Urban Legends

Cry Baby Bridge

If you search the internet for “Crybaby Bridge” you will find that every state in the lower forty-eight has one.  As a matter of fact, Ohio has four!  I just did a search on Google and got 363,000 hits.  And the story is very much the same, with some slight differences thrown in for good measure.  A mother either has an accident and her children are drowned or her husband leaves her and she drowns her children for revenge.  And at night you can see the specter of a woman in white and hear babies crying.  This is a very common urban legend and Georgia is no exception.  

Georgia’s own Crybaby Bridge is just north of Columbus.  Bev Greenfield, Debra Bates, and I were returning from a trip to Columbus and decided to track down Georgia’s infamous Crybaby Bridge.  The directions sent us to Whitesville Road and the pavement ended and we drove to the third bridge.  Georgia’s famed Crybaby Bridge.  This was obviously a popular parking spot for local teenagers because the ground was littered with empty beer cans, cigarette packs, and condom wrappers.   We stayed on site until well after dark, took numerous photographs, and even tried the “parking the car on the bridge in neutral” test.  Nothing.  Not one orb, mist, or EVP.  Lots of dust, bug bites, and sweat, though!  However, Debra found a doll’s crib lying in a pile of refuse that had obviously been dumped there.  It was broken and it was weather-beaten and had been there for quite some time.  She dropped it into the stream and proceeded to take photos of it.  We discussed if we wanted to put those photos on the website or not.  We decided to keep the “cheese” factor to a minimum and not post the photos.  

Later, we discovered that an Atlanta ghost club had been to Crybaby Bridge quite soon after we were there and found  Debra’s little crib still in the stream.  They decided that this was proof that Crybaby Bridge was the real deal and even posted video on their website proclaiming Crybaby Bridge to be an authentic haunting.  It is FPR’s opinion that Georgia’s Crybaby Bridge is an urban legend and nothing more.

Rick Heflin
February 2009