The Vanishing Hitchhiker of Jamestown
Old US Highway 70 at the East Fork Deep River, Jamestown, NC 27282
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public roadway. View from a safe pulloff on the shoulder.
Access
Limited Access
Active roadway and overgrown adjacent embankment
Equipment
Photos OK
The structure popularly called Lydia's Bridge is an older railroad underpass that carried the former US Highway 70 across an adjacent grade in Jamestown, North Carolina, between Greensboro and High Point. The current bridge is a graffiti-marked concrete structure; the older bridge associated with the original sightings is partially obscured by kudzu approximately 40 feet to one side.
The legend was investigated in print by paranormal researchers and authors Michael Renegar and Amy Greer, whose 2010 book Looking for Lydia traced the story to newspaper coverage of a fatal automobile accident in June 1920. A Greensboro Daily News article reported that Miss Annie L. Jackson, born 1885, was killed when the automobile in which she was riding overturned on the High Point Road approximately three miles from High Point. She was approximately 35 and worked at a cigar factory. Renegar and Greer concluded that the middle initial L was the likely origin of the name Lydia. Annie Jackson is buried in Holts Chapel Cemetery in Greensboro.
In 2023 the William G. Pomeroy Foundation installed a state historical marker at Lydia's Bridge, noting: "Since the 1920s, apparition of a young woman has been seen hitchhiking here, only to disappear when drivers come to her aid." The marker is the first formal historical recognition of the site.
Sources
The Lydia story is one of the United States' most-documented examples of the vanishing-hitchhiker folktale, a tradition that folklorists have traced across multiple continents and decades. The Jamestown version has been recorded consistently since the 1920s and 1930s. Drivers describe a young woman in a white evening gown standing near the underpass, sometimes appearing to flag down a passing car. When the driver stops, she gives her name as Lydia, says she has been at a dance and needs a ride to her home in High Point, and vanishes from the passenger seat as the vehicle nears the address. The home is sometimes found empty when the driver knocks; in older versions an elderly woman answers and explains that her daughter died near the bridge years before.
Local variants describe multiple candidate bridges. The original railroad underpass, now overgrown, sits near the current concrete structure, and a second bridge approximately two miles away over a creek is sometimes claimed as the actual haunted site. Sightings continue to be reported, although researchers including Renegar and Greer treat the figure as folklore attached to a real 1920 traffic death rather than as direct paranormal evidence.
The Pomeroy Foundation marker treats the legend as cultural heritage rather than as confirmed paranormal phenomenon.
Notable Entities
View the underpass and the older railroad bridge from the road. The William G. Pomeroy Foundation installed a historical marker for Lydia's Bridge in 2023, the only on-site interpretation. Do not park in lanes of travel and watch for active rail and road traffic.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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