Terrifying & True | Urban Legends of Spook Hollow: Ghost Stories from America’s Haunted Roads - Weekly Spooky: Scary Stories for Halloween

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
America is full of places nicknamed spook colla, dark valleys
and back roads, where lanterns bob without hands, where a
headless ghost taps your car at midnight, and were a
creature with horns guards a forgotten cemetery. Tonight we follow

(00:22):
the map of fear itself and find out how much
is legend what you were about to beat? You burne
based on witness accounts, testimonies, and public record. This is

(00:44):
terrifying and true. I was driving down a highway in
upstate New York the first time I saw the name
spook Hollow actually written on a road sign, and since

(01:05):
then I've always wanted to know what exactly is it.
It's a name that marks places where daylight ends and
folklore begins all over the United States. In Pennsylvania, a
stranger never made it out alive. In New York, a
guardian spirit lingered for centuries. In Missouri, a horned figure

(01:29):
is said to stalk a lonely graveyard. And in my
home of Ohio, a covered bridge keeps a terrible secret.
Are these merely stories or something more? We're going to
dive deep after this. There's something about a dark, lonely hollow.

(02:00):
That practically begs for a ghost story. Across the United States,
especially in older towns and rural regions, you'll find places
nicknamed or sometimes legitimately named spook hollow. It might be
a twisting back road, a wooded valley, or a quiet

(02:23):
stream bed, but the name is always a warning and
an invitation. It whispers ghosts rome. Here, the term spook
itself means ghost, a word inherited from early Dutch settlers

(02:44):
in America, so spook hollow literally means ghost hollow, a
place where spirits are said to linger, and indeed, in
local lore from New York to West Virginia, from Pennsylvania
to Missouri and beyond, spook hollows are the stage for

(03:07):
some of the most spooky tales in American folklore. How
did this tradition start? It turns out that nearly every
region has its own spook collo legend. In parts of
the country, especially the Appellachians and old Dutch settled areas,

(03:28):
the concept of a haunted hollow is practically a cultural institution.
In Pennsylvania, for example, there are numerous hollows informally called
spook hollow, and most share a similar origin story locals
say the hollow is haunted by the ghost of a

(03:50):
wayfaring stranger who met a grim fate there. Over the generations,
these stories have been passed around and campfires and front porches,
transforming ordinary ravines and backwoods into legendary haunts. Tonight, we'll

(04:11):
explore the origins of the spook hollow tradition and journey
through some of the most famous and chilling spook hollow
legends around the country. From the ghost of a benevolent
Native American in New York to the malevolent goat Man
of Missouri from tragic Lover's quarrel in Pennsylvania to a

(04:33):
headless specter in Ohio. Each tale offers a dose of
campfire spookiness, rooted in local history or folklore, all of
them fun and creepy, like a good ghost story should be.
But we won't shy away from the truth behind the tales.

(04:57):
After all, part of the magic of spook hollow where
facts end and legend begins. So grab a flashlight and
let's take a moonlit tour of America's spook hollows. But
just remember, if you hear a twig snap or a

(05:18):
whisper in the dark, it's probably nothing. Probably the first
question seems obvious, Why do so many places end up
dubbed spook hollow in the first place. The answer is
twofold language and lore. As we mentioned, the word spook

(05:40):
came into American English through early Dutch influence and caught
on to describe anything spectral or eerie. Meanwhile, the word
hollow or holler, an Appellationian dialect, simply means a small
valley or low place between hills, often wooded, shadowy, and remote.

(06:05):
In early American settlement days, hollows were the perfect setting
for spooky happenings. They were isolated and dark at night,
making them natural backdrops for ghost stories. By the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, it seems every region had a notorious

(06:27):
hollow with a ghostly nickname. In fact, a mid twentieth
century folklorest observed that many counties in Pennsylvania have a
place locals called spook hollow. Even if that name doesn't
always appear on official maps, the prevalence of the name

(06:47):
hints at a widespread tradition. Whenever something uncanny or frightening
allegedly happened in a hollow, folks would start calling it
spook hollow. The name itself became a tradition, almost an
American folk genre of its own. So what kind of

(07:11):
legends gave rise to these names? Interestingly, there are some
common themes that pop up in spook hollow lore across
different states. One of the most enduring is the tale
of the murdered pedlar or wandering traveler. Early America saw

(07:32):
many iterant pedlars and tradesmen trekking lonely roads to sell
their wares. Tragically, some of these travelers fell victim to
highwaymen or unscrupulous locals. Whether true or not, stories sprang
up about pedlars being robbed and killed on the road,

(07:55):
their restless ghosts haunting the spot forever after. West Virginia,
for instance, is unusually rich in murdered peddlar ghost tales.
Practically every corner of the mountain state has a story
of an unlucky salesman whose spirit lingers in vengeance, and

(08:19):
many a spook hollow from Pennsylvania down through Appalachia has
at its core the legend of a wayfarer done wrong.
Another common thread is love and betrayal leading to violence
and hauntings. Domestic tragedies in secluded cabins, jealous rage, revenge

(08:44):
from beyond the grave. These dramatic elements also fuel spook
hollow legends. The dark, hidden nature of a hollow makes
it the perfect stage for a clandestine affair or a
secret crime. When the secret comes out, bang, a gunshot

(09:06):
might echo through the woods and a ghost story is born.
We'll encounter an example of this in just a Moment,
with a Pennsylvania tale of love, murder and eerie screams
on the wind. It is important to note that while

(09:35):
these legends are told in whispers to scare the local
kids and sometimes nosy outsiders, they're usually folklore rather than fact.
Sometimes there is a kernel of truth, a real historical
incident that sparked the tale, but over the decades the

(09:59):
story grows taller and spookier, more supernatural. We'll point out
where the embellishments likely are, but we'll also let the
tales work there spooky magic. After all, part of the
fun of the spook hollow tradition is suspending disbelief, at

(10:23):
least until the fire dies down. Now, let's shine our
lantern light on a few spook hollows and the ghostly
legends that made them famous. Many spook hollow stories hearken
back to the early days of America, times of pioneers, pedlars,

(10:48):
and peril on the frontier. Picture a weary traveling businessman
trudging through a wooded hollow with his pack of goods
as dusk begins to fall. He might stop at a
lonely cabin to ask for a night's shelter and maybe

(11:09):
a hot meal. Sometimes he was welcomed kindly, but sometimes
greed or desperation led his hosts to murder the traveler
for the money in his pack, burying his body in
the hollow's soil, and if local legend is to be believed,

(11:35):
his troubled spirit would then rise, unable to rest, haunting
that hollow ever after. It's a narrative you'll hear in
various forms from New England to the Deep South, but
nowhere was it embraced more than an Appalachia. As one

(12:00):
folklorist noted, West Virginia folklore is full of ghost stories
involving murdered pedlars who were killed for their money. Change
the state and the names, and you have similar tales
in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Ohio. Often the haunting takes the

(12:24):
form of strange lights seen bobbing along a hollow, said
to be the pedlar's lantern, or the sound of footsteps
and a knock on a door that never comes. In
some stories, the pedlar's ghost is helpful warning others away

(12:46):
from the dangerous hollow, but more often it's a mournful
presence searching for justice or the return of a stolen fortune.
One evocative example comes from spook Hollow Farm, a small

(13:07):
hallow on an old farm in West Virginia. According to legend,
back in pioneer days, a French traveling peddler came through
the area and he never made it out. Locals say
he was robbed and murdered, his body hidden away in

(13:29):
the woods. Although it was later discovered who committed the crime.
Depending on the story teller, frontier justice may have been served.
The hollow never shook its eerie reputation. People began avoiding
the place after dark, claiming the murdered frenchman's ghost still

(13:53):
wandered there, perhaps looking for his stolen possessions or for
a proper burial. Generations later, the name spook Hollow stuck,
a grim reminder of the crime is their proof of
this pedlar's murder. Not really. It lives on as an

(14:18):
oral tale, but ask the old timers and they'll tell
you to steer clear of that farm lane at night
monsieur ghost making his nightly rounds. Pennsylvania has its share
of pedlar ghosts as well. In fact, as noted earlier,

(14:41):
many Pennsylvania counties have hollows known as Spook Hollow, and
most tie back to a ghostly pedlar legend. One such
tale comes from Clearfield County, PA, where the road to
Spook Hollow is spoken in hushed tones. The legend there

(15:04):
isn't just about a ghostly salesman, but adds a twist
of diabolical intrigue. Local lore says a man who lived
near the hollow sold his soul to the devil during
the Revolutionary War, and after cheating death in battle thanks

(15:25):
to this dark pact, he returned home only to meet
a mysterious and evil fate in that very hollow. Some
versions say he became a miscreant, terrorizing the area until
the devil came to collect his due. The details vary,

(15:49):
but what's consistent is that the hollow gained a reputation
for uncanny happenings. Travelers horses would shy refuse to go
down the road, Strange apparitions were reported, and eventually folks
just avoided the area altogether. The name spook Hollow took

(16:14):
hold because, as one account put it, even the bravest
men quickened their pace when passing through, just in case. Today,
it's hard to separate fact from fiction in Clearfield spook
Hollow tale. There is no written record of a soul

(16:36):
selling soldier, for instance, but the story's persistence shows how
a bit of folklore can cast a long shadow over
what appears to be a simple place. Not all Boullo

(17:01):
ghosts are anonymous strangers, however, Some are very personal phantoms
born of love, betrayal, and violence. A chilling example comes
from a spook hollow near Newville, Pennsylvania. This one doesn't

(17:21):
date back to colonial times, but to the early nineteen hundreds,
and it has the juicy plot of a soap opera
turned deadly. According to local legend, a man who lived
in that hollow was carrying on an illicit affair, cheating

(17:42):
on his wife in a secluded cabin in the woods.
For a while, he thought he'd kept it secret, but
of course, secrets in a small community have a way
of coming out. When his wife discovered the infidelity, her
reaction was explosive. Literally, one fateful day, in a fit

(18:09):
of rage and heartbreak, she took up a firearm, marched
to that very cabin, and shot dead both her husband
and his lover. The bloody deed might have ended the
mortal love triangle, but it was just the beginning of

(18:30):
the haunting. Ever since, locals swear that on certain nights,
the hollow echoes with phantom screams, the lingering cries of
the pair as they were murdered. Imagine walking that lonely
road and hearing a distant, disembodied scream filtering through the trees.

(18:59):
No wonder they call it spook Collow. Now did this
double murder actually happen? There are no confirmed records of it,
and details like names and dates have been lost to
time or perhaps never existed. This tale may well be

(19:26):
a morality story, concocted to discourage adulterous trysts. A ghostly
I told you so from the beyond. But spend a
night camping in those woods with the wind moaning like
a woman crying, and you just might start believing the

(19:48):
unhappy couple's spirits are still replaying their final moments. These
Pioneer era and early twentieth century stories illustrate how spook
hollow legends often reflect the fears and social values of
their time. The murdered peddler tales speak to fears of

(20:13):
violence on the lawless frontier and guilt over harming and
innocent stranger. The cheating lover murder ghost speaks to marital
betrayal and revenge. In all cases, the hollow becomes a
kind of mortal theater where an unresolved crime or injustice

(20:36):
keeps the supernatural world in play. It's spooky fun for
us to recount now, but back in the day such
tales also carried warnings don't rob people or you'll be cursed,
don't cheat on your spouse or else. Of course, as

(20:57):
listeners around a campfire where ghostly here for the chills,
not necessarily the life lessons and chills you shall have
because our next stop is a spook hollow story that's
less tragedy and more other worldly. For that, we have

(21:20):
to travel to a quiet New York village with a
very famous phantom. Not all ghosts in the hollow are
frightening or vengeful. In the village of Nyack, New York,
there's a spook Hollow story that is as much local

(21:42):
history as it is ghostly lore, and its specter is
almost a sympathetic figure. This tale takes us back over
three hundred years to the days when the Lenni Lenape
people lived in the Lower Hudson Valley alongside the Dutch colonists.

(22:05):
One member of the Lenape to Pan tribe was a
man named Cambowen, who became something of a local legend himself.
Camboen was known to the Dutch settlers in the Nyak
area as a friendly and helpful soul, a bridge between cultures.

(22:26):
He spoke fluent Dutch and often assisted the early Nayakers
with hunting, fishing, and even diplomacy. In short, he was
well regarded and trusted by both his own people and
the newcomers. Then one winter, Cambowen disappeared. He stayed behind

(22:52):
when most of his tribe moved away from the encroaching Dutch,
so when he vanished, people took notice. For a while,
no one knew what became of him, but odd signs
in the woods suggested Cambowen might still be around in spirit.

(23:14):
Villagers would stumble on moccasin footprints in the snow leading
toward his old glen, or catch the whiff of wood
smoke from his empty hut when no living person was there.
These eerie occurrences went on for years. Eventually the settlers

(23:35):
realized that, given the passage of time, Cambowen had to
be long dead, so what was leaving those tracks and smoke.
The conclusion Cambowen's ghost was lingering in his beloved glen

(23:56):
by the brook. The area around that brook and glen
earned the name spook Hollow because of all the reported
Camboen related hauntings. Remember spook is Dutch for ghost, so
it was the Dutch settlers themselves who likely started calling

(24:16):
it that. For generations afterward, people in Nyac knew that
a certain secluded woodsy hollow just north of the Old
Mountain Road was haunted by the friendly Native American spirit,
but as time passed, fewer remembered the full story behind

(24:38):
the name. They just knew the hollow was spooky, perhaps
not even realizing they were echoing the old Dutch term.
Flash forward to the late nineteenth century during development of
the area. Human bones were discovered in a ravine near

(25:00):
the brook, the remains of a man in a hard
to reach spot. Local historians like George H. Budkey believed
these were likely Cambowen's bones. Finally unearthed after all that time,
it seems Cambowen's mysterious disappearance was solved centuries too late.

(25:25):
He had died alone out in his glen, and in hindsight,
folks attributed the ghostly footprints and smoke to his spirit
keeping watch over the land. Once his body was found,
one might hope that Cambowen rested in peace. There's even

(25:47):
an anecdote that some sympathetic locals the story suggests maybe
the nuns at a nearby retreat performed a quiet ritual
like burning sage to honor Camboen's spirit according to his
people's customs. Niak spook Hollo stands out because it's a

(26:09):
case where the ghost story and the name of the
place have roots in real history. Camboen was very real,
and his presence was significant enough that his disappearance inspired
a lasting legend. The tone of the haunting is almost

(26:31):
gentle sightings of a guardian spirit, rather than a frightening ghoul.
Nyak even embraces its supernatural heritage. The village famously had

(26:51):
a legally declared haunted house in the nineteen nineties, and
it hosts Halloween festivals every year. The Camboan tale adds
to that mystique. As one local writer put it, Niak
has four hundred years of recorded history, with plenty of

(27:11):
time for legends, yarns, and even legally verifiable oddities to accumulate.
Spooky stories are woven into the fabric of the community
to day. Spook Hollow Road in Upper Nyak runs through

(27:33):
that very glen by a stream, and though modern homes
line parts of it, if you walk there on a
quiet evening, you might still feel a Sylvan solitude that
sets it apart. It's the kind of peace that Camboen

(27:55):
apparently loved, and perhaps the reason his spirit chose to linger.
Next time you find yourself in Niak, take a moment
near the brook, Listen to the leaves rustle and the
water flow, and maybe whisper a kindness to Camboen, the

(28:19):
man and ghost who gave Spook Hollow its name. Not
all ghost stories are meant to scare. Some like this
remind us of the people who came before us, and
the marks, scene and unseen they leave behind. Of course,

(28:45):
not every spook hollow ghost is so benevolent. For a
much more menacing hollow dweller, we must venture to the Midwest,
where a legendary goat man and his witchy mother are
said to lurk in the shadows of an ozark hollow.

(29:07):
Deep in the forests of Phelps County, Missouri, between the
towns of Rallagh and Saint James lies a winding county
lane formerly known as Pine Hollow Road, but ask locals
and they know it by a far eerier name, spoo

(29:29):
Collo Road. This remote stretch leads to an old graveyard,
the Pine Hill Cemetery, and has a reputation that would
make any ghost hunter giddy. For decades, maybe even as
far back as the late eighteen hundreds, people have whispered

(29:50):
about a monster haunting spoo Collo. They call him the
goat Man, and his legend is the stuff of Ozark nightmares.
Imagine driving down a lonely Missouri road at night, dense
woods pressing in on both sides. The only light is

(30:14):
from your headlights cutting through the darkness, you pass an old,
overgrown cemetery where the tombstones peek out from tangled weeds.
That is Pine Hill Cemetery. Locals will warn you don't
get out of the car, for it's said that a

(30:37):
half human, half goat creature stalks these woods and the graveyard.
According to legend, the goat man is the offspring of
a practitioner of dark witchcraft, born to a local witch
who worshiped Satan himself. The creature has the body of

(31:01):
a hulking man, but with grotesque goat like features, horns
curling from his head, and hoofs that leave giant, cloven
footprints bigger than a bear's tracks in the mud. Both
the witch the Mother and the goat Man the Sun

(31:23):
are rumored to be buried in Pine Hill Cemetery, which
perhaps is why their spirits or undead forms guard the
place so fiercely. Those who venture in to spook Hollow
at night report all manner of terrifying phenomena. One common

(31:48):
claim is encountering phantom vehicles. You'll see headlights or hear
an engine revving, as if a car or truck is
suddenly barreling down the narrow road. Toward you, but then
it vanishes without a trace. Some actually think this particular

(32:12):
scare might be the work of a very human local
man who takes pleasure in scaring trespassers and nosy thrill seekers. Indeed,
there is talk of a dangerous resident who will chase
you off and could be behind those ghost cars. In

(32:35):
other words, in spook collo, the living can be just
as scary as the dead. Electronics notoriously malfunction in the hollow,
as countless visitors have attested, flashlights die and the cameras

(33:00):
refuse to work when you need the most. It's as
if the goat man carries an aura that snuffs out light,
or maybe, as skeptics would say, the sheer fear makes
people fumble with their gear. Photographs taken out there often

(33:23):
come out inexplicably blank or distorted, adding to the lore
that the goat man doesn't like to be photographed. If
you're brave or foolish enough to wander off the road
toward an old abandoned school bus rusting in the woods,

(33:45):
you might see something truly unnerving. Many have reported seeing
red glowing eyes peering from the buses hollowed interior. Some
rationalize it as just tail lights or reflectors catching your
very flashlight beam, or maybe a couple of raccoons eyes

(34:10):
catching a shine. But in the moment, when you see
those two crimson points light up in the dark, it
feels exactly like the stare of a demon. Legend holds
that a vagrant once lived and perhaps died in that

(34:32):
derelict bus, and that the evil spirit of the goat
Man sometimes hangs out there watching intruders. So when twin
red eyes blink from the shadows, is it a ghost,
a monster, or just an optical illusion? Hard to say

(34:56):
when your heart is pounding through your chest. Of course,
the centerpiece of the legend is the goat Man himself.
People have claimed not only to find those oversized hoof
prints around the cemetery, but even to glimpse a towering,

(35:17):
shaggy figure with horns lurking among the trees. Hunters in
these woods sometimes speak of hearing bizarre, bleeding roars that
don't sound like any known animal. And then there are
the truly harrowing stories those who disrespect the hollow or

(35:41):
the graveyard, something like rowdy teenagers knocking over headstones or
thrill seekers mocking the goat Man aloud supposedly leave with
mysterious burns or scratch marks on their bodies. This feeds

(36:01):
the notion that the goat Man, or whatever entity inhabits
Spook Hollow actively attacks those it deems to be trespassers
or vandals. It's the kind of tale that insures local
kids dare each other to test it, and also ensures

(36:24):
they run screaming at the first sound of a snapped twig.
How long has this goat man been scaring Phelps County
at least since the mid twentieth century, if not earlier.
Some reports suggest that even soldiers stationed at nearby Fort

(36:47):
Leonard Wood heard stories of a goat like monster in
the woods, and a few claimed to have seen inexplicable
things when driving through Spook Road late at night. One
imaginative and likely tongue in cheek twist from a more

(37:09):
modern retelling posited that perhaps the goat man was the
result of some secret military experiment like gene splicing a
goat and a human, But that sounds like a classic
tall tale to spice up a ghost story. More likely,

(37:32):
the goat man legend grew organically out of older Ozark
folklore about witchcraft and protective spirits. Every region has its
monster in the woods, and for this part of Missouri,
goat Man became the superstar. Skeptics point out that Pine

(37:55):
Hill Cemetery was a popular hangout for local teens and
college kids over the years. What better place to test
one's courage. So many of the phenomena can be explained
by pranks and overactive imaginations. The phantom cars could be

(38:17):
a cranky neighbor in a pickup flicking on the high
beams to scare people off, and the failing flashlights well
perhaps cheap batteries. The red eyes in the bus could
just be reflectors or animals, and those scratches could be
from brambles in the dark rather than demonic clause. But

(38:44):
when you're out in spook hollow, skepticism is hard to maintain.
The place just feels charged with an uncanny energy. As
one paranormal sight described, visitors consiststantly report feelings of being
watched and overwhelming unease near that old bus. It's as

(39:09):
if something unseen is trailing your every step. Could it
be the goat Man himself or the ghost of his
wicked witch mother guarding their domain. No one can say
for sure, and those who might have gotten a too

(39:31):
close look aren't eager to stick around for a second encounter.
The goat Man of spook Collo is a prime example
of how a local legend can snowball into a full
fledged tradition. It blends ghost story, monster tale, and cautionary

(39:53):
fable don't mess with graves kids into one enduring piece
of folklore. True or not, it has put that little
Missouri Hollow on the paranormal map. If you're ever driving
Route sixty six through Phelps County and get the itch

(40:14):
for adventure, you can detour to spook Hollow Road, But
consider yourself warned. You may get more than a fun scare.
In goat Man's territory. The line between playing along with
the legend and becoming part of it can get mighty thin.

(40:40):
After that harrowing journey, let's head to our final stop,
A spook Hollow tale of tragedy and terror from my
home state. This one combines two classic ghost motifs, a
deadly car accident and a headless ghost looking for what

(41:04):
it lost. On a quiet country back road near the
tiny village of Oregonia, Ohio. There's an old covered bridge
that locals avoid when they can, especially around midnight. The

(41:29):
reason this bridge, which spans a creek in a sharp
bend of the road, is the centerpiece of spook Hollow
Bridge legend. It's a tale with all the makings of
a classic campfire story, reckless teenagers, a horrific accident, and

(41:52):
a ghost that lingers seeking its missing piece. Let's set scene.
Shall we Oregonia is a very small town in southwestern Ohio,
surrounded by rural farmland and woods. Not much ever, really

(42:13):
happens in Oregonia, except for that one tragic night many
years ago when a car full of high school students
was out joy riding. As the story goes, a group
of teams were speeding down the winding road one night,

(42:33):
perhaps pumped full of youthful bravado and maybe a bit
of booze, when they approached the ninety degree turn leading
on to the old covered bridge, over confident they thought
they could handle it at high speed. They were wrong.

(42:54):
The car failed to make the sharp turn, plunging off
the road and into the creek below. The wreck was disastrous.
According to the legend, Several of the teens were killed
in the crash, one girl suffered an especially gruesome fate.

(43:15):
She was decapitated during the accident. In the chaotic aftermath,
rescuers purportedly never found the girl's severed head, at least
not immediately. In some retellings, it was never found at all,
which could be an embellishment to add mystery. More likely

(43:40):
it was found later, or that detail is pure fiction.
Public record of the crash is scant, suggesting the lore
has overtaken the fact, But this grisly detail is crucial
to the ghost story that followed. Not long after the tragedy,

(44:03):
people who visited the bridge at night began to report
strange experiences. The most common story is that if you
park your car on Spook Hollow Bridge at midnight and
turn off your lights, something incredible and terrifying will happen.

(44:26):
You sit there in the dark, heart pounding, daring your
body to flash the headlights three times to summon any spirits.
There's an expectant silence, and then bang, something hits your car.
Hard panicked, you might think you've been struck by another vehicle,

(44:51):
but there's nothing. When you look. Some swear it sounds
like a rock thumping the trunk or a fist pounding
on the side panel. Others say it's lighter, more like
a pebble, or more creepily, like the sound of a

(45:13):
severed head rolling onto your hood. Yes you heard that right.
Local lore holds that the ghost of the decapitated girl
haunts the bridge, desperately searching for her lost head. If
you're on the bridge at the witching hour, she might

(45:35):
mistake your car for the one that killed her, or
perhaps she's trying to simply get your attention. The thud
on the car is said to be the impact of
her ghostly head hitting the vehicle, re enacting the moment
it flew off in the crash. Some who have undergone

(45:58):
the ritual claim to have seen in the rear view
mirror a fleeting reflection the figure of a girl, headless,
standing by the side of the road or wandering the
bridge before vanishing into the night. It's the kind of
story that college students at nearby universities love to test.

(46:24):
A midnight ride out to spook Hollow Bridge to see
if the legend is true. Many emerge with spooky anecdotes,
helped DeLong no doubt by the power of suggestion and
the creepiness of a covered bridge at midnight. Even those

(46:45):
who experience nothing out of the ordinary often scare themselves
silly in the process. Every little scrape of a tree
branch on the roof or PLoP of a frog in
the creek can send the imagination into overdrive. And if
an acorn falls on the hood, well, that's definitely a

(47:10):
ghostly head. Right. To be totally fair, there might have
been a real accident that inspired this tale. Rural roads
are notoriously dangerous for teen drivers, and Ohio folklore is
full of so called cry baby bridges and gravity hill

(47:32):
legends that involve phantom pushes or thumps on cars, usually
tied to some kind of tragedy. The spook Collo Bridge
story is basically a headless variation on those themes. It
plays on both the guilt one might feel for a

(47:53):
life cut short and the innate horror of decapitation, one
of the ultimate taboos and fears. It also resonates with
Washington Irving's classic the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, where the
headless horseman throws a severed head at Ichabod Crane. Here,

(48:17):
our poor ghostly girl hurls her own head or what's
left of it at your car, as if to say,
help me find it. Now. Have people truly seen a
headless apparition there? It's hard to pin down a credible

(48:38):
eye witness. Most accounts are friend of a friend's stories,
but intriguingly, some older locals recall that spot had a
reputation for being haunted even before the modern legend took shape.

(48:59):
It could be that the bridge or the area itself
was eerie to begin with. Many covered bridges are as
they creak and echo and evoke a bygone era. The
added tragedy just gave a concrete narrative to a free
floating spookiness. True or not, the spook Hollow Bridge haunting

(49:25):
has become part of local tradition. During the Halloween season,
it's not uncommon to find a gaggle of cars parked
near the bridge around midnight, their occupants working up the
nerve to kill the headlights and summon the ghost. Usually

(49:45):
all they get is the thrill of fear and a
lot of laughter afterward at how jumpy they became. But
every so often someone comes back convinced, convinced that the
legend gave them a scare. They'll never forget a sudden

(50:06):
thump for which they cannot account, a misty form on
the bridge that might have been just fog, or might
have been wearing a prom dress with no head above
the neck. As with all these spook hollow stories, belief

(50:32):
is in the eye of the beholder. If you want
a fright, you'll probably find one. If you go looking
to debunk, you'll find perfectly logical explanations for any noise
or shadow. But on a dark night on that lonely

(50:53):
Ohio road, with the wooden beams of the old bridge
looming ahead, and the knowledge of what happened there in
the back of your mind, logic can quickly give way
to goosebumps. The headless girl of spook Hollow Bridge has

(51:16):
entered Ohio's pantheon of ghostly lore, ensuring that her story,
real or imagined, lives on each time someone retells it
by firelight or tests it on a dare. As we

(51:38):
emerge from these tales of spook hollows across America, a
pattern comes into focus. Each story is unique to its place,
shaped by local history, geography, and culture, yet they all
share that deliciously creepy spirit of the case Vamphire ghost story.

(52:02):
These hollows are more than just dips in the landscape,
their vessels for our collective love of a good scare
and a good story. Generation after generation, the legends adapt
and persist. A peddler's ghost from eighteen hundred's Appalachia can

(52:26):
inspire the theme of a haunted hay ride. In the
two thousands, a tragic road accident in Ohio becomes a
rite of passage dare for local teens. A Native American's
memory is kept alive through a village's haunted lore. It's

(52:46):
no surprise, then, that the idea of spook hollow has
also made its way into modern Halloween entertainment. The most
notable example is an Illinois Spook Hallo in Marquette Heights, Illinois,
an annual haunted attraction that proudly bills itself as the

(53:07):
longest running outdoor haunted house in the state. Every October
since nineteen seventy nine, volunteers transform a patch of woods,
fittingly a hollow in the landscape into a trilogy of
terror with elaborate sets and scare actors. The very name

(53:29):
spook show was chosen because it evokes that classic American
Halloween Vibe Something Spooky in the Hollow behind the ballpark.
A community tradition of fun frights, the event draws over
ten thousand people each year, proving that what started as

(53:52):
an old fashioned local spook trail can evolve into a
major production without losing its homegrown charm. But you don't
have to visit a commercial haunt to experience spook Hollow.
You can find the real deal on many a map

(54:13):
if you know where to look. By some counts, dozens
of US states have at least one locale with the
nickname spook Hollow or spooky Hollow. They might not all
have well known ghost stories attached, and we skip those
without any juicy lore, but the frequency of the name

(54:35):
tells you how ingrained the idea is. America's early settlers
and their descendants saw plenty of reasons to label a
place haunted. Maybe a tragedy occurred there, or maybe the
landscape itself gnarled trees, misty swamp, strange echoes gave people

(54:59):
the he Bejeebi's. Once a spooky reputation takes hold, it
tends to stick. After all, humans love a mystery, and
what's more mysterious than a patch of dark woods where
something might be lurking. If you find yourself traveling and

(55:23):
you spot a road sign for spook Hollow Road or
here a local refer to the old Spooky Hollow, don't
just shrug it off. Consider asking about it, maybe in daylight.
To be safe, you might be treated to a local

(55:44):
legend that isn't in any guide book or podcast, a
piece of living folklore. Just remember to be respectful if
you go looking for the ghost. These places deserve caution,
not just because of alleged spirits, but because they're often

(56:05):
on private land or can be physically dangerous. Unstable bridges,
wild animals, real life curmudgeons with shotguns, any number of
dangers await in the end. Whether or not you believe
in ghosts, spookalo will continue to be an American tradition

(56:26):
as long as we love a good scare, and, judging
by the thriving haunted house industry, the endless horror films
about Backwood's terror, and the way we still delight in
telling ghost stories myself included, that's not changing anytime soon.

(56:47):
So on the next crisp autumn night, if you want
a thrill, gather some friends, dim the lights, or better yet,
step into the woods and spin one of these yarns.
Tell them about the ghostly pedlar, or the goat man
or the headless girl. Feel that shiver as the wind

(57:11):
blows and the leave skidter. You'll be carrying on a
grand tradition and keeping the spirit of spook Hollo alive
for future generations of wide eyed listeners. Terrifying and True
is narrated by Enrique Kuto. It's executive produced by Robfields

(57:33):
and bobble Topia dot com and produced by Dan Wilder,
with original theme music by Ray Mattis. If you have
a story you think we should cover on Terrifying and True,
send us an email at Weekly Spooky at gmail dot com,
and if you want to support us for as little
as one dollar a month, go to Weekly Spooky dot
com slash Join. Your support for as little as one

(57:54):
dollar a month keeps the show going. And speaking of
I want to say an extra special thank you to
our Patreon podcast boosters, folks who pay a little bit
more to hear their name at the end of the show,
and they are Johnny Nicks, Kate and Lulu, Jessica Fuller,
Mike Escuey, Jenny Green, Amber Hansford, Karen we Met, Jack
Ker and Craig Cohen. Thank you all so much, and

(58:14):
thank you for listening. We'll see you all right here
next time. On Terrifying and True

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Terrifying & True | Urban Legends of Spook Hollow: Ghost Stories from America’s Haunted Roads

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Terrifying & True | Urban Legends of Spook Hollow: Ghost Stories from America’s Haunted Roads