On Bristol Road

Neshaminy Warwick Presbyterian Church is one of those old pre-Revolutionary ones in Bucks County, Pa. It’s located at a curve on the Neshaminy Creek. Bristol Road, the one that goes by the church, takes a sharp turning as it goes over the bridge which crosses the creek. Various attempts have been made over the years to straighten and widen things a little bit, but although the bridge has been re-built for safety reasons its location hasn’t been changed, in part for historic reasons, but mostly because of the odd turning of the creek.

As the story goes, once upon a time, a long time ago, a young woman in a white dress was killed at night on the bridge. There may or may not have been a mist rising from the creek at the time, depending on the teller. She was either riding in a carriage which tried to take the turn too quickly and flipped, crushing her between the carriage and the bridge, or she was waiting on the bridge for a rendezvous with her lover and was hit by a carriage which didn’t see her. After a couple of hundred years, the story has gotten a little blurry. In any event, on certain dark nights, it is said that she can be seen on the bridge and her appearance has been blamed for more than a few close encounters between sides of the bridge and vehicles, even during my early lifetime.

Personally, I always figured it was a matter of careless driving or speeding and didn’t give much credence to it. That was before the time I was up there visiting my parents and had occasion to travel by the church one dark night–and damned near hit the bridge when I saw her.