Just outside of the small Kansas town where I grew up lies a bridge that has a mysterious haunted legend. It is called Theorosa's Bridge. It belongs to a pioneer woman who perished near it during the founding of our proud hamlet. The story has grown to many over the years, with different explanations of her unfortunate demise or even who she was. I alone, however, know the truth.
It was told to me by a wise old man who worked behind the counter at the Napa Auto Parts store when it was still around. He must have been close to ninety years old when I met him, but he still had his wits about him. Some said that living in the same small town his entire life made him crazy, and not the good kind. He knew the hell out of auto parts, though, so I had no reason to suspect any skuldrudgery.
His uncle had been the town minister during the 1880s when it formed. He was unmarried and prospects were bleak. Men and women during those pioneering days weren't afforded lots of romantic options. If they didn't find love in their town, they couldn't exactly move to Boulder, get a masters in sociology and troll the coffee shops. So, they mostly settled for what made sense at the time. Private love affairs didn't exist. It was all out in the open, just like seventh grade.
So the minister, young and brimming with hope, crossed paths with a Ms. Theorosa Stewart. She was new to Kansas, having arrived by coach from St. Louis, Mo, where she was raised as the daughter of a shipping tycoon. Wealth afforded her many delicacies in life, and thus she was quite unprepared for living on the harsh frontier. Her new home was an oil town, with most men making their way by drilling for that bubbling crude, which was not the life to which she was accustomed.
She didn't make a lot of friends, even amongst the women, feeling as if she didn't belong in this foriegn land. Theorosa arrived under mysterious circumstances; many speculated that she was disgraced by a love affair in St. Louis and this was her exile. She knew one person in town, the grocer, who was a distant cousin, but they hardly said more than greetings and went about their ways. Despite the scandalous rumors, the truth, which she kept well concealed, was a diagnosis of consumption and orders to see if the dryer country air would sustain her. If Kansas wouldn't work, then it was to be on to points further south by southwest.
The minister took to her immediately, as he understood her loneliness. The rough oil workers and other settlers didn't make for easy converts. The town started out as rather uncivilized and he wasn't the most welcome person in many establishments. He wasn't judgmental, but people felt a lot of guilt when he walked into a room, and they didn't like that too much.
Theorosa liked the lonely minister, but her consumption wasn't getting any better and her affection for him didn't move past pleasantries. However, her money wasn't lasting, as she spent a lot of it on comforts to keep her mind off of the miserable summer winds. The minister and her decided to marry; after all, this wasn't a time to be waiting for something that would never come along. He provided support and she provided companionship.
It wasn't until after they wed that he found out about the coughing fits. He heard the sounds of her hacking in the garden (she never wanted to be in the house during a fit) and noticed her scarlet handkerchiefs that she was careful to wash separately when he was away. He confronted her about it, and she was saddened by his disappointment - his new wife wouldn't last long enough to raise a family. He felt genuine sorrow for her discomfort and was proud of her bravery. She never let on in town and no one ever found out about it.
She did live long enough to bear a child. It was born about one year after she came to town. Her illness wasn't getting any better, but the birth of a beautiful and healthy daughter made her sufferings easier. She loved her baby with all of her heart. Although she didn't know how to raise a child like she was raised in such an unforgiving environment, she and the minister did their best. With all of the starts and stops and joys and sorrows of pioneer life, they did better than most.
The town was growing larger, which was a good sign of prosperity and permanence. They were building bridges up the river that went along the edge of town. The bridge construction employed many new men. It was paid for by the county, mainly for use by farmers. The government wanted the farms and settlers to prosper to make certain that the settlement would sustain itself. Taxes from the first successful oil wells provided money for workers who came from all parts, some of which were less than civilized.
The work outside of town went quickly, and three bridges were erected in record time, according to the engineer supervising them. The sites were each a mile apart, according to the grid of roads they connected. Plans for a fourth bridge were already on the engineer's desk, but they didn't materialize until many years later.
One afternoon, the minister and Theorosa were invited for a Sunday lunch at one of the farmer's houses. The road to their host's spread took them across the third bridge. The minister was nervous for his first meeting with a parishioner outside of church and he didn't notice Theorosa's cold and uneasy manner as they crossed the fateful, eponymous bridge that afternoon. The river was pulsing with a fine current, and the tree's green leaves blew in a gentle breeze, nothing which should give pause to anyone in particular. However, as the carriage clacked over the new wood, Theorosa felt a shudder go up her spine and squeezed her baby a little tighter.
After the meal, the families enjoyed an brief bit of conversation. The farmer mentioned a well that needed digging, and the minister offered his help eagerly. His nervousness at befriending someone belied his duty to care for his wife and child. The two men went outside to spend an afternoon digging in the dirt. The farmer's wife would normally have talked to Theorosa about their settling and how life was going. However, she was not a social person. Years of itinerant farming across the prairies, encounters with hostile natives, and losing two children to disease left this farmer's wife a cold and unfeeling woman. She was content to clean up after dinner and play somber tunes on the piano.
Theorosa understood the predicament and became content to sit and listen. Her baby became fussy soon, though, probably from the sullen funk that filled the air in that house, and Theorosa excused herself to the porch to comfort her daughter; the farmer's wife glowered at them to make certain of her disapproval towards infants crying. They reminded her of her own long dead children, and it was too much to bear.
Once outside, Theorosa caught a fit of coughing that intensified quickly. The shame of her disease was never known to anyone in town. It must have originated before she left St. Louis, but whatever caused it, she made absolutely certain that no one would see her suffering. One of her stronger coughs led to an expulsion of blood on her white shirt sleeve. Mortified by the evidence, Theorosa clutched her baby and climbed aboard their carriage. She left quickly and quietly down the road to home. The farmer's wife didn't notice that she never came back in. She continued to play her piano.
When the minister and the farmer finished with the first part of the well, they came in for a drink of water. The minister noticed the music and complimented the farmer on his wife's playing, albeit a bit depressing for a summer's day. The farmer looked back at him with a gracious smile, but shrinking eyes. He knew how inhospitable his wife could be. They walked into the parlor to see how the women were doing, and noticed quickly that one was absent.
The farmer was startled. He inquired of his wife to where Theorosa had gone. She looked up from her music, as if coming out of a trance. The farmer knew that face all too well. He rushed the minister outside to look for Theorosa and her baby. They found the carriage missing and came back in to question his wife once again. She was just as surprised as they were; she hadn't noticed her absence at all and she felt very sorry and ashamed.
They left the farmer's wife at home and raced back along the route to town. A few miles down the road was the third bridge. It wasn't quite dusk and they could see columns of smoke rising from the trees in that direction. When they came within sight of the bridge, it was consumed in flames, with the minister's carriage stopped at the edge of the fire. It was close enough to start blackening from the heat. In minutes it would be on fire, as well.
They ran to the carriage, but no one was in or around it. They searched the riverbanks, calling out Theorosa's name in panic. No answer. The bridge soon collapsed into burnt timbers. The minister and the farmer spent hours running around the land along the river and into town frantically searching for a woman they were afraid to be dead. And she was.
The bridge burned itself out and other townspeople came to search for bodies. They did find two bodies washed up on the banks a few miles down river, just next to the town proper. One was a baby girl. The other was a man, one of the construction workers, dead from enormous gashes in his stomach, leg, and neck. The remains of Theorosa were never found.
The minister mourned for a long time, not knowing what to make of his tragedy. The mystery of the dead man haunted him even more. Months later, a local boy came and knocked on his door. He said he wanted to confess what he was witness to on that fateful day.
The boy was nine years old and from a nearby town about seven miles to the northwest. He walked along the river to fish and found a good spot near Theorosa's bridge. He fished and napped all afternoon, and was startled when he heard a woman scream loudly. He rushed around a bend in the river to see the commotion and spied the unfortunate occurrence.
A man, one of the construction workers who built the bridge, was drunk and angry. He stopped Theorosa's carriage and carried her off of it. He dragged her across the bridge, somewhere upon which she lost hold of her daughter who fell on the bridge. Amidst the terrible screaming, the boy came closer and saw the man slide the baby off of the bridge with his foot into the current below. The boy stopped, terrified at the inhumanity. The violent screaming from Theorosa was frightening.
She kicked and clawed and screamed and then exhausted. Her energy waned for a moment as a coughing attack demanded it more. This time more blood spat across the the wooden planks. The man let go of her and stumbled back on his heels, falling down and breaking his bottle of liquor. He awoke from his drunken carnage and momentarily examined what had just transpired. His stupor just became a nightmare. Forgetting about Theorosa, who was heaving silently in tears a few feet away, he pulled out a cigar and lit a match. His mouth was dry for the taste of tobacco in that dark moment when guilt befell him.
Before he could get the match to the cigar, Theorosa had regained her strength, and her sorrow and tears turned into rage. During her struggle, she had pulled out a knife from the man's boot. She lunged for him as he sat in a quiet daze. The blade caught him in the neck first. She thrashed about trying to get it out, causing him to throw his match down. His wound enlarged and she flailed about him, the knife raining down on his leg and then in his belly, where she drug it and him to the side of the bridge. He was still, silent and paralyzed by shock.
The match lit the vapors of the spilled alcohol, which was dissipating in the hot summer sun. The flame caught on the dry wood and tar that helped to preserve the timber. It caught quickly and soon consumed the top boards.
Theorosa managed to shove the man off of the bridge, her tears falling in afterward. She sat on the edge of the bridge sobbing and howling after her baby, long since taken by the current to its death. The fire from the bridge caught Theorosa's body and she tried to slide off into the water, but snagged fragments of her dress on the beams. She hung from the bridge beneath surface alight as the fire consumed her and the bridge in a flash. Soon the minister and the farmer arrived, just in time to see the largest of the flames and the structure collapse.
The boy shivered as he told his story. The minister wept. No public story was told for any records. The minister didn't want anyone to know of the misery of his wife's end. He figured it would be best left obscured by time. The town records claimed it an unsolved accident, although they didn't account for the stabbed body. And no one spoke of it again for sometime.
When the minister was near the end of his life, his inquisitive nephew was in school and wanted to know more about his family history. Although it was a painful subject, he told his relative the story as he knew it, with great sadness and compassion for the deceased. The story haunted that boy and he would sometimes go to where the bridge was rebuilt and think about it.
One day he was sitting by the bank on a quiet and peaceful day. He looked across the still waters where cotton from the cottonwood trees flitted along in the smallest of breezes. Time was getting on and he stood up to head home. Turning around to the bridge he saw an ethereal shape - the shape of a woman, translucent and foggy, hovering slowly towards him. Time stood still. The air seemed to thicken. The shape approached him silently and stopped within inches of his face. Then is wailed loudly, in a screeching, hoarse voice -
Where's my child?! His stomach dropped to his knees and his heart sent one quick large pulse before stopping momentarily.
My storyteller turned and ran home as fast as his blood would allow. He heart beat in a panic, propelling his limbs faster and faster over logs and rocks and up the bank, across fields and back into town. When he arrived to his house he stopped amidst other people. Safe, real people. He quivered. His breath was gone and sweat flooded out of his skin. He was home and swore he would never go near Theorosa's Bridge again.
Incidents such as his were reported in the years since, but no one really wanted to talk about it. The mystery surrounding people's frightening confessions became legend. Very little truth was known about the bridge or the figure, except the accidental tragedy that was recorded in the town's records. It simply listed the names and date of death for those involved. The public since has treated it to countless versions. In some Theorosa's vengeance is murderous. In some she is a sad figure forever looking for her daughter.
There was even a book written about local ghost stories called
Haunted Kansas. It has a chapter on this legendary bridge. But only the old Napa Auto Parts guy knows the truth. And me, too.
And now you.
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