Sachs Covered Bridge

Three Confederate deserters were hanged from the rafters. Visitors photograph three faces in the beams and record EVPs saying 'Go back' and 'Help.'

Three Confederate deserters were hanged from the rafters of Sachs Covered Bridge. At least, that's how locals have been telling it since the 1870s. They'd been caught trying to slip north in Union coats during the chaos after Gettysburg, and were strung up inside the bridge as a warning. Historians have never found paperwork to prove it happened. Visitors keep photographing three pale faces in the beams anyway.

The bridge itself predates the battle by nearly a decade. David Stoner built it over Marsh Creek in 1854 for $1,544, using the lattice-truss design patented by Connecticut engineer Ithiel Town. A hundred feet of wooden beams crossed into a mesh strong enough that when Union forces marched toward the fight on July 1, 1863, and when what was left of Lee's army retreated across it in the rain two days later, the bridge held under both.

Water shows up in the second ghost story. A Confederate soldier drowned in Marsh Creek during the retreat, and visitors describe wet footprints climbing the bridge ramp on dry summer afternoons. A gasping sound rises from the water at night. You lean over the rail to look and the creek is glass.

The catalog of reported phenomena here is specific enough to read like a field guide. Clip-clop of unseen cavalry hooves across the deck. Cigar smoke with no cigar. A tap on the shoulder when you're standing alone in the middle of the span. Hair pulled from behind. Phantom lantern light swinging in the darkness beyond the north portal. EVP recordings from Ghost City Tours' investigators captured two words clearly: "Go back." And "Help."

Pennsylvania named Sachs its most historic bridge in 1938. It made the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. A 1996 flash flood tore through Marsh Creek and nearly took the structure down, but a $500,000 restoration saved it in 1997. It's pedestrian-only now, sitting in a quiet field off Waterworks Road, red paint on warped wood.

In daylight it's a beautiful piece of 19th-century engineering. At night the local ghost-tour companies warn visitors against lingering, and the rangers don't argue with them.

One of the deserters, in the story, was said to be only 16.