The Crossett Light – Part II
The Booger Lights Project: Crossett – The “New” Light
Part I appeared on 1 September 2011.
The absence of its namesake light left the town of Crossett without its claim to Fortean fame. Most people believed the reports of the light’s passing with the removal of the Missouri-Pacific tracks. The sporadic reports that the light sightings that drifted in from local teenagers were dismissed as wishful thinking, but as reports increased it became clear that the Crossett Light hadn’t died. It simply moved to a more hospitable location near the old Bovine Station.
In fact, it is hard for Crossett to claim the light anymore, as it appears much closer to the town of Hamburg than it does its original location. However, local habit conquers geography in this case and the light retains its old name.
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| The Crossett Light Road (c) 2010 Thornton Austen |
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| The Light Road 3 hours later using same camera position on tripod (c)2010 Thornton Austen |
While the light usually appears in the same predictable area, there are times that observers have witnessed the light travel across adjacent properties. Though this is exceedingly rare, when the light strays from its usual pattern it seems to gravitate toward the ruins of the Bovine Station platform to the east of the normal viewing area. On other rare occasions, witnesses report seeing the light appear near ground level between parked cars.
At its current location, the Crossett Light does not attract the attention it once commanded. Still, several amateur investigators have tried to debunk the occurrences unsuccessfully. The viewing area and the zone where the light most often appears is in close proximity to a local highway. This causes most skeptics to dismiss the Light as headlights even though a hill exists between the highway and the viewing area. When the viewer is in position to see the Crossett Light the hill shields the highway from view.
After one adamant and vocal out-of-town critic tried to persuade law enforcement to ban light hunters from the road, a local group set out to dispose of the headlight theory once and for all. They posted observers at the sighting area and the highway with two-way radios. During that night more than a hundred cars passed on the highway. The Crossett Light appeared several times as well, but failed to conform to traffic patterns. Still, the headlight explanation persists, mainly among those who have never seen the actual phenomenon and those who do not bother to even visit the site.
The author was fortunate to be present when another group positioned a laser at headlight level on the highway and directed its beam up the old tram. From the known viewing area and the zone where the light most often appears the hill blocked the beam. However when observers went to the wrong area and stared toward the highway, they could both see the laser and easily identify headlights on the highway. Curiously, from both locations the investigators witness the appearance of the actual Crossett Light.
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| An overlay combining the above photos to show the position of the light relative to the road (c)2010 Thornton Austen |
By going to the designated viewing area, prospective observers remove headlights from consideration and stand a better chance of seeing the actual Crossett Light phenomenon. Take Arkansas Highway 52 from Crossett to the airport and turn left on Ashley County Road 17. After a short distance, Ashley 17 will curve sharply to the right where it intersects Ashley 425. (Not to be confused with the US highway of the same number that goes through Hamburg.) Continue north on Ashley 425 past where the pavement turns to gravel. You will soon pass the site of the old deer camp on the right. Only a chimney remains. Continue north to the crossroads of Ashley 425 and Ashley 16. At the crossroads, turn around and drive back toward the camp for 100-200 yards. Park and turn off all lights. Local tradition says you should flash your headlights three times to summon the Crossett Light. Experience has shown this to be unnecessary, but why buck tradition? The light most often appears near the old deer camp, but if you approach it will disappear.
As always respect private property, be courteous to other viewers, and enjoy the Crossett Light. I hope you are fortunate enough to see it.
The Crossett Viewing Area
from
© 2011, Thornton Austen
Personal Experience – The Crossett Railroad Light
. A Personal Account by Grey Hand
Here’s the proof. When you share your personal ghost light experiences with the Booger Lights Project, (if you give the okay) we will post them here for everyone to see and enjoy. We do reserve the right to edit, but this time as in most cases, no editing was necessary. This personal account of the Crossett Light was made available by Hamburg, Arkansas resident, Grey Hand. (Yep, that’s his real name)
In the summer of 1975, I was 11 years old and saw the (old) Crossett Light for the first time. We were living in North Crossett that summer and earlier in the year the “Good Friday Tornado” had wiped out the town of Warren, Arkansas where my mother’s family lived. My grandparents and two teenaged aunts had survived the storm, but the girls had been at a slumber party at a house on Wheeler Street. This house like most others on Wheeler Street was leveled and the girls barely escaped before it caught fire and burned. My Grandparents decided it would be best if the girls spent the summer with us, at least until all the clean up and funerals were through.
Soon my aunts made friends with some local kids and learned about the legend of the Crossett Light. My mother confirmed that the light existed since she had snuck off from Warren in 1960 with some other teenagers and gone to see the light. I had never heard of the light, but after hearing the legend of the headless brakeman I, like my aunts, was determined to see the light. My parents finally relented and took us down to the tracks along with my little brother and a couple of neighbor kids.
We disembarked the family pickup at the old Unity Road crossing and walked north along the tracks for about a hundred yards until we were well away from the headlights along highway. We waited and waited there in the dark, but saw nothing. Dad had had about enough. He refused to believe there was such a thing as a ghost light, anyway. He had just ordered us all back to the truck when a large orange-ish light like a ball of fire drifted across the tracks about a hundred yards away from where we stood. The order to leave was soon forgotten as we all stood staring into the night.
About ten minutes later, the light came back across the tracks slowly from th other direction. This time, it was much closer and larger. The light appeared one more time that night. I know Dad saw the light, but he still refused to say it existed. I saw the light on the tracks many more times over the years and especially loved to bring friends from college to experience the ghost on the tracks. Like many people, I hated it when Mo-Pac pulled up the tracks, but was glad the light started to appear out on Ashley Co. Road 425. The light does not appear as bright or as large there, but at least it is still around for future generations to enjoy.
Booger Lights On the Road
The fall of the year is when we do most of our roadwork. When we go out to do research for the blog and books, we go in style. Sure, there are fancy rigs on the road that can cost up tp a half mil, but nothing turns heads like an Airstream. They are way cool.
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| 1987 Airstream 345 Motorcoach |
A lot of people who weren’t around during the Apollo moonshots have never seen an Airstream coach before. Up until recently NASA still used one to carry astronauts to the launch pad. There’s nothing like them. When they were made (most of them in the 1980′s) they cost around a hundred grand. The shiny aluminum skin is a lot more durable than todays fiberglass sandwich material that likes to delaminate. And at used prices they are most affordable. Nothing strikes up a conversation at the campground or the rest stop like our mobile research and recreation vehicle.
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| The Mobile Research and Recreation Vehicle rolls through the New Madrid Seismic Zone near Senath, MO |
from
© 2011, Thornton Austen
South Carolina Ghost Lights
The Booger Lights Project: Some South Carolina Lights
- Beaufort – An eerie light floats over Land`s End Road.
- Catfish – Lights at an Indian burial ground on River Bend Road.
- Dillon – Bingham’s Light appears near the old cemetery.
- Ravenel – Light in a churchyard with a tragic past
- Summerville – Railroad light
from
© 2011, Thornton Austen
Crossett, Arkansas: The Ghost Light That Wouldn’t Die
The Booger Lights Project: Crossett – The Old Light
Part II will appear on 1 October 2011.
The first experience I had with ghost light phenomena was at Crossett, Arkansas. The Crossett Light had a reputation of being finicky with its appearances that year, but we took the chance and got a rare show. That night started a lifelong fascination with ghost lights. I have seen many light phenomena since that time, but none have truly compared to that night when I was ten and first saw the Crossett Light.
The tale behind the Crossett Light is similar to many railroad light legends, involving the decapitation of a rail worker in a tragic accident. However, in this case we have names assigned to the key characters. This with a couple other minor variations makes the story a fraction more believable.
Shortly after the town of Crossett was founded, a young couple lived out by the siding at Bovine Station a few miles north of Crossett. David, who was fresh from WWI France, and Rose Marie were a happy couple and he hopped the freight to Crossett as many did in those days to ride back and firth to work. One night David slipped on the way home and the inevitable decapitation occurred on a trestle near Bovine. David was buried sans head in the cemetery near the station. Poor Rose Marie went a little off the deep end. She spent her days and nights searching the tracks for her husband’s head until she had her own rendezvous with an oncoming freight. Some speculated that Rose Marie’s demise was no accident and she was buried beside her husband, a little worse for wear but otherwise intact. As a suicide Rose Marie was doomed to unrest and haunts the tracks between Bovine and Crossett where she continues the search for her husband’s head just as she did in life.
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| Photo from Leslie Knod’s Crossett Light Website |
Because of fires that often swept towns in those days, records and local newspaper archives don’t go back much further than the 1960’s. The oldest extant local article about the light is dated 1964. However, sources from that time speak of the light as being a phenomena more than fifty years old at the time. According to secondary sources the Crossett Light was mentioned in Life magazine in the 1940’s and the first known picture was published in a Louisiana newspaper about that time. Both of those sources have proved impossible to trace. In 1976, the Houston Chronicle ran a UFO-related story about the Crossett Light. In an interview with then MUFON deputy director John Schuessler, he speculated that the light was definitely not of extraterrestrial origin. Charles Allbright of the Arkansas Gazette (and later Democrat-Gazette) devoted several of his Arkansas Traveler columns to the Crossett Light over the years. And in 1994, Georgia Pacific, who now owns the Crossett mills, ran a feature on the Crossett Light in its Growth magazine. Today, the Crossett Light is a marvel that stays clear of print media, but is an internet and YouTube spectacle.
Many observers described many different characteristics of the Crossett Light over the years. Predominant of Old Light descriptions is that it occurs as an orange ball of fire or that it resembles “a kerosene lantern glowing in a window in the distance.” However, other descriptions differ, with one man who lived near the tracks describing the light as having a “pure white center with an outer edge of royal blue” and another saying the light pulsated from white to amber to gold with occasional bursts of bright red. All pretty much agreed that the light on the tracks changed in color and brilliance. They also agreed that misty moonless nights were best for viewing and that the light was not a nightly occurrence. Sometimes months would pass without a sighting. People would wonder if the phenomenon had ceased. Then, the light would show itself once more.
Crossett Lumber Engine #4 Circa 1923 GearedSteam.com
The Crossett Light was well known to appear in the ditch beside the tracks and drift or dance across the tracks to the other ditch before winking out. Other times it would pause over the rails to bob around and oscilate in color and brightness for up to ten minutes at a time. If the viewer remained where he was, the light would usually appear again, closer to his position with each appearance until it eventually crossed behind him. However, if the viewer tried to approach the light, it would disappear and the show was usually through for the night. At times the light grew bright enough to illuminate the railroad right-of-way and the surrounding woods. On other occasions the light was known to travel straight down the tracks above the rails, appear in adjacent woods and fields, or even chase viewers. However, there is no record of the light ever harming anyone in its 60+ years residence on the Missouri-Pacific tracks.
Probably the first attempt at what could pass for a scholarly investigation of the Crossett phenomenon was conducted in ad hoc fashion by graduate students at Yale University’s School of Forestry. Crossett was on the forefront of forestry research and the Crossett Company planted the first southern pine plantation in an effort to keep a steady future supply of timber for its mills. As plantations grew in popularity, Crossett was the natural place for Yale students to do research and refine this new branch of agriculture. Yale established a summer camp for grad students less than a mile from the Unity Road crossing. Starting in the late 1940′s and continuing until the camp closed in the 1960′s, the tradition grew among the students and teachers of trying to fid the source of the Crossett Light. The yearly classes repeatedly tried to correlate the light with traffic using observers at multiple points armed with radios, but failed with each attempt.
In 1962, Duke University’s cutting-edge parapsychology lab grew intrigued by the stories coming out of the Arkansas woods. However, a local writer who desired that the source of the light remain a mystery dissuaded their investigation plans.
That writer’s opinion was not uncommon around the area. Most locals didn’t want their light explained away. The Crossett Light was the otherwise peaceful mill town’s only claim to fame until Barry Switzer coached the Oklahoma Sooners to the NCAA football championship. The fact that most source materials capitalize the name of “The Light” as a personal pronoun only served to further illustrate Crossett’s affection for its own personal mystery.
The Crossett Light Viewing Area Circa 1936
To view the old Crossett Light, prospective observers had four choices. The first and most common was to park at the Unity Road crossing that existed near the present Wal-Mart Supercenter and walk far enough down the tracks to avoid light contamination from the cars crossing the tracks behind them. Second, viewers could park at the crossing on Ray Lochala Road. Third, and sometimes most productive was the Malloy Road crossing. Fourth, light hunters could try the Highway 52 crossing near the Crossett airport and walk north along the tracks. Regular observers often said that the airport site was the least productive because of the distance from the area where the light most often occurred.
The Demise of the Crossett Light
In the early 1980′s, Missouri-Pacific announced its intention to remove the tracks that the Crossett Light frequented. This news caused an instant uproar around the community. One of the first organized efforts to preserve a ghost light sighting area sprang up overnight as locals expressed the opinion that though the tracks might belong to Mo-Pac, the light belonged to the people. In the end the preservation effort proved futile. The railroad pulled up the tracks and threw up earthen berms to prevent travel along the old rail bed.
For several years after the demolition of the tracks, many people believed that Missouri-Pacific had finally extinguished the Crossett Light. The Light itself would have the final say in the matter…
from
© 2011, Thornton Austen
