Letters

 Garr Lystad:

Letter 1: Saturday, February 26, 2001. Dear Mr. Lystad, I am an astronomer at NASA/Godard SFC who happened to be looking into unusual atmospheric phenomena involving refraction, when I happened upon your very careful study of the Gurdon Lights. I was wondering if you, or anyone you know, might have succeeded in getting a photo of them, or whether you have any further plans to view them with binoculars or telescopes. The information on them is so generally poor on the web that its hard to form any kind of opinion about what is going on. Any data that you might have would be very helpful to me. I am naturally interested in any optical phenomena that involve atmospheric effects since I often have to view stars near the horizon.   > > Thanks! > > Dr. Sten Odenwald > The Astronomy Cafe >

Reply 1: from Garr Lystad

Dear Dr. Odenwald,  

I just took a brief look at your web site. I like it. I will need to look more.   Garr

Dear Garr

Thanks for your letter. I hadn't expected a reply so soon. I am actually rather amazed, as I read through the many web pages on this phenomenon, how there are none of the customary anecdotes about named scientists who have been stumped by the light. Most other 'ghost lights' have accumulated a long list of 'scientific explanations' and failed/frustrated scientists who have looked into the matter (re. Marfa, Brown Mountain and Joplin). I find it very amusing the list of 'scientific explanations', most of which could not possibly have been  offered by scientists. Moreover, no one ever names the scientist that offered the explanation. Oh well!!

As for the Gurdon Light, I wonder if it is really true that there are no reports of this light prior to about 1932 when the Gurdon Light Legend about McBride and McClain started. Perhaps until that famous event ( I assume there is a newspaper article somewhere that substantiates the murder story, but I cant check on that), no one poked around that spot to be able to see anything. It is an awefully remote location for the idle hiker, specially after sunset. In your studies, have you ever found references that predate 1932? Curiously, this is also about the same year that the National Highway System was being built and Highway 30/Route 53 may have been built and populated by cars.

Atmospheric refraction is a very well documented phenomenon. It leads to common roadway mirages, image amplification, and it also can let you see over the horizon for very shallow viewing angles. One of the things that links the Marfa, Joplin and Gurdon Lights together, is that when you use a topographic map and plot the line-of-sight to common locations of 'lights', the angle is incredibly shallow. As seen from the possible roadway (Highway 67, Route 66, Highway 30) the line-of-sight is parallel to the ground and very close to it, which means it is passing through a very long path through the surface boundary layer within a few feet of the roadway/gravel path etc. This is an ideal geometry from which atmospheric distortions can add-up and lead to severe distortions. I am not fully convinced that this is the answer to these Lights, especially the ones that seem to predate automobiles etc ( Marfa/Joplin) so right now this is only an educated guess. I still have a lot more to learn about exactly where these lights are seen and the early history of their appearance.

I would appreciate it if you would not 'spread the word' that another scientist is poking around in the Gurdon Lights mystery. I too enjoy a mystery, and am not hell-bent on explaining away everything I see. I do not want to force-fit Gurdon into an 'explanation', and I certainly do not want to be added to the roll call of 'scientists who have failed'. It seems that too many ideas have been half-baked and then offered as explanations. What I think we could use is more data of the kind that you have been motivated to supply. I think its wonderful what you are doing, given how little the Gurdon Lights have been studied. As for the Prof at Henderson, I dont know his name, and it bothers me that it is so hard to get hold of whatever information he and his students have accumulated. It would sure save the rest of us from having to reinvent everything.

BTW.. the diffraction grating will let you see if the emission is 'line' or 'continuum'. That would be valuable!! If it is continuum, you may be able to tell what type. Look at some streetlights near you and car lights to tell the difference before hand and 'calibrate yourself'.

Looking forward to keeping in touch with you and your investigations,

Sten

Dear Sten, In the "stumped scientist" category, there was someone presented as a physicist on the "Unsolved Mysteries" story on the Gurdon Light. His guess was that it was somehow pressure in the earth and the piezoelectric effect on the quartz crystals that are quite abundant in the area that created a charge that somehow gets to ground lever and manifests itself as the light. He noted that the first appearance of the light in the early '30s happened shortly after a quake on the New Madrid fault, which is near Gurdon. There was no guess as to how the energy gets to ground level or how it becomes a light, or why there is only one light and not two or a hundred. This fellow had a name, but I'd have to look back through old emails to find it. I wasn't impressed enough to bother with it. I'd been told that the lady who runs the Hoo-Hoo Museum had information on the Gurdon Light. When I went up last year I spoke to her. All she had was a newspaper article from the Arkadelphia paper on Will McClain, and she couldn't find that. The one thing of interest I got from her was that she said that her grandfather said that the light had been seen before the 1930s. She said that was before there were any cars in the area. Of course that's second hand information to me and third hand to you. Still, even though it's easy to mistake cars on Route 53 for strange lights, if my friend thinks she got within 10 feet of it, I don't think that was a car. Of course I'd be a lot more sure if it had been within 10 feet of me. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone you are interested in the Gurdon Light, except my wife. She saw your email before I did. She won't tell anyone either. I agree that the stories are often pretty strange. I think people like to be scared of things they can avoid and people also like to have some local claim to fame. Of course, if there is money to be made from a thing then that's all the more reason to promote it. If I can get a day off from work I'll go up to Gurdon on Thursday night and ask around at the university Friday. There's no telling if I'll find anything though. I'd been told there was information at the Hoo-Hoo Museum and at the Arkadelphia library (Cooke, or is it Cook, County Library actually) and there was nothing. Maybe there is no professor either. I've shown my kids and grand kids lights thorough my little spectroscope. It's hard to find much variety in the lights that provide emission lines, at least around town. I've only found a few kinds, but I was quite impressed with lights in one of the Albertson's markets in town. There are strong emission lines of each color, one each as I remember. I ought to go back and check. I hope the guy who designed that light was well paid. I was impressed. Anyway, I wouldn't expect the Gurdon Light to have a continuous spectrum but not being sure that it doesn't or that it will get close enough, hold still long enough, or be bright enough for me to be able to get real information on the spectrum, I figured my tube was good for a first try. Your mentioning fireflies is interesting. When I went one time there were fireflies all over. They seemed to be of two varieties, a dim greenish kind and a bright white kind. There were thousands of them. I didn't see any swarms. I have no idea if the Gurdon Light is seen only at one time of the year. Nobody I've spoken to gave any indication one way or the other. Do firefly swarms blink on and off together? If they don't go out together then I don't think they are a likely candidate. Also, I don't think the fireflies are the right color. What do you think of the reddish light in the time exposure that "Unsolved Mysteries" took? Do you think it's a fake? It doesn't fit your description of lights close to the horizon unless I misunderstand what you were saying. Unrelated to the Gurdon Light, have you seen the mirages in Finland on the web? If not you might enjoy them. They are at http://www.finland.fi/finfo/english/mirage.html. Best regards, Garr

Letter 3:

Dear Linda and Garr, Thanks for the letter. It really is tough finding anything reliable about these lights. Ive done the obvious thing by using the web to collect background information, but the sources are so diverse that its really a 'dogs breakfast' of reliable, unreliable, scientific and anecdotal info. Still, even with this Ive been able to do some triage and come up with a few basic starting points. Even the proportion of 'crazy ideas' to serious studies is an important factum. ANyway, since I dont live next to ANY of these lights, my studies will have to be through people like you and what you turn up. So far, for the Marfa, Brown Mountain, Joplin and Paulding Lights, I have found ( including you) one technical-class observer for each of these lights, and I have had some delightful discussions. We all seem to agree that IF there really is a genuine phenomenon at the root of each 'Light', it is very rare. Most of the time what people are seeing is car lights ( very peculiar ones, but within the limits of atmopsheric optics to provide). The rare ones MAY be the ones that were seen prior to the introduction of cars ( and headlights) ca 1930s. There is, however, a LOT more to do to verify the historical accuracy of the claims that each odf these lights really doi predate electrical lights ( on cars for instance), and as you have discovered, that is a real wild card. ANyway, I hope you and your family heep me posted in the coming years on your exploits. I suppose we could all be doing worse things with our lives ; Sten

Reply 3 (March 2, 2001) Dear Sten, I'll do my best to keep you posted. I'll be putting information on my Gurdon Light page too for all to see. I have been thinking about phoning Henderson State University and seeing if I can get in touch with that professor, if there really is one, who has studied the Gurdon Light. If I locate him I'll try to meet him when I go up. I'll let you know of progress or lack of it as things progress, or fail to. Are the Joplin and Paulding Lights the same as "The Tri-State Spook Light"? Garr

Reply 4: March 15th,
Hi Sten, Sorry for the delay getting this information to you. The person I was refered to by the public relations department at Henderson State University on Arkadelphia, Ark., near Gurdon, is Prof. Charles Leming. He is the chairman of the Physics Dept. His email address is lemingc@hsu.edu. He sent a very nice general reply to my first email. I sent him a second email with some specific questions but have not heard back yet. If you get any interesting, or useful for observing, information from him I sure would appreciate it if you could pass it along to me. Thanks and good luck. Garr

Reply 5: March 25. Hi Sten, We went up to Gurdon this last Thursday. We saw the light from a distance, I guess it was the light anyway, both Thursday and Friday nights. It was about 8:30 both times. Friday I went after it but was still rather far away when it stopped blinking. I'll write up just what we did and saw in more detail for the web site. Much to my surprise, it was spring break at the two universities this last week. That is probably why Professor Leming didn't write back. He wasn't there. I did get three newspaper articles about the light. Two were from the Gurdon Times but they weren't too extensive. The Gurdon Times offices burnt down some years back, so all the records they might have had that you would have been interested in are gone. The other was a rather extensive article that mentioned Prof. Leming and his student whose last name is Clingan. Clingan is the one I saw in the "Unsolved Mysteries" tape. I learned that the Clark County Historical Society has information on the light, but it is all at Ouchita Baptist Univ. and that was closed for the break. I'll get that information on another trip and forward it to you if you are interested. Interesting items in the articles were that Prof. Leming has tried looking at the light with a polarizing filter. The Gurdon Light is not polarized. The other thing is that one article said that "Unsolved Mysteries" had no luck with seeing the light when they came, so they faked their results. One rather interesting bit of hearsay came to me from the wife of a policeman that we met. She told me about a young man from the area who had driven his truck out to see the Gurdon Light. When he got back to his truck the Gurdon Light was in the cab. In an attempt to get it out he took a shot at it with the result that he put a hole in the roof of the truck. The light left in its own good time. We also met a man who knew Will McClain. I learned that Will carried his lantern around a lot since he often worked late and never knew when he would need it. This gentleman, in his 80's, believes the light is Will's ghost and so has never gone out to see it, out of respect for his friend, he said. I know that's not worth anything to you, but I thought it was sort of interesting. That's the most of this weekend's trip. Garr

March 27, Hi Garr, The story was fun to read, and its hard to feel annoyed at what local people have to say about the Light. Like many others, I enjoy a good ghost story!! The comment about the light not being polarized is the first bit of solid, quantitative information I have received about ANY light so far. Everyone prefers endless descriptions of what the light is doing, and not a simple analysis of what kind of light it is. The next step would be to use a diffraction grating and see if it looks like a car light ( featureless rainbow) or like some streetlights ( rainbow with a few black bands...absorption lines we call them. Im really dissappointed to hear about the Gurdon Times burning down. That would have been A/The most important resource for finding articles about the light from the early 20th century if it was still being seen there. Oh well. Its nice to know that Unsolved Mysteries faked their results. I have never trusted them, and this kind of behavior in the heat of showing something is exactly what I would have expected them to do. They get to keep their viewership, and the Gurdon Light gets more complicated to study from second-hand reports because now we know that incorrect observatiosn do get made and filtered into the general dialogue about the GLs. You folks deserve a vacation...away from the Lights! Keep in touch, and yes I would be happy to have a look at the Ouchita information when you get it! Sten

Copyright (C) 2001 Dr. Sten Odenwald