Submission Window: April 27th – May 29th, 2023
Payment: $20 and a contributor’s copy for US residents
Theme: What is behind mysteries and legends around bridges? The stories can be based on facts or complete fiction. They can be rooted in real world explanations or supernatural causes, but they need to answer the question, what causes this?

Fifth Anniversary Edition

Submissions Open April 27 – May 29

Pay: $20 and a contributor’s copy

Paperback for US Residents

Ebook for authors outside the US

Please read and Follow All Guidelines Carefully or your story may be discarded without being read.

Email your submission to [email protected]

Cover letter and bio should be in the body of the email.

Stories are 2500 – 8000 words

Story should be sent as a separate .doc or .docx attachment, Formatted in Shunn format style

Title your file and subject Crybaby-Authorname-title

The Collection of Utter Speculation series speculates about what is behind mysteries and legends. The stories can be based on facts or complete fiction. They can be rooted in real world explanations or supernatural causes, but they need to answer the question, what causes this?

Cry Baby Bridge

Across the United States there are Bridges that belong to another time. Some aren’t even attached to roads anymore, but they are well known. People who cross them, especially at night, have stories to share of phantom cries, sometimes like a baby, sometimes like a woman. There are legends attached to explain these cries, tragedies of women seeking to flee from horrible situations.

How strange that these stories are so prevalent. That so many states have one or more bridge that the residents know of not by its name, (Van Sant, Rouges Hollow, De Kalb Rd) but by the sound both skeptics, believers and unprepared pedestrians hear when they cross.

The Cry Baby.

Maybe it’s just old boards. Strange winds. Foxes and fowl in the forests.

Maybe, as so many legends believe, it is the restless souls of unwed mothers, having flung themselves over the side into the churning, frigid waters below.

Or maybe it’s something else entirely. Something dark and more mysterious that we cannot completely understand.

Speculate for us. We want to know.

We do not want gratuitous or sexual violence particularly toward children or animals, nor are we interested in being a platform for bigotry. There is a clear line here and if you don’t know where it is, we suggest you figure it out before submitting.

Via: Speculation Publications.