Speaker 1: Calarogu, Shark Media, Hi, and Welcome to Ghost. This episode
Speaker 1: is titled for whom the quarters told.
Speaker 2: The RFK Bridge has witnessed more than its fair share
Speaker 2: of tragedy over its long storied existence, from fatal car
Speaker 2: accidents to tormented souls leaping from its dizzying suspended heights.
Speaker 2: The ghostly echoes of past calamities seem to forever linger
Speaker 2: in the steel and concrete bones of the mammoth structure.
Speaker 2: To most commuters enduring the bridge's perpetual gridlock that clogs
Speaker 2: the arterial tangle of expressways leading to its spans, such
Speaker 2: phantasmal lore is little more than atmospheric law to pass
Speaker 2: the idle hours. But to those unlucky few night maintenance
Speaker 2: workers and Rovings security guards who have glimpsed the wrath
Speaker 2: of a dark, damned figure roaming its desolate toll plazas
Speaker 2: and maintenance catwalks, the paranormal menaces are all too real
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 2: The malign spirit that haunts the RFK Bridge slash Triborough
Speaker 2: is a single minded revenant, hell bent on exacting a
Speaker 2: twisted vengeance upon the current bridge administration, one whose grudges
Speaker 2: are far more corporeal and bureaucratic than mere existential outrage
Speaker 2: over the severing of earthly bonds. It started shortly after
Speaker 2: the Port Authority and MTA announced the demolition of the
Speaker 2: antique toll booths and coin machines in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: moving to an automated gantry based payment system that scanned
Speaker 2: each vehicle's license plate, charging their account accordingly. The move
Speaker 2: towards a seamless, cashless commute was hailed as a much
Speaker 2: needed modernization measure that would ease traffic congestion and prevent
Speaker 2: the proliferation of untaxed pass throughs. But to one particular
Speaker 2: bridge troll, the long retired and recently deceased Archibald Dunworthy,
Speaker 2: the changes represented a bitter betrayal of the highest order,
Speaker 2: one he would refuse to tolerate, even from beyond the grave.
Speaker 2: Dunworthy was old school through and through, a nineteen sixties
Speaker 2: era toll collector, known to the bridge regulars as Old
Speaker 2: Quartered Windsor for his meticulously brushed silver coiffure and iconic
Speaker 2: change dispensing headpiece. He ruled his dingy, sweat stained toll
Speaker 2: booth kingdom like a feudal barren for over five decades,
Speaker 2: ritualistically relieving each driver of their coinage pittance for the
Speaker 2: privilege of safe passage. After retiring in the early two thousands,
Speaker 2: Dunworthy spent his dwindling twilight years assailing the authority with
Speaker 2: lawsuits and injunction demands to halt any talk of automating
Speaker 2: his beloved bridge's toll plazas he famously showed up to
Speaker 2: every high level policy meeting, where leaving his antique official
Speaker 2: toll taker's cap and shaking his tarnished brass change maker
Speaker 2: to punctuate each tirade. When Old Windsor finally shuffled off
Speaker 2: the mortal coil in twenty twenty at the ripe old
Speaker 2: age of ninety six, just after the Authority announced its
Speaker 2: final automation plans, his hateful rants became whispered promises of
Speaker 2: eternal spite from beyond the grave. Now as a tormented
Speaker 2: phantasm doomed to haunt the iconic triple arched Bridge for
Speaker 2: all eternity, Archibald Dunworthy is making good on those vows
Speaker 2: of vengeance in increasingly unhinged, frightful, and even deadly fashion.
Speaker 2: The first incident was reported on the Sunday overnight shift.
Speaker 2: A few months after the toll Plaza renovations were completed,
Speaker 2: Officer Rudy Vales of Bridge and Tunnel Officers Patrol was
Speaker 2: making his standard rounds of the empty toll lanes when
Speaker 2: he spied what looked like a familiar figure ambling across
Speaker 2: the traffic barriers in his periph glare. At first, Vales
Speaker 2: thought his exhausted, sleep deprived corneas were playing tricks, maybe
Speaker 2: projecting the form of a bridge worker or fellow cop
Speaker 2: milling about where they obviously shouldn't be. But when the
Speaker 2: shadowed silhouette stopped under the sickly orange lamps to stare
Speaker 2: in Rudy's direction, the uniformed officer very clearly made out
Speaker 2: its dread lineaments, the slump shouldered bearing the distinctive obsolete
Speaker 2: toll taker's cap creased low over one hollow scouring socket.
Speaker 2: Old Windsor's uniform stunk of mold and charnel rot, as
Speaker 2: if its decrepit blazer and slacks had been interred in
Speaker 2: a rain soaked pauper's coffin. Even from this distance, Vales
Speaker 2: could see the sickly translucent hue of decaying flesh, knitting
Speaker 2: in flaking eskers beneath the wraith thing's tattered sleeves, Its
Speaker 2: one remaining eyeball roamed feverishly, trailing viscous streams of aqueous,
Speaker 2: morbid fluid in its scorched, suppurating wake. You aren't authorized
Speaker 2: on the u the lanes Valees managed to call out,
Speaker 2: proud of his measured tone, despite the surreal nauseous dread
Speaker 2: coiling deep in his hindgut. The shadowy figure only spasmed
Speaker 2: in reply, issuing forth a low guttural eruption of scowling venom.
Speaker 2: When its lipless more cracked open, Rudy involuntarily took a
Speaker 2: step backward at the sight of its blackened, rotted tongue
Speaker 2: and jags of tarnished brass where teeth should be quartertulse,
Speaker 2: the thing groaned through its pulpy, distorted facade of decay.
Speaker 2: It began shambling forward again, reaching into its shredded inner
Speaker 2: jacket pocket to withdraw a decrepit hand cranked change maker,
Speaker 2: the type of antiquated coin dispenser. The MTA was still
Speaker 2: transitioning away from a century ago when Old Windsor spasmed
Speaker 2: that worm devoured fist at valets again, unleashing another scythelike scream.
Speaker 2: The dull instrument in its clutches sprang to flickering phantasmal life,
Speaker 2: oozing skeins of animated copper and nickel coins with unearthly swiftness.
Speaker 2: Dunworthy's remains flung out its ethereal hand, hagnailing a viciously
Speaker 2: whirling stream of gritty apparition imbued shrapnel. In the terror
Speaker 2: struck officer's direction, Vales took off in a dead sprint,
Speaker 2: zigzagging for all he was worth. As the saltating, franken
Speaker 2: phantasm of currency shredded jersey barrier and plastial lane divider
Speaker 2: alike with each warded lash of its hand cranked animancer arcana,
Speaker 2: he barely found shelter behind an h VAC shed before
Speaker 2: the last slivers of haunted tolbooth species shrilled into its
Speaker 2: warped planks and girders, reducing them to splinter shorn scrap.
Speaker 2: That hellish encounter was just the opening salvo in Old
Speaker 2: Windsor's dark Sorceress campaign against the Port Authority and its
Speaker 2: bridge modernization plans. In the weeks and months that followed,
Speaker 2: reports of ghostly toll taker manifestations proliferated throughout the bridge's
Speaker 2: maintenance logs and overnight incident blotters. Roving teams of bridge
Speaker 2: tenders began detecting distorted, mildewed residues of antique brass cash
Speaker 2: coins adhering to toll plaza surfaces, and newly installed RFI
Speaker 2: D sensors appearing as if from thin air. In several instances,
Speaker 2: freshly poured cement and rubberized road stripping was discovered to
Speaker 2: have been corrupted by the solidified impression of an unseen
Speaker 2: figure's gnarled, cloven hooves. But it was the grisly double
Speaker 2: murder of two easy Pass consultants that secured ol Windsor's
Speaker 2: place as one of the most maligned and pernicious haunters
Speaker 2: ever recorded. On the night of Christmas Eve, a pair
Speaker 2: of MTA contractors were found lashed, flayed, and crucified upon
Speaker 2: the monolithic steel gantries of the rfk's new easy Past
Speaker 2: holeling system. The bodies, which detectives initially dismissed as a
Speaker 2: ritualistic mob revenge slaying, had been drained of every drop
Speaker 2: of blood and gore, only for the atrocious crimson vital
Speaker 2: essences to be discovered adhering the tortured, ruined husks in
Speaker 2: the exact coinage denominations and sums the deceased texts would
Speaker 2: have been depositing into a traditional toll system. After that
Speaker 2: unspeakable atrocity, any further consideration of replacing the bridge's remaining
Speaker 2: coin operated tolbastions was permanently abandoned. PA ny NJ work
Speaker 2: crews dared not set foot within a thousand feet of
Speaker 2: the blighted spans after nightfall for fear of reprisals. Commuters too,
Speaker 2: became leery of Old Windsor's otherworldly reprisals. Those unlucky few
Speaker 2: who failed to pay their easy pass respects or neglected
Speaker 2: to roll through RFID toll lanes with sufficient balances often
Speaker 2: later discovered strange stains of mold and bloodied spare change
Speaker 2: accumulating inside their car's ventilation sys. Horrific honking dirges cursed
Speaker 2: straight from decaying pipe organ asthma lungs would pour from
Speaker 2: their dashboard grills on isolated stretches of roadway, accusing them
Speaker 2: in ghostly groaning turibus of being cheetahs and remittance thieving scofflaws.
Speaker 2: By twenty twenty five, the Triberer Bridge Authority reconsidered the
Speaker 2: name change to RFK Bridge, deciding that now politically toxic
Speaker 2: initials were cursed. But they went a step further, officially
Speaker 2: reinstating the original triber A Monica, deciding that after the
Speaker 2: year's long scourge of Old Windsor's malicious haunting, it was
Speaker 2: more brand appropriate to align the iconic span with the
Speaker 2: original antiquated three borough system of coin based transit taxation.
Speaker 2: Its royaled bones had represented for over half a century
Speaker 2: for commuters and bridge workers who have been subjected to
Speaker 2: the inescapable terrors of Archibald quartered Windsor Unworthy's phantasmal wrath.
Speaker 2: Its little comfort that today's officials formally recognize the easy
Speaker 2: pass automation as a doomed transit of hubris. Out on
Speaker 2: the desolate graveyard expanses of the Triberer's ghostly coin blasted
Speaker 2: toll plazas, all they can hear is the demonic cranking
Speaker 2: of a billion morbid cashiers groaning into eternity, each one
Speaker 2: dispensing an endless, haunted requiem of murderous, bloodstained vengeance against
Speaker 2: those who would dare to modernize?
Speaker 1: Ghost is a Calaogus Shark Media production, written and hosted
Speaker 1: by Alexander Ian McIntyre, produced by Mark Francis. Executive producers
Speaker 1: Mark Francis and John McDermott. Portions of this podcast may
Speaker 1: have been created with the assistance of AI.
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