Legends and lore hold a special place for many small Arkansas communities towns like Newport have spent decades celebrating things like the White River Monster.

Another towns places like Pine Bluff had to take extreme actions to put the Sawdust Bridge and it's ghosts behind them.

But sometimes a story can grow bigger even than the town itself is never more true than with Gurdon, Arkansas.

I saw that back in 1997 light be on one side and turn around lights on the other side is like a glowing white light like a Lantern.

My mother often said that it was swamp gas?

What it would have to be.

I ever excuse that they could come up with ever rationale, they could come up with there was some real problems with that.

I never seen it.

But they said it's kind of like an orange yellow ball of Fire that floats across the tracks at night.

That's why it's a Garden Light 'cause.

He goes around and night trying to find his head.

Well anything is possible.

I believe it's you know real.

There's something weird about they really is.

That's why it's still a lot.

Still, such a phenomena.

Today I believe in a lot of things, sometimes you see stuff that happens and you really have no explanation for it throughout here in Washington mountains.

Just NW of garden were in search of the Garden Light Everybody.

You talk to seems to have a story of a family member or their friends or their own personal experiences where.

They've they've seen this light you know as far as I know I have no reason to disbelieve this.

In fact, I'm really hopeful that the garden.

Light is something that I should believe in as far as what causes it where it comes from whether it's the spirit of a man they Mister McClain, who was murdered by one of his workers or whether it has a more scientific explanation.

That's not as important as like the experience I suppose of actually seeing the garden light, it might start calling for.

Mister McClain, which was the recommendation from the ladies at the barbeque restaurant.

Hey Willie, There was a real old woman killed an idiot, he was killed out on the tracks, which is true.

And they said that that life was a lie.

His Lantern looking for his head, then 1930 of these 2 conspirators when they got through their work and left they run through the switch and derailed made a mess.

Foreman perspective, that they were involved in this sabotage so at 1:00 AM followed him down and track.

It's an actual crime that occured December 4th in 1931.

Railroad foreman will maclean was killed by an underling.

Macbryde was that man's last name.

McBride beat Mister McClain over the head with a spike mall till he was dead and when they found MacLaine.

He was still clutching his Lantern and the light started showing up shortly after that, on the railroad tracks actually always print.

The legend instead of truth.

You know, supposedly that's what melady is is is the foreman.

Looking for his hand out with his Lantern.

I think that every human being at some point in their life.

You know, kind of questions are there things I can't understand that I can explain but we?

All at some point you know go looking for something like that.

I like to go story aspect of this, you know because everybody that we talked to seem to think that it's a spirit.

But there are also some other theories that we have because here in Arkansas.

We have some of the largest quartz deposits in the entire world and there's an interesting principle called piezo electricity.

So anything with crystalline structures.

When is placed under pressure an it flexes that crystal lattice will actually generate a high voltage electricity?

We actually have a major fault line that runs through Arkansas, known as the New Madrid Fault, an right here.

We are in Clark County right on the edge of the fault line.

This red dot here is a swarm of earthquakes have been registered by the United States Geological Survey so as the plates rub against each other.

These quartz crystal start generating huge amounts of electricity and I believe that this electricity could actually ionize the air above the fault line generating these lights.

I think anytime that you gotta air mystery about you right here that this happened during this is part of it.

You can't explain it, you know, and everything.

There's not a lot in garden, so you know, whatever you can do you do?

I started talking to Mark Carnes with the Ross Foundation, about 2 years ago about the possibility of a garden light trail and we're going to have a groundbreaking today for the parking area of the actual Garden Light Trail.

We're going to create signage and the garden schools.

The FFA and the Garden Eslab.

We're going to all get together and create signs and maybe make little mile markers along the way and benches at the most popular viewing areas as well as the actual historical account of the garden light at the trailhead parking area.

I think it's it's something that people enjoy and always remember.

I think that it's rural adds to the allure.

Maybe the mystique and even the romance of the garden light.

Hey Willie, We spent the better part of the night out here, I'm on the train tracks.

I can through waist deep weeds and.

Call in the name of William McClain like the locals urged us to do.

And Unfortunately we haven't seen any sign of the garden light?

We grew up with all these stories.

All these myths and legends and a lot of these stories get told by so many people in communities that they become really ingrained in the culture of that community.

An people will actually attach.

Maybe some of their identity to some of those stories because it's a common thing that everybody in that town can share and like a rite of passage or the people that live around here, an.

That sort of thing is really important to keep people together, especially when you're in a town like garden similar to town.

I grew up in kind of disconnected from the rest of the world.

Everybody knows it.

Whether or not they grow up and stop believing in that story, because they never have an encounter with it or whether or not they believe it for their whole life.

It's still something you can kind of talk to your kids about scare them at night.

Those stories are this part of the human experience.

I think like a continuation of that story that we're all trying to tell about each other.

Much like Dexter Harding Sawdust Bridge, the murder of will mclain could have been a dark spot on the history of Gurdon, Arkansas, but the crime and the ghost story.

That's arisen from it has been taken in and celebrated by the community.

The Garden Light is a prime example of the power of native myth and story telling in the natural state.