Van Sant “crybaby” bridge – just a historic covered bridge home to an oddly prevalent American urban legend.

2 min read

10 months ago Leo S

New Hope, Pennsylvania.
Many years ago a young woman got pregnant out of wedlock and, since it was such a disgrace to have a baby without a husband, her family wanted nothing to do with her and her child.
So upset was the poor girl by this that after giving birth, she crept out in the middle of the night with her baby in her arms and headed to the nearby bridge, where she throw her creature into the water and then hung herself from the bridge’s rafters.

This was Van Sant Bridge in southeastern Pennsylvania, that spans still today Pidcock Creek, built in 1875 and also known as Beaver Dam Bridge, but different iterations of it are associated with several different so-called “Crybaby Bridges” across the United States.
Whatever the details might be, the core elements of the myth remain the same: a child (or multiple children) met an untimely death at the bridge sometime in the past. As a result, the bridge is now haunted, in the form of ghostly cries of the departed children that can still be heard still today.
In the case of the Van Sant Bridge, added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 1, 1980, the story goes that if you park your car in the middle of the bridge you can hear not only the wail of the poor forlorn babe, but also the toes of the hanging woman scraping your car roof.
As you can see, it is a small bridge surrounded by beautiful, upscale suburban homes, and there is not a very steep drop off its side, although I am sure if you threw a baby off the side you could do some serious damage to him (probably I would be crying too).
The brave ghost hunter, however, surmises that the crying sound actually comes from red foxes that apparently inhabit the area.
Mystery solved?
Yes, It’s possible.
However, apart from the unwed mother of the crybaby legend, the Van Sant Bridge is also reputed to have been a hanging place for horse thieves in the past, so other figures can be seen hanging from the rafters…