Zoamchomsky,
in response to a comment in the last posting, suggested that there had been
stories of UFO crashes for more than fifty years prior to the Roswell case. He
was asked to provide sources but that isn’t really necessary. There is plenty
of evidence that this is true and for those who would like to see a long
listing of them, including a story or two that are centuries old, take a look
at Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky.
In
1897 the Great Airship was being seen all over the Midwest and Southern states,
with occasional excursions into the West. A report from San Angelo, Texas, for
example, mentioned that the airship had flown into a flock of birds and
exploded. In Waterloo, Iowa, the airship was found on the fairgrounds, and
while not a crash, was certainly a landing, complete with crew members who
described their flight.
The
big story, and the one that nearly everyone has heard about, is the crash in
Aurora, Texas on April 17, 1897. I have believed since I investigated the case
in the early 1970s that it was a hoax. I talked to longtime residents, some who
had been alive in 1897, to the Wise County historian (Aurora being in Wise
County) and searched what records were available. I could find no follow up
investigation, and nothing about it was mentioned in the Wise County
histories, one published within ten years of the event. In other words, there
simply wasn’t any evidence that there had been a crash with the exception of
the original story in a Dallas newspaper in 1897.
Why
mention this now, after having already posted about it a long time ago (See Aurora, Texas - A Story that Won’t Die,
March 27, 2005)? Well, in the process of consolidating files and clearing out
duplications and other clutter, I found a strip of black and white photographic
negatives. I had not seen them in decades. I knew that I had them I just couldn’t
put my hands on them.
When
I held them up to the light to see what they were, I saw a picture that had a
sign that said, “Aurora” and taken at what had been an Arco gas station on the
outskirts of Aurora. There were a couple of other pictures of that, and knew
that it was an old habit of taking three pictures at different exposures to
ensure that one would be usable.
The
prize, however, were the last three pictures. They were taken in the Aurora Cemetery
at time I was there. They look as if they were taken in a rainstorm with a
dense cloud cover. Given today’s technology, I was able to clean them up
slightly so they are better than they were.
There
is nothing startling on these pictures. The headstone with the three balls on
it is not visible. When I was there, walking the graveyard, I didn’t see that
stone and now it has disappeared. It was supposedly the marker of the “Martian’s”
grave.
I
print the pictures here for the little historical value they have. There is
nothing on the negatives to prove when I was there or when I took them and too
the real cynic, there is nothing on them to prove that I was actually there.
However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I did live in Texas, not all that
far by Texas standards, from Aurora, so I took some time to explore the
sighting. I will say, one last time so that it is clear, I do not believe that
an alien craft crashed at Aurora and, in fact, don’t believe that anything
crashed there on April 17, 1897.
