Cry-Baby Hollow

Hartselle, Alabama — a bridge where sorrow lingers, and the night never feels empty.

Alabama backroads hold secrets.

Just outside Hartselle, Kayo Road winds through a tunnel of trees, their branches knitting together like ribs. The pavement narrows as it dips toward a small bridge spanning a quiet creek. In daylight, it’s unremarkable — just another old crossing in Morgan County. But locals know it by a different name: Cry-Baby Hollow.

At night, they say, this bridge cries.

The Legend

There are several versions of the story, none less tragic than the last. Some say a wagon overturned here in the 1800s, throwing a baby into the floodwaters below. Others claim a young mother, abandoned and desperate, left her child beneath the bridge one cold night, and the forest has mourned ever since.

Older residents whisper about ghost lights dancing along the creek bed, flickering like lanterns in the mist. Teenagers tell tales of baby cries so loud they freeze your blood. Some believe the sound is the spirit of the mother, calling for a child she’ll never find.

A Place of Dread

Hartselle residents who have visited Cry-Baby Hollow agree: the air feels heavy there, charged with something that makes the skin crawl. Drivers report their headlights dimming as they approach. Others say their engines stall. One man swore his car was pushed slowly forward when parked on the bridge, as though unseen hands guided it.

Even in the humid Alabama night, the spot feels cold.

The Candy Bar Test

One popular story passed between locals is the “candy bar test.” A group of teens in the 1990s left an unwrapped candy bar on the bridge as a dare. When they returned minutes later, the candy bar had a perfect bite mark — no teeth impressions, just a strange, smooth curve. They fled without stopping to retrieve it.

Stories like this have made Cry-Baby Hollow a rite of passage for local thrill-seekers.

Echoes of History

Morgan County has seen tragedy for centuries: Civil War skirmishes, floods, train wrecks, and countless unnamed graves scattered through rural Alabama. Cry-Baby Hollow may be a legend stitched together from those sorrows, or it may be one specific story that never left the creek.

Older Hartselle families warn that this isn’t just a “fun haunt.” They say the cries are a warning, that something darker watches the bridge, luring people closer with sounds of pain.

The Night Watchers

Ghost hunters who’ve visited the site claim their cameras malfunction near the creek. Others have recorded faint cries — not a baby’s sob but something deeper, like a grown woman weeping through water. A few even report seeing pale shapes crouched under the bridge, darting away like shadows when approached.

One investigator swore he saw a small handprint appear in the condensation on his car window while parked there alone.

Unresolved

Cry-Baby Hollow has no plaque, no historical marker. The trees lean low over the road, guarding the bridge’s secret. Whether it’s a story born from grief or a real haunting, no one doubts that something lingers there.

Drive across it at night, and the forest swallows your headlights. Pause too long, and you may hear soft cries rising from the dark — a sound that feels older than the town itself, a reminder that sorrow doesn’t always stay buried.