Aurora, Airships, Martians and Meteorites

Aurora, Airships, Martians and Meteorites
Author: Nigel Watson
Contribution for Aurora – A Texas Legend from 1897
January 2023

Aurora Legend:
“Aurora rather than being a stand alone case should be seen in the context of the growing excitement in new technologies – including those of secret inventors or Martians – that would revolutionise our world. It also opened up opportunities for hoaxers to play on our fears and aspirations.”
– Nigel Watson, Aurora, Airships, Martians and Meteorites

Aurora, Airships, Martians and Meteorites

The Aurora crash came to the notice of ufologists in the 1960s, and since then it has fascinated new generations of researchers. Ironically, the crash at Roswell in 1947 was largely ignored until the 1980s. Perhaps in its own small way the Aurora case opened up the idea of crashing space vehicles and made the renewed investigations into Roswell more plausible?

As with the Roswell crash, there are many other crash stories in the time period of the Aurora incident that have been largely overlooked or ignored. One such incident occurred on the same day as the Aurora crash on 17 April 1897. Sam McLeary was travelling next to the Forked Deer River near Humboldt, Tennessee, when he came across an object that had crashed into some trees. Part of the craft was fixed into the ground and the rest of it was still lodged in the trees. The newspaper claimed that:

‘The larger portion consisted of a thin shell of bright white metal about 100 feet in length by 30in diameter, running to a point at each end. A tubular rib extends along each side and from this is suspended a framework carrying the machinery, with enclosed compartment for passengers or crew. The solitary occupant was unable to tell his story for though the weather is not cold his body and his water barrel were solid blocks of ice. The machine had evidently reached too high altitudes, and its manager had succumbed to the pitiless cold and for want of his control had fallen to the earth.

‘Its engines were of strange and unknown construction. Screw propellers above and at each end and horizontal sails or wings at each side seem with the buoyant skill to combine all the principles of sea and air navigation…This much has been ascertained from observation and meagre notes found on board, but who or whence the solitary captain has not yet been discovered.’ (1)

That account made some sense in that the craft could have been a terrestrial craft that got itself into trouble. The following report of an exploding sky craft to the west of Lanark, Illinois, at 4.00am on 10 April is far more exotic. The explosion woke the inhabitants of the town who saw a bright ruby light shoot into the sky. The light got dimmer but it encouraged about 50 men to dress and ride out into the snowstorm to see what it was. It did not take them long to track it down to Johann Fliegeltoub’s farm which was half-a-mile to the west of the town. Here they found the frightened farmer’s family being shouted at, in a foreign language, by a person dressed in strange clothes. Nearby was the wreck of the airship and the mangled remains of two bodies. A third of the craft had driven itself into the ground. The ship:

‘…was cigar shaped and made of aluminium, about thirty feet long by nine feet in diameter, and the steady red glow came from an immense electric lamp that burned upon that part of the strange craft that projected from the ground. There were four side and one rear propellers on the machine, with a fin-like projection above it, evidently the rudder. An immense hole was torn in the under side of the ship, showing that an explosion had occurred, caused probably by a puncture from a lightning rod on the Fliegeltoub barn, as one of them was slightly bent.

‘The strange creature who in some marvellous manner escaped from the wreck, is now unconscious. He or she is garbed after the fashion of the Greeks in the time of Christ, as shown by stage costumes, and the language spoken was entirely unknown to any one here, though most people are familiar with high and low Dutch, and even one or two know something of French and Spanish.

‘The remains of the two persons who were killed were taken to the Fliegeltoub barn and straightened out on boards. It is firmly believed here that the airship was that of an exploring party from either Mars or the moon…’ (2)

A reporter claimed he met a survivor of the crash and that he said he and two companions were an exploring party from Mars, who had been flying about over this country for some weeks. From the tone of the story it is obvious it is a hoax that is making fun of the airship scare. (3)

‘The Jefferson Bee’ tells of the fate of the airship that was spotted by 200 Jefferson residents on Saturday night, 10 April. With a great roar at an incalculable speed the bright white light crashed to Earth but it was only on the Sunday morning that the impact site was found.

Using ropes a local newspaperman lowered himself into the 20 feet diameter hole made by the craft. When reaching the cigar-shaped craft he found a small square door. The newspaper states: ‘The hinges were chiselled off and the door pried open. The Interior was found to consist of an oblong chamber or room eight feet square and eighty feet in length. This room, which was situated in the upper part of the ship, was elegantly appointed; finished In plush and fancy woods and provided with every convenience. About forty feet from the rear end was a square tower that could be raised and lowered, after the manner of a conning tower upon a submarine torpedo boat.’

The unfortunate crew of four beings were crushed to death by the impact of their crash. They were described as, ‘somewhat larger than earthly inhabitants, and each seemed to have a face on each side of the head, two sets of arms and legs, evidently so as to locomote forward or back without necessitating turning around.’

The report warns we should expect more Martian craft to arrive in our atmosphere:

‘It seems to be the general Impression that the ship hailed from Mars, and if this Is the case, other ships of which there seem to be several hundred, will eventually alight without fatal results to the operators and the secret of aerial navigation will be solved.’ (4)

The ‘Austin Daily Statesman’ of 20 April, reported the statements of a ‘mystery man’ who had no doubt about an imminent Martian invasion:

‘It is my opinion that the airship, so-called, is nothing more nor less than a reconnoitring aerial war car from warlike Mars, investigating the conditions of the United States to see what reinforcements we’ll need when the country is invaded by the allied armies of Europe, the Mars soldiers having no confidence whatever in the American jingoes as real fighters.’

A report from Highland Station claimed an airship exploded there on the night of 15 April 1897. ‘The Globe’ (Atchison, Kansas) of 17 April, went on to say that the injured pilot was found and he claimed he was Pedro Sanchez of Cuba. He conveniently took the airship wreckage away the next day.

Meteorites

Those reports are immediately related to the US 1896-97 airship scare, and show how the newspapers loved hoaxing its readers with tales of finding the bodies of crashed Martians (or Cubans) inside the wreckage of their vehicles.

Ships in the sky were nothing new, as fleets of them were reported in 218 B.C. and 173 B.C. and over Scotland in 80 A.D. Such craft also travelled down from the mythical land of Magonia in the Middle Ages, and historian Chris Aubeck in his book ‘Alien Artifacts’ supplies a similar story from China in 1523 of two ships descending from the clouds containing several crew members who are only 24 inches tall and a monk-like figure.

Many of these sightings could have been of Fata Morgana mirages, but the accounts are an intriguing mix of ghost ship, fairy folk and beings from distant unknown realms. The phantom airships with their improbable mechanical appendages, propellers and sails of the great US wave of 1896-97 are just a short step from such stories.

Along with ships in the sky there have been ancient stories of meteors delivering spirits and people to our planet. One legend from Alaska tells of a white fire seen in the sky followed by the rumbling of the ground. Out of this some travellers saw a young man emerge from this fire who was regarded as the spirit of the meteorite, and he went on to marry an Eskimo woman and had a daughter who had stone patches on her skin. There are other legends of meteors and comets bringing gods to our Earth, including Helen of Troy who was said to have been dropped from the Moon. There is even a connection between women seeing celestial phenomena and shortly afterwards becoming pregnant, indeed the story of Christ is one of an immaculate conception and the tracking of a strange star.

Following such legends and beliefs, newspapers and novels recounted stories of meteorites being found with ‘hieroglyphic’ messages inscribed on them. A recurrent theme is that real locations, meteor sightings, people and events are often embroidered into these hoax stories so that they at first sight seem credible. Aubeck’s ‘Alien Artifacts’ expertly unravels such claims and shows how they are at the root of our current interest in wrecked saucers, aliens and hieroglyphic messages.

An early crash story that went through several permutations over the years originated from Jamaica. Under the heading, ‘A Remarkable Object: A Meteoric Stone Said to have fallen in Jamaica’ a letter writer refers to an article in the Proceedings of the Kingston Association, 1862. The author, Dr Hopkins, stated that whilst walking along the banks of the river of Sixteen Mile Walk, accompanied by John Ergail and W. Yorrell at 11.30pm on 10 August 1862, they saw a shooting star that dropped to the Earth.

The next day, at the location where it dropped an irregular cube-shaped stone weighing 6,000 lbs was taken away for examination. It had what looked like a mechanically produced half-cylindrical groove on its surface along with engraved pictures of the Sun and worm-like creatures below it. This discovery implies that the meteorite came from an outer space civilisation but a check of the information in the story shows it was a hoax. (5)

Two years later a letter published in the French newspaper ‘Le Pays’, 17 June 1864, tells of the discovery of a 35 metre diameter meteorite at Arapaho national forest near James Peak, Colorado, USA. It alleged that it took six days to dig out this egg-shaped meteorite, and three days to access an inner chamber where, as historical researcher Theo Paijimans notes:

‘The humanoid measured about four feet. Face and limbs were buried beneath sedimentary sheets of calcium. The head was almost intact; no hair, a smooth skin, two gaping holes where the eyes had been, very long arms, and five fingers of which the fourth was much shorter than the others.’ (6)

Hieroglyphics indicated the meteorite came from Mars. A regular flow of letters to ‘Le Pays’ told more incredible stories about this discovery and they became the basis for a book ‘Un Habitant de la Planète Mars’ by French journalist Henri de Parville. (7, 8)

Parville’s hoax got recycled by ‘La Capital’ newspaper in Rosario, Argentina. They reported on 13 October 1877, an egg-shaped rock near the Carcarana River, Santa Fe,, was found by two geologists. When they drilled into this curiosity and found:

‘…some cavities inside the hard rock. In one of them the men saw several objects such as a white, metallic hole-ridden amphora-like jar with many hieroglyphics engraved on its surface. Under the floor of this cavity they discovered another one which contained a 39 inch (1.2 metre) tall mummified body covered with a calciferous mass.’ (9)

In 1878 the story was relocated to Peru. A person calling themself ‘A Seraro, Chemist’, told the ‘South Pacific Times’ of Callao, Peru, that he found a huge aerolite. After digging through several layers of mineral substance he arrived at an inner chamber. Inside this he found the dead body of a 4 1/2-foot tall alien and beside it was a silver plate that was inscribed with hieroglyphics. This writing indicated that the vehicle and its pilot had come from Mars. (Some accounts call the chemist ‘Serarg’)

The story resurfaced in the 29 July 1878 edition of ‘El Defensor de la Constitution’, (Zacatacas, Mexico) newspaper, and in the ‘El Constitucional’, (Mendoza, Argentina) in 1879. It was rediscovered again in 1965 by a letter writer to an Argentine newspaper ‘Los Andes’, and in 1994, the Mexican UFO magazine ‘Reporte OVNI’ devoted four pages to it, without any indication it was a hoax. (10)

This whole episode, evolving from a hoax perpetrated by Henri de Parville, shows how newspapers relocated and repeated it many years later and it has been given a new life by UFO enthusiasts.

Mr. James Lumley, an old Rocky Mountain trapper, claimed that in the middle of last September (1864) he was trapping at the Great Missouri River Falls near Cadotte Pass, Montana, when he saw what looked like a skyrocket burst into pieces followed by a heavy explosion. The next day, he found a path of destruction through the forest at the end of which he found a great stone buried in the mountainside. He said this was divided into compartments, and curious hieroglyphics were carved into this ‘stone’. Lumley thought it had been constructed by ‘animated beings’. This sounds like another variant of Paville’s hoax minus the mummified Martian. (11)

Aurora rather than being a stand alone case should be seen in the context of the growing excitement in new technologies – including those of secret inventors or Martians – that would revolutionise our world. It also opened up opportunities for hoaxers to play on our fears and aspirations.

References

Nashville American, 18 April, 1897.
Daily Democrat, 10 April 1897.
Daily Democrat, 12 April 1897.
The Jefferson Bee, 15 April 1897. Credit: Kay Coggin, Magonia Exchange Forum.
Cundall, Frank, ‘A Remarkable Object: A Meteoric Stone Said to have fallen in Jamaica’, at:
nlj.gov.jm/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/bn_cundall_f_0017.pdf
Paijmans, Theo, ‘The Alien Mummy: The Oldest Hoax In UFO history’ 15 May 2015, at:
mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/05/the-alien-mummy-the-oldest-hoax-in-ufo-history/
‘The Martian Mummy Hoax in 1864’, 17 June 2014, at:
diogenesii.wordpress.com/2014/06/17/june-17-1864-a/
‘Un Habitant de la Planète Mars’, full text in French,at:
gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k82263j
La Capital, (Rosario) 13 and 15 October 1877.
Paijmans, Theo, ‘The Alien Mummy: The Oldest Hoax In UFO history’ 15 May 2015, at:
mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/05/the-alien-mummy-the-oldest-hoax-in-ufo-history/
The Cincinnati Commercial, 30 October 1865, taken from the St. Louis Democrat, 19 October 1865, at:
ufologie.patrickgross.org/press/stlouisdemocrat19oct1865.htm