by Noe Torres
In addition, the beings used several strange tools, including what seemed to be a machine to help them breathe. Shaw said, “Each of them had swung under the left arm a bag to which was attached a nozzle, and every little while one or the other would place the nozzle on his mouth, at which time I heard a sound of escaping gas.”
The beings also carried another tool that was a sort of lamp. “Each held to his hand something about the size of a hen's egg. Upon holding them up and partly opening the hand, these substances emitted the most remarkable, intense and penetrating light one can imagine. Notwithstanding its intensity it had no unpleasant effect upon our eyes, and we found we could gaze directly at it. It seemed to me to be some sort of luminous mineral, though they had complete control of it,” Shaw said.
The strange beings seemed to make an attempt to “abduct” Colonel Shaw and Mr. Spooner. “One of them, at a signal from one who appeared to be the leader, attempted to lift me, probably with the intention of carrying me away. Although I made not the slightest resistance he could not move me, and finally the three of them tried it without the slightest success. They appeared to have no muscular power outside of being able to move their own limbs.”
After the failed abduction attempt, the creatures moved toward a nearby canal. “There, resting in the air about twenty feet above the water was an immense airship,” Shaw said. “It was 150 feet in length at least, though probably not over twenty feet in diameter at the widest part. It was pointed at both ends, and outside of a large rudder there was no visible machinery.”
The beings seemed to glide as they went, sometimes not even touching the ground. Shaw said, “The three walked rapidly toward the ship, not as you or I walk, but with a swaying motion, their feet only touching the ground at intervals of about fifteen feet. We followed them as rapidly as possible, and reached the bridge as they were about to embark. With a little spring they rose to the machine, opened a door in the side, and disappeared within.”
The ship then “went through the air very rapidly and expanded and contracted with a muscular motion, and was soon out of sight.”
Airship sightings all across California continued through December 1896. Then, suddenly, as the year came to a close, no more were reported. The mysterious airship wave of 1896 had ended.
12. The Second Airship Wave (1897)
After the California airship sightings ended in December 1896, several weeks went by without any more activity. But, beginning in late January and continuing through June of 1897, the United States was again gripped by “airship hysteria.” Sightings of the strange ships broke out in Nebraska and pretty soon were seen all over the country.
While engine-driven balloon ships were already being developed, they were not yet being widely used. Most of the man-made dirigibles were still in the experimental stage. That’s why many people believe that the airships seen all over the nation in 1897 were something mysterious and unexplained.
The wave of new sightings began in Hastings, Nebraska on January 25, 1897. Witnesses told the Omaha Bee newspaper that they had seen “a large, glaring light” moving at a “remarkable speed” about 500 feet above the ground. The newspaper said the light “was seen to circle around for a few minutes and then descended for about 200 feet, circling as it traveled at a remarkable speed for about two miles and then slowing up it circled for fully 15 minutes, when it began to lower and disappear as mysteriously as it had made its appearance.”
The object was seen again just west of Hastings on January 31, hovering motionless in the sky about 800 feet in the air. The newspaper said, “At first sight it had the appearance of an immense star, but after closer observation the powerful light shows by its color to be artificial. It certainly must be illuminated by powerful electric dynamos for the light sent forth by it is wonderful.”
Several days later, the object was seen again, this time about 40 miles to the south. The witnesses were returning home from a prayer meeting at church when they heard rumbling noises, strange voices, and even laughter from the air above them.
Looking up, they saw a very strange object. The February 5, 1897 edition of the Omaha Bee reported, “It seemed to be conical-shaped and perhaps 30 to 40 feet in length, with a bright headlight and six smaller lights, three on a side, and seemed to have two sets of wings on a side, with a large fan-shaped rudder.”
The Nebraska sightings continued. On February 17, three men told the Kearney Hub newspaper that they saw a barrel-sized object rise suddenly up into the air about 300 feet before descending and shooting out sparks. A similar object was seen in North Loup on March 13.
Sketch from Chicago Times-Herald, 4-12-1897
In the days that followed, bright lights were seen in the skies over several Nebraska towns. Witnesses described what they saw as a “big searchlight” and a “big [train] engine headlight” in the sky.
Late in February and on into March, these mysterious luminous objects were also being seen in the neighboring state of Kansas. The Kansas City Star newspaper described a sighting where a UFO zoomed across the sky at 75 miles per hour and lit up parts of the town of Belleville, Kansas, “like an immense meteor.” The object then came to a complete standstill in the sky for about 30 minutes before dancing around “playfully” and then zooming out of sight.
The March 29 edition of the Kansas City Times re-
ported an object over Topeka, Kansas, that “moved parallel with the horizon with great rapidity.” The newspaper noted that “stars do not perform these feats. Neither do planets.”
By April 1897, the airship mystery had spread to many other states, including Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, and Texas. In some cases, the ships seen in the sky looked a lot like experimental engine-driven balloons. In other cases, the ships looked more like what we think of as UFOs.
One of the more impressive sightings occurred on the evening of April 10 in Quincy, Illinois. Hundreds of people saw an object between 50 and 100 feet in length with an intense white light and smaller colored lights. The object flew low across the city’s west side, came to a full stop, and then reversed its course.
Man-made Airship of the 20th Century (Wikimedia)
The Quincy Morning Whig reported, “At times it did not appear to be more than 400 or 500 feet above the ground, and in the bright moonlight was plainly silhouetted against the clear sky. Men who saw the thing describe it as a long, slender body shaped like a cigar, and made of some bright metal, perhaps aluminum, on which the moonlight glistened. On either side of the hull extending outwards and upwards were what appeared to be wings, and above the hull could be seen the misty outlines of some sort of superstructure, a clear view of which, however, was intercepted by the wings. At the front end of the thing was a headlight, and from the brightness and intensity of the stream of light thrown out it was apparently similar to the searchlights used on steamboats. About midway of the hull were small lights, a green light on the starboard or right hand side, and a red light on the port or left hand side.”
Airships of similar design were seen throughout the month of April in other parts of the Midwest and Northern states. The ships were typically described as cylindrical or cigar-shaped and often had bright lights on them and attachments that looked like “wings.”
These bizarre airships were seen as far south as Texas. On April 15, the Dallas Morning News reported that an amateur astronomer, looking at the sky using powerful field glasses, had seen an object in Cresson, Texas, that “floated about a half mile above the earth and seemed to be about 50 feet long, of a cigar shape with two great wings thrust out from each side.” The UFO also had “a powerful search light” that “threw its rays far into the night ahead, beside which even the luminosity of the moon paled.”
Similar sightings in April occurred in Illinois, North Dakota, Indiana, Ohio, and other parts of Texas. Strangely, in some of the sightings, people on the ground heard voices coming from the airships. On April 11, at Hawarden, Iowa, as a 60-foot long airship passed overh
ead, witnesses heard “the sound of human voices … among which was mingled the laughter of women.”
Voices were also heard in a number of other sightings during April 1897. In almost every case, the language that was heard coming from the airships could not be understood. It did not seem to be English.
Additionally, witnesses sometimes claimed they saw people aboard the mysterious airships. On April 11 in Minnetonka, Minnesota, a ground observer said he saw inside an airship “living persons – men, women, and children. They were moving about as if very busy,” according to the Minneapolis Tribune.
In some cases, witnesses would actually talk to some of the occupants of these airships. For example, an airship that was seen in many parts of Texas was supposedly piloted by a man who called himself “Mr. Wilson.” Several people talked to Wilson during times when he would land his airship to get supplies. Wilson claimed to be an “inventor” from New York, but all attempts to locate information about him later were unsuccessful.
Other people encountered airship crews that did not seem quite human. On April 14, near Reynolds, Michigan, a dozen farmers saw an airship land in a field and then found inside it a 9-foot-tall humanoid. The Saginaw Courier-Herald reported that the being seemed to try to communicate with the onlookers, but his speech sounded like “bellowing.”
Artist’s Conception of “Foreign-Tongued Midgets” by Jared Olive
Near Cassville, Indiana, airship occupants were described as “foreign-tongued midgets who spoke no English” in a May 3rd sighting. Also, a pilot who was “clearly not an inhabitant of this world” was recovered from the wreckage of an airship crash on April 17, in Aurora, Texas, as we will discuss in our next chapter.
Another odd airship story from April 1897 happened in Lanark, Illinois, where a man named Johann Fliegeltoub claimed that during a blizzard, an airship crashed on his farm. Fliegeltoub ran to the crashed ship and pulled out the lone survivor, whom he described as being dressed in a toga much like an ancient Greek. However, Fliegeltoub never described the being’s physical features, leaving that part up to the imagination.
For a time, Fliegeltoub charged curious onlookers money to see the “creature,” as he called it. Apparently the alien was capable of speaking English, and he told the farmer that he was from Mars.
Also, his airship was not damaged beyond repair, and he was able to fix it and fly back home, presumably to Mars. Needless to say, most researchers are highly suspicious of Fliegeltoub’s odd story.
A similar tale from April 1897 concerns another crashed airship, where the pilot was found frozen in ice, and yet another crashed airship involved a pilot that was dragged from his downed craft and later claimed that he was from Cuba and that his name was Pedro Sanchez.
By around the first week of June 1897, the wave of airship sightings seemed to just stop. Very few were reported after that. The many newspaper articles from 1897 confirm that something really strange did happen. Unfortunately, we may never know exactly what.
13. Alien Body Recovered in North Texas (1897)
In a previous chapter, we described the explosion of a UFO over a cotton gin in Dublin, Texas in 1891. Six years later, in 1897, another very strange incident took place about 100 miles away. It happened in the tiny town of Aurora, Texas on Saturday, April 17, 1897 at 6 o’clock in the morning.
A cigar-shaped UFO, metallic silver in color, appeared suddenly in the sky above Aurora. It was moving from south to north. Unlike the balloon airships of its time, this UFO was built of “an unknown metal, resembling somewhat a mix of aluminum and silver.” A witness guessed that the ship weighed “several tons.”
The sighting occurred during a time when many strange airships were being seen all over the United States. For this reason, the UFO is called an “airship” in a newspaper article written later by Aurora resident S. E. Haydon.
Haydon told the Dallas Morning News that the strange craft seemed to be having some kind of mechanical problems. It slowed down to about ten or twelve miles per hour and began settling toward the ground.
Haydon said the townspeople watched in amazement as the slow-moving airship drifted over the town square and then moved north toward the property of Judge J. S. Proctor. Next, the UFO collided with a windmill on the judge’s land and “went into pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground.” The crash destroyed the windmill, the adjacent water tank and the judge's flower garden.
It seems likely that the explosion and crash drew many spectators to Judge Proctor’s land. Among the wreckage, the townspeople found the dead body of the ship’s pilot. Then the story got really weird. Witnesses said the pilot was not human.
Haydon said that, although the pilot’s body was damaged severely in the crash, it was clear that “he was not an inhabitant of this world.” The pilot may have been from Mars, said another witness, Mr. T. J. Weems, an officer in the U.S. Signal Service and an “authority on astronomy.”
In the case of the UFO that exploded in 1891 over Dublin, Texas, papers were found containing strange writing on them. The same thing happened in Aurora. When the townspeople checked the pilot’s body, they found that he was carrying papers written in an unknown language. The papers may have contained a record of the pilot’s journeys, but they were “written in some unknown hieroglyphics” and could not be understood.
Cigar-shaped UFO Strikes Windmill (Illustration by Neil Riebe)
As word of what happened reached surrounding towns, many visitors arrived to look at the crash site. Haydon commented, “The town is full of people today who are viewing the wreck and gathering specimens of the strange metal from the debris.” It’s possible that some of that mysterious wreckage that was carried away from Aurora still exists today, stored away and forgotten in attics or storage rooms. None of it has ever been found, though.
Actual Newspaper Article from Dallas Morning News, 4-19-1897
After the crash, the townspeople tried to find out more about how the UFO was constructed and what made it fly. However, Haydon said that the ship was “too badly wrecked to form any conclusion as to its construction or motive power.”
The Dallas Morning News article, published two days after the crash, said that the pilot’s funeral would take place on April 18. Another newspaper, The Fort Worth Register, said, “The pilot, who was not an inhabitant of this world, was given a proper Christian burial at the Aurora Cemetery.”
When the pilot was buried, a marker was placed on his grave. In 1973, newspaper reporter Bill Case described the marker as having a strange design on it resembling a flying saucer with portholes. Shortly after Case wrote a story describing the grave marker, somebody stole it. Today, nobody is sure exactly where the pilot was buried.
In 2008, an unmarked grave dating to the 1890s 1890s was found at the Aurora Cemetery during the filming of a television show called “UFO Hunters” for the History Channel. Since the owners of the cemetery will not allow anyone to dig up the grave, nobody knows if it is the grave of the strange pilot.
State Historical Marker at Aurora Cemetery (Photo by Noe Torres)
Although some people claim the story is not true and was created by Aurora residents to boost tourism, many other people to believe that a spaceship crash-landed there. In fact, the state’s historical commission has placed a permanent marker at the cemetery that mentions the spaceship crash. The marker says, “This site is also well-known because of the legend that a spaceship crashed nearby in 1897 and the pilot, killed in the crash, was buried here.”
The case of the alien that fell from the sky in Aurora, Texas, continues to fascinate people to this very day. It has been featured on many television documentaries and in many books, and a number of UFO researchers, especially in North Texas, are still seeking answers to the puzzling events of 1897.
14. Alien Cattle Rustlers (1897)
Beginning in the 1970s cows were mysteriously being found dead on ranches all across New Mexico and the Southwest. Investigators sent out
to determine their cause of death were baffled. From what they could tell, the cows weren’t killed by animals, but instead some form of intelligent life using surgical tools to remove various organs from inside the cows. It didn’t take long for people to theorize that aliens were the ones behind this new phenomenon.
It’s an easy scenario to imagine: a lonely cow grazes alone in the darkness. A light soon appears in the sky and hovers over the poor cow. Soon a light shines down onto the animal and lifts it up into the ship to befall its terrible fate.
There is actually an account of cattle abduction back in the Old West. And it is humorously primitive compared to modern cattle abduction premises.
The story first appeared in the April 23, 1897 edition of the Yates Center Farmer’s Advocate, a Kansas based newspaper. It was late at night when Alex Hamilton, a Leroy, Kansas, rancher awoke to a strange noise coming from outside. His cattle sounded as if something were scaring them badly. Hamilton ran to the door and could see an airship slowly approaching his cattle from the air.
According to Hamilton the airship was cigar-shaped and had a carriage underneath it. The carriage he said looked to be made of glass and was illuminated within. Inside of it were “three of the strangest beings” Hamilton had ever seen, two men, a woman, and three children. However, what made these beings so strange Hamilton never elaborated on.
