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by Karen Schillings
 I've seen some strange lights in my time, but nothing compares to the
experience that I had with my buddy and CASPR member, Chad, on the tracks
in Gurdon. We went out there one night armed with a thermal cam, 40x
binoculars, and my mini-dv cam, on a mission to prove to ourselves once
and for all just what the Gurdon Light is. I always suspected that it was
headlights and tail lights from the vehicles on the freeway, but the
illusion is so grand, it was hard to accept that theory without concrete
visual proof.
So, Chad and I head out for a long jaunt, most likely two miles over rough
terrain before we can get to the area where visual proof can be recorded.
The tracks run slightly uphill and then once you're over the hump, you
begin to see the Light down the tracks. We weren't even close to the place
where you begin to go downhill (so headlights were completely out of the
question) when we saw a ball of light coming towards us. Chad turned on
the thermal cam and aimed it right at the light. No heat signature was
attached. Always looking for the rational explanation, I suggested
strongly that it had to be a person with a flashlight coming back down the
tracks. This ball of light was consistently lit, not flickering and seemed
to be headed towards us. He said that there's no way it could be a person,
there was no heat signature attached to the light source. I looked through
the camera but couldn't believe what I was seeing. I turned on my camera
and recorded this light for several minutes. I kept thinking that maybe
the thermal cam wasn't picking up the signature, that a person HAD to be
there, and they were too far away for the cam to pick up the heat, but we
could see the flashlight they were surely carrying.
You can hear me
voicing this concern to Chad on my tape, when he says excitedly,
"look behind us, people are coming, see what they look like?"
Sure enough, you could see all the people's heat blobs as they approached
us with flashlights. When we turned back to see the light in front of us
that we had been observing, it was gone. We were truly baffled, and headed
on down the tracks.
Finally, we arrived at the location where the typical Gurdon Light is
displayed and, sure enough, by using the high-powered binoculars we were
able to determine that the Light is nothing more than a grand illusion, a
mirage of sorts, created by the headlights bouncing down the tracks as the
vehicles unknowingly create a light show for the many who brave the
elements, tracks, spikes, rotten trestles, giant spiders from hell, and
insects galore to see the "Light".
Disappointed, and definitely disturbed by the fact that I had spent so
much time on the tracks in the past, we headed back towards the cemetery
where we had parked. We crested the hill and were on the decline when we
decided to stop and take a break. I was still complaining about all the
wasted time and effort on the tracks in the past when Chad said, "you
know what's bothering me, Karen, this weird star, check it out." I
looked up in the sky and saw a red, pulsating star. We watched it for a
few minutes and then, much to our surprise and amazement, a large,
basketball sized light appeared to our right in the trees, this was
definitely not headlights! It was hovering, then bouncing around playfully
in the trees on the edge of the tracks. I couldn't believe my eyes, this
was the light I had heard so many talk about, a light that travels through
the forest and sometimes comes right up to the person and hovers a few
inches from their face, close enough for them to feel heat emanating from
the light.
We were watching this light for at least a minute or two when it occurred
to me that I should be filming it. I got my camera out just as it was
crossing over the tracks. It was moving slowly, like I said, hovering at
times and bouncing a little. I was trying to capture it on tape, but
couldn't see anything on my screen. Needless to say, I was quite excited
and realized that I had left the lens cap on the camera. I removed it and
managed to capture the light for several moments. You can hear me say in a
strange, monotone voice, "I think I just want to experience this for
myself without the camera", and I turn it off. (completely out of
character for me!) At this time the light has moved completely across the
tracks and is dancing around in the trees to our left. With the light
still in our view, something even more amazing happens. A blinding white
light illuminates my left shoulder and Chad who is standing slightly in
front of me and to the left. I will never forget how he looked bathed in
the eerie, alien-like light. We both turned to the light and saw what
appeared to be a comet or meteor-type thing flying silently through the
sky. It was not high in the sky, but very low, right above the tree line.
It left a trail of smoke that was broken into two segments, a dash-dash,
and lingered for a long time right above our heads.
Chad, a former Marine, said that there was no way it was a flare, and in
all his days, he had never observed anything like what we just saw. We
looked back to the other light that had originally gotten our attention
and of course, it had disappeared. Now here's the weirdest part of
all....it was approximately 1am when all this happened, but we didn't
arrive to our vehicles until almost 5am. Seriously, we were perhaps a 45
minute walk from the cars when we saw the dancing light and then the
meteor thing, and we didn't stay there long after the event occurred, so
what happened to all that time?? We think that approximately 2 and 1/2
hours are missing and I don't like that one bit. I have no wish to probed,
prodded or experimented on PERIOD. The only consolation is that neither of
us had any bruises, marks or anything unusual on our bodies the next day.
The missing time will always remain a mystery unless we can find a good
hypnotist and see if anything is embedded in our subconscious.
In a way, I
don't want to know. If this happened to you, would you truly want to know
if you had been a guinea pig for some perverted alien experiment? For now,
I'm content to treasure the experience and just let the missing time go. I
like to think that we were confused about the time the light appeared and
that it was actually much later than 1am.
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