Questions about the Aurora Incident, Crash of 1897, page

reply to post by Gazrok

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I wouldn't too much from the case. That supposed event happened during the period of "Yellow Journalism" effecting the world at that time. Newspapers were in their hay-day because of the wonders of the telegraphy to transmit data across the world and they existed in over-kill numbers. They were mainly sold in those days by urchins hawking on street corners. The more lurid the story, the better.

The so-called "mysterious airships" of that time (about ten years before 1900 and lasting about ten after) were the rage in the last 1890s all across America. Not so much as that they were actually seen all over the country but every little jerkwater town got into the act and invented their own version of the tale. Perhaps the most popular hoax that Len Coleman and I independently prove with a tad of investigations concerned a case in 1897 where a Leroy,Kansas farmer was roused from his sleep by employees telling him that an aerial contraption with strange-looking beings in it were attempting a cownapping. As the story goes, a rope reached from the craft to a leg of the heifer but she had a hoof caught in the fence and the craft could not complete its mission. I don't recall if the hoof came loose or the craft dropped its tether. Anyway it departed. But the kicker the hoaxer wrote in the original story was that the "respected local farmer" went to the county seat the next day and wrote an affdavit swearing that the event happened. However, the historical outfit there and the country files have no record of such a farmer ever existed nor the filed statement.

I also personally investigated a supposed crash near Champaign, Illinois, during that period. The farmer had aleady buried the strange creatures by the time the reporter arrived on the scene. The reported named for writing the article supposedly was a guest reporter from out of the area and not a member of the local stall.

I know this isn't the answer you were looking for, but you really asked the wrong question. Some individuals would like to beat some life into this tale concerning Judge Proctors windmill, but overall evidence indicatates that it existed only as a newspaper tale.

I don't deny that there were strange lights in the sky during that period, ut not that glowed were strange ships in the sky that sometimes were reported as balloon, sailing ships and even locomotive-like with large driving wheels on the side.

Mark Twain/Samuel Clements, got his start in writing tales by being a newspaper writer in Colorado by inventing a tall tale about an incredible jumping frog. That was the way things were in those days and why those days were deemed the period of Yellow Journalism.