Gurdon Light is Real

We decided to go back to Gurdon last night. We parked on the dirt road this time, and 4 locals pulled up behind us and walked in with us. Some of the locals were under the influence of some type of mind altering drug so they were a little rowdy.

We walked past the second trestle and the locals said it was far enough to start banging on the tracks. They banged away, but nothing happened. We walked another 75 yards or so and something just felt right. I stopped the group and we turned off all of our lights. (It was around 2AM) All of a sudden one of the locals starts yelling "Oh man! Did you see that. There it is. Right there man. How can you not see it?" We all thought they were pulling are legs, but at the same time, I was seeing something too. First, I would just see flashes of light way down the tracks 200 yards or more. Then, I started to see sparks of momentarily concentrated light way down near the horizon. You couldn't really look straight at it to see it well. You had to look off to the side a bit, but then we started seeing it more clearly. We could see it flickering and getting brighter. Then, we saw it swinging back and forth along the tracks. It would go down in the ditch and come back up, most of the time it hung around waist high. Then, it started to get closer. Slowly it swung closer to us and before you know it, it looked as if it were less than 20 yards away. The woods seem to flash around us. Then, we heard it. We heard the lantern swinging back and forth. We heard it off in the woods. It was coming from less than 10 yards away in the woods. The locals were freaking out. They wouldn't shut up! They said that they had never experienced this much in 14 years of living in Gurdon and that was a bad sign. Luckily they were scared off after just 15 minutes so it left just us 4. We watched the light swing back and forth towards us and away for another 10 minutes before deciding to get closer. When we got to about the point where we had been seeing the light, nothing was there. The light was gone. We walked all the way to the 5th trestle, but never saw anything substantially more. We kept walking and stopping all the way back, but again didn't see anything until we made it back the that same spot. It was about 3:45 AM before we saw it again. This time very faint and very far off, but still the same light.

After we got back to the car, we called in our cheeseburger order to the truck stop near the Interstate and we told everyone who would listen our story. Some travelers looked on wide-eyed as they asked where this took place. We told them just 3 miles down the road, and they quickly paid for the goods and high-tailed it out of there.

We have video footage. I'm pretty sure you can't see anything. The light was too faint to pick up on film. I took a couple pictures just because not expecting anything, but when I blew them up on the computer, there are all of these red, white, and blue dots all over the place. It is not digital noise, and I have been assured that lenses are very forgiving with dust on the lens and that shouldn't be the cause. If you look at some of the white dots in the picture, they look very much like the light that we saw, but at the time we didn't see all of this. The picture actually really freaked me out. I just looked at them for the first time and water just started rolling down my eyes. Very strange.

As far as possible causes. 1)I call BS on reflections off the rails. The moon had already set so there were only stars, and the rails were so rusty it took something as bright as a headlamp to make a reflection. Also, the place where we kept seeing it, brush had grown up over the rails. 2) Swamp gas: Yeah right, this stuff floated towards us and away from us. It never just aimlessly floated around in a ball. It never floated off into the woods, and it could move very fast at times. Not swap gas. 3) Quartz crystals: Really? 4)Hoax: Definitely not. This was not like a normal light from a flashlight or lantern. It's as if you don't believe it exists even as you are looking at it. 5) Car lights: No, but not for the same reasons other people give. We couldn't have been over a mile from the highway when we saw the light, but were looking west away from the highway, but we did walk 1.5 miles from the highway over about 6 trestles which is farther than most people even go and could still see cars crossing the highway very clearly. The reason it's not cars is that the cars give off a much different light. A much realer, more of this world, like you could touch and feel it unlike the Gurdon light.

There is nothing that can explain this light. Is it supernatural? Maybe. I can offer no other valid explanation. All I know is that IT DOES EXIST. Whatever IT is, it exists. This is not a joke, this is not a hoax, this is real.

PS, I'm still getting chills just uploading the picture. Oh, and the light part of the picture is the sky. It's not some ghostly trail.

Unfortunately, blogger compresses my picture quite a bit so you can't get the full effect. Definitely click on the image to view it bigger, but here is a close up of part of the picture. There's probably more than 40 of these dots everywhere.

Gurdon Car Light

Wow. Super busy as always. I had completely different plans for the past week, but somehow they got changed. I've been called back to Conway twice to call the PeeWee football games and this Saturday my Boy Scout Troop needed an extra adult to go mountain biking with the kids. We went to Burns Park on their 5 mile loop. We all had a great time, but I was exhausted. I didn't get near enough sleep the night before, didn't eat breakfast, didn't rehydrate or bring a waterbottle with me. Yeah, it was one of those mornings.

I ended up on a houseboat Sunday, cooked sausage on a sand bar in the Arkansas River and my friend brought up the Gurdon Light again. I told him that I'd be up for going right then and there (not actually). That got him excited and around 9PM we left for Gurdon. 5 of us were brave (stupid) enough to travel 2 hours (from Conway, only 1.5 for me here in Little Rock) down to Gurdon. I feel like I am THE authority on giving directions to the Gurdon Light:

Take I30 West out of Little Rock. Get off and head South at exit 63 onto HWY 53. Stop in at the gas station and have a chat. The guy behind the counter is awesome and he wants to hear about your Gurdon story. Anyway, keep heading South on HWY 53 for 3.3 miles. Before you reach Gurdon, you will come up on some train tracks. They will be the first tracks that you come to after leaving the Interstate. You have two options to park. It seems that most people tell you to take a right just before the train tracks onto a dirt road. Follow it for a couple hundred yards and there is a turn around to park at. If you don't want to take that, there is a spot just on the other side of the tracks back on the HWY to park your car at. The proplem with that is the trussle count.

You will pass 1 trussle between the HWY and the preferred place to park. From all of my research this trussle does not count in your trussle count. From here you continue walking down the tracks. It takes a few minutes before you come to the first official trussle. The second trussle is close to the first, but the third is a few hundred yards past the second (It seems much farther in the dark). You must past the 4th trussle to see the light. Now I have heard stories that the light has been seen all the way back to the second, but most people claim that it can't pass the 4th. If you make it this far, it is recommended that you go past the 5th trussle. Also the light has been reported as being seen from both directions going out as well as coming back so always look behind you.

Now for our story. 5 of us packed into Austin's car. I drove and Austin filmed. We're making a sort of documentary out of it so Austin ran the camera. We left Little Rock at about 9:15 PM and got down to Gurdon at about 11. We stopped in at that gas station and had a talk with the guy behind the counter. He told us all kinds of stories about how people he knew swore they've seen it countless times. He was new in town so he hadn't seen it himself but he confirmed that it was real. We got down to the site and parked on the HWY because we didn't know any better. Suddenly the realness started creeping in on everybody. We were out in the middle of nowhere by ourselves looking for a ghost. Luckily I brought a headlamp, because nobody else had one so I led the way. Every now and then we would hear something in the woods. The girls would freak out, but it was just some armadillo looking for a snack. We kept on. Crossing the trussels are a little tough Most of them are rotting out pretty good so you really have to watch your step. It took about an hour to finally get past the 4th trussel. We stopped, turned off our lights an tapped on the rails (that's another thing that you're supposed to do after the 4th trussel). We looked back and we saw a light. We all got excited, but then it turned red and we realized it was just a car going over the tracks so we continued on. We made it past the 5th trussel and repeated the procedure. Again, light followed by red taillight. We continued on past the 5th trussel. We ended up walking 1.5 miles from the road before we said enough. There we saw another light, except this one in the sky. . . a nice shooting star near Orion's Belt. We turned around and walked back and repeated the clanking when we got back to the 5th and 4th trussel. Again, at the 4th trussel, we saw something. You could feel it before it came. You could feel everyone's hair rise. You could sense the excitement and adrenaline in the air, but alas, it too was followed by a taillight. We had been duped yet again. At about the 2nd trussel I gave everyone a good scare as I let out a load HOLY $#!+ A shooting star, definitely in my Top 10 of shooting stars, seared the night sky. It was truly amazing. That is when the disappointment started creeping in. We quickly walked the rest of the way out and went back to the gas station to tell our story.

The drive back home was a long one. It was 4:10 AM when I crawled into bed. . . and I had to work the next day. That was not fun, but it was all worth it. I wouldn't take it back, and I will probably be back. I must see this light. Too many people say it is real for it not to be, and we will get it on film.

Post Race Recap

Ok, so I didn't get to bed early the other night. I think it was about 1:30 AM or so before we finally made it to bed, but it was worth it. I whipped up a batch of spaghetti with mushrooms and sausage so we could get our carbo-load on. Then, I had to change my inner-tube on my front tire and time just kind of slipped by on us.
(Not to confuse, the pic is from the Sprint Triathlon)

No worries though, Jacob and I made it down to La Harpe in plenty of time to get a warm up lap in and push our way to the front of the extremely large crowd. It seemed like it took forever for the race to start, but it finally did and off we went (sort of). The start was on a slight hill and we were packed in like cattle so it took a few minutes before we were moving well enough to clip our shoes into the pedals. Before I knew it we were over the bridge. There was a little mix up after we got to the North Shore and we were sent right when we were supposed to take a left, but we figured it out before long. Next thing I knew, in no time at all we were passing through Mayflower. I felt amazing for the first 50 miles. My muscles were fresh and were operating in autopilot cruising at around 18-22 mph. I kept having trouble keeping a group together though. We kept splitting apart. People would break off and do their own thing. It was hard to keep more than about 4 or 5 people in a nice tight group to help break the wind.

We made it 50 miles before I had to stop and refill my gatorade and water bottles. I wasn't originally trying to go the whole way without stopping, but after the great start I was. We only stopped because the others that we were with stopped. Later, I was thankful I stopped when my liquids lasted me until 8 miles from the finish line. This is when the picture was taken. I apologize for the strange face, but I am stuffing down oranges and drinking pickle juice. Oh, and I just rode 50 miles.

The next 10 miles in my opinion are the hardest 10 miles of the race. They are just east of Conway heading towards 107 and back to 89. I honestly almost had to get off and walk on the hill after crossing 107. That hill is straight up and long. Then after that, you have the longest stretch, Highway 89. It seems like it stretches forever, but once I hit Mayflower again my second wind caught on. At this point, my buddy Jacob had been riding stronger than me all day, but right at the county line he faded. I thought that he had just moved back the end of the line, but the next time that I looked back I couldn't even see him. I thought about holding back and waiting for him, but I was too close to the finish line. I could taste it and I wanted to beat my last time as bad as I could so I pushed forward. I found 2 other guys that had some gas in the tank and we roared past everyone else, each taking turn pulling the other two. We picked up about 4 people and formed a good little group. My muscles were gone, but somehow I was able to convince them to keep peddling. When we hit downtown North Little Rock, our group dispersed. It was every man for himself. I attacked early and often. I quickly passed everyone in our group. There were only 2 people between me and the finish line. As I turned the last corner I used the last of my energy to pass them just before crossing the line. It was amazing. There's no way anybody has ever finished as fast as my time. . . well except for all of the people who finished an hour or so ahead of me. . . but we're not talking about them and they're not telling the story are they? I am and in my story I didn't SEE anybody finish ahead of me, therefore I did finish 1st! haha, Take that!

Anyway, long story short my cycling time was 5 hours 15 minutes plus approximately 5-10 minutes for that 1 stop. The quickest times were somewhere around 4 hours, and my time 2 years ago was 7 hours plus 1 hour of aid station breaks so I crushed my old time by 2 hours and 45 minutes. Hey, at least I'm improving.

Guess what, I did it. I signed up for the Little Rock Marathon. This will be my first marathon ever. Maybe I'll get a few other people to do it with me. I encourage everyone to give it a try with me. Sign up now before November or else it goes up by $10. It's like 6 months away so we have plenty of time to train. Even if you are totally 100% out of shape, you have plenty of time to change that.

Bow season starts tomorrow. I'll see you out in the woods!

Big Dam Weekend

Reporting live from the RiverMarket...

So tonight I must get to bed early. There's a lot to do tomorrow, but I decided to venture out to the river to see what festivities might be taking place tonight. Under the rivermarket pavilions, they are having some kind of Power 92 Jams Skate Party. Everybody is out there with their old school skates showing off some skills. Very unexpected.

Yesterday, I officially turned my apartment into a microbrewery. I've had a Belgian Ale fermented and bottled for a few weeks now. It should be ready any day now, and I plan on cracking one open tomorrow after the race. A few weeks ago, I picked up some muscadine from my friend's dad. He has a small vineyard bigger than 4 or 5 people's gardens. Well, I finally got around to crushing them up. I had to hurry up and do it or else my roommate was going to eat all 30 pounds of them (They taste like candy). My roommate and I actually ended up crushing them by hand. We found that just getting down in there was easier than using a potato smasher or any other method we could think of. Then, for the next step. I had no idea what to do next. I added too much water, forgot about the sugar, had to take some water and a few muscadine out, then put the sugar in. The end result looks like something that would turn into wine, but we can only hope.

I decided that while I was at it, I might as well put another batch of beer in the fermenter, so I went through that whole process. I started all of this at 7 PM and it was 1 AM before I had everything cleaned up. So now I have 5 gallons of beer and wine fermenting and 4 gallons of beer bottled and ready to go When I woke up this morning, our entire apartment complex smelled like a brewery. It was delicious.

Well, I better go. My friend just arrived back at my apartment. We've got to get up early tomorrow for the Big Dam Bridge 100 miler. I'm mostly prepared for it. If you live anywhere around Little Rock, North Little Rock, Maumelle, Mayflower, Conway, or Hwy 89 lookout tomorrow because a lot of cyclist are coming your way.

Alright, I've gotta go fix a flat. I just found it as I was heading out the door to the River. I hit a bad pothole Wednesday on the River Trail. I'm pretty sure it's the one on the North Little Rock trail down close to Dickey Stevens Ballpark. When I hit it, I figured it was going to cause a flat. At least I found it tonight and not tomorrow on my ride.

BeaverFork Tri

It was a perfect weekend, well except Saturday which was a little crazy, but Sunday was gorgeous and that's all that mattered. It was the day of the Conway Sprint Tri.

Every time I do this event, it's a completely new experience. I focus hard on what I lacked the time before. It all starts with the swim. Arms and legs everywhere all tangled up. You can feel the current in the water from all of the bodies swimming in the same direction and you begin to understand why fish swim this way. My swim was the strongest swim I have put together of all of my 3 sprint Tri's, however it wasn't flawless. On the first leg I caught 2 big mouthfulls of water. We were churning the water enough to make white caps which makes it harder to breathe when you come up for air only to get splashed by a wave. This must have kicked up my adrenaline a notch because I ended up swimming faster than my breathing rhythm, but the reason I liked my swim was when I finally reached shore I wasn't wore out at all. I had plenty of gas left in the tank.

The bike was a piece of cake. I was feeling really good at this point, actually too good, almost let down. I was cruising at about 19 mph. My heart rate was staying low and my breathing was normal. I know what you're thinking then, why not go faster if it was so easy? Well, I couldn't. My muscles were set to go at 19 mph. Any faster would have exponentially increased the amount of work that I would be doing and I wouldn't finish.

As I coasted back in to the transition area, I felt good about the energy that I had left, until I hopped off of my bike. Immediately, all my thoughts went from ease to panic. I was seriously doubting whether I would even finish. I had been racing right alongside a friend of mine. We had been going back and forth the whole race, and I just knew that I was going to blow up end finish 10 minutes behind him. My left shin felt like I had kicked a post at full swing. I couldn't build up any momentum at all. That feeling of being let down by the course. . . gone. So was my breath and I could not find it. This is the moment where it stops being about the physical activity and becomes 100% mental. You have to will your legs to keep kicking. Halfway through the run (1.6 miles), my friend, Jacob, had put about 50 yards between him and me, but I started to build some steam. It's something about running back that is so much easier than running away. My shin loosened up. I closed my eyes and found my Happy Place then opened them real quick when I realized I was running off of the road. I slowly picked up my pace the whole way back, but I never caught Jacob. He must have done the same. I finished in 1 hr 25.5 minutes. Jacob beat me by 1 minute. I can't complain though. My goal was to just beat 1.5 hours, but I was really aiming for 1hr 25 minutes so at least I hit my mark.

One thing that I promise, I will be more prepared for the next one. I know I always say that, but this time I am publicly declaring it so it will happen. Hopefully I will be able to do more events as well next year. As for what's left for this year, the Big Dam Bridge 100 mile Bike Tour is coming up in 2 weeks. I hope you'll be there. It's a lot of fun.

Tomorrow: Rest is over, resume training

Movin' to the Rock

Long time no see. Things have been busy as always. First off, I should explain that I have been without the internet for a few weeks. I just made the big move from Conway to Little Rock. Guess that makes me city folk now. Obviously, I'm still having trouble blending in and looking civilized. I probably should start out by putting on a shirt and some shoes. We'll see.

Shortly after my last post was the St. Joe Bazaar. For those who are unfamiliar, it is a school carnival. We put up all kinds of booths to win ham, bacon, cheese, goldfish, hats, and my personal specialty: dishes, glassware, and rabbits. Our booth, the dimetoss, always dresses up with some sort of theme. This year was "Cowboys and Indians." Dressing up as a cowboy would have been too easy, so I scoured Hobby Lobby for anything I could call Indian. I found some cheap leather and beads and whipped together an outfit. My elm tree had to sacrifice a low limb for the bow, but it didn't seem to mind.

In the meantime, I've been training hardcore for the CATS Sprint Triathlon. It's coming up this weekend. 500 meter swim, 15 mile bike, 5k run. Winning time is usually under 1 hour. I'm hoping to just break 1.5 hours. Wish me luck.

P.S.

I've been told that the ghost was actually urinating on me. I was in the bathroom when I took that picture. I thought I was standing in front of the sink, but actually I was standing in front of the urinal. Also, there is a strange bit of lightness where his ghostly extract would be coming from. . .

The Haunted Hotel

If you are from Arkansas, you probably are somewhat familiar with the Haunted Hotel in Eureka Springs. It is the Crescent Hotel. It was my fate to end up there two weeks ago for my cousin's wedding.

At first, I wanted name this Title "The Not So Haunted Hotel" because, at first, I was extremely unimpressed with the "Hauntedness" of the hotel. The hotel was amazing by itself, but seemed to lack something very important to be "haunted" namely ghosts. I paced the halls all night long. Every floor I searched high and low. Every mirror, every window, every room was inspected for anything extraordinary. It seemed to be too well lit. No dark eerie hallways to make your hair stand straighter than a New Mexican Interstate. There were no creeky floors or banging pipes to make you hear things that aren't really there. The only thing that seemed to be possessed was the shower. The hot and cold water interchanged at will never meddling in the middle creating one of the worst experiences in my life.

The only sort of ghost that I caught was an orb, but orbs are just camera flash return so it doesn't really count. I did not sleep all night, afraid that I would miss a ghost. It didn't help that we were going to wake up at 3:45 to go fishing on Beaver Lake either so I figured it would be just as easy to stay awake all night. Like I said, I looked everywhere and took probably 200 pictures. I found a few strange things, but upon further inspection found that most were light "glowing" spots on the wall that were actual impurities left from where a painting use to hang, or light streeks caused from the reflection from other paintings or piano tops.

Upon further review, I did find one series of pictures that stood out. I actually noticed it when I took the picture, but I thought it was just my shadow. When I showed my aunt the picture, she freaked. She couldn't even look at it. I admit it is not rock solid evidence of a ghost. You may call it a "stretch," but isn't that what a picture of a ghost be anyway. I mean, if we could always touch and feel and see ghosts, then they would not be so mysterious would they? We would have all kinds of proof that they existed. So believe if you will or. . . don't. It's your choice.

PIC 1

PIC 2

PIC3 close up

Altered (what I see)

The higher the resolution of your monitor and the smaller the picture size, the clearer you can see it. You can clearly see what appears to be a well dressed man (or maybe a straight jacket) looking right at me. He has long enough hair that it hangs over his ears and he has a nice full beard and sideburns. You can see his arms folded in front of him touching me and even the worn out spot on his elbow.

I have included the three unaltered pictures along with one that is obviously altered that I sketched what I see. I hope you see it too!