Can a bridge be haunted? According to some P.A. residents… maybe?
Located north of Prince Albert is Little Red River Park. It’s a nice place, with several trails to hike. It’s also a popular place to get drunk and light things on fire, if the litter, the bottles and the discarded gitch in the parking lots is any indication.
It’s also the home of Hands Bridge, the strange ghost bridge of Prince Albert.
Once we brought up the subject with friends who grew up in the area, we started to hear a lot of bizarre rumours about the bridge about a vehicle that plunged into the river. Depending on which friend – or Google source – you are willing to believe, some also say it was a school bus. According to conjecture, urban legends and drunken tall tales, several children died in the crash.
So the stories go, you would drive out at night and park your vehicle on the bridge. If you stayed there long enough, tiny handprints would start to appear on the windows of your car.
So the stories go.
The bridge has been closed down and blocked off since 2011, so you likely won’t be able to get your vehicle haunt on – do ghosts ever haunt cyclists? But there is a lot of colourful graffiti adorning the concrete archway, including a nifty stencil of sign language symbols spelling out “Hands Bridge.”
Interestingly enough, there is a second ghost bridge south of Prince Albert that looks a lot like Hands Bridge. Not a lot of info on it, but it does feature some very similar spray paint tags, including a message to “jump.”
Never, ever take the advice of bridge vandals seriously.
