The ghosts of Spook Bridge

In many of the winding backroads of rural Pennsylvania there are bridges notorious for their vivid and terrifying hauntings.

Author Patty A. Wilson in her new book "Totally Bizarre Pennsylvania" recounts one of the first of these haunted bridges in this the story of Spook Bridge...

"In the late 1700s near old Gosstown, there was a bridge with the half ominous name of “Spook Bridge.” The bridge was made up of only a couple flat bench logs stretched across the Shamokin Creek temporarily so that people could walk along the footpath.
In the rough and rural ar

ea of Gosstown, there were few social events for people to attend. However, on occasion a party would be planned and the entire area would turn out to drink hard cider, applejack and socialize.

Late one summer, Mr. Dunkelberger announced that he was holding a gathering. He invited everyone in the area and Martin Goss and his wife looked forward to the event. Martin Goss was an older gentleman in the area who had a farm. His wife was substantially younger than he was and she was most excited about the party.

On the night of the event, Martin accompanied his wife to the Dunkelberger house. The applejack was plentiful and Martin enjoyed his share. There was music and dancing that seemed to threaten never to end. At last Martin grew tired. He was seventy-five years old and the night was late. He told his wife that he was going home and excused himself from the party.

Mrs. Goss stayed behind to dance and enjoy herself. She knew that Martin was capable of going home by himself. She would make her way home in the company of some neighbors.

Sometime later in the night a group of revelers made their way to the bridge. To their horror, they found Martin Goss face down in the water. He had apparently slipped on the slippery bridge and fallen to his death. He was possibly too inebriated to extricate himself or else he could have struck his head.

The revelers ran back to the Dunkelberger house where they broke the news to Mrs. Goss and the assembled company. The entire group made their way back to the little footbridge.

A group of men conferred and it was decided that the acting coroner should be sent for. The coroner’s home was several miles away and someone was dispatched to fetch him back to the scene. Meanwhile, the men built several bond fires so that the area would be well lit for the coroner.

When the coroner arrived, he called out that someone should remove the body from the water.

No one made a move to do so and in disgust the coroner made his way out onto the footbridge and reached down to pull the body up on the wooden structure by his shirt collar. Suddenly, the assembled men plunged into the water and helped remove the body.

The coroner turned to the men and demanded to know why they had refused to touch the body until he had. One of the men explained that they didn’t want to touch a body because the first one to touch the body might have been haunted by him forever after.

After that night the bridge became known as “Spook Bridge,” and for many years people claimed that Martin Goss haunted the bridge where he had died. But time does march on and the town named for Goss forgot about him and changed its name. Today Gosstown is known as Uniontown and the story of the first known ghost in Uniontown is all but forgotten."

There are more of Patty's fascinating storys of the strange and unexplained in here book "Totally Bizarre Pennsylvania" available at Amazon Here:

You can also read of one her more frightening stories from her latest tome of Forteana on my blog HERE.