It was never known how Sonny drowned. Since he had just assumed it was accidental and never questioned the incident any further. Sonny was buried in a pauper's grave and folks thereabouts proceeded to forget about the strange derelict who frequented the old bridge.

But Sonny would not be so easily forgotten. A few months after his death he was seen again on the covered bridge!

Now, in the old days, covered bridges often came to have the reputation of being haunted. Bats fluttering about, loose planks and boards, and long, inky-black shadows inside the bridge invariably contributed to the "ghostly" atmosphere and helped spin lots of yarns.

But in this case, it was apparently more than just a few tall tales. Many reliable townspeople on various occasions reported seeing Sonny. There were too many sightings to dismiss them as creative fantasies.

One of the most detailed sightings was reported by a young lawyer who was crossing the bridge one fogshrouded night. As his buggy was entering the bridge, he noticed that his horse hesitated to plunge into the shadows. It bewildered the man, because the animal had never before shown any reluctance to cross the bridge, day or night. When they were a little more than half way across, the horse reared up and started making an awful commotion. At about the same time, the lawyer heard hurried footsteps and in the greenish-yellow glow from the gas streetlight on the south side of the river, he saw a figure standing at the far end of the bridge.

Despite the fog, the lawyer always insisted that he saw the figure clearly. It was Sonny, wearing that same shabby, threadbare overcoat with the knapsack over one shoulder.

Sonny continued to make frequent appearances on the old covered bridge on South First Street until 1916. On February twenty-first of that year, the bridge was swept away by an ice jam. After that, Sonny was seen less frequently--once in awhile on the bridge on Second and Elm, now and then on the Market Street Trestle bridge.

He never seemed to find a bridge he liked as well as the First Street bridge, however, and eventually, he was never seen again.