The Gurdon Light 1984 Investigation

Local residents say it’s the lantern carried by the spirit of a murdered railroad man. Others say it’s a scientifically explainable phenomenon – but they can’t explain it. Whatever it is, everyone agrees it’s there, as residents of southwest and central Arkansas have been seeing the “Gurdon Light” along a four-mile stretch of the Missouri-Pacific Railroad tracks sine the early 1930s.

A nighttime trek through the dense, swampy woods and past an old cemetery to see the phenomenon reveals a yellowish-white, sometimes bluish light that appears one to three feet above the tracks. The light is thought to be approximately eighteen inches wide, one foot high and shaped like a medicine or rugby ball.

It seems a railroad foreman was bludgeoned to death with a spike maul by one of his employees right along the tracks where the light now appears. The employee had been accused of sabotaging the tracks, trying to wreck the Sunshine Special, but actually causing the wreck of a freight the day before. (No one was killed, according to the December 10, 1931 Southern Standard, but a group of hoboes were treated for injuries in Gurdon.)

Since that time, a lantern has allegedly been seen swinging near the area along the tracks where the foreman was killed, however, many prefer the headlight theory. Headlights and taillights haven been the single most suggested explanation for many ghost lights. Looking down long stretches of either railroad tracks or rural highways, skeptics believe that the terrain can be confusing in the darkness and what many people think is actually something paranormal is actually only the comings and goings of headlights of distant traffic.

Dr. Charles Leming, a professor of physics from the nearby Arkadelphia College, supervised a study of the light as part of a one-hour credit course called “Physics: Theories – Fact and Fiction.” Since the 1950s a new wave of college students has descended into the deep night wood, tottered over trestles, toed gingerly over rotting ties and squinted ahead to where a triangle of sky points to the apex of a narrowing railroad tracks where the light has been seen for years.

On a hot evening in June of 1980, a party of 12 professors, students and curious visitors parked their cars at the little-used railroad crossing, smeared their bodies with insect repellent and headed down the tracks that connects Gurdon to Okolona. Dr. Leming led the way, followed by Mike Clingan, who headed the investigation. The Gurdon Light has always interested him.

It is believed that to view the light properly you must proceed down the tracks about a mile and a half just beyond the third trestle. In the distance ahead, you could see a yellow, orange or even red light bob around and move from left to right.

I traveled to Clark County, Arkansas in September of 1984 to conduct my own investigation of the Gurdon Light. I contacted the Arkansas Gazette, who published the original article and was accompanied by Lamar James and a photographer, John Cary. Even though there was supposed to be a full moon that evening, it hadn’t yet risen and the area was dark as pitch. You couldn’t see a few feet ahead of you.

I arrived there with a video and still 35mm camera and James provided a set of two-way radios for communication purposes. We continued walking down the tracks for quite some time, listening to unusual sounds; unusual for me I guess, being a city-boy. The reporters tried to ease my fear by offering simple explanations like turtles flopping into the water, even though the noise sounded more like a body falling in to ordinary animal movements. On that night, however, the light was a no-show even though I had seen it the night before – a greenish-blue light arcing from rail to rail in the distance.

After we arrived at the third trestle, we continued for a bit more before the reporters became a bit nervous themselves. We peered down the tracks without any success, so I tried taking some time-lapse photographs with a 35mm camera loaded with high-speed 400 ASA film. The whole time there we saw nothing out of the ordinary, however, upon looking at the processed film, I was surprised to see two or three photographs that showed a moving light in an otherwise pitch-black photograph. The shutter was held open manually for over two minutes at one time and nothing else in the pictures could be discerned except this unusual light.

I walked away with a sense of awe and wonderment at the possible cause for these lights.

Address: About 75 miles south of Little Rock on Interstate 30 and located just east on Hwy 67. It is located just outside of town along a stretch of railroad tracks.

Hauntings: Local legends abound including an old black cemetery where some people used to hide by the tombstones to scare visitors away. Reports say they were scared away themselves, but they didn’t specify by what. Then there’s a hanging tree where unfortunate people were neck-tied while Arkansas was still a territory. Some say if you park underneath that particular tree, your car begins to shake uncontrollably

Equipment setup: A 35mm SLR Cannon AE-1 camera loaded with high-speed 400 ASA film was used, a Panasonic Pro-Edit 0 lux VHS camcorder was employed, two-way radios and Pentax 10x35 binoculars for observation.

Experiments performed: The main purpose of our investigation was simple observation of this mystery light which did not show its head on that second evening. The VHS camcorder was useless out there due to insufficient light available for illumination. The 35mm camera was taking pictures past the third trestle and a few occasions, time-lapse images were taken using a sturdy tripod and remote cable release attached to the shutter release button.

The Ghost Research Society investigated the Gurdon Light on September 14, 1984. Team members included: Dale Kaczmarek with help reporter Lamar James and John Cary, a staff photographer from the Arkansas Gazette.

Personal experiences:

Dale Kaczmarek: This was a very creepy walk down a disused section of tracks that happened to pass by what has been described as a black slave cemetery on the left. Coupled with the extreme darkness and strange slashing sounds beneath our feet as we passed from trestle to trestle completed the eeriness of our walk.

I did not have any real personal experiences during this investigation but did capture some dancing lights on the film that I used. No one in our party had seen any lights down the tracks, which would have been easy to see in the darkness, so I was at a loss to explain how those lights had appeared on the film.

Evidence collected: Two frames from the 35mm film does show some weird light anomaly far in the distance that weren’t observed by the visual eyes.

Conclusions: This was a great experience, especially being accompanied by local newspaper reporters who had never been out to the light in the past. It would have been outstanding if we had seen something where we might have been able to process what we saw and perhaps explain or debunk this Spooklight.

Since I was leading the way and the reporters were taking up the rear, I believe a few times they tried to spook me a bit by throwing rocks in water by the train tracks. That, of course, did not bother me as there was an abundance of nighttime animal life all around us.

A follow-up investigation with topographical and surface maps and current state-of-the-art equipment might shed some more light on this mystery. The newspaper did a nice article about our endeavors that evening including a front-page picture of myself!