“Certain natural phenomena [...] are described by nonscientists as mystery lights. Folklore however has assigned special meanings to these eerie lights. When the light is seen in graveyards, they are called corpse lights. They also are said to appear wherever a tragedy is to occur.””
An Unexplainable Light seen for nearly a century…
Travel about 85 miles south of Little Rock, Arkansas along Interstate 30 and you come to the town of Gurdon. In a remote area, several miles outside Gurdon sit railroad tracks for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. It is along a four mile stretch of track that sightings of a floating, glowing orb have been reported for the last ninety years, now known as the Gurdon Light.
While there are of course scientific theories which attempt to explain the origin of the Gurdon Light, many instead believe the phenomena is linked to a single event in history, the murder of a railroad foreman in 1931.
Perhaps not everything seen along the railroad tracks is scientifically explainable, and if not, how long has the area been that way? Is the light something that only dates to the 1930s, or is it something that has been there much longer? Perhaps the Gurdon Light has always been there, it just took people to give it a name…
Additional Links From This Episode:
Sources:
Brown, Alan. Haunted Places in the American South. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2002.
Carroll, Cynthia McRoy. Arkansas Ozarks Legends and Lore. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2020.
The Daily Journal (Franklin, IN). “Eerie ‘Gurdon Light’ is 50-year mystery.” October 30, 1981. Newspapers.com
Granato, Sherri. Haunted Rail Trails & Train Tracks: Forgotten Pathways. Self-published, 2018.
Hope Star (Hope, AR). “Slayer of Section Foreman Convicted.” February 3, 1932. Newspapers.com.
Hope Star (Hope, AR). “Eight Jurors Seated for Trial of McBride.” February 18, 1932. Newspapers.com
Hope Star (Hope, AR). “Negro Appeals in Gurdon Slaying.” March 31, 1932. Newspapers.com.
Hope Star (Hope, AR). “Death Sentence of Negro Upheld.” May 23, 1932. Newspapers.com.
“The Gurdon Light.” The Dead History (blog). Accessed April 19, 2022. https://www.thedeadhistory.com/blog/the-gurdon-light.
Morrow, Staci Nicole. “Gurdon Light.” Updated December 23, 2014. CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/gurdon-light-1198/.
Rayborn, Tim. The Big Book of Paranormal: 300 Mystical & Freighting Tales from Around the World. Kennebunkport, ME: Appleseed Press, 2021.
Sherman, Josepha, ed. Storytelling: An Encyclopedia of Mythology and Folklore. New York: Routledge, 2015.
Swayne, Matthew L. Haunted Rails: Tales of Ghost Trains, Phantom Conductors, and Other Railroad Spirits. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2019.
Unsolved Mysteries. Season 7, episode 9. “Episode 207.” Directed by John Cosgrove, featuring Robert Stack, Diane Barton, and Wanda Barton. Aired December 9, 1994, in broadcast syndication. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Drzj1Ij46X4.
