Appalachian Folklore & Myths Series – The Suscon Screamer: Black Bridge, Patricia Emlaw, and the Screams Along Suscon Road
On a lonely stretch of Suscon Road in Pittston Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, the woods hold one of northeastern Pennsylvania’s strangest roadside legends. Locals call it the Suscon Screamer.
Some tell it as a ghost story. Some tell it as a creature story. Some remember the old Black Bridge, also called Boo Boo Bridge, where drivers once honked before passing through a narrow railroad crossing. Others connect the legend to a real murder from 1969, when fifteen year old Patricia Emlaw of Avoca was killed and left in the woods of Luzerne County.
That is what makes the Suscon Screamer difficult to write about, and also what makes it worth preserving. It is not one clean legend with one beginning. It is a layered local story where a dark road, an old railroad bridge, remembered screams, teenage dares, animal fears, and a documented killing became tangled together over time.
The truth is not that every version can be proven. The truth is that Suscon Road became the kind of place where people expected something to be waiting.
Suscon and the Railroad Landscape
Suscon is an unincorporated community in Pittston Township, east of the Wyoming Valley and not far from the old coal and rail corridors that shaped Luzerne County. It sits in the wooded hills outside the more developed towns near Pittston, Dupont, Avoca, and Wilkes Barre. The area belongs to the broader landscape of northeastern Pennsylvania, where mining roads, old rail grades, state game lands, and isolated hollows have long given stories a place to survive.
The name Suscon itself points back to railroad history. The Susquehanna Connecting Railroad ran from Old Forge to Suscon Junction, where it connected with the Central Railroad of New Jersey. It was a short line, but an important industrial piece of the coal region. Built in the late nineteenth century, it helped move coal from collieries around Old Forge and Moosic toward larger rail connections.
That railroad background matters because the Screamer legend is tied to a former railroad bridge over Suscon Road. Local stories often describe it as the Black Bridge or Boo Boo Bridge. The bridge was remembered as narrow, low, and dangerous enough that drivers would honk to warn oncoming traffic. Over time, that practical warning sound became part of a ritual.
In one common version of the legend, a driver goes to the old bridge site at night, shuts off the engine, points the car toward where the bridge once stood, and honks three times. After that, the Screamer is supposed to appear or cry out from the darkness.
Like many roadside legends, the rule is simple. Stop where you should not stop. Make a sound into the dark. Wait to see what answers.
The Woman in White
The best known version of the Suscon Screamer is the woman in white.
In one telling, she was a bride left at the altar. Broken by shame and grief, she went to the bridge and hanged herself, letting out one final scream. In another telling, she was a girl killed on prom night, still trying to get home. Other versions make her a mother rushing a child to the hospital, an asylum runaway who leaped from the bridge, or a phantom hitchhiker seen along Suscon Road.
These versions are familiar in American ghost lore. The abandoned bride, the prom night victim, the mother and child, and the lonely hitchhiker all appear in legends across the country. What makes the Suscon version local is not the pattern itself, but the setting. The road, bridge, woods, railroad memory, and local fear gave those old story forms a place to land.
The Screamer does not always appear clearly. Sometimes she is seen as a pale figure in the woods. Sometimes she is glimpsed behind a car. Sometimes there is no sighting at all, only a cry that comes from the trees and fades before anyone can find its source.
That sound is the center of the legend. The Screamer may change shape from story to story, but the scream remains.
The Creature in the Woods
There is another Suscon Screamer, and it is not a woman.
Some accounts describe the thing as animal like, monstrous, or half human. One version tells of a pig snouted creature from the bogs or woods. Later online collections repeat a reported newspaper story about a hunter near Suscon Road who heard another hunter scream, then saw a strange gray creature through binoculars. The creature was described as long, heavy, gray, big headed, and snouted, with webbed feet and claws.
These creature versions push the Suscon Screamer away from ghost lore and toward cryptid folklore. In these tellings, the scream belongs not to a dead woman, but to something living in the rough land around Suscon Road.
Northeastern Pennsylvania is good ground for such stories. Forested ridges, old mines, state game lands, boggy patches, abandoned rail corridors, and hunting culture all help keep creature tales alive. A person alone in the woods hears a shriek and has to explain it. A fox, bobcat, owl, fisher, injured animal, or frightened human might make a terrible sound in the dark. But folklore begins where ordinary explanation fails to settle the nerves.
The Suscon creature is sometimes described as a swamp monster, sometimes as a bearlike or piglike thing, and sometimes as something closer to Bigfoot. That variety shows how oral tradition works. The story is not preserved like a court transcript. It changes as it is retold, adjusted to fit what each generation fears.
Patricia Emlaw and the 1969 Murder
The most serious part of the Suscon Screamer story is the real death of Patricia Emlaw.
Patricia Emlaw was fifteen years old. In 1969, her body was found in a wooded area in Luzerne County. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania later summarized the case in Commonwealth v. Ash. The court record states that her body was found on September 30, 1969, and that she died from knife slashes to the neck.
David Ash was indicted for her murder. In March 1970, he entered a general guilty plea to murder in the Court of Common Pleas of Luzerne County. A three judge panel found him guilty of first degree murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The later Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision dealt with legal issues raised on appeal, including the confession, the three judge procedure, and whether the evidence supported first degree murder.
The court record is important because it gives the historian firm ground. It confirms the murder, the place in Luzerne County, the nature of the wounds, the guilty plea, the first degree murder finding, and the life sentence. It does not prove that Patricia Emlaw became the Suscon Screamer. It does not prove that the older bridge stories began with her death. It also does not prove the ghostly or creature parts of the legend.
What it does show is that a real girl was killed in the same general landscape where the legend later grew darker.
That distinction matters. Patricia Emlaw should not be treated only as a ghost story character. She was a real person, and her murder was not folklore. Later retellings may connect her death to the Screamer, but the historical record should be handled with care.
Two Tracks of the Same Legend
The Suscon Screamer seems to follow two overlapping tracks.
The first track is older local folklore tied to Black Bridge, Boo Boo Bridge, screams in the woods, and the ritual of honking three times. This track includes the woman in white, the jilted bride, the prom night victim, the asylum girl, the mother and child, the escaped circus animal, and the pig snouted creature. It is broad, changeable, and difficult to date with certainty.
The second track is the documented 1969 murder of Patricia Emlaw. This track is grounded in court records and contemporary newspaper coverage. It is not legend, even if later legend absorbed it.
The danger is treating both tracks as the same thing. A good folklore history must hold them side by side without forcing them together. It can say that the murder became associated with the Suscon Screamer in later tellings. It should not say that the murder created the legend unless stronger evidence proves that.
Local stories often work this way. A dangerous place gains a reputation. A bridge becomes known as haunted. Teenagers test each other by driving there at night. Then a real tragedy occurs nearby, and memory pulls the tragedy into the legend. Over time, people forget which part came first.
The Suscon Screamer is not only about what happened. It is about how a community remembers what might have happened, what did happen, and what still feels unresolved.
Black Bridge and the Honking Ritual
The old Black Bridge is central to the legend because it gave the story a stage.
Local accounts describe it as a narrow one lane railroad bridge or underpass area where drivers honked to warn others before passing. That practical custom likely helped shape the later haunting ritual. If people already associated the bridge with honking, then a ghost story about honking three times would feel natural.
This is one of the clearest examples of how folklore grows from real habits. A road hazard becomes a local custom. A local custom becomes a dare. A dare becomes a legend.
The bridge is now gone, but that may have strengthened the story instead of weakening it. Vanished places often become more haunted in memory. When people can no longer point to the exact structure, they point to the road, the curve, the trees, the old grade, or the feeling that something used to be there.
A ghost does not need a standing bridge if the bridge still exists in local imagination.
Why the Story Lasted
The Suscon Screamer lasted because it has all the pieces of a strong Appalachian and Pennsylvania mountain legend.
It has a real road. It has an old railroad crossing. It has a dark wooded setting. It has a simple ritual. It has multiple versions, allowing each teller to choose the one that scares them most. It has a documented tragedy nearby that gives the story emotional weight. It also has enough uncertainty to keep people arguing.
Is the Screamer a murdered girl, a bride, a mother, an asylum runaway, a creature, an animal, or only the echo of tires and wind under an old bridge?
Folklore does not always survive because people agree. Sometimes it survives because people disagree. Every version becomes another reason to keep telling the story.
For some, the Suscon Screamer is a ghost. For others, it is a cryptid. For others, it is a cautionary tale about lonely roads, teenage dares, and the dangers hidden beyond the headlights. For historians, it is a reminder that legends often form around real places where fear already has roots.
Remembering the Human Story
Any article about the Suscon Screamer should pause for Patricia Emlaw.
It is easy for folklore to turn victims into symbols. A girl becomes a woman in white. A murder becomes a roadside dare. A grave wound becomes a scream in the woods. But the real history deserves more respect than that.
The court record does not give us a full portrait of Patricia’s life. It gives us the legal aftermath of her death. Newspapers identified her as a teenage girl from Avoca. The law remembered her because a crime was committed against her. Folklore remembered her differently, as part of a haunted landscape.
Those two forms of memory are not equal. One is evidence. The other is story. Both matter, but not in the same way.
The responsible way to tell the Suscon Screamer is to say that Patricia Emlaw’s murder is a documented event later associated with the legend, not to reduce her to the legend itself.
The Scream Along the Road
Today, the Suscon Screamer remains one of northeastern Pennsylvania’s better known local legends. It belongs to Luzerne County, but it also belongs to a wider Appalachian and coal region tradition of haunted bridges, ghost roads, railroad warnings, and creatures heard in the timber.
The old bridge may be gone. The tracks may be abandoned. The exact origins of the Screamer may be impossible to prove. Still, the story endures because Suscon Road gives people what folklore always needs: a place where imagination can meet memory.
Drive any dark backroad long enough and the land begins to speak. Sometimes it is only wind in the trees. Sometimes it is an animal in the brush. Sometimes it is the mind making shapes out of darkness.
And sometimes, according to the old stories from Suscon, it screams.
Sources & Further Reading
Commonwealth v. Ash, 482 Pa. 590, 394 A.2d 479. Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, November 18, 1978. https://law.justia.com/cases/pennsylvania/supreme-court/1978/482-pa-590-0.html
“Divorced Laborer, 26, Is Charged With Murder Of Teenage Avoca Girl.” Standard-Speaker. Newspapers.com clipping. https://www.newspapers.com/article/standard-speaker/2086150/
“Article Clipped from Republican and Herald.” Evening Herald. Newspapers.com clipping. https://www.newspapers.com/article/evening-herald/6706185/
“GCK7EH SUSCON SCREAMER!!!” Geocaching.com. Hidden August 8, 2004. https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GCK7EH_suscon-screamer
“Suscon Screamer.” Pennsylvania Haunts & History, February 27, 2008. https://hauntsandhistory.blogspot.com/2008/02/suscon-screamer.html
Gable, Andrew D. “The Suscon Screamer.” Masks of Mesingw, September 27, 2009. https://masksofmesingw.blogspot.com/2009/09/lon-stricklers-phantoms-and-monsters.html
“The Suscon Screamer.” Pennsylvania Paranormal Association Forum, December 15, 2010. https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/theppa/the-suscon-screamer-t1468.html
“Poconos/I-80 East Haunts & History.” Pennsylvania Paranormal Association Forum, October 21, 2008. https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/theppa/poconos-i-80-east-haunts-history-t503.html
“Suscon Screamer.” PAranormal and True Crime, November 2, 2016. https://pennsylvaniaparanormal.tumblr.com/post/152640842973/suscon-screamer-jilted-bride-scary-pig-nosed
Zurn, Adam. “The Suscon Screamer: A Haunting Echo in Luzerne County.” Uncharted History, July 17, 2025. https://unchartedhistory.com/2025/07/17/the-suscon-screamer/
“The Creepy Side of NEPA: The Suscon Screamer.” WNEP, February 6, 2020. https://www.wnep.com/article/features/podcast-creepy-nepa-ghost-stories-suscon-screamer/523-dce848ee-0c38-4d06-872b-d76dce443ddb
“The Creepy Side of NEPA: The Suscon Screamer.” Podtail, October 10, 2024. https://podtail.com/podcast/the-creepy-side-of-nepa/the-creepy-side-of-nepa-the-suscon-screamer/
“Author Discusses Book on Grisly Deaths, Mysteries Along Local Road in Pittston Area.” Times Leader, October 25, 2015. https://www.timesleader.com/news/local-news-1/490806/author-discusses-book-on-grisly-deaths-mysteries-along-local-road-in-pittston-area
“Bend Your Ear to These Spooky Tales.” Times Leader, June 23, 2015. https://timesleader.com/archive/285877/news-guide-910683-bend-your-ear-to-these-spooky-tales
“Pennsylvania Cryptids and Folklore.” Folk Bestiary. Accessed June 23, 2026. https://folkbestiary.com/pennsylvania/
“The Susquehanna Connecting Railroad.” Abandoned Rails. Accessed June 23, 2026. https://www.abandonedrails.com/susquehanna-connecting-railroad
“The Wilkes-Barre and Eastern Railroad.” Abandoned Rails. Accessed June 23, 2026. https://www.abandonedrails.com/wilkes-barre-and-eastern-railroad
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System.” Accessed June 23, 2026. https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
United States Geological Survey. “Geographic Names Information System, Suscon, Pennsylvania.” The National Map. Accessed June 23, 2026. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/summary/1214000
Pennsylvania Geological Survey. “Surficial Geology of the Pittston 7.5-Minute Quadrangle, Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties, Pennsylvania.” U.S. Geological Survey National Geologic Map Database, 2006. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Prodesc/proddesc_78736.htm
Census Reporter. “Pittston Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.” Accessed June 23, 2026. https://censusreporter.org/profiles/06000US4207961056-pittston-township-luzerne-county-pa/
Author Note: This article separates documented history from folklore while preserving the local legend as it has been retold in northeastern Pennsylvania. Patricia Emlaw’s murder was real, and the folklore surrounding Suscon Road should be read with respect for the human tragedy behind later retellings.