Saturday, April 28, 2018

Aurora, Texas - Again

This probably should be another edition of “Why I’m Beginning to Dislike Ufology,” but I thought I’d just use it as a single example of what is wrong with us today. I had thought we had finally driven the stake through the heart of the Aurora, Texas, UFO crash of 1897. I thought that the overwhelming evidence showed no such event had taken place. It was, in the terminology of today, “Fake News.” If you wish to read that article that sparked this post you can find it here:


I have written about the Aurora crash on a number of occasions in both books and magazine articles, and a few times on this blog. Rather that revisit all that here and now, just take a look at these links:


and here:


and about halfway through the following article you learn about my personal investigation of the crash, which you can read here:


The point, however, is that there is no evidence that the crash took
Aurora, Texas. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle
place. Attempts to find bits of the metal supposedly scattered all over the place have failed, excavations conducted in what was supposed to be Judge Proctor’s well found nothing other than a snake, the written record, which should have been vast given the written histories of Wise County published within a decade of the event refutes the idea, and those I interviewed in the early 1970s, before Aurora became the draw it is today told me that nothing happened… and this included people who were alive at the time, though they were youngsters in 1897.

As noted, this is another of the UFO stories that simply won’t die. There are those who wish to keep it alive for reasons that I can’t understand. When the evidence is stacked as high as it is suggesting there was no crash, I do not understand why some simply ignore it, reporting on the nonsense that has become associated with the tale.

The Aurora Cemetery. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle
I will say one final thing about this because of a comment or two in the latest report on Aurora. What government organization or agency that existed in 1897 was attempting to suppress this information? There was no CIA, no FBI, and Army Intelligence, such as it was, had no reason to care about the airship sightings or a story that appeared in the Dallas – Fort Worth area newspapers… and if you believe that the Air Force of 1947 had some sort of reason to suppress the story at that late date, I would ask for some evidence that they cared enough to attempt it.


No, this is just another reason that UFO research seems to be in decline. Find a solution for a case and there will be those who scream government cover up or label us as “debunkers.” Rather than focus on the truly mysterious, on those cases in which there is no good solution (and yes, I’ll point to the Socorro UFO landing as one of those), they bring back this exciting case of a UFO crash in 1897. Sorry, but that simply isn’t adding to our knowledge and detracts from the good work that could be done.

2 comments:

purrlgurrl said...

Meanwhile . . . What was it really like fighting in space? C’mon Kevin. Please stop lying about being in Iraq and tell us the truth. We know where you really were. You're a member of the secret space fleet, right? You were on the SERPO team.

Sigh. Ufology is no longer about UFOs (which have almost become beside the point). Now it's all about bat shit crazy government conspiracy theories. Just as long as part of the story includes the thesis that the government is lying or covering something up (or otherwise conspiring to do some type of harm to its own citizens), Ufology devotees will reach for their wallets with a smile.

So stories that were proved conclusively to be untrue long ago keep getting recycled because their underlying theme is that the government is lying or engaged in a cover up. Government conspiracy theories are what sells now. UFOs, not so much anymore.

james tankersley said...

I think Kevin Randle has made some interesting much needed points regarding this case in that in the 1970s long before the Roswell UFO crash was widely known, he began looking into this case and could never find anyone to support or confirm that it really happened. But there is one thing that intrigues me about this supposed crash..........the metallic debris the witnesses describe were remarkably similar to the light but tough metal found at the Roswell UFO crash site along with the strange Egyptian like alien writing and symbology found on some of the wreckage. The crash at AZTEC also described the same kind of material, which is why i think we should be on the look out for some additional information that could come up that we just have not discovered yet!