A bridge in Millstadt is said to be haunted. What’s the story behind it?

FEB. 9, 2026, 2:31 P.M.-This story was updated to correct the spelling of Millstadt in the headline.

If you ask a group of people in Millstadt about paranormal urban legends, chances are one of them will bring up Hernando’s Bridge.

There are many versions of the legend that exist today. Some say that if you go there on a full moon, you can see bodies swaying from the bridge or lying in the creek below. Others claim that upon crossing the bridge, your car will shut off and you’ll be unable to start it again.

While the supernatural happenings at the bridge are contested, many share the same origin: that a man named Hernando promised his love to a witch and, after reneging on his promise to marry her, was cursed with insanity. That insanity, legend has it, led him to murder his entire family.

But the validity of this myth is highly disputed. Like most urban legends, it is rooted in real events.

“The legend of the bridge goes back to the 50s and 60s,” says Mark Farley, a paranormal investigator for the St. Louis Paranormal Society, “and that legend stemmed from an event that happened sixty years before that.”

Farley says the original event that inspired the urban legend happened more than 150 years ago in the Saxtown ax murders, a tragic event in a small German immigrant farming community of Saxtown, where a murderer killed five members of a family inside their home. The event, which took place in 1874, was so jarring to the local community that it led to the dissolution of Saxtown and its incorporation into the town of Millstadt. The killer was never identified, though local lawmen detained and interrogated some suspects to no avail.

“There was a stigma about the murders and that location until the thirties or forties,” Farley says. “The only thing that ended that conspiracy was the fact that the murderer could in no way still be alive.”

Farley says the Paranormal Society investigated the location themselves using electronic voice phenomena, a device intended to capture spiritual voices outside the range of human hearing.

“We got really good EVP at the bridge,” Farley recalls, “it was asking a question about something we were doing or something we were using.”

Farley says spirits are everywhere, and the “voice” heard on the instrument isn’t necessarily a sign of historic crimes. The site where the murder occurred may have ghosts, he adds, but hasn’t been tested yet.

Conspiracy theories about the bridge still linger today, despite the changed landscape. The bridge was once a covered wooden structure, but now an open-air bridge of concrete and steel spans the creek, and the house where the murders took place has been demolished and replaced with a barn.

Contemporary ghost hunters help keep myths about the “haunted bridge” alive, though you’re more likely to find a pair of teenagers on a date there than a ghoulish apparition. They might have their headlights off or their engines off, claiming it’s a supernatural influence rather than a prank—just as Farley once did with his date.

“I think the rumor persisted for so long because they never actually found the Saxtown killer,” Farley said.

“I think it’s just about fun more than anything else.”

This story was originally published February 8, 2026 at 6:00 AM.