Kissing Bridge

The Kissing Bridge is a covered wooden footbridge that spans the Canal in Derry, Maine, connecting Bassey Park to the grounds of Derry High School. It is a structure of deceptively quaint appearance, its sides and plank footing—even the beams under the roof—covered with an intaglio of initials, phone numbers, and declarations. These range from professions of love to threats of violence, including declarations that those discovered engaging in homosexual acts would lose their foreskins or have their assholes plugged with hot tar. One cryptic message that puzzled the young Eddie Corcoran read: "SAVE RUSSIAN JEWS! COLLECT VALUABLE PRIZES!" The bridge thus serves as a physical record of the town's conflicting impulses toward connection and cruelty.

The Site of Adrian Mellon's Murder

The Kissing Bridge is most infamously the site of the brutal murder of Adrian Mellon on the night of July 21st, 1984, the final night of Derry's Canal Days Festival. Mellon and his boyfriend, Don Hagarty, were walking home when they were set upon by three teenagers—John "Webby" Garton, Steven Dubay, and Christopher Unwin—who had been incensed by Mellon's flamboyant hat and his homosexuality. The attack began near the bridge, with Garton punching Mellon and cutting his hat to pieces. The assailants then dragged Mellon to the Main Street Bridge, where they threw him over the railing into the Canal. After the murder, Hagarty, who had been beaten and was semi-conscious, looked down and saw the clown Pennywise under the bridge, holding a bunch of balloons and saying, "They float. Down here we all float; pretty soon your friend will float, too." The bridge thus becomes the threshold between the mundane violence of the town and the supernatural horror that feeds on it.

A Place of Contemplation and Fear

Before its association with Mellon's death, the Kissing Bridge was a place where the town's darker currents could be felt. Eddie Corcoran, a boy fleeing his abusive stepfather, often sat by the Canal near the bridge, finding a strange peace in the water's power. He would fantasize about pushing his stepfather into the spring runoff, watching him be carried away. The bridge's graffiti, with its homophobic slurs and threats, reflected the same hatred that would later drive Mellon's murderers. Don Hagarty, in a statement to the police, described taking Adrian Mellon to the bridge to show him the graffiti, including the message "SHOW ME YOUR COCK QUEER AND I'LL CUT IT OFF YOU." Hagarty saw this as evidence of a pervasive, deep-seated craziness in Derry, a sentiment that proved tragically prophetic.

Destruction and Aftermath

The Kissing Bridge was destroyed during the catastrophic storm that struck Derry on May 31st, 1985. As the town's infrastructure collapsed, a piece of the exploding Paul Bunyan statue—the head of its plastic axe—sheared through the bridge's roof and floor. This destruction, occurring as the Losers' Club was concluding its final battle with It, symbolizes the end of an era and the breaking of the town's cycle of violence. The bridge, once a site of both romance and horror, is physically erased, its complex history of love, hate, and murder finally silenced.