The Horseman of Iron Bridge Road
I just went to Pennsylvania this past weekend and I was talking to a few of my friends and I spoke to my parents. We remember this short little legend about Iron Bridge Road and the headless horseman. Since there doesn’t seem to be anything on the internet about it and I can’t find the book I had originally read it in, I discussed it with some others who had heard of it to see if they remembered it the way I did.
The story goes that a man was drinking in a pub in Lancaster in the days of horses and carriages and the like but his wife was extremely needy and pushy. She was very often angered when her husband would come home from his favorite watering hole drunk and stumbling so she had set a curfew for her husband. He had to be home in Columbia by midnight or, pun intended, heads would roll. As the hours and minutes ticked by and the clock moved closer to midnight, everyone in the pub started to chide him that he would never make it to Columbia by midnight even if he could push his horse hard. With one final swig of his drink, he slammed down the glass and announced drunkenly, “I’ll be in Columbia by midnight or I’ll be in Hell.”
As he pushed his horse harder and faster, they reached a dangerous gallop on the dark country roads and, unfortunately for the poor inebriated fellow, he managed to get his neck caught on a low-hanging branch on Iron Bridge Road. It is unknown whether or not the tree branch actually severed his head (that being fairly difficult) but what is known is that late in the night people have reported hearing galloping hoof-beats and the sound of a horse that’s been pushed too hard breathing and huffing in the night.
(Thanks to @fishthinktank for this submission! I had a lot of trouble finding things about Iron Bridge Road from my resources, even though I’ve heard this legend before!)