Transcript
Last fall, thousands of people reported sightings of mysterious drones flying over New Jersey, sparking concern from local officials and even national security concerns. But a thorough investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security determined that all the lights were merely normal manned aircraft and commercial drones. As a historian, I wonder how the spate of sightings of mysterious drones in New Jersey in the fall of 2024 that garnered national attention will be remembered.
But one thing is certain, it’s not the first time that things like this have happened. In fact, long before New Jersey, long before Chinese spy balloons, even before Roswell and the term unidentified flying objects, reports of strange lights and mysterious ships created a national obsession in 1896, leaving behind conflicting evidence, strange conspiracy theories, and perhaps an enduring mystery.
The late 1800s were a period of magnificent and rapid technological advancement. Probably the most significant and obvious advancement was electricity, with Edison’s practical incandescent bulb in 1879 preceding other advances like DC and AC motors and transformers leading to much cheaper and more available electricity. Processes that made inexpensive steel available began the era of enormous bridges, rail networks, and skyscrapers. The internal combustion and diesel engines invented in the last few decades of the 19th century, and advances in radio communication and the telephone promised to radically alter life as people knew it, with the United States at the forefront of the shift.
For many, among the most fantastical concepts of the period were airships. The first airships appeared in the middle of the 19th century, such as the balloon Pson, a navigable balloon designed by French aeronaut Ferdinand Lagles around 1850. In 1852, Henri Gford made the first engine-powered flight in a steam-powered airship. Pal Hanelan powered an airship with an internal combustion engine in the 1870s, and the Tenier brothers used electric motors in the 1880s.
The concept of humans mastering travel by air enthralled many, as evidenced by the variety of science fiction novels which made use of the airship theme. Jules Verne’s 1886 Robur the Conqueror features the Albatross, an airship built by Robur, a secretive inventor. A series of dime novels by Lewis Cenarans about character Frank Reed Jr. often centered on Reed’s steam-powered inventions, including airships, beginning in the 1880s. A pair of novels by George Tintenwide Griffith, The Angel of Revolution and Olga Romangh, featured a group of anarchists who use a fleet of airships to establish a new world order. This extended to space flight as well, including Percy Greg’s 1880 novel Across the Zodiac, featuring a spaceship which used anti-gravity materials to reach Mars and Robert Cromy’s A Plunge into Space. Of course, speculation on extraterrestrial life and sightings of unexplained aerial phenomena were not new even in the 19th century, but the sightings took on a more scientific tone in the Age of Enlightenment.
In 1853, several studies at Britt College in Tennessee noted two luminous objects on the horizon as the sun rose. According to witnesses, the first one grew smaller, but the second instead seemed to grow larger, becoming roughly spherical. Professor AC Karns interviewed several witnesses and reported the event to Scientific American. Karn speculated that somehow the phenomenon was caused by electricity, while Scientific American dismissed the idea and suggested distant clouds of moisture. In general, reports of strange phenomena similar to modern UFOs in the 19th century were sporadic and poorly attested to, but in the mid-1890s, that changed.
In November of 1896, reports suddenly exploded about a mysterious light that appeared in the skies of California. The first reports appeared in Sacramento, where both credulous and incredulous observers were unsure of what to make of it. The Sacramento Bee reported on November 18th that last evening, between the hours of 6:00 and 7:00, a most startling exhibition was seen in the sky in the city. All over, people saw what appeared to be merely an electric arc lamp propelled by some mysterious force. It sailed over the city unevenly towards the southwest, dropping nearer to the Earth, and now suddenly rising into the air again, as if the force that was whirling it through space was sensible of the danger of collision with objects on the Earth. “Aerial ship, ghost story, or meteor as you like,” the paper said.
Anyway, the light was seen, and it acted very strangely. Not only did hundreds of onlookers claim to see the light, many claimed to have heard voices from it. Not the whispering of angels, not the sephilocrol mutterings of evil spirits, but the intelligible words and the merry laughter of humans. As the light seemed to drift downward, many swore that they heard people saying things like, “Lift her up quick. You’re making directly for that steeple.” Another witness claimed to have heard someone say, “Well, we have to get to San Francisco by tomorrow noon.”
Some surmised it was some sort of balloon. Another said that it couldn’t be, as it seemed to be sailing into the wind. The paper steadfastly refused to speculate. “Here is the chronicle,” it said, “whence the light which was not a meteor all agree came, whether it went and where it is now, these things it is not within the capacity of this article to deal with.” The Bee saw, between dismissing the sight and looking for answers under the title airship, or what the reporter said, “All men liars looks that way,” before immediately saying, “But then how is that fluctuating white light in the sky to be accounted for?”
The Sacramento Union described the light as pure white, of about double the power of an electric arc light. The arc light they referred to was common in the era. Invented in the early 1800s, it involved creating an electric arc, creating a high-intensity light commonly used in street and building lights until incandescent lights replaced them in the early 20th century. Others described it as a locomotive headlamp. Some claimed to see what appeared to be a body of some kind of object attached to the light. The Union thought that 99 out of 100 men in the city regarded the matter in the light as a huge hoax.
On November 19th, Colonel HG Shaw reported in the Stockton Daily Mail that he had found a 150-foot-long metal craft, featureless except for a rudder, parked in the countryside. His report claimed that three slender 7-foot-tall creatures approached him, emitting a strange warbling noise. Shaw claimed the beings attempted to physically force him into the ship and declared he thought that they were men from Mars. By November 24th, various residents in Oakland were declaring that they too had seen a flying light as early as November 20th.
One watcher said he saw a light that looked like a headlight on an electric car. And while he couldn’t say it was an airship, he added that he wouldn’t be surprised. “Aerial navigation is sure to be solved sooner or later.” The Inquirer also said that an attorney, George Collins of Alama, told them that a man who claimed to be the inventor of an airship desired him to secure patents. While he had seen no airship, he declared that more wonderful things than airships have been invented. Rumors swirled around Collins, and soon the mysterious inventor was from Orville, and his name was Mr. Benjamin. Now Mr. Benjamin was a client of Collins and an inventor, but of dental-related inventions.
San Francisco Mayor Adolf Sutro reported that many people had seen a light pass a few hundred feet over Sutro Heights. “I certainly think that some shrewd inventor has solved the problem of aerial navigation and we will hear all about it within a short time,” he said. “It wouldn’t be any more wonderful than the invention of the telegraph, the telephone, the photograph, or the X-ray.” Several reports now came out of the woodwork. A Miss Hagstrom claimed to have been impressed by a strong light six weeks earlier in San Francisco, while the real estate dealer in Berkeley claimed to see the Collins-Benjamin airship in early November.
Descriptions of the thing abounded. Some claimed that they saw a balloon-like shape, while others said it resembled a dark body with bird-like oscillating motion or albatross wings. It may also have been powered by great fans or propellers. Now, any report of a light seemed to merit a report in the paper, with more witnesses declaring sightings over the rest of the month. What followed might be considered the first UFO flap, a surge of sightings in a small area. Reports flooded in.
On November 23rd, the light appeared at the St. Nicholas Hotel in San Francisco. And the same night, a detective claims he saw two men send up an airship, a kite with a Japanese lantern tied to its tail. Papers reported and derided. The San Francisco Examiner joked that the airship must be starting away to Washington to get out a patent on himself. It said, “A floating light seen the previous evening gave off a decidedly reddish hue.” A man was reported to run out into the rainy street, bareheaded, coatless, and breathless, to shout, “Look at the flying machine.” “Attorney Collins apparently regretted saying anything.” “The notoriety I’m getting about this airship matter is getting to be more than monotonous,” he said. He decried that anyone had decided that the supposed patent seeker was a Mr. Benjamin, recanting or denying much of the story. At least 19 counties in California were reporting seeing the great airship. The Fresno Republican said that the town which has not had its airship might as well come off the map. The Humboldt Times in Eureka said people had gone daft over the flying machine. Yet reports of sightings came from Eureka, from Merced, from Yakaya, from Fresno.
On November 24th alone, it was reported at Eureka, Santa Rosa, Sebastapole, San Francisco, San Jose, Vizelia, Sacramento, and Placerville. Some even described the unidentified object as an aerial destroyer. William Randolph Hearst, who owned the San Francisco Examiner, made the historically ironic declaration that the whole thing was pure myth created by fake journalism. But that didn’t apparently prevent him from publishing sensational stories about the airship simultaneously in the New York Journal.
Major General William Henry Harrison Hart, a former California Attorney General and an interesting figure in his own right, added fuel to the fire, claiming to have spoken with the fires personally. In an article in the San Francisco Call, he went on at length and in detail about a series of flying machines supposedly being constructed and perfected. Hart advised the thing be sold to the rebelling Cubans in their struggle against the Spanish to destroy Havana. He would eventually distance himself from much of what he said.
A remarkable light appeared far north in Tacoma, Washington, on November 27th. Witnesses there said that it had the appearance of a brilliant electric searchlight and that it flashed often, and each time sent forth various colored rays of light shooting out like spokes from the hub of a wheel. It had a wavering motion like a vessel at sea. Rarely, witnesses claimed to actually speak to the airship crew. Usually, the crew claimed to merely be Americans with an invention that would be revolutionizing travel. Sporadic sightings in California continued throughout the year all over the state. And then the mysterious light seemed to have disappeared, at least for a time.
More reports of a similar nature began to crop up in the new year, beginning in February, halfway across the country in Nebraska. On February 2nd, the Omaha B published a report of a sighting of an airship or something of the kind near Hastings, Nebraska, and 3 days later reported another sighting near the town of Inavale. Again, the papers battled over whether the sightings are real, mistaken identifications, or outright hoaxes. The Omaha World Herald reminded people that others had once laughed at the likes of Samuel Morris and Thomas Edison, while the Lancaster, Pennsylvania semi-weekly New Era derided the idea that anyone sensible could believe the stories.
Quite a few reports suggested that viewers were simply mistaking bright Venus for an airship, or another suggested it was merely nighttime kite flying. Reporters were careful to say that interviewed witnesses were sober folk and not drunks. But the Adams County Democrat joked, “It is funny what some people see after dark.” Witnesses leaving a prayer meeting said that they saw a conical-shaped ship 30 to 40 feet in length and carrying a bright headlight.
Again, witnesses claimed to have heard voices carrying down. A later survey found that nearly every newspaper in Nebraska carried the story of the airship. At least 130 sightings around Nebraska were documented by professor and folklorist Roger Welsh. The Omaha B reported rumors that some eccentric airship inventor was hiding near Hastings, afraid that his airship invention would be stolen. Letters were published claiming to be the mysterious inventor himself. Like in California, a handful of witnesses claimed to have actually seen the landed ship and spoke with the crews.
The Auburn Granger published such an account which included the story that the ship was carrying explosives to destroy camps of Spanish troops being masked for transportation to the Philippine Islands as tensions rose before the Spanish-American War. One of the most interesting tales of the airship came out of the Table Rock, Nebraska Argus, which said witnesses saw the ship moving slowly overhead with a woman apparently being held hostage while other passengers hurried to and fro. Suddenly the windows darkened, the report went on, and at the same instant the ship shot out into space so rapidly that in the space of a few seconds, it was out of sight.
The jokes kept coming. The Lenus, Missouri bulletin riffed on the classic children’s song, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Ship.” Now dust thou through the heavens slip and add balloon a joke or star. How we wonder what you are. A Dixon, Illinois paper wrote a less generous version. At eve your colored lights draw near. At dawn they quickly disappear. With awful speed you rend the sky with equal speed. The people lie. Another told the story of the king of Omaha, Axar Ben III. Nebraska spelled backwards. As the spring wore on, airship sightings multiplied beyond Nebraska.
A paper in the town of Indiana, Pennsylvania reported that flying lights were seen in mid-March. A Denver, Colorado paper reported that an airship with a blood-red light had soared past Topeka, Kansas. “I don’t know what the thing is,” Kansas Governor Ley said, “but I hope it may yet solve the railroad problem.” On April 1st, a light appeared near Kansas City where thousands of responsible citizens saw it. The paper was incredulous, repeatedly saying, “Was it an April fool joke?” Only to add, “If so, it was a decidedly successful effort.” The light seems to have made its way past Kansas City to be spotted in Everest, Kansas, 60 miles away. Waterloo, Iowa was the site of a hoax when a joker constructed a fake ship and claimed to have flown it from California.
To the south in Lin Grove, papers reported that they had seen the airship in daylight and that they had collected ballast which had been thrown off of it. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, they claimed to meet Professor Charles Davidson, who left Sacramento a month ago. Other encounters were reported in Harrisburg, Arkansas, and Rockland, Texas. In Harrisburg, the story was that the ship worked via an anti-gravitation process. And the maker intended to display the ship, but only after he killed out the Spanish army and visited Mars with his machine gun that could fire 63,000 bullets a minute.
In St. Louis, the Globe Democrat reported a bona fide alien abduction story on April 23rd when a man claimed that he had been hypnotized and brought aboard a ship. The paper said that the experience was diagnosed as alcoholism. The St. Louis Post Dispatch published the tale of an elderly Christian gentleman named W.H. Hopkins who appears at least to have been a real person who claimed to find a shiny metal ship powered by three large propellers. The old man was greeted by the most beautiful being I ever beheld, a golden-haired woman dressed in nature’s garb and an old man of noble proportions and majestic countenance. The figures told Hopkins that they came from Mars.
No matter how outlandish or unbelievable some of the tales, sightings continued to be reported at Chicago on April 9th, at St. Louis on April 12th. The Evanston Index claimed the light had the brightness of 50 ordinary electric street lights. A photographer claimed to have managed to get an undocumented image of the ship in Chicago on April 11th, and battles over the photo’s authenticity raged between Chicago papers. While an etching exists, no negatives or prints of the photo have been found since.
Through April, just about any town with a newspaper reported sightings or ridiculed the entire episode. Some are clearly fakes. In Peoria, it was reported that the newspaper reporters had launched colored paper balloons to see what would grow out of it. Many witnesses swore that they had seen the airship in Peoria that day. In 1897, mysterious lights and airship outlines were reported in more than a dozen states, some at the same time, hundreds of miles apart. In mid-April, while lights were appearing all over the Midwest, hundreds saw the airship in western South Dakota, with several claiming that they saw an entire flying squadron.
In May, it was widely reported that the airships might not be imaginary, as the federal government supposedly had an aeronaut at work on designs. Some experts insisted that people were misidentifying Venus, Jupiter, or Alpha Orionis, which is today called Betelgeuse. In Baraboo, Wisconsin, headquarters of the Ringling Brothers, the opinion was that it was a publicity stunt as the Chicago sighting coincided with the arrival of the circus. The airship was even reported to have blown up near Kalamazoo.
Hundreds of articles with invented fiction were published about encounters or supposed inventors. A few of the stories have survived beyond their initial publication. In 1966, Frank Edwards published “Flying Saucers: Serious Business,” one of the most successful UFO books ever published. He covered a story first reported in April of 1897. In it, a man named Alexander Hamilton saw that an airship was lowering over his cow lot. The huge ship, 300 ft long, stopped above the cows, and six of the strangest beings I ever saw appeared. One of the cows had a slip knot around its neck, and as the ship rose, it took the cow with it.
Now, the truth. Hamilton was a real man, a stock trader in Southeastern Kansas. But the story was a lie concocted by Hamilton and several others at the small Yates Center Farmers Advocate. As the paper’s printer later explained, the group had a liars club that specialized in tall tales. While the fact was revealed in the 1900s, there were reports that it was confirmed fraud even at the time. Perhaps this tale was the beginning of the popular image of aliens kidnapping cows.
The Dallas Morning News reported an even more dramatic event on April 19th that residents of the small town of Aurora were astonished by the appearance of the airship which had been sailing throughout the country. The airship was moving slowly and apparently sinking towards the ground when it passed over Aurora, where it collided with the tower of Judge Proctor’s windmill and went to pieces in a terrific explosion, scattering debris all over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge’s flower garden. Only the pilot was recovered, badly disfigured, but not an inhabitant of this world. Mr. T.J. Williams, a U.S. Signal Service officer, declared that he thought the pilot was from Mars. Town residents were collecting chunks of the ship and planned on giving the being today dubbed Ned a Christian burial.
While incredible, it was not the first tale of an airship near Dallas. In the days preceding, the paper carried more than a dozen different reports of mysterious lights around the city. This particular tale, as amazing as it might sound, aroused no particular interest. No follow-up on the alien’s burial followed in the news. No supposed artifacts of the ship seem to have turned up. And although in 1973, someone robbed the grave, the Aurora incident has remained widely reported. The town today, a tiny community, was going through hard times.
A severe outbreak of spotted fever reduced the population, and it was followed by a major cotton crop failure. Most disastrous, the railroad bypassed the town. According to the 1981 book, The Great Airship Mystery, a UFO of the 1890s, the Flying Saucer Review performed an investigation in 1966, where they found a man named Oscar Lowry, 11 years old, in 1897. He recalled no crash and believed the story was a hoax meant to try and bring in tourists. Lowry said that TJ Williams was a blacksmith, not a signal service officer. Lowry even claimed that Judge Proctor never had a windmill. The mutual UFO network records, however, several eyewitnesses who recalled the crash.
The local cemetery has no record of a buried Martian. Despite all of that, investigations have continued. No original headstone was discovered, although a later one appeared before a local committee removed the stone as tourism doesn’t have a place on holy ground. In 1980, an 86-year-old local claimed the story was a hoax to bring interest to Aurora. The railroad had bypassed us and the town was dying.
Still, the incident was investigated on both a 2005 UFO Files episode and a 2008 UFO Hunters episode, an episode of Ancient Aliens, and in 1986, the fictional movie, The Aurora Encounter, was released. Hoax or not, it was a fitting punctuation mark as the airship craze of 1896-1897 came to a close. On April 19th, newspapers reported that a letter was found in Atoria, Illinois, addressed to Thomas Edison, the greatest technological figure of the age. When presented to the wizard himself, he dismissed it as a fake, and the whole affair is absurd, and anyway, at best, airship would be only toys, and so he wasn’t interested in inventing one. His words may have poured cold water on the craze.
The sightings puttered out after April, and sightings never reached the East Coast. Sporadic reports came in over the next few months, but the entire thing faded from the headlines and then faded from memory essentially until these reports were rediscovered in the 20th century by researchers who were motivated by the modern UFO phenomenon. The mysterious airships themselves never seemed to have appeared. If there was some new technology that had been invented, you would think a hundred years later we would have seen some evidence of it by now. And of course, many of the reports can easily be written off as hoaxes.
But with so many reports, it’s hard to tell which ones were mere fabrications and which ones were somebody seeing something because the 1896-1897 mysterious airship sightings were one of the largest mass sightings of unexplained aerial phenomenon in history. There were thousands of reports. They were likely seen by hundreds of thousands of people. And like reporters at the time who were credulous but who had difficulty completely dismissing so many sightings, a historian is left to wonder, was there maybe something to at least some of these sightings? And if so, what was it? Leave your ideas in the comments.
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