Maco, North Carolina

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Maco, NC. (f/k/a Maco Station, f/k/a Farmers Turnout). Small town in southern NC, primarily noted for the appearance of “ghost lights” in the vicinity for the last 100 years or so.

The story goes that one night in the late 1800s an Atlantic Coast Line train moving north through town out of Wilmington lost its caboose, which began rolling backwards downgrade. The sole inhabitant of the caboose was one Joe Baldwin, the conductor. Baldwin, realizing that another train was following close behind, ran out on the rear platform of the caboose swinging his lantern as a warning. Alas, he was too late; the following train impacted the runaway caboose, killing Joe via decapitation resulting from impact. The head was never found.

Shortly after the accident inhabitants of the area began reporting strange lights in the vicinity of the railroad tracks. All attempts to determine the source of the lights failed. At one point an expedition of soldiers from Fort Benning came to the area in order to solve the mystery, but these efforts were also in vain. The lights appeared with such frequency that trains passing through town were required to have different colored lights to differentiate themselves from the ghost lights. According to local lore, the light was the ghost of Joe Baldwin looking for his head.
By the late 1970s traffic on the rail line had dried up. The line was abandoned and the track taken up. The ghost lights have not been seen since.......

www.newsobserver.com/105/story/522429.html