Crybaby Bridge

“Every city in the US has a ‘crybaby bridge’, a bridge that’s haunted by a baby that died there.  If you walk across the bridges at night, you can hear the babies crying.”

 

The informant, from Oklahoma, broadens a usually more local belief (and, indeed, he did view it as more a local story, because his town in Oklahoma has a “crybaby bridge”) into a more general one, by stating that every city in the US has a crybaby bridge.  In the information age, it’s easier to find out about other cities that have similar legends, possibly leading to the change in the belief.

The actual belief itself — that you can hear the cries of babies who had died on the bridge whilst driving across it at night — is a general sort of haunting story, made more unique by the fact that its setting is a bridge, a usually open, public place in comparison to the dark, enclosed spaces that usually claimed to be haunted.