Stuckey's Bridge

The story goes that the Dalton Gang passed through Meridian in the late 1800s and left a member behind. Stuckey — no first name survives, if a first name ever existed — set up an inn on the old stage road beside the Chunky River, and at dusk he would walk the bridge with a lantern, hailing flatboats and flagging down tired travelers with the promise of a hot meal and a bed. The Chunky is a tributary of the Chickasawhay, and the road was the kind of quiet that rewards patience.

Once the guests slept, local memory holds, Stuckey murdered them for their belongings and buried the bodies along the riverbank — some twenty victims before the sheriff caught him. He was tried, hanged from the bridge built over the site of his work, and left swinging for five days before the noose was cut and the body dropped into the river. One telling has the 1901 construction crew uncovering the victims' remains while rebuilding the span. The file notes, in fairness to the accused, that no record of a Stuckey — or any Stuckey family — exists in Lauderdale County for the period, and that the legend's timeline bends politely around the bridge's documented construction dates.

The reports are consistent in a way that either corroborates the legend or merely proves the legend travels well. Visitors describe an old man carrying a lantern along the water's edge, loud splashes beneath the bridge attributed to the body hitting the river after the rope was cut, and the figure of a hanged man swaying from the truss. Some claim Stuckey's ghost pushed them off the bridge entirely, which at least suggests the ghost retains the family trade.

The bridge appeared on the Travel Channel's Most Terrifying Places in America in 2018 under the name Old Man Stuckey's Bridge, and a 2024 promotional poll ranked it the fifteenth spookiest street in America — a designation of unclear methodology but real dedication. Locals interviewed by the Meridian stations tend to end the segment the same way: they believe it enough to stay away after dark. A few claim to have photographed the lantern light; the file notes that lantern light photographs badly in daylight and not at all otherwise.

The bridge was designated a Mississippi Landmark on August 4, 1984, and added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 16, 1988. It remains closed to traffic, periodically vandalized and periodically repainted — a fresh coat went on in 2016 — while the Chunky River runs underneath it as indifferently as it did in 1850. The archive files it as a place where the paperwork is impeccable and the namesake is a rumor, which is not the same as saying the rumor is finished.