Shortly after the accident, residents of Maco and railroad employees reported sightings of a white light along a section of railroad track through swamps west of Maco station, and word spread that Joe Baldwin had returned to search for his missing head. The light was said to appear in the distance, before approaching along the tracks facing East, bobbing at a height of about 5 feet, and either flying to the side of the track in an arc or receding from the viewer. Other reports spoke of green or red lights, or other patterns of movement. The earliest stories supposedly dated from the 1870s, and until the 1886 Charleston earthquake, two lights were often reported: railroad employees said that trains had occasionally been stopped or delayed due to the activities of the light, which had even been seen from locomotive cabs. The journal "Railroad Telegrapher", for example, reported in 1946 that the light had been seen on March 3 that year, and suggested it had been appearing for some seventy years previously. 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. 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. Similar "headless brakeman" stories have been found associated with other "ghost lights" in the United States, such as the Bragg Road ghost light and Gurdon light: from a folklore perspective the story connected with the Maco light, being substantially the oldest and best-known and having received some national coverage, may have served as the point of origin for the others.