Lights of the World Week 7: Maco Station Light

Photo by Cassiopeia sweet at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OER_3021_Signboard_Headlight.jpg

The Fall 2017 Lights of the World Fitness Challenge encourages participant to be physically active an average of at least 20 minutes/day.

Week 7, starting October 8 and ending October 14, features North Carolina's legendary Maco Station Light seen at Rattlesnake Grade or Farmer's Turnout in northeastern Brunswick County. In 1873, a light resembling a lantern was first reported to appear near the railroad tracks at night. Was this the ghost of Joe Baldwin, who stood frantically waving a lantern to warn an oncoming train while on a detached car rolling down the tracks only to be beheaded in the collision?

Perhaps the light resulted from nearby swamp gases, but why would it be swinging side to side and traveling down the center of the track? Headlights from vehicles on a nearby road might have been a good theory, but some say the lights were reported decades before automobiles would have been on the scene.

Some say Grover Cleveland came through the area on a train and asked why the signalman used two lights instead of one and was told it was to distinguish between the real signal and the ghost of Joe Baldwin. The Maco Station elicited a bit of interest from a variety of sources, including Life Magazine, the Smithsonian Institute, and even a machine gun detachment from Fort Bragg.

We'll probably never know the absolute truth about the Maco Station light mystery. The railroad filled in the swamp under the trestle in 1935. The track and trestle associated with the legend were removed in 1977.

If interested in hearing one account of the Maco Station light, click here to listen to Jackie Torrence, a famous storyteller from Spencer, North Carolina, weave the tale as only a seasoned storyteller could.

And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. "Joshua 10:13