it had been appearing for some seventy years previously. One commonly cited aspect of the legend, that the light was discussed with President Cleveland when his train was stopped at Maco in 1889, seems to have originated with Atlantic Coast Line employee B. M. Jones, who claimed to have been present at the visit as a young child. Another early account of the Joe Baldwin legend was given by Robert Scott, editor of the Atlantic Coast Line News, to the journal Railway Age in 1932. Similar "headless brakeman" stories have been found associated with other "ghost lights" in the United States, such as the Bragg Road ghost light and Gurdon light: from a folklore perspective the story connected with the Maco light, being substantially the oldest and best-known and having received some national coverage, may have served as the point of origin for the others. Popularity and investigation The legend became widely known across the region, and the site was frequented by curiosity seekers and those looking to explain the light, including a team of electronics engineers (two from radio station WWOK, one from WKIX and one from Bell Laboratories) in July 1962. In the 1950s and 60s it became a common local pastime to park by the tracks at night to try and glimpse the phenomenon; Life magazine even devoted a two-page article to the light in an October 1957 issue. Photographers from the Wilmington Star-News attempted to photograph the light in 1946 and 1955, claiming partial success. Joseph Dunninger visited Maco in 1957, without managing to see the light, and a 1964 investigation by paranormal researcher Hans Holzer led to the latter concluding (despite failing to see the phenomenon himself) that Baldwin "did not realize" he was dead, and was still warning oncoming trains of disconnected rail cars. More prosaic explanations were put forward by locals, such as phosphorescent gas from the swamp or reflected car headlights, or that the light had appeared regularly until 1935, when the railroad filled in the swamp under a trestle, but that since then only automobile headlights had been seen. A search of newspaper records for the Wilmington Railroad Museum discovered that although there was no record of an 1867 accident or of a Joe Baldwin, a conductor called Charles Baldwin had been killed in an incident in January 1856 close to the later site of Maco station. The accident had occurred