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The mysterious Maco Light

Maco Light, also called the Ghost at Maco Station, is one of North
Carolina's most well-known and enduring supernatural phenomena. It dates
to a fatal train wreck in 1867 at a small rural station then called
Farmer's Turnout, 14 miles west of Wilmington on the line serving
Wilmington, Florence, S.C., and Augusta, Ga. Conductor Joe Baldwin,
riding in the last car of a wood-burning train, discovered that his car
had come uncoupled.

He died waving a lantern from the rear of that car in a failed attempt
to signal and stop a second train coming from behind. One witness saw
Baldwin's lantern fly clear of the train wreck, land and right itself in
the adjacent swamp, and burn on.Shortly afterward and for over a century
since, a flickering light has appeared regularly along the railroad
tracks in the vicinity of the 1867 collision. Legend attributes this
light to the ghost of Joe Baldwin, who was decapitated in the wreck; the
ghost is said to be looking for its head. From 1873 until after an 1886
earthquake, railroad workers reported a pair of Maco lights that would
appear together.

Over the years, the Maco light has been bright enough to fool many
railroad workers into stopping their trains. To remedy the ghost's
schedule-thwarting attempts, signalmen at Maco used two lights, one red
and one green. While President Grover Cleveland's train was wooding and
watering up at Maco in 1889, the president saw the two signal lights,
asked about them, and got the full story of Old Joe Baldwin.In the
spring of 1964, the South Eastern North Carolina Beach Association
contacted parapsychologist and ghost-hunter Hans Holzer to come to Maco
and investigate the mysterious light.

After his visit, Holzer gave an apparent certification of the phantom
conductor, citing the consistency of his return appearances. Since the
railroad tracks were removed around 1980, sightings of the Maco Light
have 'greatly diminished, if not completely disappeared,' according to
Cape Fear Museum historian Harry Warren. In its time the Maco Light has
been the object of many a dark vigil at Maco Station, where anywhere
from a few to dozens of people would frequently gather at night. It has
also been the subject of numerous newspaper stories and at least one
narrative ballad, 'The Maco Light,' which sums up the tale:They found
Joe's body,They found Joe's head! They buried 'em both,But he's not
dead!

On a dismal night in a dismal swamp,You can see his lantern shine!--
Bland Simpson(From "Encyclopedia of North Carolina" edited by William S.
Powell. Copyright © 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press.
Used by permission of the publisher. For more information visit
www.uncpress.unc.edu.)Researcher Brooke Cain searches journals and other
sources for talk about the South. She can be reached at (919) 829-4579
or bcain@newsobserver.com.