Emily's Bridge, Stowe: The Story Behind Vermont's Most Famous Ghost

The Gold Brook Covered Bridge is easy to miss. It is a single 48-foot span of weathered boards on Covered Bridge Road, a few miles southeast of Stowe village, with a brook rattling over rocks below and a handful of houses close by. Cars still drive through it every day. It is a genuine piece of Vermont history: built around 1844, it is the only 19th-century covered bridge left in Stowe and the last timber Howe truss in the state still carrying a public road.

It is also, by a long way, the most famous haunted place in Vermont. Almost nobody calls it the Gold Brook Bridge. It is Emily’s Bridge, after a young woman said to have died here and never left. Visitors come from all over to stand inside it after dark, and the Travel Channel put it on television in 2018. This guide covers the real bridge, the many versions of the legend, the research that traced where the story began, and how to visit without upsetting the people who live next door.

History of the Gold Brook Covered Bridge

Stowe once had several covered bridges over its brooks and rivers. The Gold Brook bridge is the only one from the 1800s that survives. Local builder John W. Smith put it up around 1844, using a design that was brand new at the time: William Howe had patented his truss, which combines timber diagonals with vertical iron rods, only in 1840. That makes the Stowe Hollow bridge one of the earliest Howe trusses anywhere, and today it is the only timber Howe truss in Vermont still carrying traffic on a public road.

It is a modest structure. The single span is 48.5 feet long and 17 feet wide, with a 13.5-foot roadway of wooden planks, vertical board siding that stops short of the eaves to let light in, and a gabled metal roof. It rests on stone abutments laid without mortar. The bridge carries Covered Bridge Road over Gold Brook just north of where Gold Brook Road and Stowe Hollow Road meet, in a quiet residential corner of town.

The bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 1, 1974, under the name Gold Brook Covered Bridge. Some older references call it the Stowe Hollow Bridge. By the time of the listing, though, it already had another name, and that name is the reason most people find it today.

Historian Jill Mudgett, writing for Vermont Public in 2012, pointed out that a book about Stowe published in the 1930s describes this bridge without any mention of a ghost. The ghost arrives decades later, and how it arrived is one of the better pieces of detective work in New England folklore.

The legend of Emily

The story most people tell

The usual version goes like this. In the 1850s a young woman named Emily, from a poor family, fell in love with a young man from a wealthy one. His parents would not allow the marriage, so the couple planned to elope. He asked her to meet him at the bridge at midnight. He never came. Heartbroken, Emily either hanged herself from the rafters or threw herself into the brook below, and her spirit has haunted the bridge ever since.

Other versions move the date to the 1920s or the 1940s, or have Emily killed when her horse and carriage, or her car, went off the bridge into the water. In some she was thrown from a horse onto the rocks; in others she was murdered. The Stowe Historical Society’s former director Barbara Baraw noted that if anyone jumped, the higher bridge on Gold Brook Road would have made more sense. “It’s a great story,” she told the Stowe Reporter, “but it probably didn’t happen.”

What visitors report

The stories told about the bridge are mostly about cars and touch. People say they returned to their vehicles to find long scratches on the paint, or felt something grab or scratch them on the deck. Others describe footsteps on the planks when no one else is there, whispers, screams, strange lights and a white figure. Some accounts say Emily is especially hostile to men, a detail that fits the jilted-bride version of the tale.

Vermont author Joseph Citro, who has written more about the state’s ghosts than anyone, calls Emily “Vermont’s most famous spook”. In his book Passing Strange he recorded locals who said something circled their parked car and shook it. Citro has also said plainly that he does not believe there is a ghost here, and that he could find no historical evidence that an Emily ever existed.

Where the story really came from

Several people have tried to find Emily in the records, and none has succeeded. The Stowe Historical Society has no record of a woman named Emily dying on either Stowe Hollow bridge, Citro found no death certificate or report of a murder, and the Vermont Historical Society now says the legend has largely been debunked because no evidence of a death at the site has been found.

The paper trail starts in the early 1970s. Jill Mudgett traced it to a book on Lamoille County’s covered bridges by local historian Bob Hagerman. Hagerman reprinted parts of a high school paper by a student named Susan, who had collected several versions of the story and concluded that the most likely one involved no death at all. In a 1978 newspaper interview Hagerman added that a friend of Susan’s had confessed the two girls used a Ouija board to write part of the paper. A copy of that paper is at the Vermont Historical Society.

There is a second claim, too. Longtime Stowe Reporter columnist Nancy Stead said she and a friend, Hazel Carlson, made the story up in the early 1970s to scare children swimming at a nearby pond. A reader disputed that, saying the bridge was already called haunted in the 1960s. Either way, the evidence points to a ghost story born within living memory, not a tragedy from the 1800s.

Why the story lasts

None of this has slowed the visitors. If anything, the mystery of who Emily was keeps people coming. The bridge is dark, narrow and loud with running water at night, and its acoustics carry every sound. That is part of the appeal, and, as the neighbors will tell you, part of the problem.

Where to look

• Inside the bridge: the planked deck and the Howe truss rafters, where Emily is said to have hanged herself and where visitors report footsteps and touches.
• The portals: where people stop their cars and later report scratches; never park on or in the bridge.
• The brook below: Gold Brook runs over rocks under the bridge; look at the stone abutments from the road shoulder rather than climbing down at night.
• The Gold Brook Road bridge: the higher crossing nearby that the historical society suggested would fit the jumping version of the story better.

Visiting Emily's Bridge

The bridge is on Covered Bridge Road, just off Stowe Hollow Road and Gold Brook Road, about ten minutes from Stowe village. It is a public road, free to visit and open at all hours, and cars use it, so it is not a place to stand in the middle and set up tripods. There is no parking lot: pull well off the road where it is safe and legal, and walk in.

Please be considerate. In 2013 neighbors told the Stowe Reporter that late-night visitors, street racers and partiers kept them awake, and that the bridge’s acoustics send every shout straight to their bedroom windows. Ten residents met the town manager and police chief, and Stowe police increased night patrols. The chief noted that being at the bridge is legal unless you block traffic. Most ghost hunters, residents said, were respectful. Go early in the evening, keep voices low, and leave nothing behind.

Stowe makes an easy base. The Green Mountain Inn on Main Street has its own famous ghost, Boots Berry, and the Brass Lantern Inn just north of the village has guests who hear parties in empty rooms. The Old Stagecoach Inn in Waterbury is 20 minutes away.

• Visiting A working one-lane road bridge, open at all hours; there is no parking lot, so pull well off the road and respect the homes beside it
• Ghost hunting Public road; no organized ghost hunts. Stowe police patrol at night after neighbor complaints

Tips for your visit

• Visit at dusk or early evening rather than the small hours, out of respect for the neighbors.
• Park completely off the road and never stop a car inside the bridge.
• Bring a flashlight: there are no lights on the bridge or the brook.
• Look at the truss from inside: it is a rare early Howe design.
• Stay at the Green Mountain Inn in Stowe village and make a night of Stowe’s ghost stories.

More haunted places nearby

• Green Mountain Inn, Stowe: Boots Berry’s inn on Main Street, 10 minutes away
• Brass Lantern Inn, Stowe: a bed and breakfast where guests hear parties in empty rooms
• Old Stagecoach Inn, Waterbury: Nettie Spencer’s inn, 20 minutes south
• Haunted places in Vermont: Wilson Castle, the Bennington Triangle and more
• Haunted places in Vermont

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: Gold Brook Covered Bridge
• Stowe Reporter: Activity at local haunt causes headaches for Stowe Hollow neighbors (2013)
• Stowe Reporter: How haunted is Stowe? (2009)
• Vermont Historical Society: Emily's Bridge
• Vermont Public: Jill Mudgett, Emily's Bridge (2012)
• Burlington Free Press: The history of 7 haunted Vermont locations