The Gurdon Light

Gurdon is a small town in Clark County, southwest Arkansas. Outside it, a stretch of the old Missouri Pacific railroad runs through woods that locals call the ghost light bluffs. The rails have been removed or covered, though four creek trestles still stand and a small old cemetery lies nearby. Visitors walk about two miles along the old trackbed to reach the spot. They come for the light.

The most popular legend tells of a railroad worker beheaded by a train, who walks the tracks swinging his lantern, searching for his head. The second legend rests on a documented crime. On 4 December 1931, Missouri Pacific section foreman William "Will" McClain was reported missing. He had been struck four times on the head, once with a shovel and three times with a spike maul. He crawled almost a quarter mile into swampy woods before he died.

The killer was Louis McBride, a 38-year-old member of McClain's own crew. The motive is disputed: an argument over work days during Depression cutbacks, lost seniority, or an accusation that he had caused a freight wreck. McBride was electrocuted at the Little Rock penitentiary on 8 July 1932. The light, says the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, was first seen shortly afterward.

Witnesses describe a round ball of light, yellowish-white, sometimes bluish. Others report green, orange, reddish or golden. It hangs one to three feet above the rails and makes no sound. One local broadcast said it seems to be "bobbing around as if on a cord."

Some say it is never still. Others say it never seems to move at all. It is simply seen at one end of the track, and later at the other. Sometimes it reappears behind the people walking the line.

Mike Clingan, a Gurdon native who went on to study physics, once watched through binoculars as a group came "walking toward him" for 10 to 15 minutes. It vanished when it reached him. He saw a bluish mist over the rails. He heard voices and shuffling with no visible source. He felt a sudden dread, and his companions said they felt it too.

In 2012, student filmmaker Marcus Lowe sat at the site at dusk. "In between where I parked the car and where I was sitting, it appeared, there it was." He took photos and video, but it was extremely dark. He believes it is "definitely something supernatural," with "a purpose."

Clingan tested the light for years. He reported that it was not polarized, which he said ruled out a mirage, and that it caused a slight deflection on a galvanometer. The results were never published. In October 1994, an Unsolved Mysteries crew came to Gurdon, filmed a reenactment of the murder and interviewed Clingan. The program reached no conclusion.

Skeptics point to headlights on Interstate 30. But the site is more than two miles away, a hill is said to block the view, and the sightings predate the highway. Swamp gas fits poorly with a light seen in all kinds of weather. Clingan leaned toward a piezoelectric glow from stressed quartz beneath Gurdon, an idea no one has confirmed. Brian Dunning of Skeptoid noted that the headless brakeman story attaches to other ghost lights too, which makes it an unlikely true origin.

Bob Thompson, president of the Clark County Historical Association, says nobody has explained it, "not on national television, local television, no one." The light is now a Halloween attraction. It belongs to a family that includes the Marfa Lights, the Brown Mountain Lights and the Maco Light, where another headless railroad worker carries a lantern.