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Reported phenomena — as catalogued
+ 1 further entry on record
A short span on Woodland Church Road near the Nanticoke where locals have called Maggie's name at midnight for generations.
Woodland Church Rd, Seaford, DE 19973
Research updated August 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public road bridge; free to visit. No facilities.
Access
Limited Access
Narrow rural two-lane road with soft shoulders and woods on both sides; no sidewalk or pull-off at the bridge.
Equipment
Photos OK
Adjacent to the Woodland Ferry, an eighteenth-century Nanticoke River crossing still in operation · Delaware's best-known legend-tripping site, documented in regional folklore writing and local television · Subject of Kelly Lidji's 2022 book Maggie, I Have Your Baby
The bridge sits in the Woodland area of western Sussex County, a few miles southwest of Seaford on the road that leads down from the Woodland Ferry landing. The ferry itself is one of the oldest continuously operating river crossings in the country, carrying Woodland Ferry Road over the Nanticoke since the eighteenth century, and the surrounding district was a working landscape of landings, mills, and farms. Local television coverage of the area notes that Jacob Cannon, a cousin of the slave-trader Patty Cannon, was killed near the ferry by a debtor, one of several grim stories the neighborhood carries.
The span itself is unremarkable: a short modern road bridge over a branch of the Nanticoke on Woodland Church Road, roughly a mile south of the ferry. What sets it apart is the story attached to it. As told across Delmarva, a young woman named Maggie Bloxom was driving a horse and carriage over the bridge in the late 1800s when the horse spooked, by most accounts at a clap of thunder. The carriage went over the side into the water and Maggie was killed. Most versions add that she was pregnant or carrying an infant, which is where the variant in which she asks passersby for her baby comes from.
The historical record behind the legend is thin but not empty. Travel writers report that a nearby cemetery holds a grave for a Maggie Bloxom who died young, and Seaford-area author Kelly Lidji spent years researching the story for her 2022 book Maggie, I Have Your Baby: The Haunting of Maggie's Bridge. Maryland author Mindie Burgoyne, who has written about the site for her Haunted Eastern Shore work and Chesapeake Ghost Tours, describes it simply as the place where local young people go to scare themselves. No contemporary newspaper account of the accident has been published in the sources reviewed here.
Sources
The ritual is the same in nearly every telling. Go to the bridge at midnight, or during the hour after, and call Maggie's name three times. Call it again and, according to residents quoted by Chesapeake Ghost Tours, a hard breeze comes through the trees and small lights, like fireflies out of season, show in the woods beside the road, a patch known locally as the Ghost Pits. Some say the sound of a horse's hooves approaches along the pavement before anything is seen.
The apparition, when it is described at all, is a woman emerging from the treeline. Older versions have her headless, or carrying her head; newer ones have her searching for a baby and asking anyone on the bridge whether they have it. The title of Kelly Lidji's book, Maggie, I Have Your Baby, refers to the taunt some visitors shout to provoke a response, which regulars warn against.
The car stories are the most consistent physical claims: engines that will not turn over on the span, automatics that shift themselves out of park, and vehicles that creep forward after being switched off. Local television coverage in 2019 added that Maggie is supposedly more responsive on nights of a full moon, and Chesapeake Ghost Tours' account specifies blue moons. None of this has been investigated in any published, controlled way; it survives as a rite of passage for Seaford and Laurel teenagers and a standing entry on every Delaware haunted list.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Drive Woodland Church Road south from the Woodland Ferry landing about a mile to the small bridge over a branch of the Nanticoke River. Visitors traditionally stop near the span after dark and call 'Maggie' three times. The road is narrow and unlit; stay off the bridge deck itself.
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