Maco Light: The Legend of Joe Baldwin
Story by Valerie Robertson

Joe Baldwin was a conductor on an old wood-burning locomotive that traveled to and from Wilmington on the old Wilmington-Manchester-Augusta line, before it became par t of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. On its way through Brunswick County, the train passed several small stations, including Farmer’s Turnout – later named Maco Station. One fateful night, a horrific train wreck put the little town of Maco on the map forever…

The year was 1867. It was a dark and misty night.  Suddenly Joe Baldwin realized that the caboose he was riding in had changed speeds, and was beginning to coast to a stop. Something felt terribly wrong. Quick investigation showed he was alone on a caboose that had become uncoupled from its train and, to make matters worse, Joe realized another train was traveling full speed towards his ever-slowing caboose. Desperate to alert the oncoming train that he was an obstacle in its path, he hurried to the rear of the caboose and waved his lantern, in the frantic hope of stopping the oncoming train.  Eyewitnesses at the scene later related that Joe never stopped swinging his lantern, even as the oncoming freight train ploughed into Joe’s caboose with such force that the car and everything on it was destroyed.

The impact caused Joe’s lantern to fly high up into the air; its light flickered but did not  fail, even as it curved through the air and landed upright in the surrounding swamp. Joe himself was crushed by the impact; his mangled body was eventually retrieved from the scene, but they say his head was never found, and poor Joe had to be buried without it.  Not too long after the collision, the first sightings began. Locals reported the appearance of a light – just a few feet above the tracks where Joe was killed – that would swing back and forth as it approached and grow larger and larger… only to recede quickly and fade completely away. The appearance was consistent: it always appeared at night, and it always traveled the same stretch of track as the accident, facing east. The light was observed by so many people that the phenomenon was given a name: the Maco Light.  Sightings of the Maco Light continued for more than 100 years, by people from myriad backgrounds.  The light’s appearance only stopped permanently when that portion of track was physically removed by the railroad in 1977. 

Several years after Joe Baldwin’s accident, trainmen traveling the same route were sometimes mislead by the appearance of old Joe Baldwin’s ghost light; on more than one occasion a train stopped for a warning light, only to learn there was no train on the track responsible for the signal. Policy was changed at Maco Station (then named Farmer’s Turnout) so that two signal lanterns – one red and one green – were always displayed, to avoid confusion.  In 1889 President Grover Cleveland happened to stop and dismount the presidential train at Maco Station. When he asked about the unusual double light, he was told the story of Joe Baldwin.  He carried the story back with him to Washington, D.C., spurring national  attention for the tale. It is highly unusual for such a phenomenon to last for so long with no tangible or scientific explanation for the occurrence. Over the years, many people have tried to explain or discredit the light. Shortly after President Cleveland’s visit, an investigator came from Washington and saw the light, but ruled in favor of the swamp gas theory. Automobile lights have also been theorized as the source of the light, but early sightings predate use of the automobile.  Subsequent experiments halted all auto traffic in the area, and still the light appeared. Fort Bragg sent a machine-gun detachment to investigate, to no avail.  The Smithsonian Institution sent a research group, and scientists and noted parapsychologists have made investigations, but none has been able to explain the light’s origin.

In 1964 Hans Holzer, a famous author and ghost hunter of the time, was hired to settle the matter. Much media attention ensued, but even he could produce no explanation.   Although there seems to be no explanation for the light’s presence except the heroics of Joe Baldwin, there may be several reasons this legend has been so popular for so long. Most of us love a good ghost story. Tales that are violent or gruesome are all the more memorable, and Joe Baldwin’s decapitation certainly fits the bill. We love the romance of trains. And we especially love a story that lives in our own backyard, a part of our own local history.  The legend of the Maco Light endures because sightings continued until recently. Hundreds of people still remember going out to Maco at night to look for the light. It was common to take the family to look for the light, and get a good scare. Pat Wilkie, Membership Coordinator of the Wilmington Railroad Museum, grew up around trains, and remembers being taken to Maco as a small child to look for the apparition. Her father started walking down the tracks, and when the light appeared, it seemed to her as if he walked right through the light. “It just scared me to death,” she recalls.  Area locals remember the site as a popular place to take a date; for those lucky enough to see the light it was good, scary entertainment.

Southport native Brooks Preik was already married when she saw the light in the 1960s.  Late one night she and three family members decided as a lark to take the station wagon down for a look.  At first nothing happened, so her husband, dubious about the light’s existence, decided to get out of the car and walk down the tracks.  “All of a sudden we all saw it,” says Preik. “All of a sudden all of us were aware of it at the same time. You could hear the gasp going through the group.  And my husband saw it and it scared the daylights out of him because he’d just been walking down the track.” She says the light was large, moved fairly quickly, and just appeared out of nowhere above the tracks, about waist high.

The light was diffused around the edges, like the moon’s aura on a misty night. “It was just the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. And then it disappeared.  But it was there long enough and it moved and it looked just exactly like the descriptions that I had heard all my life.” When she later researched the story for inclusion in her book, Haunted Wilmington, she was struck by the fact that all the descriptions she unearthed were so similar.  You’d think that since the Maco Light hasn’t been seen since 1977, the story would diminish in popularity, but such is not the case. New articles appear every year. Brooks Preik reports that in her innumerable visits to schools as a story-teller, she has yet to discover a group of children unfamiliar with the legend.   Folks use modern Web technology to retell the story: text and animated versions appear on Web sites. In May, 2007 it was the topic of a radio play on Prometheus Radio Theatre entitled, Night Train Through Maco.

The Holt family chose to use the legend as their theme when they opened a gas station last summer at the intersection of 74/76 and Maco Road. A mural depicting the story fills one wall, the staff wear engineer hats, and Maco Light theme t-shirts are a popular item. Amy Chavis, General Manager of the new Maco Depot and its Subway shop, says that a lot of their clientele are locals, and many volunteer stories about having seen the Maco Light. “The theme has generated quite a bit of interest,” says Chavis.  “It’s a very rich tradition in this area.”  Tradition is, by definition, passed down from one generation to the next. Pat Wilkie says that she doesn’t have any corroboration, but a man told her that when the Maco Station track was removed in 1977 and part of it reused in South Carolina, some folks claim to have spotted an unusual light near the newly-placed track.  But to hear about that first-hand you might have to visit Florence…