The Real Cowboys & Aliens

by Noe Torres

  Daylight Disc Sighting in 1927 (Courtesy of UFOcasebook.com)

  The brightness of the sky temporarily blinded Martin, and he lost track of where the object was. He rested his eyes for a few moments. By the time he could see again, the UFO was right on top of him, and it was much larger than before.

  The newspaper article said, “When directly over him it was about the size of a large saucer and was evidently at great height.” So, although it was huge in size, it was also very high up in the sky. This means its true size was even larger than what it seemed to be.

  Martin described the shape of the object as sort of like a balloon. But, although hot-air balloons already existed, they were extremely rare, and they did not move very fast.

  Martin kept watching the UFO until it moved completely out of view. “It went as rapidly as it had come and was soon lost to sight in the heavenly skies,” the newspaper said.

  A report about the sighting appeared in the Denison Daily News on January 25, 1878. It was titled “A Strange Phenomenon” and consisted of a first-hand report from the farmer.

  The newspaper article confirmed that Martin was a very trustworthy person. He was not the kind of person who would make up a false story. “Mr. Martin is a gentleman of undoubted veracity and this strange occurrence, if it was not a balloon, deserves the attention of our scientists,” the article said.

  In the book Texas UFO Tales, authors Mike Cox and Renee Roderick said that the UFO incident may have happened closer to Dallas than Denison, which is 72 miles north of Dallas. The authors said that Martin’s story may have first appeared in the Dallas Herald. It was then picked up and republished by the newspaper in Denison.

  J. Allen Hynek (U.S. Government Photo)

  In the early 1970s, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a famous astronomer and UFO investigator, studied the Martin sighting. Hynek classified the incident as a “daylight disc.” These types of UFOs usually travel very fast and make almost no sound. They sometimes make sudden, sharp turns while traveling extremely fast.

  Daylight discs are often described as shiny or metallic. They usually display no lights. Sometimes, witnesses may hear a very faint “swishing” sound.

  Daylight discs were mostly reported after 1940. So, this very unusual case from 1878 is extremely rare. It remains one of the most interesting UFO cases of the 1800s.

  4. The Ghost Lights of Marfa, Texas (1883)

  When something strange appears in the sky, like a UFO, it rarely happens on a regular schedule. Usually, there is a lot of luck involved in seeing something out of the ordinary. The witness just happens to be at the right place at the right time. However, in West Texas, there is a strange phenomenon that has been happening almost every night since the 1800s. It’s called “The Marfa Lights.”

  The lights are brightly-glowing balls of fire that float and dance along the horizon every night beginning at around sundown. These “orbs” of light will suddenly sputter to life, like someone lighting a camp- fire. They will sparkle and grow brighter, float around, move left and right, move up and down, and then suddenly, will grow dim and go out.

  Photo of the Marfa Lights by Noe Torres

  This apparition is hard to explain in words, but most people who actually see the lights are amazed and thrilled by them. That is why the State of Texas has built a special “Marfa Lights Viewing Area.” The site has bathrooms and pay telescopes for viewing the lights. It is located on U.S. Highway 90, about nine miles east of Marfa, Texas. In order to see the lights, spectators look off to the southwest, toward the Chinati Mountains, and wait for them to appear.

  Almost every night of the year, the viewing area fills up with curious people hoping to catch a glimpse of these mysterious lights. Getting a good view of the lights often depends on the weather, cloud conditions, and so on. The lights seem more “active” on certain nights, and there seem to be more lights appearing on some nights than on others.

  Some people have associated the mysterious lights with UFOs. A number of UFO sightings have been recorded in the Marfa area over the years. A reported mid-air collision between a small plane and a UFO occurred in 1974, about 30 miles from where the lights are seen. The incident is known as “Mexico’s Roswell.”

  For many years, investigators have tried to explain the Marfa Lights. Some people say they are headlights from cars traveling on a nearby highway. Other people say they are balls of gas or electrical energy. Still others say they are some form of geothermal energy that is escaping from the Earth’s core.

  The first serious attempt to discover their mystery came in the late 1800s. A railroad engineer named Walter T. Harris used surveyor’s methods to find the exact location of the strange lights. He was not successful and concluded that the lights might be coming from deep within Mexico.

  Over the decades, people have chased them. Airplanes have followed them. Scientists have studied them. Television programs have been done about them. Books have been written about them. And still, nobody knows for sure what they are. They remain one of Texas’ most enduring and fascinating mysteries.

  So, let’s go back in time to one of the very first sightings ever recorded of the Marfa Lights. The time was 1883, and Texas was very much a dusty, frontier territory. Few people lived around Marfa, Texas.

  A cowboy named Robert Reed Ellison and several

  other men had been herding cattle through the area around Marfa, Texas. On their second night in the area, they camped at a place called Paisano Pass. Suddenly,

  Ellison saw flickering lights in the distance and thought

  they were campfires lit by Apache Indians. Scrambling onto their horses, Ellison and his men went out into the desert, looking for the source of the mysterious lights.

  For hours, the men searched along the base of the Chinati Mountains and in the mesa between their camp and where the lights had been. They saw no evidence that Indians had been anywhere in the area. They found no tracks, no doused campfires, and no other clues. Ellison was extremely puzzled and began to think that the lights were something very unusual.

  For the next two nights, Ellison and his men again saw the strange lights. They were never able to solve the mystery, though.

  Later, Ellison talked to local residents about what he had seen. They told him that many local people saw the lights frequently. Sometimes, people would wander out into the desert trying to find the lights or evidence about the lights, such as ashes that indicated a campfire. But, nobody had ever found any trace of what might cause the lights.

  Chinati Mountain Range Near Marfa, Texas (Photo by Noe Torres)

  It seems likely that the lights were seen even before 1883. Historical accounts show that strange lights in the sky were seen by people riding on wagon trains from Ojinaga, Mexico, to San Antonio, Texas, back in the 1840s.

  There is even a legend that says the lights are the ghost of a notorious Native American Chief named Alsate, who lived in the mid-1800s. Alsate grew up in Mexico, across the Rio Grande River from Lajitas, Texas. He was of the Mescalero Apaches and became a powerful and greatly feared war chief of the tribe. Alsate and his warriors went on frequent raids into Mexico, which caused the government to hunt him down.

  The Mexican authorities eventually captured Alsate, executed him near Presidio, Texas, and then scattered his remaining followers, selling them into slavery throughout Mexico. After the chief’s death, stories were told about his ghost being seen in the mountainous areas around Marfa, Texas, where the tribe used to camp. According to this legend, the mysterious Marfa Lights are also part of Alsate’s ghostly apparitions.

  In part because of this legend, the nearby Chinati Mountains are called the Ghost Mountains, and the strange lights are often called the Marfa “ghost lights.” This incredible story is just another part of the continuing mystery of the Marfa Lights.

  5. The Cowboys Saw a UFO Crash (1884)

  On Friday, June 6, 1884, a very strange thing happened while John W. Ellis and three other cowboys were rounding up cattle on a re
mote ranch about 35 miles northwest of Benkelman, Nebraska. The cowboys said they saw a flying saucer crash in a nearby ravine. The incident was reported in two separate newspapers of that time, the Nebraska Nugget and the Daily State Journal of Lincoln, Nebraska. About the area where it happened, the Nugget reported, “The country in the vicinity is rather wild and rough, and the roads are hardly more than trails.”

  The cattle roundup was suddenly interrupted when the three cowboys heard “a terrific whirring noise” in the sky above them. Looking up, they saw a blazing streak of light shooting down toward the ground. The witnesses later described it as a cylindrical airship, about 50 or 60 feet long and about 10 or 12 feet wide. It was composed of a strange metal that they later found to be extremely light.

  The fiery cylinder struck the earth some distance away from where the cowboys stood. They could not see exactly where it had crashed, because it had fallen into a deep ravine.

  The Daily State Journal later reported, “John W. Ellis, a well known ranchman, was going out to his herd in company with three of his herders and several other cowboys engaged in the annual roundup. While riding along a draw they heard a terrific rushing, roaring sound overhead, and looking up, saw what appeared to be a blazing meteor of immense size falling at an angle to the earth. A moment later it struck the ground out of sight over the bank.”

  Ellis and the others turned their horses and set off in search of the crash site. Moments later, they found it. According to the Nebraska Nugget newspaper of that time, the cowboys saw wreckage of a very strange appearance.

  Sketches of Cogwheels (Courtesy of Wikimedia)

  The newspaper said, “He [Ellis] rode at once to the spot, and it is asserted, saw fragments of cog-wheels, and other pieces of machinery lying on the ground, scattered in the path made by the aerial visitor, glowing with heat so intense as to scorch the grass for a long distance around each fragment and made it impossible for one to approach it.”

  Although “cog-wheels” makes it sound like an ordinary machinery, the witnesses may not have known how to describe it more exactly. They probably were just using images and words with which they were familiar.

  More description was given about the wreckage: “One piece that looked like the blade of a propeller screw of a metal of an appearance like brass, about sixteen inches wide, three inches thick and three and a half feet long, was picked up by a spade. It would not weigh more than five pounds, but appeared as strong and compact as any known metal. A fragment of a wheel with a milled rim, apparently having had a diameter of seven or eight feet, was also picked up. It seemed to be of the same material and had the same remarkable lightness.

  Interestingly, other reported UFO crashes that happened many decades later often included descriptions of extremely light metals. For example, in the alleged 1947 crash of a UFO near Roswell, New Mexico, witnesses claimed to see pieces of a metal that was very light and flexible but also very strong.

  After witnessing the crash, the three cowboys approached the still-burning object. “Coming to the edge of the deep ravine into which the strange object had fallen, they undertook to see what it was. But the heat was so great that the air about it was fairly ablaze and it emitted a light so dazzling that the eye could not rest upon it more than a moment.”

  One of the cowboys, whose name was given as Alf Williamson, dismounted and approached the crashed UFO. Approaching to within 200 feet of the blazing wreckage, Williamson stuck his head over the edge of the ravine. Within 30 seconds, he “fell senseless from gazing at it at too close quarters.” His hair was “singed to a crisp” and his face was covered with blisters.

  The injured man was dragged away from the intensely hot area and taken to John W. Ellis’ house, where he was cared for until a doctor could arrive to treat his wounds. His condition was said to be serious, and his brother, who lived in Denver, was summoned by telegraph.

  This is one of the first accounts of a person being harmed during a UFO encounter. Although the injuries were described as heat-related, it’s possible that radiation was also involved. Some people who approached the wreckage may have later suffered radiation-related illnesses and possibly death.

  Library of Congress Photo of Nebraska Cattle Drive (LC-USF34- 008808-D)

  Cylindrical Airship Design (NASA Photo)

  Examining the crashed object from a safe distance, the remaining cowboys noticed that the ground around the UFO had been strangely affected by the crash. The newspaper said, “When it first touched the earth the ground was sandy and bare of grass. The sand was fused to an unknown depth over a space about 20 feet wide by 30 feet long, and the melted stuff was still bubbling and hissing. Between this and the final resting place there were several other like spots where it had come in contact with the ground, but not so well marked.”

  The only air travel known in 1884 was in hot air balloons, which had no engines and few mechanical parts. It is doubtful that the crash of a balloon could have caused such intense heat or radiation. It is also doubtful that it would have scattered so many strange pieces of metallic machinery all over the crash site.

  Another interesting feature of the crashed object was an intense light that continued shining long after the crash. After nightfall, many people from neighboring ranches came to the crash site to view the mysterious object. But, even hours after it fell, the light was still too bright to look at directly. “The light emitted from it was like the blazing rays of the sun and too powerful to be borne by human eyes,” the newspaper said.

  On the following morning, June 7, 1884, the crash site was again visited by many of the local people. Among the visitors was E. W. Rawlings, an inspector of cattle brands for the local ranches. The wreckage had, by then, cooled a bit, although it was still too hot to touch.

  After looking over the crash site, Rawlings went in-

  to the nearby town of Benkelman, Nebraska, and he supposedly verified that everything Ellis and the other cowboys had reported was true. The newspaper reported, “Great excitement exists in the vicinity and the roundup is suspended while the cowboys wait for the wonderful find to cool off so they can examine it. Mr. Ellis will go to the land office to secure the land on which the strange thing lies so that his claim to it cannot be disputed.”

  So, what finally happened to all the debris from this airship crash? In its June 10, 1884 edition, the Daily State Journal said, “It is gone, dissolved into the air. A tremendous rain storm fell yesterday afternoon beginning around 2 o'clock. As it approached, in regular blizzard style, most of those assembled to watch the mysterious visitor fled to shelter, a dozen or more, among them your correspondent, waited to see the effect of rain upon the glowing mass of metal. The storm came down from the north, on its crest a sheet of flying spray and a torrent of rain. It was impossible to see more than a rod through the driving, blinding mass. It lasted for half an hour, and when it slackened so that the aerolite should have been visible it was no longer there. The draw was running three feet deep in water and supposing it had floated off the strange vessel the party crossed over at the risk of their lives.

  “They were astounded to see that the queer object had melted, dissolved by the water like a spoonful of salt. Scarcely a vestige of it remained. Small, jelly-like pools stood here and there on the ground, but under the eyes of the observers these grew thinner and thinner till they were but muddy water joining the rills that led to the current a few feet away. The air was filled with a faint, sweetish smell.

  Skeptics insist that this UFO crash is false because one of the witnesses said that the wreckage included “fragments of cog- wheels,” which were common pieces of machinery in the 19th century. However, as we have previously noted, just because he said it looked like cogwheels doesn’t mean that they really were cogwheels. He may have just had no other way to describe it.

  In the end, the only thing that can be said is what one of the newspaper articles from 1884 said, “The whole affair is bewildering to the highest degree, and will no doubt forever
be a mystery.”

  6. Bigfoot from Outer Space (1888)

  In the world of unexplained phenomena the big three are undoubtedly UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. Not surprisingly, due to its strange appearance, some people believe that Bigfoot is a hairy monster from another planet, dropped off on earth by a flying saucer.

  The idea that Bigfoot and UFOs are connected is actually not something new. The first story suggesting Bigfoot was a hairy castoff from a UFO appeared the late 1800s.

  People in the Old West, especially Native Americans, reported seeing these large man-like beasts. Almost all Native Americans had legends of hairy giants resembling Bigfoot. Some tales were stranger than others and some even suggested that Bigfoot was a meat-eating cannibal!

  The strangest Bigfoot story of all comes from a journal written by a Mr. Wyatt, a cattleman in California in the 1800s. The incident happened in 1888 in Humboldt County in the “Big Woods Country,” where Wyatt had spent the winter with an Native American tribe. Wyatt had learned to speak the tribe’s language and, having gained their trust, was allowed to participate in tribal activities.

  One day, while out in the woods, Wyatt came across a local tribesman carrying a platter of raw meat. Wondering what was going on, and who the meat was for, Wyatt began to question the man. Although reluctant at first, the tribesman finally allowed Wyatt to follow him to a nearby shallow cave along a cliff face.