It is her spirit, they claim, that is often seen on Cline Avenue as it passes close to the Calumet River. Passing motorists have seen a beautiful girl wearing a wedding dress standing by the side of the road, staring pitifully at the passing motorists before she plunges down the embankment toward the river.

One cab driver had an even closer encounter with the woman in the white dress. Late one night in November, the cab driver was driving along Cline Avenue toward Hammond to pick up a fare. As he drove through the chill evening, a thin drizzle formed out of the dark skies and a mist swept out of the river and clung to the roadside. Slowing for a potentially treacherous curve, the driver was bewildered to see the form of a young girl appear out of the mist by the side of the road. Instinctively he slowed and flicked on his bright lights in an effort to see her more clearly.

By the light of his headlamps, she appeared young with long hair. Most startlingly, she wore a long white dress in the manner of wedding dresses from decades before. For an instant, she was illuminated in the light and then she was gone. The driver slowed further but then, deciding that his mind was playing tricks on him, he pressed the accelerator and moved on toward Hammond.

The cabbie might have written the vision off as a trick of the light and mist except for something that happened a half mile or so from where he had seen the girl. As he drove on through the night, concentrating on the road before him and his waiting customer, he gradually became aware of a damp, cold feeling permeating through the car. At first he thought the window was cracked, admitting the night air, but upon checking, he found this was not the case. The window on the passenger’s side of the car was also tightly closed. Thinking perhaps that the rear passenger’s door was ajar, the driver stole a glance over his shoulder into the back seat. As he did so, his heart nearly stopped.

He was staring directly into the eyes of a young girl. She sat, staring silently ahead into the night, her eyes glazed and apparently oblivious to her surroundings. Though the night was dark and the interior light of the car was shut off, he could see her clearly. In an instant, he knew that this was the face of the girl he had seen a moment before, standing by the side of the road. As he later told friends, she was totally wet, her once beautiful white dress soiled and dank. Suddenly the smell of river water filled the car.