There are many online resources that speak of Arlington, Texas' "Screaming Bridge", but the link below is to the only one that gets it right. Photos in the article show an old bridge on a closed road said by many to be "Screaming Bridge", but in reality, what is depicted is a concrete bridge that was closed some 20-25 years after the deaths of the teen girls.
Screaming Bridge Arlington Texas - Texas Ghost Stories"Trying to hear the screams "
The legend is bound up in actual events of 1961 and possibly blended with another multi-vehicle wreck in the mid to late 1970’s that resulted in multiple casualties. As the scene of the original screaming bridge changed, then became inaccessible, the story attached itself to another nearby bridge.
Photo looking east at the concrete bridge, see white arrow in Google image below.
Numerous websites and paranormal investigators have chronicled the search for spirits at the site and continue to offer tours of cemeteries and nearby landmarks. Every new generation of local youth are exposed to the legend and many seek to hear “the screams of the girls” for themselves.
On the night of February 4th, 1961 a car filled with six Arlington teenage girls plunged off a burned out wooden bridge where then Arlington-Bedford Road (renamed Greenbelt Rd) approached the railroad tracks in far North Arlington. The tracks themselves run parallel to a drainage ditch (mistakenly reported to be a creek in various newspaper articles of that time) which the bridge spanned.
The Arlington High School coeds were out joyriding after leaving a movie that evening. As the girls’ car approached the crossing at approximately 45 mph, the incline of Arlington-Bedford Rd. and darkness prevented them from seeing the bridge was out. At 9:30 pm their vehicle left the road and impacted the other side of the ravine (which sloped up to the old Rock Island Railroad track) landing upside down.
Instantly killed were Mary Lou Goldner, 16, and Claudie Jean Reeves, 17. By 2am Sunday morning Kathy Fleming arrived dead on arrival at Baylor Hospital bring the total deaths to three. Injured were Donna Post, Dorothy Ibsen, and Jo Ann Anderson with multiple fractures (arms, jaws) and concussions. Jo Ann Anderson remained in critical condition after undergoing emergency brain surgery that Sunday morning.
Newspaper articles of February 6th (headlined “Death Bridge Involved in Probe”) reveal that another youth, Bill Young, had slowed for a train crossing the road just beyond the bridge over the ditch and noticed the bridge was out, stopping just three feet shy of the ravine. He had narrowly missed plunging off the road himself and tried to warn the girls’ vehicle by honking his horn while he was backing up. It is thought his warning may have frightened the driver (into speeding up to pass his vehicle, contributing to their speed when they left the road. It was this witness who notified authorities of the accident.
Six ambulances rushed the victims to Arlington Memorial Hospital where they received emergency care before being transferred to Baylor Hospital in Dallas. Since none of the girls were carrying id, police and medical workers only learned their identities when Dorothy Ibsen regained consciousness long enough to give her parents names and name of the other girls in the car.
My map of the sites. Yellow arrow points to the site of the bridge the girls died on, over a drainage ditch just below (south) of the railroad tracks. White arrow points to the concrete bridge that most mistakenly believe was the site of the crash, even tho that bridge is concrete and there are no railroad tracks nearby.
