Haunted Places: Theorosa’s Bridge

April 29, 2019

Hello Everyone,

There were a couple topics I wanted to cover and one of those is Theorosa’s Bridge. I wanted to do these just before I begin gathering information and hopefully adding some categories to my webpage.

Theorosa’s Bridge:

The bridge is located in Valley Center, Kansas. Theorosa’s Bridge has been burned down and rebuilt over the years but the location remains the same. The first fire occurred in 1974. The bridge at that time was made of steal and wood. The next time it was rebuilt, guess what? It was burned again. After that Theorosa’s bridge remained closed until a not so burnable concrete bridge was constructed in 1991.

Although the bridge still holds the same name it is not the bridge itself that carries the eerie or haunted story but the location.

The Tale:

Although they are considered Urban Legends I found the first story similar to one that I hear locally. So that’s why it kind of rang a bell and made me want to do a blog on it.

One version goes that a group of settlers were attacked by Native Americans who stole a baby named Theorosa. Her mother went looking for her in her hope of finding her child but was only rewarded with the misery of coming up empty handed. This she does to this day. Some say you can hear her calling out and wailing in the dark in search for her lost infant named Theorosa.

Another one also carried the influence of Native Americans on the Urban Legend. This one, a little more eerie to me, is that a Native American woman bares a child with a white settler. Theorosa then throws her child in the cold stream that the bridge now crosses to hide the truth of the child’s father. Then in her inability to accept what she did and not being able to undo her horrible deed she throws herself into the water to join her child.

A similar version is similar but instead of a Native American woman and a settler it is a farm wife and a hired hand that bare the child. However, in both tales the mothers of the children still wail and search not only for the child Theorosa but perhaps for forgiveness. Perhaps they are lost in a state of purgatory of similar for killing the child.

The Haunts:

The haunting or eerie phenomena that occurs at Theorosa’s Bridge is very similar to other haunts. Strange and eerie lights spotted at odd hours.  A ghostly apparition of a woman walking around. The wind chilling unusually right around the bridge. Of course there is the part that makes it eerie to me. That is the wailing that can be heard around Theorosa’s Bridge at night followed by a baby crying.

Whether there is a cold sensation that coincides when the haunting apparition appears or not the sound of a baby crying outside in the dark, desolate night is enough to give me the chills.

 

Thanks for Reading,

Joshua Crane Dowidat

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