Maco light

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The Maco Light was a mysterious light that resembled the glow from a lantern and was seen along a section of railroad track near the train station at Maco, North Carolina.

Legend associates it with Joe Baldwin, a train conductor who is said to have been decapitated in a collision between a runaway passenger car and a locomotive at Maco in the late 1800s.

According to legend, Joe Baldwin was the sole occupant in the rear car of a Wilmington-bound train on a rainy night in 1867. As the train neared Maco, Baldwin realized the last car had become detached from the rest of the train. He knew another train was following, so he ran to the rear of the car and began frantically waving a lantern to signal the engineer of the oncoming train. The engineer failed to see the stranded railroad car in time, and Baldwin allegedly was decapitated in the resulting collision.

Shortly after the fatal wreck, residents of Maco began to report seeing a mysterious light along that section of railroad track. Word began to spread through the community that Joe Baldwin had come back to search for his missing head.

The light distracted engineers to the point that the railroad adapted a new signaling system that was used only at the Maco station. President Grover Cleveland is said to have inquired about the reason for Maco's unique red-and-green signal lights when the presidential train stopped at Maco during a rail tour of the coastal Carolinas.

The railroad removed that section of track in 1977. That also marked the end of reported sightings of the mysterious light.