Haunted Roads of Western Pennsylvania

by Thomas White

  The sound of galloping hooves and the horrible crash of the carriage has been reported in the hollow over the years, drawing legend trippers. Faint cries of “help me!” or moans of agony are heard emanating from the woods. This legend is similar to the one reported on Mystery Mile, though it appears to be the older of the two. It is likely that through frequent retellings, the story migrated downriver to that location, so now it is told in both places.

  A dark and ominous fog or mist has frequently been mentioned by nighttime visitors to Mudlick Hollow. Sometimes it appears in conjunction with the cries for help and the sound of the crash; other times it appears on its own, surrounding vehicles that linger too long. One legend tripper once informed the authors that she saw a dark shape in the fog, emerging from the woods. Other online accounts mention a mysterious white shape near the bend where the crash is thought to have occurred.

  This mysterious fog or mist is sometimes linked to an Indian curse or some type of lingering Indian enchantment. The Indians of the upper Ohio River Valley once used Bear Hill in Vanport as a lookout. Perhaps more ominously for Mudlick Hollow, Patrick Mulvanon’s extravagant house was built right next to an Indian burial ground. This can clearly be seen in the Centennial Atlas of Beaver County from 1876 on the map of Vanport. With such an obvious association, it is no wonder that such a legend would develop at the hollow, especially given the tragic death of Anna Mines.

  The northern end of Mudlick Hollow Road. Authors’ collection.

  We have already discussed the implications of Indian curses, but is there any truth to the other two accidents? Again, there seems to be no direct evidence of a carriage accident killing a newly married couple. Since it allegedly happened so long ago, even if it was real we may not find a record of it. Patrick Mulvanon, on the other hand, was flesh and blood. His property exists on maps and his story, or at least much of it, is remembered in the community. Though we have conflicting reports as to whether Anna Mines actually died in the house, it is clear that the wedding never happened. In Vanport, the mansion briefly known as the “white house” quickly became known as “Mulvanon’s Folly.” The house sat empty until 1850, when Captain Thomas Greenlee purchased it for his family. Other families had few problems there, though it was once struck by lightning. It was eventually taken and torn down by the state when building the Beaver Valley Expressway.

  It seems that these two Beaver county roads, in spite of having some clear urban legends associated with them, still have enough real mysteries and a historical basis to continue to draw legend trippers. Certainly the legends borrow from one another and may sometimes be intertwined because of their relative closeness (as in the case of the carriage accident), but each is unique enough to stand on its own. The mysterious animal behavior on Mystery Mile, while limited to subjective observation, is definitely bizarre. The historical reality of Patrick Mulvanon and the Indian burial sites on his property lend a sense of authenticity to Mudlick Hollow’s ghost stories. For those who visit these roads, their belief or disbelief in the legends will come down to personal experience in the end.

  A map of Mudlick Hollow from the 1876 Centennial Atlas of Beaver County. Note the Indian burial grounds on the Mulvanon/Greenlee properties. Courtesy of the Duquesne University Archives and Special Collections.

  THE MANY 13 BENDS ROADS

  ALLEGHENY COUNTY

  You may have heard the legend of “13 Bends Road.” It is a long and obviously winding road that leads up a hill. The road’s name comes directly from its mysterious physical characteristic. When you drive up the road, there are thirteen bends, but when you come back down, there are only twelve. There are some varying accounts claiming that there are seven bends going up and six coming back down for a total of thirteen. Either way, it does not seem to make sense.

  And then there are the ghosts. In most accounts, an orphanage once stood near the road at least half a century ago. The orphans who lived there met with a tragic fate. One night while they slept, the orphanage caught fire and burned to the ground, killing all who were inside. Some who tell the story insist that the fire was started by an arsonist or that the children in the orphanage were horribly abused by those who ran it. Now their ghosts are trapped near the road, waiting to interact with those who pass by. Sometimes they leave tiny handprints on dirty cars. Other times you can hear them laughing, screaming or crying in the darkness or in the woods near the site of the orphanage or at the top of the road after one travels all thirteen bends.

  Supposedly, 13 Bends Road is also haunted by a ghostly car that will follow motorists and then mysteriously disappear around one of the bends. It has been theorized that the phantom car belonged to a young couple that was killed in a crash at one of the curves. Now their ghosts make their final trip over and over again, disappearing at the site of the accident.

  If you have, in fact, heard these legends or some variation, you may be able to name the road’s real name and its precise location. Renzie Road, near Boston in Elizabeth Township, Allegheny County, has been known as 13 Bends for years and has attracted numerous legend trippers during that time. But another person might tell you that you are wrong and that 13 Bends Road is actually Happy Hollow Road, also in Elizabeth Township. Yet another may say that both locations are incorrect and that the real 13 Bends Road is actually Coulter Road in the Alpsville/Coulterville area of South Versailles Township. Still another person might tell you to go farther to the north, to the Allegheny River Valley and Harmar Township, where 13 Bends Road is known by the name of Campbell’s Run Road. And you would all be correct.

  The legend of 13 Bends Road is interesting because it is attributed to (at least) four different roads in the same county. They all seem to have an almost identical story. Three are clustered geographically in the southeastern part of Allegheny County, but the fourth is much farther north. How can four different roads have the same legend? Can they all really be haunted, or is one the real source of the real legend and it spread to the others through misattribution and misunderstanding?

  To attempt to make sense of 13 Bends (if that is even possible), we can start by looking at each of the haunted roads individually and then analyze the legend itself. Renzie Road has been identified as 13 Bends for at least twenty years but probably longer. Ashley Kilbert heard the stories about the road while she was growing up in the early 2000s. There were thirteen bends when you traveled up the road and twelve coming back down. Kilbert also heard about the orphanage that allegedly burned, killing the children inside. If you stopped your car near the site of the orphanage and honked your horn, the ghosts of the children would come. You might hear children’s voices laughing or whispering, and if you put a thin layer of baby powder on your bumper, hood or trunk, their tiny handprints would appear. They served as physical evidence of a supernatural encounter and authenticated the experience for the legend tripper. (And it is true that fingerprints may appear on your car if you apply a thin layer of powder because they are probably already there. The powder can highlight existing prints much like one would dust for prints at a crime scene.) The stories Kilbert heard are typical of what has been said about Renzie Road. There are also a few reports of the phantom car that was mentioned earlier.

  One of the problems with Renzie Road, and the legend in general, is what one considers to be a bend worth counting. Renzie Road has a few big bends, but most of the others are slight curves. The road does not have thirteen clear and substantial bends, but that may be impossible to expect from almost any road. If you do count very slight curves and variations, it may not have thirteen going up and twelve down, but there may be enough curves to count seven up and six down for a total of thirteen. Again, this depends on what one counts as a bend. So far, there is also no direct evidence that any orphans were killed in a fire in the vicinity of the road or that an orphanage even existed on Renzie Road. There were other structure fires in the general area in prior decades, but not on the road, that might have inspired that part of the legend, at least at t
his particular location. A schoolhouse also stood near the top of the road in the early twentieth century. It is possible that it is the source of the legend’s association with children.

  Renzie Road is one of the many 13 Bends Roads in Allegheny County. Courtesy of Carrie Payne.

  The sharp bend on Renzie Road. Courtesy of Carrie Payne.

  A map from the 1876 Centennial Atlas of Allegheny County depicting part of Elizabeth Township and Renzie Road (unmarked). Courtesy of Duquesne University Archives and Special Collections.

  Happy Hollow Road, which is also in Elizabeth, has sometimes been identified as the true 13 Bends. One can count thirteen bends on this road, though some are extremely slight and are actually more like gradual curves. If one wishes to call them bends, it is enough to fit the legend. While it seems that the legend about this road is as old as Renzie Road, accounts are vague and cannot be definitively dated. The main problem with Happy Hollow Road is that there, once again, does not seem to have been an orphanage (or similar institution) anywhere in the immediate vicinity. Happy Hollow is a little more isolated than Renzie Road, and that probably adds to the atmosphere of spookiness at night.

  Not far from these two roads is Coulter Road. It runs down into the center of Coulterville and is said to have seven bends going down and only six coming back up. The stories told about this stretch appear to be the oldest of the 13 Bends Road legends, dating back at least forty to forty-five years but maybe longer. This would likely make it the original site for the legend in this region. This road has all of the standard 13 Bends legends and a very specific possible location for the orphanage. That is because, unlike the other roads, there really was an orphanage nearby.

  Happy Hollow Road, one of the alleged 13 Bends Roads. Courtesy of Carrie Payne.

  On Tourman Street, which connects to Coulter Road and runs parallel to part of it near the largest bends, is the old St. Patrick Roman Catholic Church. Next to that was the orphanage. The site can be plainly seen on several old maps. Ed Falvo, a historian at the Elizabeth Township Historical Society, explained the history of the site to the authors. The orphanage was the Vandergrift Summer Home, run by the Home of the Friendless of the Allegheny Relief Society. The Home of the Friendless opened in 1861 and expanded in 1864 during the Civil War in Allegheny City (which is now Pittsburgh’s North Side.) The organization took care of destitute children who had been neglected or whose parents had died. By the 1890s, those who ran the organization decided that they should purchase a summer home for the boys to get them away from the pollution of the city for at least part of the year. In 1894, the former Bigley Mansion in Alpsville was purchased and donated by J.J. Vandergrift. It became the Vandergrift Summer Home, which housed around 120 boys and operated every summer until 1944.

  A Hopkins Map of Coulterville from 1900. Courtesy of the Heinz History Center.

  A close-up view of the 1900 Hopkins Map depicting the orphanage in Coulterville/Alpsville that inspired the legend of 13 Bends. Courtesy of the Heinz History Center.

  The St. Patrick Cemetery is also located just off Coulter Road, back in the woods. It was used for the parish, but legend trippers often mistakenly believe that the orphans are buried there. If one cemetery were not enough, farther up Coulter Road is Coulter Cemetery, which allegedly has ghosts of its own. St. Patrick Church is no longer an active parish, and the area is now private property, so do not enter without permission. St. Patrick Cemetery is private property as well.

  So, if the orphanage really existed, is there any historical evidence that there was actually a fire? It turns out that there is—more than one, in fact—but not at the orphanage. On New Year’s Day in 1924, the original St. Patrick’s Church, which was built in 1867 and was right next door to the orphanage, caught fire and was destroyed. The current building was constructed on the site. The orphanage passed into private hands after 1944. It was simply torn down in the 1970s after it was no longer used, and no orphans were ever killed in a fire there. Ed Falvo pointed out another church fire that was relatively close on the other side of the Youghiogheny River that may have also been linked to the legend. At the site of Dravo Cemetery, which has many ghostly tales of its own (see the book Supernatural Lore of Pennsylvania: Ghosts, Monsters and Miracles for those accounts), once stood the Dravo Methodist Church. In the early 1880s, a Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad line was constructed extremely close to the church. A little over a decade later, the church mysteriously burned to the ground one night. The church was rebuilt, but in 1924, the same year as the St. Patrick fire, it burned again. Though arson was at first suspected, it was discovered that embers and sparks coming off passing trains were likely responsible. The church was not rebuilt this time. Henderson Road, which leads to the cemetery, is also isolated with many bends. It seems that there may be yet another 13 Bends Road.

  The path to St. Patrick Cemetery on Coulter Road. Courtesy of Carrie Payne.

  Coulter Cemetery along 13 Bends Road. Courtesy of Carrie Payne.

  St. Patrick Church in Coulterville/Alpsville. The empty lot to the left is where an orphanage once stood. Courtesy of Carrie Payne.

  Clearly, the story of 13 Bends is tied to at least some authentic community memory of the fires and the orphanage. Over time, the stories merged and were exaggerated, becoming perfect fodder for the ghost story. Given the geographical proximity, it is reasonable to think that the stories of Renzie and Happy Hollow Roads may have originally been mistakes about the location that took on lives of their own. Such misattributions are easy in oral tradition and also on the Internet, where one piece of misinformation can spread rapidly.

  But what of the fourth 13 Bends Road that lies farther to the north in Harmar? Campbell’s Run Road has been identified with the legend for at least thirty years as well and probably almost as long as the Coulter legend. Today the end of the road is closed to traffic, so the final bends must be completed on foot even though they were once accessible by car. The wooded road conveys a feeling of isolation, even though it is not very far from more densely populated areas. It has all of the same elements of the other roads including the burned orphanage and tiny handprints, but it is not clear how or even if it is connected to the other 13 Bends Roads in Allegheny County. It may have evolved independently, as there are 13 Bends Road legends (and similar stories) in other parts of the country. The historical record contains no proof that an orphanage was ever located close to Campbell’s Run, but there may be something else that inspired the legend. In a 2003 newspaper article, Harmar police officer Bill Steenburgh said that there had once been a barn that was sometimes used as a dancehall off of the road. It burned down in the 1940s, and that fire might have been the original source. It was associated with younger people, just not orphans.

  At least two of the four 13 Bends Road orphanage legends seem to have been inspired by real fires. But these fires did not occur at orphanages and did not have any fatalities. Why then, do legend trippers still cling to the story of the unfortunate orphans who met a horrific fate? Though this is a difficult question to answer, something about the story resonates with those who seek to interact with the ghostly children. It would be easy to say that these legends are linked to the changes in American society in the 1970s. We have already mentioned the perceived increase in threats to children, which was amplified by the media. The orphanage story involves children who died a seemingly preventable or unnecessary death. If one heard the version of the story where the fire was arson, then it was the feared criminal element that killed the children. Certainly the changes in society helped amplify the legend, but did they really cause it? The answer would have to be no because it seems that the Coulter Road legend stretches back at least until the late 1960s, if not before.

  It is hard to say exactly why the orphanage legend continues to be popular in modern times, when such institutions no longer use that title and function quite differently than they once did. Perhaps our image of the stereotypical orphanage, as a desperate and lonely place for child
ren, still connects with teens who visit the roads. Many teenagers can relate to the sense of isolation and helplessness that we imagine or assume that the orphans felt, even if they are not orphaned themselves. At the same time, the ghostly orphans are a reminder that death can come at any time and even claim innocent youths. Interacting with the ghosts of the children on the legend trip can be a way to address such issues by externalizing them in the ghost story. That is not to say that everyone approaches 13 Bends for this reason, but it might be part of the draw for some legend trippers.

  One of the bends on Coulter/13 Bends Road. Courtesy of Carrie Payne.

  The legend of 13 Bends Road also addresses death in the form of the ghostly car that vanishes at the bend in the road where it allegedly crashed. This is another case of car-related ghosts reminding young (and old) drivers of the dangers of being behind the wheel. One careless mistake or moment of inattention can lead to tragedy.

  And then there is the road itself and its mysterious bends. The many 13 Bends Roads are legends where merely driving the road and counting the bends allows one to participate in the legend trip ritual. By traveling the length of the road and passing all of the bends, one can experience something that is out of the ordinary. In this way, this legend is the most direct example of a road representing a journey to the supernatural. The directness and simplicity of the legend, coupled with the fact that it addresses the death of young people, explains why the legend of 13 Bends Road has remained so popular and is so widespread. And who knows—maybe late at night something supernatural does occur at the dark bends.