Old Legends Sometimes

Become New Investigations

Every community has one or more of these places, the old abandoned property reportedly haunted or a lake with the spirit of a long dead young woman materializing from time to time or the country road, complete with disembodied spirits walking the shoulder.  Every paranormal investigation has heard the stories and many have discounted the possibility of any real phenomenon existing there worth the time to study.

That was the case when the Association for the Study of Unexplained Phenomenon (ASUP, Inc,) first learned about the Old Alton Bridge in Denton County, Texas. This was a historic landmark, recently repaired after decommissioning the bridge when a new, modern roadway was created nearby. It was a place that young men took their prom dates to scare them with the tales of headless ghosts and wandering gun slingers long since past.  “The legends say that if you go to the bridge and honk your car horn twice at midnight; the ghost’s firry red eyes will appear on the bridge,” one local teenager explained.

For several generations teenagers from as far away as Dallas and Fort Worth have travel to the site, many later recounting stories about being scared away by unearthly sounds, galloping hooves  and unnatural shapes floating in the air near the bridge.

As most folk tales often do, the bridge takes on newer and more fanciful claims with every passing year.

In 2006, the Texas chapter of the ASUP, Inc., a nation paranormal research group, merged with Denton County Paranormal Investigations (DCPI), who perchance was the trustee for the bridge and park area. DCPI’s lead investigator, Sarah Blair, who later became the ASUP’s Director of Field Investigations, assumed ASUP investigators that there was something going on at the bridge site, beyond the games played by testosterone inflated teenagers and with experience in law enforcement behind her, the group agreed to undertake a closer look.

Investigations are not cheap and involve a lot more than running out to a location to see what can be seen. Before ASUP gets involved, they first give the case over to team researchers, who take on a thorough look at everything in the public record about the place. In this case, Research Director Joy Maner quickly learned that this was not going to be an easy undertaking. Among the legal records were hundreds of articles about the bridge that had been amassed over the years, certainly enough material to keep her busy for a long time.

Some facts were easy to secure, the bridge had been built in 1884 by the King Ironworks to cross Hickory Creek and had been in service for over a hundred years for pedestrian, horse and later vehicular traffic, becoming a National Historic Landmark in 1988 and restored in 1992.  The bridge was now a part of the U.S. Army, Corps of Engineers, Elm Fork Hiking Trail complex. While called the Old Alton Bridge, it sits in the City of Copper Canyon, and today is encircled by well manicured horse farms and suburban communities that have been a part of the Dallas – Ft. Worth housing boom.

While Maner was able to find hundreds of facts bout the structure, she was not able to confirm any hangings, lynching’s or murders at the site in her archive search.  She did find however that the area was the location of a well documented shoot out between the Texas Rangers and the old Sam Bass gang. This was a natural ford over the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, long before the bridge was constructed and had been built to allow free access to the village of Alton, the original county seat of Denton County.

Sometimes, even the most well know facts are hard to pin down; while everyone with an eye for local county history could tell you about the 1876 Sam Bass shootout at the ford site, the public record was short on details.  In the days of Sam Bass, the Texas Rangers were reimbursed for the number of rounds reportedly fired in such a standoff, but they were not paid to write detailed reports on such an encounter.  Basically, the record showed how many shots were fired and the number of the Bass gang taken into custody, but failed to mention if there were fatalities at the scene, or how long the shootout lasted. Maner attempted to dig out of the old court records and any further information about the affair, but was unable to find any report that could elaborate on the confrontation.

Likewise, the most prominent tale attached to the bridge concerned a old goat herder, who folklore says was run off the side of the bridge with his flock by a gang of drunken cowboys at some time in history, but Maner could find no proof of a goat or sheep ranch in the area, nor of a herder’s untimely death from any mishap.  It was colorful, but not confirmable in either the public record or local newspapers. The local newspapers did recount the stories of the bridge being haunted many times, usually at Halloween, but shed no more light on the nature of the activity there.

Another widely told tale about the bridge suggested that there had either been a public hanging or a lynching at the site, and although local publications were known to be good at reporting lynching, a fairly common affair in Texas history, none were ever reported at the Old Alton Bridge. The public record also included several local public hangings, but none of them from a bridge. Public executions normally took place at the county seat but the village of Alton had been abandoned for lack of a good water supply, long before the construction of the bridge.  After several months of digging, the final research report was given to the Board of Directors of ASUP, who agreed to do an in-depth field investigation at the area. Proper authorization was secured from the Corps of Engineers for the group to do research at the site and then the real work began.

When the decision to investigate the bridge and adjacent park was made by ASUP, the directors considered it a good place for training purposes, but held out little hope for confirming any paranormal activity. There was absolutely nothing in the research to suggest anything anomalous and they felt what had been reported more recently could be attributed to a spooky location in the countryside and old wives tales that had gotten the better of visitors, who were there in the first place to be frightened.

The group’s first visit to the site was made by a field team to map the location and make some basic measurements. This was a small group of well trained investigators who were not prone to scare easily and had many years of experience. Because it was a preliminary visit, not a full investigation, the team members had packed light, carrying digital still cameras, GPS, EMF measuring equipment, two-way radios and little else, except for their note pads. Two digital recorders were placed on the bridge itself and a stationary camera was set up to overlook the bridge.

Physically, the bridge is located at 33.07.760 N x 097.06.243 W on GPS and sits 545 feet above sea level and 27 feet over the riverbed. It is 140 feet long and situated at approximately 21 degrees magnetic north. There were no street lamps or other illumination in the park, but there is some illumination from passing roadway traffic from the new highway to the east of the old bridge. The group surveyed the area for about two hours before nightfall. The weather was clear, cool and moonless.

Once dark, two teams set out, one on each side of the creek, near the bridge. As with all ASUP investigations, team members are not permitted to investigate alone and there is always a “gatekeeper” who is in touch with the teams via radio from a central location. About 45 minutes into the field research, the team at the far end of the bridge to the north called back to the base camp, requesting additional investigators to come to their location, about 100 feet into the woods.

On arrival the added personnel were able to confirm what the original team was reporting, a dim, glowing cloud that appeared to be orange in color, floating in the treetops at their location. Moving closer into the woods, a call was made to the team on the other side of the creek, requesting that they try to position themselves near the bank of the river.  At the same time the orange “blob” began to move closer to the ground and float parallel to the creek. It seemed to come to rest momentarily about 30 feet from the nearest observer and about 4 feet above the ground: it was roughly spherical, but without sharp lines.

The team on the opposite bank was now in place and was asked to shine their lights in the direction of the opposite bank; this gave the team a more clear view of the creek banks and the objects relative position.  After about 15 minutes observation the “blob” rose again into the tree tops and then disappeared. The teams took dozens of photos to ascertain if there was any possibility of reflected light, but there seemed to be none.

On a second visit to the area several weeks later, the ASUP field investigators were more prepared for any similar occurrence, including video equipment in an effort to record the phenomenon, if it reappeared.  The team also had a portable weather station to confirm the direction of the wind and all common atmospheric conditions that might be conducive to fog. It was on this occasion that a member took a random photo of the bridge deck itself, which produced a very striking image, similar to the one seen floating in the trees on the first visit.

Subsequent visits have produced digital recordings of what sounds like the beating of hooves on the bridge deck and a plethora of “orbs”, which normally the group would dismiss out of hand, except for their total number and the fact that they are from a total of six different cameras. Ironically, the video shot on all of these visits showed absolutely no activity.

The ASUP has now taken on the Old Alton Bridge site as an ongoing investigation, simply because every visit has yielded more anomalies and as yet, no explanations. While they have ruled out virtually all the folklore and legends associated with the location, there is still a good deal of material that would suggest there is “something” happening on the bridge and in the adjacent woods of this otherwise tranquil spot.

What has the attention of the ASUP’s coordinator is simple. While the group is relatively certain that none of the stories about the bridge have a basis in fact, the phenomenon is very real…. whatever the phenomenon is.  It is now the goal of the group to schedule visits to the location in all sorts of weather and different times of year and to attempt to secure some correlation between the atmospherics and the phenomenon, a feat not yet attained.

Like railroad spook lights that can be found all over the county, those glowing orange orbs that form over railroad tracks, which have a very earthly explanation, some feel that the Alton Bridge “blob” might have a reasonable cause, but that is not the majority opinion at the moment.

“We have been at the bridge site on cold clear nights and hot, muggy ones; the principal phenomenon seems to appear regardless of the weather and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all. We have no data to suggest a fault line out there, either. The sounds we have recorded are classic; there are cold spots and odd odors at times, but the blob certainly is not a common occurrence in the literature!” Joy Maner notes. “It is one thing to capture an EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) of horses’ hooves on the wood flooring of the bridge, another to have a reoccurring orange cloud visible on multiple visits under different atmospheric conditions.”

With hundreds of investigations in 35 plus years, the ASUP is not a newcomer to the field; the group’s investigators include engineers, police officers, paramedics and journalists and a college professor, to name a few professions represented.  They are not prone to either hallucinations or flights of fancy and all have a lifetime of experience as professional observers who understand the importance of objective reporting and the chain of evidence. 

Last May 1^st, at approximately 2:30 p.m. local time, Director of Field Investigations, Sarah Blair was walking on the south side of the river, about a half mile from the bridge with her German Sheppard, when she saw a rider on a black horse approaching from a nearby rise on the path. Her recollection was that the rider was dressed in dark colored western wear and was at a gallop, toward where she was standing. Her dog was aware of the oncoming traffic and pulled Blair to the side of the road, but after loosing sight of the rider where the path curves and passes into a thicket, she could no longer see or hear the horseman.  She proceeded to walk toward where she originally saw him, but found no rider nor signs of hoof prints anywhere in the soft, muddy ground anywhere.

Unfortunately, by her own rules, the sighting was not official, there was no corroboration, and no second witness to the event and her dog could not tell his version of the story. Nevertheless, what she saw and heard that afternoon will stay with her forever.

“We have a pretty good hit rate,” Sarah Blair explains. “When there is something, we report it, and I think our overall success rate for explaining phenomena is better than 60 percent over the years, but when you run into something like the old bridge, you have to step back and be sure you are crossing all the T’s and dotting all the I’s. I think this one will take a long time to explain, if it is explainable at all! But with every visit we bring out new gear and new ideas.”

By definition, the ASUP’s mission statement is very clear, going back to the very foundation of paranormal study; that is, “To research and study all phenomenon in the pursuit of possible proof of individual survival of human personality after death…”

To that end, the ASUP will continue to pursue whatever is happening in the woods of this newly suburban Texas location, in search of the answers.

“Maybe, the phenomenon is being created by the sheer number of people who visit the site and believe there are ghosts, or maybe it is a physical phenomenon. It might just be that we are dealing with a very real personality,” Technical Director, Allen Slaughter adds. “But we will never know, if we don’t keep looking for the answers.”

© 2007 ASUP, Inc.  The contents of this blog may be reproduced in whole as long as proper credit is given.