Siam Steel Bridge Site (Watauga River, Elizabethton)

The legend of the Siam Steel Bridge involves a violent attack on a young couple who were spending time beneath the structure. According to the most circulated version — documented by folklorist Charles Edwin Price in his 1992 book Haints, Witches, and Boogers — the couple were attacked by a vagrant who stabbed them both; the young woman died at the scene, and the young man died at the hospital after stopping a passing vehicle on the bridge and climbing into the back seat. The legend holds that an impression of his seated weight can be felt in any car that stops on the bridge after dark.

Researcher Justin H. Guess investigated the legend for his 2012 book Weird Tri-Cities: Haunted Carter County, Tennessee and found a significant chronological problem: Price's account names the victims and dates the crime to the 1920s or 1930s — before the bridge's 1941 construction. Guess found no murder records corresponding to the described individuals in Carter County archives. This chronological impossibility is a standard fabrication marker in regional ghost-bridge folklore, where a dramatic backstory is attached to a location with no documented basis.

The most concretely documented incident is from July 18, 1977, when Gate City, Virginia sheriff's deputy Beecher Davis reported to Carter County authorities that while driving across the steel bridge, the passenger door flew open and then shut on its own. Davis found an indentation in the passenger seat as if someone were sitting there and observed a dark, cloaked figure in his mirror that then vanished. This account is notable for involving a named law-enforcement officer who filed a report with a neighboring county's department.

In light of Guess's findings, the murder legend is presented here as local folklore rather than documented history.