Purple Head Bridge (Wabash Cannonball Bridge)

According to coverage by local Vincennes-area media and Vincennes University's student newspaper, the bridge's nickname comes from a cluster of related legends. In the most widely repeated version, a man long ago leapt from the bridge intending to hang himself, but the fall tore his head from his body, and the head was never recovered. A second strand of the legend holds that the bridge was a site of hangings in the 1800s, supposedly giving it the 'purple head' name.

The signature manifestation is a floating, glowing purple head said to drift toward visitors who park on the bridge late at night, often described as appearing on a rainy night or after a ritual of turning off the car's lights and sounding the horn. Vincennes University tradition also holds that screams of the dead can be heard from the span after dark.

A separate, older layer of the lore attributes the haunting to the unburied spirit of a Native American figure from the area's frontier-conflict history. All of these accounts are folkloric, with no documented historical record of a specific named victim; they are presented here as the established regional legend rather than verified events.