Stone Quarry Bridge Investigation

The Stone Quarry Bridge is a historic Pratt truss bridge which carries Township Road 1000N across the Embarras River in Coles County, Illinois. The bridge is a double-intersection Pratt truss bridge, a variant of the Pratt truss in which the diagonal supports cross multiple panels; it is the only bridge of its type in the county. It is 180 feet (55 m) long, and its eastern and western portals are 14 feet 10 inches (4.52 m) and 16 feet (4.9 m) high respectively. Built in 1883 by the King Iron Bridge Company, the bridge is the oldest truss bridge in the county as well as the oldest bridge in the county which is still open to traffic.

The bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 30, 1981.

Address: located on E CR 1000N, just west of N CR 2000E or about 1/3 mile north of SR 16, east of Charleston, Illinois 61920

While there are no specific reports of hauntings or paranormal activity at this location, locales still visit this bridge at night hoping to collect evidence of ghosts. It is located next to the Stone Quarries of Coles County.

The Ghost Research Society investigated Stone Quarry Bridge July1, 2017 and the team members included: Stan Suho and Dale Kaczmarek with help from Jason Snider from Crawford County Ghost Hunters

Equipment set up: Only handheld equipment was employed here including the Ovilus X, digital recorders and cameras, Tri-Field Natural EM Meter and camcorder.

Personal experiences: Almost as soon as I stepped foot on the bridge, a wave of dizziness overcame me. It came on very sudden and only seemed to affect me while I was physically on the bridge. This was a daylight investigation and we only conducted a short fourteen minute Ovilus X session.

Evidence collected:

Couch stone.MPG – while conducting an Ovilus X session on the bridge, the word “couch” came through in dictionary mode. Snider commented that sometimes people throw couches over the bridge and before we left the area indeed found a black couch thrown over the right side of the bridge.

Stone stone.MPG – while conducting an Ovilus X session on the bridge, the very first word spoken by the Ovilus X session in dictionary mode was “stone.” The name of the bridge is Stone Quarry Bridge!

Words spoken by the Ovilus X in dictionary mode: stone, tilde, though, couch, liberty, calcium, muddy, thick, house, products, Z, hey, Oremus and ah.

Conclusions: While we received no direct responses to questions asked, the Ovilus X did kick out several words that were very relevant to the location that we were at including “stone” for Stone Quarry Bridge, “couch” a couch was later found thrown over the bridge and the combination words “muddy” and “thick” which could be used to describe the condition of the river that day since a motorboat had just cruised through the area perhaps stirring up the mud on the bottom of the river.

The word “Oremus” also came through and according to Wikipedia, Oremus in Latin means “Let us pray.”

This was an incredibly interesting session even though not much made sense in phonetic mode. It is a location that might have to be revisited sometime in the future!