[2][3] The tale associated the light with Joe Baldwin, a train conductor who was said to have been decapitated in a collision between a runaway passenger car or caboose and a locomotive at Maco, along the Wilmington and Manchester Railroad, in the late 1800s.
[7] One commonly cited aspect of the legend, that the light was discussed with President Cleveland when his train was stopped at Maco in 1889, seems to have originated with Atlantic Coast Line employee B. M. Jones, who claimed to have been present at the visit as a young child.
[7][8] Another early account of the Joe Baldwin legend was given by Robert Scott, editor of the Atlantic Coast Line News, to the journal Railway Age in 1932.
[1][10] The legend became widely known across the region, and the site was frequented by curiosity seekers and those looking to explain the light, including a team of electronics engineers (two from radio station WWOK, one from WKIX and one from Bell Laboratories) in July 1962.
[11] In the 1950s and 60s it became a common local pastime to park by the tracks at night to try and glimpse the phenomenon; Life magazine even devoted a two-page article to the light in an October 1957 issue.
[12] Joseph Dunninger visited Maco in 1957, without managing to see the light, and a 1964 investigation by paranormal researcher Hans Holzer led to the latter concluding (despite failing to see the phenomenon himself) that Baldwin "did not realize" he was dead, and was still warning oncoming trains of disconnected rail cars.
[3] Refuting the stories of some locals, who claimed that the light had still appeared while the highway was closed for a period during World War II, the Star-News researcher noted that a thorough check of archives twenty years earlier to verify this part of the tale had failed to reveal any evidence of such a closure taking place.