The Aurora, Texas UFO Incident (1897), page 2

You gave more information than I had heard or read before. Thanks. Most of my previous info came from
en.wikipedia.org...
and
www.ufocasebook.com... I discovered both of these after watching an old movie "The Aurora Encounter".

reply to post by Gazrok

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I've seen the TV documentary on this subject and I'm looking forward to the day when that cemetey may be used for a business and they'll have to relocate all of the coffins and perhaps in doing so the alien will be finally be found.

Great thread Gaz....

After reading the info provided, I have came to the conclusion that this was a crashed Zeppelin...........

Let me try to explain why...

I will post some quotes.

Here is a description from Milam County, Texas.
"The monster had the appearance of the pictures of the great whaleback ships of which so much has been written, with immense wings both fore and aft, with great fins beneath and on the sides. The noise of its approach was not great, but it produced a humming sound, which he thinks was caused by the machinery that propelled it."


Here is a description from Hunt County, Texas.

"I saw an immense cigar shaped vessel resting on the ground in front of me. I saw three men walk out of the vessel. Two of them went to work about the rigging of the ship. The other asked if I would mail some letters for him.

Here is a description from Stephenville, Texas.

"It consists of a cigar shaped body about sixty feet in length to which is attached two immense aeroplanes, and the motive power is an immense wheel at each end, in appearance much like a metallic windmill. It is driven by an immense electric engine which derives its power from storage batteries. The crew consisted, as stated, of two men who gave their names as S. E. Tilman and A.F. Dolbear.

Here is another description.

"The ship was seen travelling in a southern course, moving at the rate of about forty five or fifty miles an hour. It looked to be from 75 to 100 feet in length, carried what seemd to be a headlight, not unlike those used on a locomotive and was some quarter of a mile from the earth."""

".....

What makes me think that it was a Zeppelin.........and maybe an experimental one........

Most witnesses say long cigar shape 75 to 100 ft long..........(We all know what shape a Zep is....)

Fins beneath and on its sides......

A speed rate of forty or fifty miles an hour..........

Men messing with the rigging..........(big clue there) guide ropes

And what kind of sold me on the idea is a quote from you(gazrock).

Fireball and molten aluminum ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, aluminum frame and hydgrogen gas on the zep.

The MUFON investigation did net some other finds as well. Metallic debris was found on the property, including a curious piece of metal embedded in a rock. This established that the metal must have been molten at the time. An independent lab tested these pieces of metallic debris. The test results indicated the pieces were largely aluminum with trace amounts of iron. Nothing to indicate an ET origin, but also not a ratio that was consistent with normal production practices of the time (and, aluminum would have been costly at the time). Still, the aluminum content was consistent with reports of the debris after the crash.

After reading up on the Zeppelin, I started seeing similarities............

The most important feature of Zeppelin's design was a rigid light-alloy skeleton, made of rings and longitudinal girders.[5] The advantage of this design was that the aircraft could be much larger than non-rigid airships (which relied on a slight overpressure within the single gasbag to maintain their shape) because the light-alloy used for the structure, (usually Magnesium or Aluminium alloys), enabling Zeppelins to lift heavier loads and be fitted with more engines and/or more powerful engines.

The basic form of the first Zeppelins was a long cylinder with tapered ends and complex multi-plane fins. During World War I, as a result of improvements by the rival firm Schütte-Lanz Luftschiffbau, the design was changed to the more familiar streamlined shape and empennage of cruciform fins used by almost all airships ever since. Within this outer envelope, several separate balloons, also known as "cells" or "gasbags", contained the lighter-than-air gas usually hydrogen but in America was mostly only helium. For most rigid airships the gasbags were made of many sheets of goldbeater's skin from the intestines of cows. About 200,000 were needed for a typical World War I Zeppelin.[6] The sheets were joined together and folded into impermeable layers.[6] Non-rigid airships do not have multiple gas cells..

]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin

The battery comment from the witness could be an experimental zep electrically powered.( could be).....

After reading the information in the op and reading up on the zeppelin, I have come to the conclusion that this was an early model( probably a test model) of a blimp.........

It was the "hindenburg" before the hindenburg............

I believe "They" wanted to keep it a secret and this is why the UFO thing in Texas still exists today.......

This is my opinion and my best educated answer that I can come up with..........

I am out of words on the counter

I hope I made sense......Good thread and a flag for you.

reply to post by Gazrok

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They were probably time traveling with Phil Schneiders great, great great grandpappy./

Originally posted by nineix
reply to post by Gazrok

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As a native Texan, I've always loved this case. I've even passed through Aurora (not because of this), and thought about the case while there (but didn't do any poking around).

I'm always reminded of Charles Dellschau when I come across this too. If you've followed the airship flap occurring at the time, you're already familiar with books like The Secrets of Dellschau.

This is opinion, but, with all the airship activity at the time, I suspect this case, as interesting as it is, is a case of someone crashing an airship. Some poor inventor with more daring than he had piloting skills crashed into the windmill and wound up having a bad day of it.


Missing person's records were not exactly kept the way they are now. However, the names of the "pilots" given in the original articles could be searched to see if they were real people. Then those could be cross referenced with anyone believed missing.
I wonder if anyone has tried doing a missing person search for people reported missing in the days and weeks surrounding this case? It'd certainly be an interesting tid bit if there were any inventor types reported missing. It would be nice to finally put a name to the poor fellow laying in that unmarked grave.
He may have had family.

edit on 9-2-2012 by nineix because: (no reason given)

reply to post by Gazrok

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Not sure a lightning strike would explain molten aluminium - an initial strike is highly unlikely to melt blades and any subsequent fire from a wooden support tower wouldn't burn hot enough for long enough.

The blades were mostly made of galvanized steel, not aluminium, which wouldn't have been easily available or financially viable for blade construction at the time of the crash (although whilst there is evidence of a windmill there is no proof it was there in 1897).

reply to post by Gazrok

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Imo,there were no military dirigibles flying around the USA in the 1890's and especially not flying all over the country and a lot of those sightings took place in the early 1870's which is over 30 years before the first American dirigible was "Tested" by Roy Knabenshue in 1904...

And that fact make the Great Airship sightings of 1871-1897 more than a little unusual and sometimes these mystery airships would appear very swiftly,then stop and hover over a city for ten minutes at a time,then after flashing green,blue and white lights,shoot upwards into space,their lights gradually twinkling away and looking like a bright star....

Some of these bizzare craft were seen at night and some in daylight and these mystery airships,seen thousands of times all over north america between 1870 and 1897 were not just lumbering around and drifting aimlessly like hindenberg dirigibles...

They were ufos that resembled things to come...Phantom reflections of our future technology?

Psychic thought forms projected from the collective subconsciousness of humanity?

Just like ufos and flying saucers are now ?

Some type of superior intelligence enjoys playing mind games with humanity...imo...

Heres a link that describes dozens of sightings of the mystery airships from just michigan alone during april and early may 1897 >www.angelfire.com...

reply to post by Aliensun

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I suspect that whole thread was discarded and a new one started to avoid my posting being readily available to those that read the thread for the reason that it answer the basic question of the thread fairly quickly.

Your "debunking" of it is on a post in a completely different forum, one where I asked Jim Marrs for his input. Also, that thread did not have any of the same info, it was a simple question for his comments.

Your response was not moved or deleted. In fact, it can easily still be seen as the original response in Jim Marrs' forum. I'd appreciate it if you would kindly take a few moments and recheck things before making such an accusation. In the interest of showing your counterpoint, here was your response in that thread:

From Aliensun:

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.

reply to post by Gazrok

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Still, Gazrok, you threw me a curve when in your first response to my questioning you did not admit to having started the thread on Marrs' forum. So I'm seeing two threads by you ond one day and then another one the next. So I automatically wonder what is going on. Did my first posting sting too much?

I had no idea--no concept, actually--that a Super Mod would break the rules and put out two threads on the same topic in two days time on different forums. Seems sorta unprofessional, you know? Hell, now I can't even trust Obama to be true to what the rules are or what he promised.

reply to post by Gazrok

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Jim Maars did write about Aurora in his book Alien Agenda

reply to post by CynicalWabbit

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And he was on both television investigations. In my post in his forum, I was hoping he'd see it and weigh in, as he may know of anything more recent in the case, such as whether or not they did anything more to indicate the grave, etc.. I was hoping to get some feedback and add it to this thread article, but didn't, so went ahead and posted.

reply to post by Gazrok

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wtf so when will the goverment just say it when will they tell us or will we all have a major ufo incedent on the news hahaha the goverment would be under the gun then they should just tell us before we find out our selves

reply to post by McC556

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Wish I knew the answer to that, but it's hard to imagine a scenario where they couldn't cover up such an event with an explanation designed to keep people away, unless it happened during some other live news event.

Even then, it could be dismissed as a publicity stunt, if someone did it right. In order for anything to change, it must be in one party's interest to come clean (either us or the aliens). So, until that happens, it seems both parties are still agreeing to secrecy. For what end? Well, that is the million dollar question. Odds are, we won't like it.

The other possibility of course is that there is no coverup and no alien visitors. I think the evidence weighs against this, but nevertheless we have to acknowledge it as a possibility as well.

This is one of the best write-ups of the Aurora Enounter that I have ever read.

When I was a little boy, I loved the movie "The Aurora Enounter," which was loosly based from the enounters you wrote about. It is the story that first got me interested in the UFO phenom.



Star and Flag for you - great job! I learned more about this story than I knew existed. I wish we had more posts like this.

When I read your post - I got a funny impression that these people are hiding the evidence of this event on purpose. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but it seems as if they are workign together to hide the alien body & keep it safe.

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