Genevieve’S Smile

Front 1

I’ve always been a skeptical, logical person—a critical thinker. At a young age my father, a doctor, told me that everything outside the physical realm is a myth after I had a nightmare about demons. “Hocus Pocus”, he said, “An illusion created by errors of the human mind”. By the age of five I didn’t believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. Nevertheless I loved horror movies and supernatural subjects because I thought they were fascinating, even from a scientific standpoint, and I think on some subconscious level I wanted to discover something so unbelievable as a ghost. That’s probably one of the reasons I decided to visit the North Trestle.

Back 1

The North Trestle is an old, outdated railroad bridge that towers high over a narrow part of North Lake, a winding river valley flooded by a dam over sixty years ago. The bridge is even older than the lake, and as with all old things people perpetuate rumors about the bridge being haunted by a ghost of some kind. The story goes that Genevieve, a wealthy girl who went to our high school in the 60’s, used to secretly meet her female lover at the bridge on moonlit nights. When her controlling mother found out and wouldn’t let her see the girl anymore, she hung herself from the bridge. Apparently if you walk across the bridge on a full moon, you’ll see her. “Genevieve” was a classic story every freshman at our high school heard, and I thought it was just stupid.

Front 2

One day I decided it’d be fun to go to that bridge and film it for our school newscast, hopefully to put the dumb story to rest. Chris, our editor, was all for going with me, and our friend Jenna wanted to go just to see something happen firsthand. One week later on a full moon, we grabbed a camera and a two-liter of Mountain Dew and headed for the bridge.

Back 2

We took the north road farther and farther out of town until only pine trees and cornfields surrounded us. This was the part of Catawba County most people didn’t think about—a dark corner of the map. Thank God for the full moon, I thought to myself; we hadn’t seen a streetlight for miles and I have pretty bad night blindness. Even basic shapes I can’t make out if the sun is down or the lights are dim. After what seemed like forever we finally saw moonlight shimmering on water, and parked in a marina near the bridge. “Ahhh it’s cold!” Jenna shouted as soon as we opened the car door. “Good”, I said. “We need a cold, clear night like this, I don’t even think we need a light for the camera.”

Front 3

But for some reason the moonlight piercing the cold air was more eerie than total darkness, the way the light trickled through the pine trees to the bare ground. In some odd way it felt like the night wanted to show us something. As we walked along the rusted railroad toward the bridge, Chris spoke up: “So, we walk to the middle of the bridge, Dan you film some there, then walk to the other side of the bridge, then come back. We get at least ten minutes of film, and I’ll edit out the boring parts. Good plan?”

Back 3

“Good plan, but the whole thing’s gonna be boring parts”, I said.

“You don’t know that, Dan!” Jenna replied.

Walking on the trestle bridge was nerve-wracking in itself; the gaps were easily large enough to step through, and as soon water was below us we were at a dizzying height.

“Could you jump off this thing? Maybe we should come back here in the summer”, Chris noted.

“It’s gotta be pretty deep”, I added.

“Well you two can have fun with that”, Jenna replied. She was usually the voice of reason.

Just before we got to the middle of the bridge, I was paralyzed. A cloud had covered the moon and I might as well have been in a cave. “Hold up guys. I can’t see where to walk.”

They were both shocked. “You can’t even see the bridge?”

“I can’t see my own hand” I clarified. “Just chill out and give me a second”. I felt around for the wood ties and made slow progress.

“Why did we trust you with the camera?” They laughed. “Don’t trip and drop that thing!”