The Brown Mountain Lights, the Big Thicket Light, and the Maco Ghost Lights are among the most famous ghost lights in the South.
Swamp gas? Reflections of automobile headlights? St. Elmo's Fire? Something from another world? Just what are those eerie lights that hover over abandoned stretches of railroad tracks or flit across lonely mountainsides like will-o-the-wisps? Sober-minded scientists can't seem to make up their minds.
Believers in the paranormal, however, claim that a ghost light is the spirit of a dead person, endlessly searching for something or someone which will never be found. Or they claim that certain ghost lights are the spirits of locomotives, endlessly plying the rails.
There is no agreement on either side regarding the origins of ghost lights, but one thing is for certain. Ghost lights excite the imagination of the observer and, at the same time, make his blood run cold. And ghost lights have spawned a legion of creepy legends.
The South has more than its share of spooky ghost lights. Here are three of the most famous -- the Brown Mountain Lights, the Big Thicket Light, and the Maco Ghost Light .
THE MACO GHOST LIGHT (aka The Baldwin Light)
(Maco Station, North Carolina)
On a rainy night in 1867, conductor Joe Baldwin lost his head -- literally.
Joe worked for the Wilmington, Manchester and Augusta Railroad, now the Atlantic Coast Line. His train was heading home to Wilmington in a driving rain. It was almost at its destination. At the time Baldwin was in the last coach of the train doing paperwork. He looked at his watch. It was time for him to walk through the passenger cars to announce that the train was nearing its destination.
When opened the front door of the coach he found to his surprise that the rest of the train was far ahead of the coach -- nearly out of sight. The last car had somehow uncoupled. He knew that close behind him was another train -- an express -- bearing down at high speed.
Joe ran to the rear door of the detached coach and swung his lantern wildly, trying to catch the attention of the engineer piloting the train behind, but it was no use. The express careened into the coach, demolishing it and decapitating Joe.
To this day, Joe's ghost lantern still burns over that stretch of railroad. Old railroaders swear that it is the ghost of Joe Baldwin looking for its head (which, by the way, was never found). The ghost light causes a real problem because other engineers have often mistaken it for a real signal. As a result, the railroad ordered its signalmen at Maco to use two lanterns, one red and one green. That way there would be no mistake as to which lantern was the ghost light and which lantern was real.
BIG THICKET GHOST LIGHT
(Texas)
Abandoned railways and ghost lights seem to go together like ham and eggs. Between the towns of Saratoga and Bragg, Texas, for instance, a former railroad right-of-way hosts a ghost light that, strangely enough, only appeared after the abandoned rails were dismantled and sold for scrap in 1934.
While the railroad was in operation, several deaths were reported along this stretch of tracks. One horrible death occurred when a railroad brakeman was caught between two cars and crushed to death. The engineer was unaware that the brakeman was in such a precarious position and began to back his engine. At the time the brakeman was carrying a lantern.
The Big Thicket Ghost Light has been witnessed by many people. It seems to sway back and forth, exactly like a person carrying a lantern. It approaches the observer, first as a yellow light. Then it changes to white and finally to red before it vanishes.
THE BROWN MOUNTAIN LIGHTS
(Morganton, North Carolina)
There are, perhaps, no more famous ghost lights in America than the Brown Mountain Lights. These are red, blue, green, and white glowing balls seen flitting across the side of Brown Mountain, near the Blue Ridge Parkway. However, the lights are elusive. They can be seen clearly only when viewed from afar, but disappear when the observer gets too close.
One legend about the Brown Mountain Lights holds that the orbs are the spirits of Native Americans. Seven hundred years ago, Cherokee invaders swept down from the north battled the native Catawbas. From all accounts, it was an extremely bloody battle. But the lights, strangely enough, are not the spirits of slain warriors. Rather, they are said to be the spirits of Indian women sifting through the carnage, looking for dead husbands, sons, and brothers.
Although the Cherokee claim the lights have been around for centuries, they were first officially reported by the German engineer Gerard Will de Brahm in 1771. De Brahm also offered the first scientific explanation for the lights. He said, "The mountains emit nitrous vapors which are borne by the wind and when laden winds meet each other the niter flames, sulphurates and deteriorates."
Since de Brahm's day, science has further tried to explain the lights. Strangely enough, many "scientific" explanations fail to take into account certain time elements. For instance, when the U.S. Geological Survey conducted an investigation in 1913, they concluded that the Brown Mountain Lights were the result of locomotive headlights from the Catawba Valley, south of Brown Mountain. Another investigation, by the same agency, declared that the lights were actually reflections from automobile headlights. However, automobile headlights, like locomotive headlights, were unknown in the 1700s.
A third theory argues that the lights may be a mirage -- reflections from the electric lights of Hickory, Lenoir, or other nearby towns. The problem with this, of course, is that there was no electricity there until the last part of the nineteenth century. Some scientists even claim that the lights are the result of swamp gas. But there are no swamps on steep mountainsides. In fact, there are not swamps in the area at all.
Since no one can get close enough for a personal encounter with the lights, it stands to reason that the riddle of the Brown Mountain Lights will remain a mystery for a long time to come!
