Lydia's Cache: A Ghost Story from Jamestown, NC

Spoiler Alert for Guilford County, NC

Every since I was a child I've heard the ghost story of Lydia. A short distance from where I was raised there is a two-lane highway that passes under a railroad bridge just east of Jamestown, NC. The earliest recorded instance of Lydia's appearance is from 1924. Since then the story goes that there have been numerous reports. Typically a man is driving alone in his car on a rainy evening along this stretch of highway headed west towards Jamestown and High Point. As he arrives at the railroad bridge he sees a young pretty girl hitching a ride in her white prom dress. He stops and gives her a ride. She wants to go home to High Point. She tells him that she has had a fight with her boyfriend. She even gives directions to turn here and there along the way. Upon arrival the man turns around to look at her or he gets out and goes around to open the door and she has disappeared. Usually the man goes up to the house to inquire and finds that Lydia used to live there but had died in an automobile accident in 1923. Goosebumps!

Thanks to a local cacher I was able to go with my grandson to find Haunted Triad Bonus - Lydia's Bridge. Some years earlier a new bridge was put in and the road was straightened so that the same curve just before the bridge is less dangerous. If you park at the suggested parking location you can cross the highway and walk to the original culvert that the road used to pass through at the time of the accident. It was once grown over and really spooky looking. Recently the state has cleaned it up and you can walk through it. On the other side you trek to GZ and start your search. As you can see in the photos you must look up. We started our search looking down. Suddenly I saw a leaning tree with a rope wrapped around it. It held the suspended cache high overhead. When we got the decorated ammo can down we found it to be full of horror movies. My grandson is a little too young for these so we passed on the trade. It was a fun cache to do with my grandson on a winter day with some snow still on the ground.