Haunted bridges are a staple of ghost stories, from Virginia's notorious Bunnyman Bridge to one in Ohio where a long-dead motorcyclist can be summoned back if you sit at one end of the span and blink your headlights three times. You can feel the rush and sound as the invisible bike and rider roar past.

Up near Elizabethton, in Carter County, Tennessee, we have a haunted bridge. Charles Edwin Price tells the story in his HAINTS, WITCHES, AND BOOGERS: TALES FROM UPPER EAST TENNESEE (1992) under the title "Part of the Dark Is Moving"--as it did one night way back in the 1930s, when this tale of love, murder and ghosts begins.

A steel-girder bridge was built across the Watauga River in the community of Stony Creek in the 1920s, and shortly thereafter, the dark, secluded area underneath it became a haunt for young (and occasionally, illicit) lovers. One night in the 1930s, a young couple named Tom Jackson and Wanda Smithson found themselves the only couple making use of the privacy it afforded.

They settled in to a makeout session. Around ten PM, after full dark, Wanda called a halt before things went too far, and Tom, a gentlemanly sort who seemed to be falling in love with her, rose and pulled her to her feet. They were just about to walk back to Tom's car when they noticed someone coming down the bank toward them. They assumed it was another couple, but no second person appeared. Tom was able to see that the figure was a huge man, carrying a huge knife, just as the man rushed Wanda and stabbed her twice in the chest; she was dead in seconds.

Tom tried to run away, but was stabbed in the back and chest. With blood coming from his mouth, he managed to crawl to the top of the bank--the madman with the knife still behind him, scrambling and losing ground on the loose gravel on the bank--and race to a car that was just about to cross the bridge at the west end. He yanked the rear door open and flung himself into the back seat, landing on the lap of a woman, The woman shrieked in horror as the man with the knife tried to follow Tom into the car. The driver, providentially, floored the car and flung the killer off. Tom, lying in a bloody heap across the woman, managed to say a few words: "Wanda's dead. . .and I'm shore kilt. . ."

The couple in the car rushed him to the hospital. He managed, before he died of blood loss and shock, to tell authorities that he and Wanda had been attacked under the bridge and give a rough description of the murderer. When authorities went back to the site, however, Wanda's body was gone. Nor was there any trace of blood, as there should have been where a young woman had bled out and died. Wanda's body has, to this day, never been found; nor was a suspect ever identified in her and Tom Jackson's murders.

For awhile there were no lovers to be found under the bridge; fear of the crazy man with the knife was enough to keep them away. But no more incidents occurred, and eventually, it became a refuge for "courtin'" couples again.

It wasn't long, however, before people crossing the Stony Creek bridge around 10 PM, began to report peculiar phenomena. Drivers swore that, as they drove onto the western end of the bridge, there were sounds as if the back door were being opened and slammed behind some invisible being, and the seat would go down as if someone had sat there.

Nor was this the only odd happening. Pedestrians crossing the bridge have reported hearing footsteps behind them as they walk across. When they turn around to see who's there, they see what one young man described as "something mov[ing] that looked like a darker shadow in the shadows--like part of the dark itself was moving" (page 98 of HAINTS, WITCHES, AND BOOGERS).

One young man, so followed, stepped into some bushes at the far end of the bridge and peeked out from their shelter to see that the "part of the dark" looked as if it were wearing a monk's robe with the cowl pulled up and forward to hide its face--until the figure turned and raised its head. In the moonlight, the young man could see that there was nothing but a skull beneath the hood.

Traditionally, ghosts cannot cross water--which was lucky for this youngster. He ran all the way home--but fortunately the figure didn't follow him.

Local tradition says that the ghostly sounds of a car door opening and closing and a weight on the seat is the murdered Tom Jackson, still trying to get help for himself and Wanda Smithson.

As for the part of the dark that moves--God only knows what he is: the murderer? Or the Grim Reaper himself?

And on that uncanny note, fair thee well.