The Midnighters: Troll Bridge

For over thirty years, Jerry worked as a police officer in Pittsburgh. In his time on the force, Jerry had seen some bad things, some worse things, and some downright evil things. Cleaning up when people got mad or got crazy was part of the job, but there were other things that Jerry saw, things that most people never see, things that prowl the night, things that refuse to die.

I interviewed Jerry several times in 2002. The following incident is just one of the many stories Jerry shared in hours of audio recordings. I have transcribed them just as they were told to me by Jerry.

“This happened back in the summer of ‘65. Frank and me – that’s my partner, Frank – we was doing night patrols around the Smithfield Street Bridge.

“See, that’s the oldest bridge we got here in Pittsburgh and they were doing some work on the trolleys they used to have on the bridge but every time the construction crew showed up for work in the morning, they found tools smashed and general vandalism-type stuff.

“We figure it’s a bunch of  these kids – hoodlums – running around all hours, so we did the stakeout thing to catch ‘em. Only it’s a big bridge so we had to walk up and down the thing and around and under, too.

“We’re out there on the first night and we don’t see nothing. We come up from under the bridge on our rounds and there’s some of the new tracks they were putting in torn off and ripped up. Now this is metal track, right? You don’t just take it apart like that, not unless you got time and some heavy equipment, but Frank and me, we were only off the bridge for ten minutes tops.

“The next night, same thing happens, right? Nobody can figure out what’s going on and the union is starting to make waves about it. Now the only way to stop the trouble is to put like fifty guys on the bridge all night long, but the captain, he don’t want to budget that kinda overtime so he tells us, you better get on this right away and figure it out, Okay?

“So, it’s a real mystery and Frank and me, we weren’t sure what we were dealing with. But Frank, you know, he’s sure the whole freakin’ bridge is haunted, so he wants to do a seance or dredge the river for bodies or something.

“I say, ‘Frank, take it easy, there’s a top and a bottom to the bridge, so let’s split up.’ Frank agrees to give it one more try so that third night he’s down below the bridge and I’m topside at first, then we’ll switch.

“After a few hours, it’s pretty quiet and I head down to trade places with Frank. There’s a street down there under the bridge and that’s where Frank is supposed to be but he ain’t there. Now, that’s not unlike Frank at all, right? But I’m not letting my partner go off on his own.

“There some scrub and grass down there and I see Frank crouched down. He sees something, I can tell by the way he’s sitting there, so I creep up real slow beside him. He’s got his gun drawn, but he’s not pointing it at anything.

“He points off to this big flat rock under the bridge. There’s nothing there, right? I don’t know what Frank is looking for, maybe he thinks that’s where the body is buried, right?

“Finally I say, what is it, Frank? And Frank says, ‘He’s in there, inside that door.’ And I’m like, ‘Frank, maybe you been working too hard ‘cause there ain’t no door there.’ 

“Frank gives me a look like I’m the crazy one and I look back and, you know what? There’s a door there right where there wasn’t a door a minute ago. And it’s just standing there ‘cause there ain’t no wall around it, and it’s this big wooden thing like you’d see in a castle or something.

“I’m just trying to figure out where in the heck this thing came from when all of a sudden it opens – guess I should’ve expected a door like that was gonna open right then – and standing in the doorway is the biggest guy you ever saw.

“Now, I can’t see him real good on account of it being so dark, but he’s a mountain all right, and he’s just standing there waiting and I think he’s watching us, but then I hear this funny sound like someone got the sniffles and I think, this guy isn’t looking at us, he’s smelling us!

“He takes a step forward and there’s more light so I can see him better, and, remember now, Frank and me, we haven’t moved yet and we’re not too far from this guy, but I don’t think he sees us but he’s moving his head around like he’s listening.

“He’s big, right, and he’s got this long black hair and big long nose and his skin looks green, in fact it looks like a rock with moss on it or something, and he’s wearing some sort of crazy get-up that looks like a sack to me. And his eyes, well, his eyes were the worst part. They were like little lights, like keyholes, right, only there’s a fire on the other side of the door.

“Now, I thought this guy is gonna see us and he’s gonna beat the living heck out of us, but he just sniffs and cocks his head and he says something like, ‘I can smell you sitting there in the dark’ and I realized this guy don’t see too good.

“Frank stands up and says, you know, ‘What do you want?’ and the guy says ‘Tell them to leave my bridge alone’ and Frank doesn’t say anything at first and like the jerk I am, I said ‘You can’t have that door here, it’s against code’ and Frank and the big guy just both look at me like I passed gas.

“I admit, I’m not the brightest knife in the drawer, and I say some dumb things, but this was a real doozy. I’ll never forget how the big guy looked right at me for the first time and he says, ‘The rocks and trees are my code’ in this real creepy-like voice.

“Frank gives me an elbow in the ribs and he says, ‘Okay, Mister, we’ll take care of it’ and this guy gives a little sneer and steps back inside that door and ‘poof’ goes the door again.

“Well, Frank gives me a look like he’s gonna take me up to the bridge and throw me off, right? But I say, ‘Frank, how are you gonna take care of it?’ And for once, I think that Frank has no idea.

“Well, a few weeks later, the trolley work is done without any more trouble and the captain is pretty pleased with Frank but nobody knows how he did it. Turns out, Frank got the foreman to get a crane down there and they put that big rock on the back of a truck and, according to Frank, he drove it 100 miles north and dumped it beside the road.

“Frank told me how these types of things – he didn’t wanna say troll but I don’t care – these trolls like to be under a bridge because something about how all the people coming and going over the water, passing through this kinda in-between place like a bridge causes something like friction, which gives off an energy or something, and these trolls, they can live off of that. I don’t know myself, sounds pretty nuts to me.

“But that spot where they dumped it – that rock – was down a big steep gorge ‘cause Frank was hoping that the troll wouldn’t find its way back. Now, a few years after that and that exact spot is where they put Interstate 80 that goes across the whole state – goes from New York City to San Francisco – and they built a new bridge there, a real big one, and thousands of people cross it everyday and I bet that rock and that troll are still down there under that bridge.”

Trip, trap, trip!

Next week on Scary True: Who's that tripping on my bridge? Find out in "The Midnighters: Troll Bridge!"
And check out this week's monster story, "Demon Wings."

Demon Wings

In the backwoods of western Pennsylvania, there’s a little-used highway that cuts through a deserted forest. Across the highway’s cracked pavement the thickly-wooded forest casts long, sinister shadows. The forest is known as Broome’s Quarter and the road is Route 666 and both are haunted. 

Jeff writes to tell me how he ended up driving Route 666 one dark September night in 1998. Jeff was a civil engineer in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and, after attending a conference up in Erie, Jeff got a little lost on the way home. 

“This was before we had all the GPS stuff,” Jeff tells me. “I had a map but I don’t think I even opened it.”

Jeff was making good time, or so he thought. He steered his car down the twilit and increasingly-deserted road. “It wasn’t that late, but I was the only car out there,” Jeff recalls, “and that made me think I must be going in the wrong direction.”

Jeff decided he needed to turn around. He pulled off onto a side road, made a turn, and headed back down the road. A quarter of an hour later, Jeff realized he had made a mistake.

“I was on Route 219 or something when I turned around,” Jeff remembers, “and here comes a sign saying Route 666 East.”

Jeff has no idea how he came to be on a completely different road, a road he had never seen before. And he wasn’t put off by the ominous sign. “It’s just a number,” Jeff tells me. “I’m an engineer, so I’m not afraid of numbers.”

Jeff considered his predicament. He was lost. He was headed east and he needed to go south. There wasn’t anyone around to ask for help. 

Suddenly a figure loomed up out of the dark trees and into the path of Jeff’s car. His headlights snared a young deer and it stood frozen in the road. As Jeff began to swerve his car, a shadow swept in front of his windshield and he lost sight of the road.

“I nearly stood on my brakes as this thing came in front of me,” Jeff tells me. “It all happened in a  split second or faster.”

When the shadow passed, the deer was gone. Jeff’s car sat still, his tires smoking. Jeff was breathing heavily and he was surprised to feel sweat dripping from his nose.

“I just sat there stunned for a minute,” Jeff recalls. “I thought I hit the deer and it must have flown over my car or something.”

Jeff got out to check the damage to his car. The night air made Jeff shiver. “I checked the front and the sides but there was nothing there,” Jeff remembers. “Not even blood.”

Jeff thought he must have missed the deer somehow and his thoughts turned to what exactly he had seen. It seemed that something had swept down and then the deer disappeared. “Now, did something pick it up?” Jeff asks. “Did I have a guardian angel? Or did the deer?”

Jeff got back in his car and swung it around so the headlights would illuminate the spot where he had last seen the deer. There was nothing there but one of the rare highway lamp posts flickering with a dim light.

Jeff walked toward the post and scanned the road for signs of the deer. He saw the grim, silent trees and the dark cracks that snaked across the highway, but nothing of the deer.

He paused under the buzzing, orange glow of the lamp post. He thought he heard a noise like running water or cracking very close by, but couldn’t make out the direction. He saw a patch of dark liquid at his feet but couldn’t make out the color. Was it blood or oil?

Then, the bottom half of a severed deer leg landed at Jeff’s feet with a heavy, wet splat, showering Jeff’s shoes with specks of blood.

“I was in shock,” Jeff says. “I didn’t figure out where it had come from at first.”

Jeff staggered back, his mouth open in silent fear as he quickly realized that the deer leg had fallen from the lamp post, that something else was up there in the dark, too, and whatever it was, it had swooped down in front of Jeff’s car, picked up the deer, and was now dismembering it, most likely eating it.

“I guess that deer didn’t have a guardian angel,” Jeff says. “And neither did I.”

Although the lamp’s light made it difficult to discern clearly, Jeff could see a shadowy figure perched at its peak. And the sound he had heard previously, like a wet crunch, was definitely coming from up there, too. 

Jeff walked backwards toward his car. The figure on the lamp post moved little, seemingly taking little notice of Jeff.

“I got to my car – fumbled with the door – not taking my eyes off that thing,” Jeff recalls. “But I finally got a good look before I left.”

As Jeff started to turn his car around, it seemed the thing on the lamp post became aware of his presence. Jeff saw the shadow sit upright. “I thought it heard the car or something,” Jeff says, “but I think it realized it had dropped that leg.”

The shadow leaned down and Jeff thought it looked like it was studying the ground with some sense possibly other than sight. Suddenly it fell to the ground right on top of the deer leg.

“It looked like a big black garbage bag at first,” Jeff remembers. “But those were just the wings.”

The body was smaller than Jeff expected: it was child-size, but wiry and muscular, with greyish mottled skin like an old tree. It was human-like, in that it had a head and two arms and two legs, but its arms ended in something more like scissors than fingers and its legs bent backward at an sickening angle and the head was a black stump divided by a teeth-filled maw.

And the great black wings that hovered above and enclosed the creature like a cocoon swayed and quivered in what Jeff could only surmise was a kind of pleasure.

“I couldn’t make sense of it,” Jeff says. “And I was strangely ashamed that I couldn’t make sense of it.”

The creature continued its meal and two pale grey disks watched as Jeff drove away. It wasn’t until years later that Jeff would come across the legend of Mother Meade and the monsters she left to wander in Broome’s Quarter. It was only then that Jeff contacted me. It was the first time he told anyone about his mysterious encounter with one of Mother Meade’s monstrous children, about the night he came under the shadow of demon wings.

“I don’t know what they are or where they came from,” Jeff tells me. “All I know is that I don’t want to run into one of them ever again.”

Read more about Mother Meade's monster children here.

In the sky!

Next week on Scary True: What's that in the sky? A giant bat? A Mothman? Whatever it is, it rides on "Demon Wings!"
And check out this week's story, "The History of a Bottomless Pit."

The History of a Bottomless Pit

When presented with evidence of the supernatural, we often find it blurry, anecdotal, or wholly lacking. But, then again, supernatural things are, by their very nature, shadowy and elusive.  How then do we follow the history of things that appear so ephemeral, so detached from the physical traces of reality? Where should we begin?

From the March 18th, 2003 edition of The Western Star Dispatch, a weekly newspaper covering eastern Iowa.

“Somerville might be in a celebratory mood next summer if local business owners get their way. The Somerville town council is set to vote tonight on whether to authorize a new holiday based on the local attraction, the Mystery Hole. The Hole, reported by locals to be bottomless, has become a kind of tourist destination after being featured on the national radio program, The Midnight Hour.”

From the October 2nd, 2001 broadcast of The Midnight Hour, a weekly syndicated radio show focusing on paranormal topics. The show’s host, Phil Bart, interviewed a man named Lyle who claimed to know the location of a bottomless pit.

“Phil: Well, I’ve got Lyle on the line. Lyle has faxed us some information regarding a mysterious hole. Lyle from Iowa, you’re on The Hour.

Lyle: Hi, Phil. How ya doing?

Phil: Hey, Lyle. Now, I understand you have a weird hole on your property, is that right?

Lyle: Well, it ain’t exactly my property –

Phil: Oh, well, not exactly, right?

Lyle: – but it is a mysterious hole.

Phil: Now, tell us how you found this hole.

Lyle: Well, it’s always been out there. Everybody out here knows about it.

Phil: And you say that you dump stuff – junk and garbage – out there in the hole. You just throw it in?

Lyle: Yeah, everybody in these parts takes their junk out there and pitches it in. Been doing that for forty years now.

Phil: Now, you say you measured the hole? 

Lyle: Well, I didn’t exactly measure –

Phil: Right, you put some line down there? Some fishing line?

Lyle: It’s the kind you use for sharks. My buddy lent me some. 

Phil: You get a lot of sharks out there in Iowa, do you?

Lyle: Ha, ha. Not so much, Phil. My buddy used to live in Washington state and do some fishing there.

Phil: Ok, so how much line went down this hole?

Lyle: Well, near as I figure it, these lines come in spools of 5,000 feet, and I’ve gone through about fifteen of ‘em.

Phil: Wait, let’s do that math...

Lyle: It’s got to be a lot of miles...

Phil: That’s fifteen miles, I think.

Lyle: That’s pretty deep.

Phil: Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty deep.

Lyle: Sure is.

Phil: And everybody out there knows about it all this time? Like a local legend?

Lyle: Oh, yeah. And there’s the story of the guy who threw his dead dog down there...

Phil: Oh, really?

Lyle: Yeah, it died so he threw it down the hole.

Phil: Oh, really? What happened?

Lyle: Well, it came back. He said he was out hunting and he swears he seen his dog alive again.

Phil: There you have it folks. Bottomless hole resurrects the dead. Or turns them into zombies, at least.”

From a June 1st, 2010 post on Question the Answer, a blog that takes a critical and informed look at paranormal phenomena. 

“When we talk about this sort of experience are we talking about entities that were once alive but are now dead? Or are we talking about a problem with time in the sense that entities from the past (or future?) are showing up in our time? Or are they, following Burke and his research, the result of what we might call cosmic accidents or quantum quirks, events that make something that is impossible suddenly possible.

There is little to base a theory on but let’s take a look at a relatively recent sighting in the US. A credible witness encounters a canine that, for all intents and purposes, is a ghost. It is a Black Dog of fabled British lore, the phantom creature that presages death and doom. But what do we make of it when it shows up among the cornfields of Iowa? Are we going to classify this as a ghostly encounter? The spirit of a dog returned? Or are we dealing with something else? Is there a connection to the vestigial rituals, as detailed by Holman, practiced by Iowa farmers?” 

From “The Sacrifice of Land: Pre-Christian Practices in 20th-Century American Agriculture” published in the journal Anthropological Frontiers in 1988 by Dr. Franklin Holman.

“The most striking hints of a so-called non-Christian tradition come from the scant yet provocative evidence collected by Reinhart et al. in eastern Iowa. The anecdotal history suggests an offering of agricultural output ensured the next year’s crop in a familiar cycle of sacrifice and rebirth. Specifically in Iowa, this was accomplished annually by allowing bushels of corn to be thrown down an ominous hole that existed in the middle of the fields. This hole was said to be the abode of a creature or god, sacred to the Otoe natives, who had been displaced by European settlers and, like the Indians themselves, had to be managed in some way.”

From Logos, USA, an essay by the French philosopher Henri Benoit, published in the January 1992 issue of Riot Magazine.

“What can we offer to the pit? The pit is the center – must be the center – everything else must eventually end up inside. But what does not belong in the pit? What does not fill the pit? Is it nothing or everything that the pit lacks? The bottomless can only be filled with itself, but it does not know this, so it will not be filled. It is a chain of reference without end. The Americans swarmed this continent, utterly consuming the frontier, and they managed to erect the most magnificent, the most expensive culture in history: it cannot be filled, it has nothing but desire, it is a celestial Vegas light show, it is a black pit of formless nothing.”

From The Black Pit of Formless Nothing, a semi-legendary text reputed to be a lost book of Atlantis or the diary of a fallen Lucifer. Although most experts agree it was written in America in the mid-18th century, the author remains a mystery. A fragment of the text became the focus of a failed cult in the 1870s.

“All is formless and empty, not touched with hands, not beheld with eyes. The Pit calls to us and the Pit waits for us. We will live forever and forever in the Pit because the Pit is forever and forever. It will swallow what it cannot love. The White Man will go down with the Red Man to the infinite place of eternal rest. There the great gods slumber and dream of our faces, while the Pit’s keeper watches in silence.”

From “The Great Fire’s Legacy,” an article in the August 16th, 1883 edition of the Chicago Tribune.

“After the Great Fire left him destitute, Mr. Jeffrey, like many others, fled the city for the bucolic pursuits of the countryside. He settled among the fertile fields of Iowa and established himself in the farming business as the seasons dictated. Mr. Jeffreys was first made aware of the secret groupings during the harvest of 1874. ‘They was trying to get us to go to a meeting,’ Mr. Jeffreys reports. ‘I thought the fella was a union-man.’ Before he met a preacher and his soul was saved, Jeffreys spent four unspeakable years as an adept in the Ancient Order of the Unending Pit.”

From The Ballad of the Black Prairie, a western folk song thought to had been composed around 1830 but first published in 1850.

“Follow me not to the prairie, my love,

where my bones can never be found

where my spirit, where my spirit 

walks deep under ground.

Follow me not to the prairie, my love,

for the devil that rides as the wind blows

will drag you under, will drag you under 

where the prairie grass grows.

Follow me not to the prairie, my love,

for all of my grief and all my regrets,

cannot make a home, cannot make a home

where the western sun sets.”

From West Sets the Sun, a compilation of pioneer stories published in 1914.

“We crossed the big river in May of 1845. Little Hiram was terribly affright on account of the fierce storm clouds but Mother held him close. As the wagons came up on the Great Desert, we saw a lone figure silhouetted ‘gainst the sky. ‘An Indian,’ said Father and he and some men went to treat with him. Father returned in an agitated state but related that he had come to some kind of agreement with a very peculiar Indian. Father would tell us no more about the Indian or the bargain they had made. That night, the animals were terribly skittish, and we laid in the wagon as we listened to strange screams and moaning in the distance. Father said it was just a coyote, but I saw a set of glowing eyes – red like the fires of Hell – watching the wagon from the darkness.”

 From The Life and Death of Red Coyote, an Indian, a biography of a Sioux warrior written by Chester Peterson and published in 1851.

“When the son of Two Eagles came to my village, many were afraid of the story he told us. His father was desperate and had gone hunting in the Black Land. Alone among the warriors of the village, I was not afraid to go with him to the Black Land. We made the hard journey, but we were too late to save Two Eagles. He had tamed the Black Land by giving himself to the Great Spirit of the Pit. He had gone down and he had died and then he came back.”

From Before the World: Archaic Myths of America, a linguistic reconstruction of what are thought to be the earliest American Indian myths published in 2010.

“When Agochook, the Great Spirit, returned to the Third World, he saw that his passing had left a great hole and that the hole had no place to begin and no place to end. So, Agochook, the Great Spirit, took one corner of the world in one hand and took another corner in his other hand and he picked up the world and twisted it until the hole began at the beginning and ended at the end. And Agochook, the Great Spirit, saw that the hole was in the center of the world and that parts of the world were now falling into the hole. Birds and rocks and trees fell into the hole and, as they did, the hole began to contain the world, and Agochook, the Great Spirit, saw that after everything in the world had fallen into the hole, then the hole would be the world and he was pleased.”

There is no end!

Next week on Scary True: Beneath the cornfields of Iowa, the history of horror is waiting! Come down and read "The History of a Bottomless Pit."
And check out this week's ghost story, "The Haunted Bathroom of Blood-Red Death."

The Haunted Bathroom of Blood-Red Death

The following documents were sent to me anonymously and without comment. Over the past few months, I have debated the merits of publishing them. Ultimately, I decided that the document’s unnamed victim would want this story published as a kind of memorial to her grisly fate.