Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

After watching the movie “Bridges of Madison County”, my husband and I decided we just had to go see all those lovely red covered bridges in south central Iowa. We are from eastern Iowa originally but lived in southern Minnesota when we journeyed down to Winterset, Iowa.

We had a lovely time finding and walking through each of the seven bridges. We even found the “lost” bridge that had been accidentally burned down by a foolish man trying to put his and his sweethearts initials into the McBride bridge using a blow torch!

Over time we have been down to the bridges many times. On one such visit I found a ghost story book in a gift shop and low and behold one of the covered bridges was named in it! Well, down we headed to check out the tale of the Roseman Covered Bridge… It seems back at the turn of the last century a man had  gotten a lonely unmarried girl pregnant and her father finally got the name of the father of the baby out of her and demanded that he marry the girl. her father promised the young man land and a fine horse to seal the deal as well. Well the day approached and the young man rode his horse to the father’s house for a civil ceremony. He came in the house, looked at his would be bride and stated “I can not go through with the marriage!”; he bolted out of the house jumped on his horse and raced away with her father and a few other townsmen not far behind him…here is where the legend of the Roseman Bridge haunting comes in: as the young man raced through the Roseman Bridge his horse came out the other end empty saddled and still racing away. The men chasing the horse caught up to the empty saddled beast but no trace of the man was ever found and no-one ever knew what became of him…the men saw him on the horse going into the bridge but all saw an empty saddled horse appear out the other side!

So there I stood on the far end of the bridge trying to hear the alleged horses hoofs racing through the bridge… a warm summer evening, a soft breeze blowing and me hearing nothing even remotely close to horses hooves clomping across the bridge. I started looking at the lazy creek below and noticed a few frogs hopping about and water bugs skating on the surface of the water, my concentration leaving the bridge for the water below it.

That is when it happened! Sure enough I heard hooves! I really and truly did! My husband who was in the gift shop some yards away came over to see if I had heard anything and he could tell by my face I had! We stood there together in the evening dusk and I swear to you it sounded just like a wagon strolling through the bridge as we stood there together… we love our covered bridges even Roseman Bridge otherwise known as The haunted bridge!

Sent in by Pat, Copyright 2010 TrueGhostTales.com