History & local legend
Butler’s swinging footbridge crosses Sullivan Run behind the ballpark’s center-field fence. A local story collected by Jim Clements concerns cries and moans heard from a vacant lot on the stream’s east bank at midnight under a full moon.
According to the tale, a bus involved in a fatal crash elsewhere had been towed to the lot. The unexplained voices began after the wreck arrived. Someone eventually dismantled the bus and removed its pieces, but the people who told Clements the story said the sounds continued. He passed the account to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Susan Seibel in 2002.
Sources
- Susan Seibel, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 30, 2002, interviews with Jim Clements and Butler County Historical Society docents
- Butler Eagle, 2023 photograph and identification of Butler’s swinging bridge
- Jim Cheney, Uncovering PA, field photographs and description of the bridge
- OpenStreetMap, mapped suspension footbridge
