Dead Woman's Crossing, Weatherford: The 1905 Murder and the Legend

Dead Woman’s Crossing is a small bridge over Deer Creek in Custer County, in western Oklahoma, a few miles northeast of Weatherford and just north of Interstate 40. The tiny community around it carries the name on maps as Dead Women Crossing. There is nothing to see but a concrete bridge, a creek and farmland.

Unlike many haunted bridges, this one has a real crime behind it. In 1905 a schoolteacher named Katie DeWitt James was shot and her body left by the creek, and the woman blamed for it poisoned herself before she could be tried. The ghost story grew from there: that Katie still walks the creek calling for her baby. Here is what the records and the reporting say, what is legend, and how to visit safely.

The murder of Katie DeWitt James

Katie DeWitt James was a young schoolteacher in Custer County. On July 6, 1905 she filed for divorce from her husband, Martin James, on grounds of cruelty, and the next day, July 7, her father Henry DeWitt saw her and her 14-month-old daughter Lulu Belle onto a train at Custer City. She was going to visit a cousin in Ripley. Her husband did not come to see her off.

Weeks passed with no word. Her father went to the authorities, and a sheriff recommended a private detective from Oklahoma City, Sam Bartell. Bartell learned that on the train Katie had met a woman named Fannie Norton, who went by Mrs. Ham and was said to be a prostitute. Norton took Katie and the baby to the home of her brother-in-law, William Moore, near Clinton, and the next morning the three left in a buggy, saying they would be back in a few hours.

Witnesses said the buggy turned into a field near Deer Creek and came out about 45 minutes later, driven fast, with Norton alone. Norton left the baby with a farm boy and asked that his mother look after her; the child was unhurt, but her clothes were stained with blood. Oklahoma Today reports that Bartell found Lulu Belle with a family near Weatherford and later caught up with Norton in Shawnee. She denied killing anyone, and that same day she took poison and died.

On August 31, 1905, a man taking his son fishing at Deer Creek found a skull and a skeleton in a ragged dress, with a .38 caliber revolver nearby. The skull had a bullet hole, and some accounts say the head had been severed. Henry DeWitt identified his daughter’s remains. A Custer County coroner’s jury ruled that Fannie Norton had killed her, and robbery, of the small sum Katie was known to carry, was given as the likely motive.

Many questions were never answered: whether the two women really met by chance, whether anyone else was involved, and why Katie left the train where she did. Martin James took custody of Lulu Belle. Oklahoma Today reports that she died of polio in 1913, at about eight years old. A book, Dead Woman’s Crossing: The Legacy of a Territorial Murder, and many podcasts have since gone over the case.

The ghost of Dead Woman's Crossing

A mother calling for her baby

The heart of the legend is that Katie’s spirit walks the banks of Deer Creek at night, calling for Lulu Belle. It is a story that makes sense of a real tragedy: a mother separated from her child and killed by the creek. There is no record of anyone seeing her, only the story told for generations.

Wagon wheels on the bridge

The most repeated detail is that if you stand under the bridge and keep very still, you can hear wagon wheels rolling overhead, as though Fannie Norton’s buggy were still crossing. The original crossing was a wooden wagon bridge; the concrete bridge that stands now replaced it after floods washed the old one out.

A crying baby and lights

Oklahoma Today collected other local lore: a baby heard crying from the creek bank below the bridge, orbs of light nearby, and a woman’s voice calling out at night. It also noted, fairly, that some of these reports may be tall tales from bored teenagers. Its own writer, who visited late at night, saw and heard nothing. OnlyInYourState puts the bridge among Oklahoma’s crybaby bridge legends.

Where to look

• Under the bridge: where people say they hear wagon wheels overhead.
• The creek banks: where Katie is said to call for her baby and where her remains were found in 1905.
• The bridge deck: seen from the roadside; please do not stop in the traffic lane.

Visiting Dead Woman's Crossing

Atlas Obscura and Oklahoma Today give the same directions: leave Interstate 40 at exit 84, drive half a mile north to the stop sign, go a quarter mile east, then follow the blacktop north for about half a mile to the bridge. It is a public county road, so you can see the bridge and the creek from the roadside at any time, but there are no facilities, signs or parking area.

Go in daylight if you can, pull fully off the road, and do not climb down into the creek, which floods after rain. The land around the bridge is private farmland. Weatherford, a few miles south, has food and fuel, and the Route 66 towns along I-40 make it an easy stop on a western Oklahoma road trip.

• Visiting A public county road bridge; see it from the road
• Ghost hunting No organized access; rural road at night, take care

Tips for your visit

• Visit in daylight and park well off the road; this is a working rural road.
• Stay on the public right of way and out of the creek.
• Read up on the case first: the real story is more striking than the legend.
• Combine it with a Route 66 drive through Weatherford and Clinton.
• Leave nothing behind; it is a place where a woman was killed.

More haunted places nearby

• The Noble House, Watonga: a 1912 boarding house turned B and B about an hour north
• Historic Fort Reno, El Reno: ghost tours at a frontier fort on Route 66
• Haunted hotels in Oklahoma: where to stay the night
• Haunted places in Oklahoma

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Wikipedia: Dead Women Crossing, Oklahoma
• Oklahoma Today: Spooky Oklahoma (October 2020)
• Atlas Obscura: Dead Woman's Crossing
• The Ghost in My Machine: Haunted road trip, Dead Woman's Crossing
• Oklahoma Today: Six Oklahoma locales to get you in the Halloween spirit
• OnlyInYourState: Dead Woman's Crossing haunted bridge