December 22, 2024 

Investigations Conducted By The Louisville Ghost Hunters Society:

THE ELMORE RIDER
By Rhonda Jurgenson

So, have you got an itch to take a little trip? What are you doing March 21?

If you are interested exploring something paranormal in nature, you may want to take a trip to Elmore, Ohio and wait around for the infamous Elmore Rider to appear.

The Elmore Rider is a folklore legend with origins dating back to 1919. As legends are apt to do, the story of the Elmore Rider changes depending upon who the teller of the story is. One version of the story goes along these lines:

A young man had been sent to fight in World War One and was forced to bid a temporary goodbye to his girl back home. Once the war was over, this fellow purchased a motorcycle and drove to his girlfriend’s home to surprise her with his return to the states. Upon arrival he was informed that his girlfriend had met someone else while he was away fighting and that they had recently become engaged. Irate from hearing the news of her betrayal, he jumped on his motorcycle and sped away.

Not too far from the girl’s driveway, the road took a sharp turn and crossed over a bridge. In his fit of rage, the man lost control of his motorcycle on this road and careened wildly off the bridge to the rocks below. Authorities later found his crumpled body and the twisted metal that was once his motorcycle lying in the muddy rocks at the bottom of the ravine the bridge crossed. His decapitated head lay a few feet away from his body.

In the years that followed the crash of the Elmore Rider there have been several claims of his return. Supposedly on the anniversary of his death, March 21, the headless Elmore Rider with his headlight glaring, drives from his girlfriend’s house, down the curved road and then vanishes at the midpoint on the bridge. Some people even claim to have recorded his return.

This excerpt is from Troy Taylor’s “Ghosts of the Prairie” website:

Richard Gill was a student at nearby Bowling Green University and had an avid interest in the paranormal. As March 21 neared, he and a friend decided to stake out the haunted bridge. They brought along a movie camera, a still camera and a tape recorder. They parked their car on the far side of the bridge and then followed the procedure that, legend had it, caused the ghost light to appear. He blinked his car lights three times and then honked his horn three times. Suddenly, the light appeared near the farmhouse and flew toward the bridge, where it vanished.

Excited now, they repeated the experiment, this time crossing the bridge with a string. This way, they would learn if it was a physical object that crossed the bridge rather than a supernatural one. They repeated the summoning procedure and the light appeared again, following the same course. The string remained where they had left it!

Now it was time for the next step ... one of them would stand in the middle of the bridge as the light approached. The light appeared again and Gill was puzzled when his friend did not return to the car. He went to check on him and found him in a ditch by the side of the road ... badly beaten! He had not idea what had hit him and recalled nothing other than watching the light approach.
Somehow, Gill convinced his friend to try one last experiment. They parked on the same side of the bridge from the direction the light came from and pointed their car in the opposite direction. This time after summoning the light, they started moving away from it. The light overtook them, passed through the car and vanished … and Gill and his friend kept right on driving!

What did the cameras and recorder pick up? The movie film was totally blank, the still camera picked up only a light source and the recorder picked up some sort of high-pitched noise. Was it the ghost light? There was no way to tell.

It is said that if you stand on the bridge at the precise time (know one seems to know what time this is) when the Elmore Rider comes along, you will end up being injured in some form or fashion but if you stand on the side of the road, he will merely pass you by. At one point in the early ‘80s the bridge had become such an attraction, police would actually park on the bridge at night to make sure no one would stop to investigate. The police don’t have to worry about that today though. It seems that the Elmore Rider legend is beginning to fade away. I can’t even find out precisely where the actual bridge is located. The most popular location seems to be just across the county line in Sandusky County near Lindsey. There is supposed to be a bridge on Fought Road that crosses Mud Creek and this is supposed to be “the” bridge!

Should you find yourself bored one night and decide to take a road trip, maybe you’ll find out for yourself if the legend is worth the drive. Be forewarned though … don’t stand on the bridge or you may end up feeling the wrath of the dreaded Elmore Rider!

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* The Louisville Ghost Hunters Society Investigations are not always public, we do confidential investigations of haunted residences which will not be reported on our website.

If you have a haunted house, or a unexplained phenomenon that you would like us to investigate - please do not hesitate to contact us, and rest assured that your investigation will remain strictly confidential (unless you wish to release our findings to the public).

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