Audio version of this story on our YouTube: https://youtu.be/kx0raTMc1I8 this can also be found Spotify and most other podcast platforms!
This story was sent to us by one of our fans named Linda. This was one of the outside of Appalachia stories that made us decide to start the new submissions From Beyond Appalachia section on the site.
I’ve lived all over the world, but most of my stories seem to root themselves in the soil of Connecticut and Vermont. I spent fifteen years in Virginia, too, but today I’m taking you back to Stowe, Vermont—specifically to Gold Brook and the structure they call Emily’s Bridge.
Built in 1844, it’s a beautiful piece of architecture, the only wooden covered bridge in the state using Howe trusses. But locals don’t go there for the woodwork. They go for the legend. Back in the 1850s, a young girl named Emily fell for a wealthy local boy. His parents forbade the union, and the boy promised to meet Emily on the bridge to elope. He never showed. Consumed by a grief that left her no air to breathe, Emily threw herself from the bridge onto the jagged rocks of the brook below.
I was fourteen when I had my own encounter there. My family lived in Connecticut, but we spent our autumns in Vermont. One late fall night, a group of us were heading back from a pizza place outside of Stowe. The air was biting and the sky was a bruised, heavy black. Someone suggested we drive over Emily’s Bridge.
I’ve always been a bit of a magnet for the paranormal, so I felt the weight of the place before we even saw the entrance. My friends, fueled by teenage bravado, wanted to get out and look for her. I didn’t want to be the coward left alone in a dead car on a dirt road, so I stepped out into the freezing dark with them. We walked the length of the wooden planks, our footsteps echoing over the rushing water of the brook, but we saw nothing.
Still, the “vibes” were screaming at me.
We piled back into the car, my friends laughing and mocking the legend as the engine turned over. You should never do that—mockery is an invitation.
Just as we reached the middle of the bridge, the car died. It didn’t stutter or stall; it vanished. Every electrical component went black. No engine, no headlights, no heat. The silence that rushed into the car was deafening. My friends stopped laughing. We were sitting in a hollow wooden tunnel, suspended over the place where a girl had died, and it was getting colder by the second.
As my friends argued about who was going to step out into the dark to pop the hood, the radio snapped on.
It was the only light in the entire vehicle—the eerie, pale glow of the dashboard. A song began to play, loud and impossibly sad. It was a cover of an Elton John track, but it wasn’t Elton singing. It was a woman’s voice, thin and drenched in such profound sorrow that it felt like it was weeping through the speakers. The song was “Emily.”
The car erupted in screams. We knew she was there, standing in the dark just beyond the glass, watching us through the static.
Then, as suddenly as it had died, the engine roared to life on its own. We didn’t wait for an explanation. We tore out of that bridge and never looked back. I haven’t been back since, but I’m moving soon, and I think I’ll visit as an adult. This time, I won’t be laughing.
Thank you Linda for this great story! We decided to start a brand new section on the site just for this! I know you have more stories you said you’d send along and I can’t wait to hear them! If you have a submission you’d like to see make its way to the blog and our various other platforms you can email us a submission at webmaster@spookyappalachia.com.
Thank you to our patrons, Alvin, Charles, Jeff, Josh, Julia and Shannon. And thank you for listening.
