I hadn't been enrolled in college very long until I began hearing tales about a bridge north of town that was haunted.  It was called by all the locals "Dead Woman's Crossing," because a woman and her baby supposedly were murdered there.

During my four years of schooling, I heard many a variation of what often happened at Dead Woman's Crossing.  As the tale circulated around the campus, as it did every year with the arrival of a new Freshman class, each university student embellished it just a little more.

On any given day, the gullible Freshman might hear of such things as UFO sightings, cattle mutilations, or mysterious black-robed individuals performing supernatural acts at midnight--all  happening on the very bridge where the murder occurred. 

Every girl has a date sooner or later who wants to take her out to Dead Woman's Crossing-preferably on a night when the wind is moaning as it ripples through the trees and the sky is pitch black.  His motives are, of course, completely honorable.  

However, there actually is a bit of truth in the legend; it is even included in the Oklahoma website discussing the paranormal in Oklahoma and discussed on several websites on the internet.

As the story goes, which could easily be verified by any old-timer playing dominoes at the fire station (we didn't get many fires in Weatherford, which had a population of about 7,500, not counting the college crowd) when I was in school there, back in 1905 a woman named Kathy DeWitt James was crossing the bridge over Deer Creek with her baby when she was attacked. Not sure if it was Injuns or robbers, since both were plentiful back in those days out in wild western Oklahoma, still just a territory and yet to become a state. 

The old timers, all of whom swore to have actually been present when Ms. James' body was found, told it like this.  As Ms. James rolled on to the bridge, she was suddenly surprised by the Indians or the outlaws, presumably hiding under the bridge.

In gruesome fashion, they beheaded her, hanging her from a tree where she remained for several days before her body was discovered.   The child had disappeared, never to be seen again.   Hence, the reason for the haunting.

Supposedly, the woman's spirit haunts the site, especially late at night, searching eternally for her missing baby.

There is another version that may be closer to the truth which holds that Ms. Dewitt was killed by a prostitute with whom she had taken up after deciding to divorce her husband. The motive supposedly was robbery. That tale includes a trial for the murder and explains what happened to the child. It is told in the second website referenced below.

https://www.ghost-investigators.com/Stories/view_story.php?story_num=15

 https://www.prairieghosts.com/dwoman.html

 

 


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