Horror story of Broken Bridge

I consider it my ill-hap that I haven’t had many scary stories to experience firsthand. But this horror story right here had the balls to send a chill down my spines. It had a weird thrill that made me kind of enjoy it, and then to share it with the world every time somebody inquired was as exhilarating as reliving it all over again.

Our very own Horror Story

Not only was Chennai an alien land for us, but it holed secrets we were yet to explore. There were abandoned territories we didn’t know about, and the city was afraid to share them with strangers like us.

There were three of us scaling down the sands of Besant Nagar Beach, or as it is more popularly known as Elliot’s Beach, one fine evening looking for some adventure. It had been a dull day for us, so the only beach that we adored, seemed like a pleasant respite to blow the heat off. Soon the jaded sun called it a day whilst the night gradually started growing on us.

We were unsatisfied souls; nature had nothing new to offer, so we decided to look for Nearest Attractions in our mobiles. My phone beamed up with a suggestion Broken Bridge, not 1 km from where we were standing. Little did we know, a rare haunting, our own short horror story lurked in that corner waiting for us to trudge upon.

All three of us agreed to it and started to waddle through the sand back to our bikes. We had two of them. I was alone on mine, whilst my friends shared theirs.

Heading towards Broken Bridge

As I inadvertently became the navigator, I started speeding ahead looking for the route to the promised place. It required us to pass by a fisherman’s village, which made us slow down when some men started blathering in Tamil pointing at us. We didn’t comprehend so we didn’t bother and carefully crossed the village.

The path ahead was more like a ranch road and yet there were no street lights on either sides. It was pitch black out there. If it weren’t for our bike lights, we would be groping in the dark for hours. The road ran parallel to the beach, so we could see the sea to our right. The surge of the sea was silent like the dead. We could make out occasional waves running wild to meet the sand sealed edge of the land.

We passed a police barricade that read STOP or something. But with no one around to stop us we continued nevertheless. We talked whilst we drove adjacent to each other. We had almost covered 1 km but the place was nowhere to be found. My friend’s head began to cloud up in doubt. He tried to stop us midway saying the place looks unsafe, but I was adamant.

“Chill bro! What could happen?”

But he would retort with – someone might come with a knife and kill us. I would try to pacify him with,

“All three of us? And what would we do? Help him out?”

“Do not panic!” became my motto that day. Somehow I was trying to fill them up with pluck for an adventure, and I didn’t really care at what cost.

Daring Further

Both the sides of the road were painted in plants. The dark flora surrounded us like people watching us venture into the netherworld.

As we inched further, one of my friends gave up saying,

“We have dared too far. There could be a dead end ahead, for all we know.”

Just to our right, a dirt road seemed to summon us suggesting we might have come to the right spot. However, from what the panorama offered I was convinced it wasn’t the place we set out for. But since the dices stopped rolling, we decided to take a pit stop right at the edge of the dirt track.

As we stopped on the main road, I tried to check the GPS status. I was busy locating where we were and whether we had reached our destination. To my surprise I found my GPS location, the blue triangle that shows us where we are, changing abruptly within a matter of seconds. Sometimes it would show us near Broken Bridge, sometimes it would depict us miles away and then sometimes it was a random unmarked place. I laughed it off showing it to my friends who were already discussing plundering stories they had encountered growing up. Then suddenly my mobile died. I tried switching it on. But the battery was completely drained off. I asked my friend to check his GPS for the place. He said it wasn’t working either.

Towards the Beach

I beseeched them both to follow my lead, as I wanted to head towards the beach to experience some real tranquility. The vista looked too fascinating to miss and so with a roar of engine I stormed into the dirt road. But to my surprise, it wasn’t a dirt road that I had sped unto. It was stark beach sand. The beach extended its sway right to the road we were standing on. Confused, both my tires had ended up in sand and I was stuck. My friends pulled me out of it, safe on the road once again. I urged them to tread on foot to the beach. They reluctantly gave in.

As we moved ahead towards the beach, leaving our bikes behind in the backdrop, the sea noise started getting louder. The moonlight came to our aid, acting up as our searchlight and we didn’t really care to take our mobile phones out for light. We prattled nonsensically till we neared the sea, when all of a sudden my eyes fell on a black thing lying on the sand.

My friend switched on his mobile light to check it out. It seemed somebody’s slippers, well kept, pointing towards the beach as if somebody had taken them out before going for a swim.

There was a lot of black stuff lying around as I lead them further in. When I turned around to check, my friends had already stopped right there where the slippers were, and were saying – “something looks fishy”.

The Company

He focused the flicker of his mobile light towards the other black stuff, only to find out a wallet, a saree, and other tattered clothes in black casually left on the ground. They must have been old and ragged, it was hard to tell. I kept hearing them in the backdrop asking me to stop and return as I scoured the area for anything living. Suddenly my eyes fell on something moving on the beach just where the sea touches the sand. It was black in color too. Amidst all this pandemonium, I pointed towards the water and blurted out,

“Hey look! There’s something there!”

Before I could even say that, I found my friends already retreating. For the fear of being left out in what seemed like a probable ghost story, I ran too, joining them and then racing past them towards our bike. As we ran wild it seemed we were followed by dogs since there was a lot of barking noise that came from behind. The thrill of running from something was both funny and frightening at the same time. As we ran, within those gasps I tried to convey that it was just a dog, but too many noises vexed us, giving an impression there was a whole pack of them pouncing on us, following us.

We didn’t stop till we reached our bikes. I turned around to check what was all that about. No dogs followed. There was nothing that came chasing us down the road. My friends made fun of me saying I was the one who ran the fastest, whilst I tried to dodge them with the real explanation, still looking out towards that misty horizon as our engines purred once again, and we headed back.

On Returning to our Place

The first thing that we did the moment we reached home was search ‘Broken Bridge’ on Google. As we typed those letters, Google began suggesting us results that blew us away. The first suggestion was “Broken Bridge Haunted”. We looked at each other in sheer disbelief. We searched for it and started reading blogs that branded the place to be haunted.

“We had just been there! For Christ’s Sake! We were rigth there.”

As my friend read it, I decided to put my mobile on charge. It had switched off so I decided to plug in. Surprisingly when I switched it on the battery showed 45%. The sheer terror!

I snapped open a related blog that I found and started reading it. There was a warning in it that said “Do not visit Broken Bridge after 9 PM”, and we were there at 9:30 PM. With every statement like that we looked at each other with a blank expression.  I kept reading. It said the place is supposedly a suicide spot and that many people have died there. Then popped a horror story, and then another one. With every link-click there was a horror story for us related to what we had visited.

For people who had just experienced a haunting, things like that only fuel curiosity. Amidst all that ruckus, my attention moved towards the date of the blog. I was taken aback to find out, it read ‘the next day’s’ date. How can a blog be written in the future? It was like a perfect icing to our own little horror story.

I cross checked the date then figured it was way past 12 AM and that we had already ushered into another day. But still, what were the odds?

The Final Verdict

As I try to think about this horror story, it does seem like there was nothing wrong with any of it, and that human mind has a habit of playing tricks on you. What I had witnessed was a contour of a dog, so it could be, it was just a black dog. We were super afraid. I believe that made us sway towards bizarre conclusions.

As I try hard not to get drifted away by our horror story, I think about other factors unequivocally. My mobile was already nuts, so it wasn’t a surprise for me when I found it was working weirdly. Also, the written blog  had an explanation.

So from a distance everything ghostly seems aloof. But to have truly lived the horror story, watching it up close, the account tells a different scary story altogether: a blood-curdling one hiding in that pitch darkness in a forlorn spot.

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Special Thanks to Samya Sourabh Pattnaik and Animesh Adhikari