Posts Tagged ‘ghost story’

This story and others will appear in the eGuide “Campfire Stories: From the Chill to the Giggle” coming October 15, 2010. To pre-order your copy at a 30% discount please click here.

Pre-orders are only $3.46. Your eGuide will be delivered to your email inbox on October 15, 2010. At that time, the eGuide will go on sale for $4.95. Order yours today!

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.

This story and others will appear in the eGuide “Campfire Stories: From the Chill to the Giggle” coming October 15, 2010. To pre-order your copy at a 30% discount please click here.

Pre-orders are only $3.46. Your eGuide will be delivered to your email inbox on October 15, 2010. At that time, the eGuide will go on sale for $4.95. Order yours today!

Sometimes the best ghost stories are the ones that you tell as if it happened to you. The key to making them super scary is to relate most of the story in a matter-of-fact voice until you get close to the climax of the story. Then, let the creepiness be heard in your voice.

Hints:

• Feel free to adjust the time frame to fit your audience.
• Change the date in the story from October 4th to be the date you’re telling the story.
• If you think your audience can handle it, have a “helper” sneak away and cry like a baby at the very end. (Caution with that one!)

Cry Baby Creek

Tulley Creek, just a bit west of here, has been known for years as Cry Baby Creek. Tulley Creek used to flow year-round, but about 15 years ago, the creek went dry. Now, it only flows once a year, on October 4th.

That’s because, when I was young, Shelly Armstrong died at Tulley Creek on October 4th. Shelly had been driving home from work, late one night with her infant son Jack asleep in his car seat in the backseat.

It had been storming all afternoon and Shelly was anxious to get home. The rain had made the dirt road slick and treacherous. The pot holes were filled with water and shoulders of the road were soft. Shelly had her windshield wipers on at full speed but it seemed as soon as they moved the water, the rain blurred the windshield again. Her headlights barely illuminated the road in front of her.

As Shelly approached the old wooden bridge over Tulley Creek she noticed that the creek was flowing much higher than ever before. It seemed that the bottom of the bridge was only a few feet above the raging surface of the creek.

Shelly slowly eased her car onto the bridge. Even above the sound of the rain, she could hear the bridge moan and pop. Just as she was nearly across, the bank on the far side slid into the raging waters below.

Shelly watched, helpless, as the whole bank in front of her gave way, revealing the supports of the bridge. Just as she was putting her car into reverse to back off the bridge, she saw the bridge give way and plunge her, the car, and her still-sleeping young son, Jack into the tumultuous waters below.

The next morning, searchers found Shelly’s body 30 miles down stream. Her car had washed up in some shallows. They searched for three days, but they never found the body of young Jack Armstrong.

Now, people say that if they visit Tulley Creek on October 4th they can see the waters rise and go rushing through the creek bed. And if you go to the site of the old wooden bridge, you can still hear young Jack Armstrong crying for his mother.

I went to Tulley Creek, Cry Baby Creek one year. I was 16 and had just gotten my drivers license. I was too afraid to roll down the windows to listen for the baby to cry, but when I drove away, on my back window there was the imprint of a baby’s hand.