It is
night. In the small town of Gurdon in Arkansas, USA, railroad workers see a
strange yellow light
hovering above the
railroad 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 railroad worker called Will McClain. The men remember his story.
Will McClain was a railroad
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 railroad 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 railroad 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 railroad tracks, many people in the South
would advise
you to be very, very careful.
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