The Curiosity Shop - Gurdon Light - Trip 5

Thursday, March 22nd, we parked the car next to a pickup truck just off Highway 53 at the Sandy Crossing and started walking west along the track. We met two couples who were coming back east somewhat before 9:00 p.m. and asked if they'd seen the light. They said, "Yes." and pointed down the track. We had been watching their flashlight as they approached, but when they pointed down the track we could see the flashes of light above the track in the distance. We walked west and the flashes continued for some time, but we never got close to them and they stopped before we got to the top of the hill with the white gravel and the dirt road that cuts across the track. We put our little folding chairs down there and waited. I noticed a red light through the trees about 40 degrees south of the track to the eastern. I looked through our binoculars and could see that it was round. It, or the tree branch next to it moved a bit and then there was no more movement for 5 or 10 minutes. I don't think this was the Gurdon Light. Later when I looked the light was gone. We sat there on our chairs till 10:45. It was cold, and so we quit earlier than we might have otherwise.

Friday we went looking for information. We had gone up on a Thursday so that I could get to the libraries at the two universities in Arkadelphia. I suppose they are open on weekends, but I wanted to be sure. So we went to Henderson State University first. We drove up to the visitor information building and found that it was closed. We walked up past the cafeteria and I saw a campus police car and the campus police office. Figuring that there would be somebody there at least, we went in.

We spoke mostly to the wife of a campus policeman. She had come to eat lunch with her husband. She told us of the time she and her husband had seen the Gurdon Light. This was before Interstate 30 was built. They had been with a group. At some point they gave up on seeing it and started back toward Sticky Road. One girl in the group took a look behind them and, seeing nothing, yelled to the light, "Your mother wears army boots!", a popular saying at the time. A moment later the light was there, bouncing along over one of the rails. Occasionally it would stop bouncing, rise up and hover for a bit, and then go back to bouncing. She said it never got too close to them but kept some distance.

This lady also told us about a young man who had shot a hole in the roof of his truck. He had gone to see the Gurdon Light. When he returned to his truck the Gurdon Light was in the cab. He took a shot at it, but the light took no notice of being shot at. I'm hoping to contact this fellow and see if he will give me a brief write up of the events of that night for this web site.

This lady suggested that we go to the Gurdon Public Library, so that was our next stop. The librarian gave us copies of two articles from the Gurdon Times. One was dated Aug 16, 1995 and entitled, "What Are The Gurdon Lights". Despite the plural "Lights", I have never heard of anyone seeing more than one light at a time, and I've talked to a lot of people who have seen the light. The other article was written by Zela Taylor and is from October of some year, but it wasn't clear which year. That article begins, "As Early as the late twenties there was observed a peculiar light on or near the railroad just west of Sandy Crossing on Highway 53 near Gurdon." The librarian told me that "Really Scary Stories" had just done a story on the Gurdon Light and I might contact them at Fox TV. The librarian also suggested that I talk to a gentleman in his 80s who runs a variety store on Main Street in Gurdon. That's where we went next.

The gentleman at the variety store had known Will McClain, the man murdered on the tracks in 1931 and who's ghost is thought by some to be the Gurdon Light. He said Mr. McClain was near retirement when he was murdered. He also said that he'd often see Mr. McClain with his lantern. He carried it each day on his way to work and back because he never knew how late he would have to work. This gentleman had never seen the Gurdon Light out of respect for the memory of his friend, Will McClain. He suggested we could get more information from the Clark County Historical Association and suggested that if we went to the Clark County Public Library in Arkadelphia they could put us in touch with someone from the association.

We drove to Arkadelphia and went to the Clark County Library. I had been there on a previous trip looking for information on the light and they hadn't had any. They gave me the name and phone number of the man to contact at the Clark County Historical Association and let me use the phone to call him. He said that the association's material on the Gurdon Light was all in the special collections of the library at Ouchita Baptist University. He said they even had tapes of TV shows on the light. Since it was spring break and the library was closed I will have to visit the library on another light hunting trip.

While I was on the phone one of the librarians brought me a copy of an article on the Gurdon Light from a local newspaper. It was concerned primarily with a physics professor at Henderson State University and one of his students and their studies of the Gurdon Light. The most interesting fact that the article contained was the fact that they had tested the light for polarization and that it is not polarized. This means that it is not a reflection. Of course when you see the light in the distance as I have, you might think it was a reflection. I can't imagine that those who have seen the light up close would have ever imagined that the ball of light hovering over the track was any kind of reflection.

Friday night we got to the tracks about 7:00 p.m., just as it was getting dark. Linda's leg was bothering her a bit, so we only walked as far as the three trestles that are close together (See map). We sat there for a while and then started back. After crossing the three trestles we looked behind us and saw the light above the tracks far in the distance. We had been seeing lightning and there was a storm approaching, but I turned around and headed for the light. Linda remained behind, but we kept in touch with walkie-talkies we had bought that day. I went as far as the first patch of white gravel going up the hill past the thee trestles, but by then I hadn't seen the light flashing in some time and the lightning was getting closer. I turned around and, walking quickly, made it to the graveyard by the time the first drops of rain started to fall. We made it to the car only slightly damp, but as we drove back to the motel it began to pour.

The next day the storm had passed and we went up past Hot Springs to Ron Coleman's Quartz Crystal Mine, arriving in the early afternoon and staying till they closed at 5:00. After eating that evening we went out to the tracks again. We got there a bit after dark and stayed long enough to be convinced that the light wasn't going to be there that night, or if it was it would hold out longer than we would. We were tired from the crystal digging.