THE SCARE

We took the back roads on the way home from Chapel Hill, still looking for an experience that would remain, well, unexplained. A friend in the back seat of the car led the way to his home in Prospect.

"Turn here," he said, just after we entered the tiny town of Elkton, Tennessee. Not far down the road, something stole all of our attentions. We each, at the same time, turned our heads to the left. It was the old Elkton Cemetery.

"That place is really fucked up," our friend said. "Way in the back, there are a bunch of children's graves. They say that, at night, you can hear babies crying." A chill came over all of us. "But do you want to see something really scary?" he asked.

We all nodded in unison.

Once again, he led the way. The roads to Chapel Hill seemed like big city thoroughfares compared to the backwood streets we were trying to navigate that cold February night. He instructed us to turn off the "main" road and onto a small local street.

The road was curvy and bumpy, as menacing trees surrounded us. "There's a bridge here. It's from before the civil war, when this whole area was still settled by the Native Americans. There was a small tribe who lived right on the banks of the Elk River. They were called the Hanawa Indians."

He continued speaking as the driver tried to listen to his words while not incapacitating the car. "During the Civil War, the Union Troops occupied this area and imprisoned all of the Indians. The men were killed and the women were raped. There was a young woman with a small baby. Knowing that there was no chance of survival in her prison, she ran. She ran with her child and got as far as the bridge."

Our friend stopped speaking long enough to instruct the driver to slow down. "Right here," he said, pointing to the left. There it was, a dark dirt road leading seemingly straight down into a dark abyss of unseen eyes and unspeakable evil. And the chill that ran over our spines was so that we may as well have been looking down into the pits of hell. The beams from the headlights, shining down the road, seemed to disappear into the darkness. It seemed there was no end.

He spoke slowly. "It was down this road where she made her escape. The ceaseless shouting of the soldiers behind her only got closer and louder, and the harsh shouts of the old Union colonel rang in her ears. She looked at the quickly rushing water below. And, to save her child from a horrible fate at the hands of their captures, she threw it into the water. Then, she took one last breath. In a second, she joined her child.

"Now, they say, on dark and cold nights like this one, you can hear the sound of an object hitting the water, followed by another larger splash. Then you can hear the sound of a woman desperately searching, as a baby cries in the distance..." We were all silent. "Anybody want a look see?"

We looked at him as if he had, just that second, lost all touch with reality. "Hell, no," I said, already exhausted by the night's events and the daunting task in front of us. We turned around and drove off, never looking behind us.

THE TRUTH

We returned to that dirt road not two months later. And, in an attempt to embolden us, we went on a bright sunny day. We parked at the top of the road and descended the dirt path, expecting to be greeted by an old forgotten legend and a bridge holding secrets of the past.

What we did pass, however, was a rather large and pleasant house sitting on an equally pleasant pasture with spring flowers blooming and ponies running free in the fields. It was like something out of Disneyland. But we walked on, where the road narrowed and the brush thickened. Then ahead of us, there it was.

At first glance, we could imagine the frights that could be found at the foot of the old bridge at night. But, judging by the graffiti and the beer cans scattered about, teens trying to get laid while becoming intoxicated were probably more frightening than anything supernatural.

The bridge itself was quite impressive. It had burnt many decades before (we were told) and had sat vacant as the main road was moved to the north. But, judging from the large remaining steel structure, it was definitely not of the Civil War era.

Disappointed, we walked off to get another look at the ponies.

We drove to Pulaski, Tennessee that day so I could show my friends some of the places we called haunted on the campus of Martin Methodist College. While there, we stopped at one of the town's better restaurants. We were seated, then joked about the days events and how legends can evolve from something benign to a huge superstition. And how the one we explored that day was just one of the countless "crying woman at the bridge where she lost her baby" legends.

Above our table was one of a collection of pictures inside the facility highlighting the attractions of Giles County. But this one was vaguely familiar. It was of an old bridge, still intact, dated in the mid seventies or eighties. We looked closer. It was the bridge was had just visited.

More intriguing was the type on the bottom. It was labeled "The Hanna Ward Bridge." We laughed. Somehow, through the vestiges of time and human fallacy, the name had morphed from Hanna Ward to Hanawa. This was truly an unfounded legend, and quite an obvious one at that.

A couple of years later, I returned to the site. The first thing I noticed, at the top of the old dirt road, was a street sign. Recently placed there, it was still shiny as if it hadn't yet become a victim of the weather. It read "Hanna Ward Road."

The
Scare

The
Truth