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It
is night. In the small town of Gurdon in Arkansas, USA, railway workers
see a strange yellow light hovering above the railway track.
The light seems to move in circles. The men walk towards it. It
disappears. Suddenly the light reappears behind them. The men are
frightened. They cannot explain the light.
It moves slowly down the track. They follow it. At a certain point it
moves off the track into a local graveyard. The terrified men continue to
follow it. The light stops above a tombstone. Then it disappears. The men
shine their torches on the tombstone. They read the inscription. It marks
the grave of a railrway worker called Willy McClain. The men remember his
story.
Willy McClain was a railway foreman. One of his men, Lewis McBride, was
giving him problems. The man wasn't doing his job properly. He was
negligent. McClain fired him. McBride was a cruel violent man. He turned
on McClain and hit him with a shovel. McClain was badly injured but he
managed to run away from McBride along the railway track. McBride chased
McClain, caught him and murdered him brutally with a hammer.
The law soon caught up with McBride. They charged him with murder and he
died by execution in February 1932. Not long after, the strange yellow
light started to appear at the place where McClain died. Was it McClain's
ghost?
People from the town of Crossett, also near Arkansas, saw a similar light
above their railway track. They believe it is the ghost of another
railwayman. In the early 1900s a brakeman climbed down from his train just
outside Crossett. He wanted to inspect the track. It was night so he had a
lamp with him. He bent over to repair something. Just then, without
warning, the train lurched forward, ran over the man and decapitated him.
The man's horrified companions carried his body on to the train. They
couldn't find his head. Today people say that the light comes from the
dead man's lantern.
Every night the headless brakeman walks down the track, looking for his
lost head.
There are many stories like these in the sleepy little towns in and around
South Carolina, USA. Perhaps the best-known tells the story of Joe
Baldwin. In 1867, Baldwin was working as a brakeman on a train travelling
through the town of Maco. During the journey, the train's boxcar came
loose. Baldwin knew that an express train was due very soon. He stood on
the platform of the boxcar and signalled with his lantern, trying to get
the express train to stop. The driver didn't see him in time. In the
horrific crash that followed, the express train decapitated Baldwin. They
never found his head.
Perhaps the lights are caused by natural phenomena like gases, mineral
deposits or local atmospheric conditions. But, if you see any unexplained
lights by railway tracks, many people in the South would advise you to be
very, very careful.
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