the glow of our taillights until she was out of view. The rest of the ride home was rather uneventful. However, something about the encounter struck us all as strange. There was something weird about it that we couldn't quite put a finger on, other than the obvious fact that a 13 year old girl was out in the middle of a field by a creek at night, all by herself. We go back to the house that we were sharing. Me and Eric decided to turn in for the night. However, Derek could not let it rest and decided to do some Internet sleuthing. We woke up the next morning to see him asleep on the couch with his laptop open. After waking him up and asking him if he had found anything, he jolted awake and showed us an old newspaper clipping from an Internet archive. In the newspaper article was a picture of the girl that we had spoken with last night. However, the clipping was dated 1963. The context of the article was difficult to read. Quote, Local girl found dead in creek. The article went on to describe that a quick investigation revealed a family secret. The young girl, whose name was Emily, had been repeatedly sexually assaulted by a family member, her dad. And one night she attempted to escape, at which point her father tracked her down and drowned her while she was hiding under the bridge. As per our other stories that you've heard from us, I do believe that there is a lesson. I believe the paranormal hauntings can exist for the sake of saturation and human suffering. But I do believe that this girl's spirit watched over this bridge to warn people of her father. The trauma might have bonded her spirit to the area, but the kindness of her persevered on. And we believe that is what we interacted with that night. An act of kindness in the dark on a lonely bridge on a lonely road.
