“When the light reached a point in the road nearly opposite him it stopped and came directly toward him with great velocity, until it was within a few feet of him when it stopped. The observer describes it as about the size of a half bushel and of intense brightness. It then rose in the air a distance of several rods and then began to descend where the gentleman stood. He says that he is not usually easily frightened, but he could not account for the strange sight and he retraced his steps to the house he had just left.”
The light followed him up to his neighbor’s house, where the witness told of what he had seen. Two men there offered to accompany him home. They started out but the light had apparently disappeared. Then, suddenly, “it again made its appearance and was distinctly seen by all three.” This time it did not approach as closely as before, but would disappear and reappear in an entirely different direction and at a distance from where it was last seen.
The article finishes with the statement that the light was also seen by others in the neighborhood, none of whom could explain the strange occurrence.
Source: “Strange Phenomenon,” Ackley Enterprise, Iowa, February 8, 1878. The report was originally published in the Hampton Chronicle but as there are no precise details, our date of February 1st is only an estimation.
496.
29 July 1878, Rawlins, Wyoming, USA
Unidentified planetoid observed by two astronomers
Professor Watson has observed a shining object at a considerable distance from the sun during the total eclipse. A confirmatory observation was made by Professor Swift of Denver, Colorado. Astronomer Lockyer commented: “There is little doubt that an Intra-Mercurial planet has been discovered by Professor Watson.”
Source: Lewis Swift, “Discovery of Vulcan,” Nature 18 (19 September 1878): 539. Also The Observatory 2 (1878): 161-2 and J. Norman Lockyer: “The Eclipse” Nature 18 (29 August 1878): 457-62, at 461.
497.
30 July 1878, Edwardsville, Kansas, USA
Unknown light rushes down the train tracks
Mr. Timmons, “one of the most substantial farmers and reliable men in Wyancotte county,” reports that “the section men on the K. P. road, on my farm, seeing the storm coming up very fast, got their hand-car on the track and started full speed for Edwardsville. They had run but a little ways when the entire crowd, at the same time, saw coming around the curve of Edwardsville what they supposed to be a locomotive at full speed.
“They jumped down and took their car off the track as fast as possible when they saw it was not a locomotive. Whatever it was came down the track giving off a volume of dense smoke with occasional flashes resembling a head light in the centre of smoke. It came three-fourths of a mile from where they first saw it, then turned off the track at a pile of cordwood, went round it once, then went off in a southwesterly direction, through a thick wood. The section men came running to my house evidently much frightened and bewildered by what they saw.”
Note: globular lightning may have produced this effect, as the ball of plasma could have been guided by the train tracks until it grounded itself. The duration of the phenomenon, however, makes it most unusual.
Source: Atchison Globe (Kansas), 7 August 1878.
498.
11 August 1878, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, USA
Planetoid passing in front of Jupiter
Two amateur astronomers, Messrs. Gemill and Wampler, observed an unusual celestial object using a 5-inch telescope. At 10:05 P.M. they noticed a dark round spot on the eastern margin of the disc of Jupiter. It moved west, just above the northern belt, parallel with the planet’s equator, and passed off the face at 1:24 A.M. on 12 August, having crossed the disk in 3 hours and 19 minutes.
The object appeared as a perfect sphere, much larger than any of Jupiter’s satellites. It was well-defined and sharp, most intensely black. The observers commented “it was neither a satellite nor the shadow of one, because all four satellites were in full view all the time.”
Note: Jupiter has other satellites that were unknown at the time, but they are much smaller than the four satellites in question, and could not explain the effect observed.
Source: The Indiana Progress (Indiana, Pennsylvania), 22 August 1878.
499.
12 April 1879, Manhattanville, New York, USA
Unexplained astronomical phenomenon
“Upon the evening, Mr. Henry Harrison was searching for Brorsen’s comet, when he saw an object that was moving so rapidly that it could not have been a comet. He called a friend to look, and his observation was confirmed. At 2 A.M. this object was still visible (…) Mr. Harrison disclaims sensationalism, which he seems to find unworthy, and gives technical details: he says the object was seen by Mr. J. Spencer Devoe, of Manhattanville.”
Source: “A Curious astronomical phenomenon” in Scientific American n. s., 40: 294; New York Tribune, 17 April 1879, 2, c.3; also Henry Harrison’s entry in Scientific American Supplement 7 (21 June 1879): 2884-5.
500.
10 October 1879, Dubuque, Iowa, USA
Large unexplained airship overhead
“People who were up at a very early hour this morning were astonished at seeing what appeared to be a large balloon going over the city. It was seen by quite a number of persons in different parts of the city, and was visible for an hour.”
The object disappeared on the horizon, moving in a southwesterly direction. It is noteworthy that an employee of the Times named Thomas Lloyd saw this balloon as it was very high in the southeast and traveled south slowly, rising and falling in its course.
A real balloon (the “Pathfinder”) piloted by professor John Wise had taken off from the town of Louisiana, Missouri in this period, but it had fallen into lake Michigan some ten days before, and could not have been the cause of the sighting.
It is noteworthy that the last eight sightings in the Chronology come from the United States, and that the last one is a report of an unknown “airship” flying slowly over a city. But that, as journalists of the nineteenth century liked to say, “is another story.”
Source: The Inner Ocean (Chicago, Illinois), 11 October 1879.
Epilogue to Part I-F
Three aspects stand out when we review 19th century reports of unusual aerial phenomena:
- Meteors and meteorites were reported with greater enthusiasm and in more abundance than in previous times. The press, exploiting people’s interests and concerns for the sake of sales, began a love story with these still-mysterious astronomical phenomena, and it lasted till the end of the century. Given the interest in meteorites in the name of scientific progress, the public was encouraged to report the latest observations at their local newspaper offices.
- Claims of extraterrestrial encounters were first made in this century. Such claims were not published until the 1850s on, but tall tales involving the alleged inhabitants of the moon, allegedly spied through telescopes, had become popular decades earlier. It was not long before stories of aliens on the moon would turn into stories of aliens on visits to Earth. Indeed, by the late 19th century the press would be full of articles speculating on what extraterrestrials drank and ate, on the average height of Venusians and on whether airships had already made the journey across interstellar space to meet us. As early as 1847 the Mormons, followed by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, began to discuss interplanetary travel and speculated on which physical planet God inhabited. We have generally avoided including examples here for want of truly convincing cases.
- Reports of UFO crashes were first claimed in the nineteenth century. Though examples can be found in the literary efforts of earlier generations, allegedly factual reports had never been published before. That most of these cases were probably hoaxes is not in doubt, hence our avoidance of them, but they do allow us a glimpse of the world’s new mentality.
We stopped our Chronology before 1880 because the world was about to change radically and irreversibly, with increasingly common access to novel forms of energy and trans
portation: The Suez Canal was opened; John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil; Most significantly, the first mobile gas engine was demonstrated by Siegfried Marcus, and other engineers rushed to make plans for new vehicles based on the internal combustion engine, which had been demonstrated as early as 1860 by Lenoir.
With the introduction of automobiles, the telegraph and an oil-based economy, the basic structure of the modern world was established. In science, the first measurements of the speed of light were accomplished, and the kinetic theory of gases published. In technology, high tension induction coils, cast-iron frame buildings, Bunsen gas burners, and Singer’s sewing machines were developed.
Most importantly for our purpose, the social context was revolutionized by changing standards in journalism, the increasing demand for escapism and instant news and the renewed fascination for the exotic and the unknown.
In 1876 Italian priest Pietro Secchi announced that he had discovered “canals” on Mars. When astronomer Antonio Schiaparelli confirmed this observation in 1877, and Asaph Hall discovered the two satellites of Mars the same year at the Naval Observatory, it led to much renewed speculation about life on other planets, which in turn tended to color reports of unexplained aerial objects and inspired today’s fascination with the extraterrestrial theory, to the exclusion of any other hypothesis about these phenomena.
It is not for lack of data that we decided to stop this chronology when we did. The end of the nineteenth century would see an extraordinary burst of sightings, popularized by the new media and amplified by the growth of urban centers, the greater ease of travel and the vast extension of the railroads and the telegraph. A catalogue of unexplained aerial phenomena beyond our chronology would deal with history’s first major “wave” of reports about 1885 and with an even bigger one from the fall of 1896 to 1897. The records of that era, now known as “the Airship Wave,” if they are ever analyzed and published, will dwarf the present book.
PART II
Myths, Legends, and Chariots of the Gods
In our effort to understand how certain recurring themes linked to unexplained aerial phenomena have evolved and spread throughout human history, we have tested many claims for the sake of accuracy. Naturally, given the hoary age of these accounts, it was not possible for us to measure the truth or falsity of every story compiled. However, in the process of analysis, we have uncovered many spurious items that cloud the literature of the field. Some of them deserve special documentation.
Descriptions of unexplained objects or phenomena in the sky are found in the records of the earliest civilizations that used some form of writing. Several serious authors, such as Alexander Kazantsev and professor Agrest in Russia or Aimé Michel in France, have suggested that some prehistoric rock carvings and primitive statues were indicative of contact with non-human visitors from the sky.
Less cautious or less scholarly writers such as Erich von Daniken and Zecharia Sitchin have expanded this notion into the popular theme of Ancient Astronauts, where it is assumed that the Earth was either visited or colonized by beings from another planet. Some forms of the Ancient Astronaut theory quote the Bible and other ancient texts in support of the notion that these beings intermarried with primitive earthlings or modified them genetically to produce modern humans.
Indeed, the literature of earlier centuries is rich in legends involving beings flying in the heavens, sometimes alongside humans as witnesses or as participants in their warfare or their lovemaking. Although such accounts are too vague in date and circumstances to be included in our chronology, they cannot be ignored in any study of the history of the field. Having said this, the reliability of these accounts must be critically challenged, either because they were the product of poetic imagination, because they were fabrications used in blatant support of political or religious movements of the time, or because they were invented by opportunistic authors and popularized by overly credulous readers.
Other accounts in the literature were genuine historical events that were misinterpreted in good faith by observers at the time, and propped up later as “evidence” for various theories, some of which still flourish in contemporary works. Accordingly, we have classified the stories we have rejected from the main chronology, under four major categories.
Deceptive story, hoax, fictional account or tall tale.
These accounts may be deliberately couched as true happenings, or they may have been lifted from their fictional context by later retelling as true facts. History is full of examples where a simple rumor gave rise to major movements while truthful accounts were only reconstructed much later.
Religious vision.
The real (or imagined) arrival of beings and artifacts from outside Earth has had enormous impact on human societies, and the evidence can be considered from many points of view. Theology has been shaped by a belief in sky-dwelling divinities. If mysterious craft are seen in the sky and stones fall from the clouds, what can Man’s position in the scheme of things be?
Religious visions have their own characteristics, and we do not feel qualified to judge their relevance to the overall problem. While they may represent true happenings for large groups of believers, these accounts are not amenable to scientific study in the same sense as the observation of an objective phenomenon.
It has not escaped our notice that a genuine paranormal phenomenon may come to us dressed up as a religious vision, either because the witnesses interpreted it in such terms, or because the standards of the society around them demanded such an interpretation. Therefore we do not exclude reports purely on such a basis.
Natural astronomical phenomenon.
Throughout history, mankind has anxiously observed the heavens for signs of future events. The sky has answered with a bewildering series of displays, such as comets and meteors, which we recognize today as natural phenomena. Ancient accounts of such “wonders in the sky” provide precious information for today’s astronomers, in the form of accurate data on the periodicity of comets, and the frequency of meteor showers, to give only two obvious examples. Auroral displays (aurora borealis) are frequently the occasion for historical amazement, and rightly so: The natural mechanism for such phenomena was not fully understood by physicists until the present (21st) century.
Optical illusion or atmospheric effect.
These deserve a category apart. Here we deal with sincere witnesses faced with spectacular sky displays such as luminous crosses, multiple suns, multiples moons, or fantastic mirages. The mechanism behind such displays has only become understood in recent centuries, and new discoveries are still being made today about the properties of the atmosphere, lightning, tornadoes (often seen by terrified witnesses as sky serpents or dragons), the propagation of light through the air, and yes, even swamp gas!
It would be most interesting to compile an exhaustive list of events reported in the ancient literature under the general topic of sky phenomena. Some authors such as William Corliss have published catalogues of scientific anomalies that give fascinating compilations for comets, meteors, globular lightning, or aurorae borealis. Such work was not within our scope, but we needed to tell the reader why certain well-known incidents had been excluded from our main chronology.
The following list, selected among hundreds of items, makes interesting and sometimes comical reading. It illustrates the vagaries of the human mind, indeed even the scientific mind, as it tries to come to grips with phenomena beyond its understanding.
400 million years ago, Kentucky, USA
Crashed saucer, strange alien bodies
One of the most common recurring themes in the literature of this field is that of a flying machine that comes down from the sky and crashes, along with its extraterrestrial occupants. Far from being unique to Roswell, crashes of alien artifacts constitute a standard story, complete with descriptions of small cadavers and mysterious writing on the recovered craft. The present case, however, which is little known even within the paranormal community, must set some sort of r
ecord in terms of the extremely ancient date of the alleged incident.
In January 1969, the American periodical Beyond Magazine published a curious article about an alleged extraterrestrial fossil found in Kentucky. “Reader Melvin R. Gray of 417 South 5th St., Louisville, Kentucky, 40202,” wrote columnist Brad Steiger, “has discovered a stone which has what he considers very suspicious indentations.” Mr. Gray’s examination of the stone led him to conclude that it contained fossilized remains of tiny humanoid creatures and “what may at one time have been a tiny flying saucer no larger than our present day washbasins or dishpans.”
No photographs illustrated the article but Gray described the stones as looking like “a small chunk of meteor.” In order to get a better idea of what the “beings” looked like he made plaster, fiberglass, and aluminum castings from the rock. He reported:
“The fossilized creatures themselves are humanoid in appearance, looking very much like ourselves, and approximately three inches tall. (…) The stone looks rather cindery as if it may have hurtled through a long trail of space, melting as it went and finally splashing into some river or lake before it was entirely consumed, leaving…a fossil-like imprint for a permanent record to tell the world…that we had visitors to our earth…who had met with some terrible calamity.”
Steiger himself was not entirely convinced. While acknowledging that, with the aid of a magnifying glass, he could make out the outline of “a tiny human pilot sitting in a bucket-type seat” on the casts that Gray sent him, he wondered whether it was merely a trick of nature? There was no reason to think Gray had made the “fossil” himself.
Wonders in the Sky Page 29
