The
Great UFO Craze of 1897.
Starting in November of 1896, people started seeing large
cigar-shaped airships with
red and
green running lights and
propellors. Most of the
sightings took place in
Texas and the
Midwest, particularly
Michigan.
Many of the
reports describe the airships'
landings -- the
occupants were often described as
bearded men, though young
couples and
Orientals occasionally appeared. One report from
Vernon, Kansas accused the airship
pilots of
stealing a three-year-old-
heifer.
And on April 17, 1897, an
airship crashed in
Aurora, Texas. It
collided with a
windmill and
exploded, leaving "
strange metal" debris, "papers in
unknown hieroglyphics", and a
dead pilot, described as "not an
inhabitant of this
world." The crash was forgotten until
1967 when an old
news story about the crash was
published in a
UFO bulletin.
Investigations by the
Dallas Morning News indicated that the airship sightings were likely a
prank pulled by
bored telegraph operators, but in
1973, somebody went to the
trouble of
robbing the
grave where the dead airship pilot was
laid to rest, prompting
accusations of a
Roswell-style
coverup.
Primary research: Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast by Kenneth Hite, "Up, Up, and Away (In My Beautiful Airship)", pp. 43-45.