Cass County can be CREEPY...

The time is upon us when the veil between the quick and the dead is lifted, if only for a day.

Don’t think because you’re in Cass County that you can escape the eerie specters of spirits from undying urban legends.

Cass County has its own creepy cache of cryptic and terrifying tales that many a brave soul have tested for themselves.

One such tale is of a haunted bridge off County Road 155 in Linden, on Bear Creek Road just past a crossroad that appears so creepy, it’s as if the devil himself is warning the traveler of the terrors that lie ahead.

Lacey’s Bridge is said to be named for a dearly departed woman who was allegedly murdered there a couple of hundred years ago, or so some legends state.

Some say Lacey was pregnant, and for reasons unknown—but likely related to witchcraft—she was hung from a tree at the bridge.

Others say Lacey devised her own demise by jumping from the bridge, and unable to swim, succumbed to the waters wrath.

Some even say Lacey was with a group of fellow settlers whom were hiding from Natives during a battle. The legend goes that her comrades threw her crying child into the still waters to silence the baby’s scream, lest it give away their position. Some conclude that Lacey was so distraught by this gruesome scene that she jumped in after her child and drowned as well.

Of all the stories surrounding Lacey and her bridge, the only commonality we can find is that Lacey—with child or without—died at the bridge by one macabre means or another.

Many locals swear that at night, one can park their car a few feet from the bridge and watch quietly as a ghostly apparition in a long dress and braids wanders aimlessly on the bridge, while crying out mournfully, before eventually crossing to the other side and seemingly vaporizing into fog.

It is said that if one goes onto the bridge at night and throws a penny in the water, the penny will be tossed back up onto the bridge. Some say that if a rose is thrown over the bridge in memory of Lacey and her child, one might hear the unmistakable sound of an infant child crying. This is why Lacey’s Bridge is sometimes referred to as Crybaby Bridge.

Astonishingly enough, an even more terrifying tale originates just a mile or so past the aforementioned bridge, from a time when the phrase “Witch Hunt” was meant in the literal sense.

Many have heard of the Witch’s Tabernacle, an old cemetery dating back another couple hundred years. This is nearby an old Masonic Lodge where witches were allegedly buried—rather than burned—after being hung in a nearby tree.

Both intriguing and terrifying, these old graves are covered in capstones; some having chains for one reason or another, with pews nearby as if for some sort of mass, service, or witchy ritual (witchural?).

The back edge of the cemetery has a circular patch of dead grass year-round, which is harrowing in and of itself. This is not a spot recommended to check out as it is off the beaten path and there have been reports of spirits’ souls attaching to the soles of shoes in an effort to follow the curious home.

Ghastly Apparitions hanging in trees and floating near graves, chanting, killing electronics—car batteries, phones, flashlights—have been reported, along with the hollowed and haunting sound of Native American drumming carried on a crisp harvest breeze.

Take it from someone who has seen all of the above and just avoid this area altogether...and not just on Halloween.

Trust that you will be wishing you’d have just taken the Devil’s warning and turned back from the crossroads when you had the chance.

Once you pass the lightening scorched tree on your left before the bridge, you have already crossed into the spirit sanctuary.

“When Should we meet again? In thunder lightning or in rain?

When the hurlyburly’s done, when the battles lost and won”

“By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.”

-Shakespeare’s Three Weird Sisters, Macbeth