The town of Beauregard, Mississippi is a small quiet place found about forty miles south of Jackson. The town's population is impossible to calculate for sure--it all depends on if you count only living residents or if you include the restless spirits of those who used to call the place home.
Dr. Elias Rowan made his home in Beauregard for many years, living in a home perched along the Illinois Central Railroad tracks. His dream was to serve the community he loved by remaking his house into a hospital. In 1883, he got that chance, if only briefly.
A hurricane hit the town and destroyed most of the structures in Beauregard, although Dr. Rowan's home was left standing. People flocked there, bringing the injured for treatment, and for a few days Dr. Rowan was able to run his home like the hospital he had envisioned it as. For his service he became a hero amongst the townspeople and was embraced as a pillar of the community for the rest of his life.
He also continued to treat patients right up until the day of his death. In fact, his devotion to administering medicine helped lead to his demise. In 1912, Rowan was an elderly man. He was on his way to the train station to meet a patient whose arrival he was expecting, and was walking on the railroad tracks as a shortcut. Due to his age and failing hearing, he never heard the very train he was waiting for bearing down on him. At the last moment, he turned around and saw the locomotive. He could only yell the word “No,” and flail his lantern as the train hit him, killing him instantly.
For a decade, Dr. Rowan's house stood as the only reminder of his past involvement with the town, still full of his belongings and furniture. Locals never entered the dwelling. Soon enough, incidents began happening which made people think that Dr. Rowan himself was still walking the tracks he walked in life.
In the 20’s, train conductors would constantly report seeing strange lights along the tracks in Beauregard. As they told it, as they approached the town, they would see a lantern waving wildly, as if its owner was signaling that he needed help. They would slow down, even stop, but upon doing so, there would be no sign of people.
As this same incident occurred again and again, railroad officials began keeping a log of the light sightings. They gave this log to two private detectives who were assigned the job of figuring out who the prankster causing these problems was. They never found anyone. After months of investigating they had to report back to their superiors that, in fact, there was no logical or scientific explanation for the appearance of the flailing lights along the Illinois Central tracks.
For many years, Dr. Elias Rowan's house stood along the tracks, untouched.
Eventually, it was demolished in the 1940’s. Since then, sightings of lantern lights along the tracks in Beauregard have lessened considerably, but there is still an occasional report of the mysterious lantern lights.
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