History & local legend
The Spook Bridge story at Tharptown, also called Uniontown, begins with Martin Goss leaving a New Year's gathering on January 1, 1830. In the account preserved by the Shamokin Online Museum, he took a shortcut home over slabs laid across Shamokin Creek, slipped, and drowned.
Neighbors gathered beside the creek and lit fires while someone fetched the coroner. Yet Goss's body remained in the water. The coroner asked twice for help retrieving him, but nobody moved. Only after he stepped onto the slabs and grasped the dead man's coat did the others rush in to assist.
They explained that touching a body before the magistrate did could expose them to a lifetime of haunting. A red bridge later built nearby acquired the name Spook Bridge, and some residents avoided crossing it after dark.
Sources
- Shamokin Online Museum, local account including the coroner’s reported words, 1830 date and later bridge
- Coal Township, identification of Tharptown/Uniontown in Northumberland County
- USGS Geographic Names Information System, Uniontown, Northumberland County
- Sanborn Map Company, 1922 Shamokin atlas, sheet 35, showing the creek and Hospital Road crossing in Uniontown or Tharptown
- Present-day Hospital Road bridge over Shamokin Creek
