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.

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!

It's Only Money

It's always busy being a captain, an awesome one no less, but somebody has to do it so it might as well be me.

I burned a lot of gas this week. I hate it. The Earth probably lost a couple seconds off of it's life due to me this week. It all started on Wednesday. Me and my buddy Jacob (Yes that's right, "Me and my buddy" not "My buddy and I." I know what it's supposed to be that's not what I want), we (much better) went to Tunica, Mississippi after work. (Here comes my first "outside" as in "outside the state of Arkansas" story) I had one of those free weekly hotel nights that they always send after you sign up for their membership card. If you go to any casinos you have to sign up for these cards. You would be stupid not to. Then, go around to all of the table games and just change $100 into chips to create activity on your card. They will send you all kinds of free stays and freeplay coupons. Anyway, we left Little Rock at about 6 and got there around 9. We didn't even have time to eat. We were on a mission to gamble the night away. I headed for the Craps table. I love Craps. Craps is a game that you can be best friends with someone who you know nothing about all for the sake of taking down the house. All you have to do is roll a couple hard 6's, make a few points and don't roll a 7 unless you're coming out. Follow those simple rules and you will have a table full of best friends. They might even buy you dinner. My luck was about like it always is. I was doing pretty good, hit a real bad rough patch and lost all my chips at one table. The table turned bad cold so I moved to another table and cashed in for some more chips. I lost all the way down to 20% of my chips again and I was about to cut all my losses when I got hot. In 30 minutes I went from having 10% of the money I walked into the casino with to 40% profit above what I walked in with. I quickly forced myself to walk away. Next up was the roulette and blackjack table. I made a couple of bucks off of those, but quickly retired to bed (It was about 12:30 AM)

Things calmed down until Saturday. I have been looking into buying a canoe or kayak. I found a canoe for $295 and a kayak for $250 both up near Rogers, AR. I had decided on actually splurging and buying one of them, but I had to wait on the result of my Tunica trip. If I lost $200 I wasn't going to buy anything. Luckily I won a little bit. It still took a little coaxing to make the long trip up there though. I called about the canoe and sadly it had already sold, but the kayak was still up for grabs so I hopped in my truck and headed out towards Beaver Lake near Rogers. I stopped by St. Joseph Catholic Church in Fayetteville on they way and went to mass. Long story short, I bought the kayak. Now I need a paddle. . . Since I was up near Fayetteville, I called my buddy Andrew to crash on his couch. Saturday night, I did something that was long overdue. I went to Dixon St. We painted the town. Clint Eastwood couldn't paint a town like we did. I realize that Dixon St. is overrated and all that yadayadayada, but coming from Little Rock, it was an improvement. I remember going to the Smoke and Barrell Tavern, but before that we went to some pool hall. All of the beer on tap was $1.50 to $2.00 and we were drinking Shiner Bock ($1.50). In Conway and Little Rock I probably would have paid $3 to $4 for the same glass, and that wasn't a special price. No happy hour or nothing. Also, the pool tables were free. It was like a much much cleaner Midtown Billiards which isn't saying much. You could actually breathe the air inside. We ended up crashing at around 2AM.

Today, actually yesterday by now, I went to an Arkansas Naturals minor league baseball game. They were playing the Arkansas Travelers my home team from North Little Rock. It was a great game. The Travs won 8-7 I believe. They hit 4 home runs, 2 by the same guy. Anyone interested the ticket price for general admission was $7 and parking is $3. I went ahead and splurged for the $10 ticket which got me right behind home plate. And if you're thinking about skipping out on the $3 parking, forget about it. It's not like North Little Rock where you can park on a side street. The stadium is in the middle of a field so there is nowhere else to park. You are forced to pay the $3 parking fee unless you want to walk 2-3 miles. All in all the game was great and the stadium put on a good show. They actually do a little better job with the music and all than the Travelers do. The moral is if you haven't been to a Travs game or a Naturals if you live up in NW Arkansas you need to go. It's good cheap fun.

I think I might have to start posting twice a week. These weekly posts are too long and I summarize way too much. I did get my first visitor while I was gone this weekend. Somebody from Alaska! I'm excited I really am you have no idea. Thanks for stopping by. Please come back and comment. You are why I am here.

P.S. The pictures will get better as well as the writing. I promise.