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This story is best told by a male, but could be modified to use a male relative of the storyteller. It is best if you replace the place names with the names of places that your audience will recognize. Before telling this story around your campfire, be sure to practice it so you get the rhythm and timing correct.

As with any scary story, you’ll want to choose your audience carefully so you don’t keep anybody awake all night.

Props:

• White hanky

The Woman At the Bridge

A few years ago, I was driving home on a rainy summer evening. The wind was whipping the rain so it was nearly heading in sideways and I could hardly see out the windshield.

As I was coming to the Willow Bridge underpass, a figure in white stepped out from under the bridge and raised one hand. I quickly braked and just avoided splashing the person with water from a large puddle. I rolled down the passenger window to yell but was confronted with a beautiful young woman in a white dress, soaking wet.

“Do you need help?” I asked her. After all, who would be waiting under a bridge in a rain storm if they didn’t need help!

“Can you give me a ride into town?” She answered. I nodded and she opened the door and got in. I noticed that she was shivering so I offered her my coat that was sitting in the back seat. She wrapped it around herself as I continued on into town.

“What were you doing under that bridge?” I asked her.

“My boyfriend and I were at the movies. We got into a fight and I made him let me out of the car. Thank you for picking me up.”

To my discomfort, she started to cry. She pulled out a white hanky to dab at her eyes but it looked as wet as her dress.

I tried to get her to talk to me, but she just stared out the window and cried quietly. I vowed that if I ever met the lousy boyfriend who had left her under the bridge, I was going to break his nose!

My passenger shivered every now and again and pulled my coat tighter around her. I turned up the heater since I could tell she was still cold.

As we got into town, she started giving me directions to her home. But it was as if she didn’t really want to talk to me since she just said things like “Turn here” or “Take the next right.” Pretty soon we were on a nice street in a part of town I wasn’t really familiar with.

“This is my house,” she said quietly. As I pulled up to the curb, the rain was pouring down harder than ever. I got out quickly to open the door for her. But when I opened the door, there was nobody there. I looked around wondering if maybe she had gotten out of the car before I had come around the car but there was no sign of her.

Confused, I figured that she must have hurried into the house while I was coming to open the door for her. I went up to the house, noticing that no lights were on, and rang the doorbell.

After a moment, an old woman answered the door, wrapped in a bathrobe. I was a bit startled but said, “I just saw a young lady, all dressed in white. I think she went into this house.” But suddenly I wasn’t sure and felt the fool for waking up the lady.

“That was my daughter,” she said.

“I’m glad she made it home alright, then,” I answered and turned to go.

“No,” the woman said, “she didn’t. She was killed in a car accident after fighting with her boyfriend at Willow Bridge underpass. It was fifteen years ago tonight. Every year on the anniversary of her death, she signals a young man like you to pick her up. She tries to get home to me, but she never makes it. Wait a moment,” the lady said.

She opened the coat closet next to the front door and handed me a coat. My coat. “This is yours,” she said.

Stunned, I carried my coat back to my car and got it. It was only as I turned on the windshield wipers that I realized that the coat was dry, inside and out. I reached over to feel it and in the fold I found a damp white hanky.

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