Black Bridge

My in-laws reside close to Black Bridge in Stevens Point, WI. It's located close to the Stora Enso paper mill in town. This happened about a year ago on a bright, sunny July afternoon. It was too hot to stay indoors and I was getting really antsy. I didn't want to stay home because the weather was too beautiful to waste indoors. My husband was working on building a greenhouse for my mother in law so I dragged his younger sisters, ages 12 and 15, with me on a walk.

His younger sisters were telling ghost stories as we head over to Black Bridge. One of the girls said Black Bridge was haunted and that people have seen a dark figure walk around the area. I laughed at their stories, saying that it's just an urban legend and brushed it off my shoulders. When we approached Black Bridge, there was a gate that held back people from slipping into the river. We stood on a ledge overlooking the river and the other side of town. On the river, we can see people on their boats and fishing.

The girls started talking about the stories they've heard about Black Bridge, I laughed at the non-sense. I leaned over the ledge to look below and I saw open shells of crayfish on rocks. I thought who would be crazy enough to go down there and catch crayfishes. Again, I brushed it off as if it was nothing and continued enjoying the scenery.

All of a sudden I heard a splashing sound coming from the waters. I looked down and saw pebbles dropping into the water. I leaned closer to look below the ledge at the bottom of the river to see who was throwing those pebbles but I could not locate anyone. The girls also heard this and tried to see where the pebbles were coming from. I thought this was a mean joke some local kids were playing with us because we were talking about ghost stories. So I told them to ignore it and we continued talking.

We heard the noise again. This time more rocks were thrown into the water and the splashes were louder. To our surprise when we looked down to the riverbank to see who was doing it, we didn't see anyone throwing those rocks but rocks were literally flying off the ground into the river. It was as if an invisible person was throwing rocks from the side of the river into the water.

I realized that this was not a human, local kid joke but something from the "other" side. We screamed and ran all the way back to my parents in law. Just when I thought nothing could happen on a beautiful, bright sunny day - anything anywhere is possible.