Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Program Shoots Gurdon Light

Gurdon's ghost light will be the star attraction on a segment of Foxkids "Real Scary Stories."

A film crew from Highland Entertainment of New York, with another from the Dempsey Film Group of Little Rock, were in Gurdon Saturday and Sunday, interviewing those familiar with the light and the legend behind it.

The crew was fortunate on both nights to capture the elusive light on film, but they were the second to do so.

The first person known to have caught the light on video was Lori Russo, who was scouting the story for Highland Entertainment, in early November.

Russo, along with Mary Young and Tim Knapp hiked up the tracks from Sticky Road to the site the light seems to prefer, and had, what they describe as, a supernatural experience.

The Highland group interviewed Russo and Young at the tracks Sunday, Dec. 10, getting their version of what happened on the scouting mission.

Russo went in as a skeptic, she said, but came out believing the light is the ghost of murder victim William McClain.

According to the legend, in the early 1930s McClain, a railroad track foreman fired one of his crew for goldbricking. The fired man returned later and decapitated McClain.

However, the legend goes, McClain's head was never found. But, the murderer was caught, brought to trial and executed.

Since then, though, the light has appeared on a lonely stretch of track about two miles off the Sticky Road side.

Nancy Larsen, segment director for the Fox Family Channel, where the episode will air, said it was exciting and scary to actually experience the light and get it on film.

According to Larsen, Brandon Curtis, of Caddo Valley, sent an email to Fox after seeing it's ad for scary stories at the end of a Saturday episode.

At this point, Russo was hired to scout the situation, try to get the light on film and let Fox know if it was worth doing a show on. It was  and then some.

Russo, during her interview, said they were, in effect, enveloped by the light, and felt a heat radiating throughout their body from the contact.

At the outset, she said, it was taken as a lark on her part because of her skepticism. Russo chided the "spirit" and sang to it, in an attempt to coax it out and be filmed, but expecting little, if anything to happen.

She called the experience frightening and exhilarating, and is now a believer in it being a legitimate spirit.

What makes this sighting of the light so unusual is it's being captured, first on video, then on film.

Several other television programs, including "Sightings" and "Unsolved Mysteries" tried to catch the light on film, but failed. In fact, until Russo's capture, all other efforts to photograph it had ended in failure.

The tape was then sent to Fox and a decision made to send in a crew to do a segment.

"We were all excited with what was on the video," Larsen said.

From there it was work with the railroad to schedule a time when the filming could be done without interruption, and get everything else together, including "actors" for the reenacting of the murder.

The actors were Knapp and John Miller. Knapp portrayed the killer, with Miller the victim.

Filming the murder took about two hours, as smoke machines created a surreal, foggy atmosphere to go with the overcast night.

Once the murder had been caught on tape, the Little Rock crew was sent home, while everyone else went back to try and see the light one last time.

It took a while, but the light did show itself again, flashing red and white four or five times, but not providing the spectacular show it had done the night before nor in early November.

"We enjoyed the trip," Larsen said. "Everyone was incredibly friendly and welcomed us."

Larsen said Foxkids wanted to keep its presence low profile to keep the crowds down and prevent the possibility of pranks.

While no air date has been set as yet, Larsen said it could air sometime in January. Normally editing an episode takes two or three weeks.

However, she said, when the air date is scheduled Fox will notify those involved.