The Aurora UFO Incident, Texas, 1897
One spring morning in 1897, the town of Aurora, Texas, was changed forever when a metallic airship allegedly flew across the town square before colliding with a windmill on Judge Proctor’s property and exploding.
This in itself was unusual enough, but when townsfolk approached the burning wreck, they discovered the body of the ship’s pilot – a body that was, allegedly, out of this world.
Although details of the pilots remains have been lost, it was described as “petite” and speculated to have come from Mars – a detail added by Army Signal Service officer, T.J Weems from Fort Worth. According to the original article featured in The Dallas Morning News, Weems was “an authority on astronomy”, but how he came to the Martian conclusion is unknown.
Martian or not, the townsfolk decided to give the pilot a good Christian burial in the local cemetery along with a few pieces of their ship. The rest of the wreckage was said to have been thrown down a well close to the damaged windmill and that was the end of the matter.
If this all sounds like a 19th century Roswell, you’d be right.
Investigators and UFO enthusiasts have since done their best to unravel this mystery, however, the cemetery authority has flatly refused any exhumation of the alleged grave.
When MUFON, The Mutual UFO Network, investigated the grave, it was marked with a stone that featured a drawing of the craft, along with positive readings from a metal detector. However, when MUFON returned to the site, the stone had been removed, along with any fragments of metal that may have been buried their.
A new stone boulder was placed on the site where visitors left mementos and trinkets to the “Little Traveler”, however, these were removed again in April 2024 and the site now sits unmarked.
Of course, there are many who believe the whole incident was a hoax, with Aurora resident Etta Pegeus telling Time Magazine in a 1980 interview that the original newspaper article was fiction, made up “as a joke and to bring some interest to Aurora” which was, at the time, in decline. She also claimed that there was no windmill on Judge Proctor’s property, although this was later challenged by the television series UFO Hunters, who uncovered the base of a water pump well used with a windmill. However, in a bit of back and forth, a 2020 episode of the Monster Talk podcast claimed that the well was modern and therefore offered no proof to the existence of a windmill.
Whether or not the whole incident was a hoax, the people of Aurora are still rather protective of their little alien, who some insist is buried under the bent arm of the old oak tree in their local cemetery.
Gösta Carlsson and the Ängelholm UFO Memorial
Although not particularly well-known in the English speaking world, Gösta Carlsson was a Swedish businessman who founded Cernelle, a herbal medicine compant, in 1953.
Known as The Pollen King, Carlsson made his fortune selling bee pollen, but he claimed his success was due to one very particular incident that took place in the woods near Ängelholm in May 1946.
According to Carlsson, who was a 28 year old railway worker at the time, he was walking back from the beach through the woods when he happened upon a light near a clearing between the trees. Curious, he peered closer and saw what he thought to be a group of people setting up a “funfair carousel”, but swiftly realised things were not as ordinary as they seemed.
Carlsson realised he was in the presence of a disk like object, with a fin like a boat’s keel and retractable legs. Instead of running away in fear, he approached the craft and its crew, who he described as “human looking” wearing white boiler suits with hoods and boots, though one of them used a device like an old fashioned bellows camera to keep him away.
Eventually, the crew boarded their craft and left, leaving behind a quartz-like rod that Carlsson kept. Throughout that year, he reported bizarre dreams where he spoke to the UFO’s pilot, who eventually gave him the pollen recipe he went on to produce. He also experienced fainting and nightmares as well suffering a “feeling as if his skull was an overloaded radio receiver.”
Since going public with the story in the 1970s, journalists and investigators have examined Carlsson’s story, even going so far as to have the quartz rod examined by Stockholm University, although it proved to be an ordinary shard of quartz crystal.
In 1972, Carlsson constructed a one-eighth scale concrete model of the craft and had it installed at the site of the encounter. He went so far as to have paths created in the apparent “impressions” the ship left behind.
Although many doubt Carlsson’s story – including ufologist Clas Svahn, who wrote the book The Meeting In The Clearing – the memorial site has become a beacon for hikers, tourists and UFO enthusiasts alike.
Did aliens really inspire Gösta Carlsson to make his millions? Svahn likely put it best, recalling in an interview:
“The story became part of his reality, a way for him to live. He was a very special person who had difficulty distinguishing between fact and fiction.”
Flight 105 UFO Sighting
July 4th 1947, three crew members on United Airlines flight 105 allegedly witnessed multiple strange crafts eight minutes into their flight.
Initially spotted by First Officer Ralph Stevens and Captain EJ Smith, they reported four or five “flat and circular” objects “bigger than aircraft” which disappeared and were then replaced by four more. The two called the stewardess, Marty Morrow, into the cabin and she too saw the strange objects. Due to the angel of the plane, none of the eight passengers witnessed the event and despite radioing a tower in Oregon and another United flight near the area, these too did not see the objects. Despite this, flight 105 followed the objects for up to 15 minutes before they sped off.
This incident was not the first of its kind, however. It was among 800 other sightings that took place during the summer of 1947. In fact a few weeks before, on June 24th, private pilot Kenneth Arnold, reported nine strange objects flying over Mount Rainier – the incident that coined the term flying saucers.
Although the Air Force blamed the sighting on misidentified aircrafts, balloons, birds or “pure illusion”, this was a watershed moment for ufology, as it was the fist sighting reported by commercial pilots, who’s credibility the press reinforced. One journalist stated:
“no report shook the incredulous so much as the account of Captain Emil J. Smith, veteran airline pilot, and his crew … Here was substance, something that seemed above flimsy reports. The whole affair reeked of humor, but the story of Captain Smith and his crew, like a very few other reports, suggested a deeper, more authentic meaning running below the surface of the nation’s belly laugh. These were reportedly competent men shaken by their own eyesight. There was a substantial evidence which grew in the atmosphere of mirth.”
Should we take this sighting at face value or could all three crew members have succumbed to “flying saucer fever”?
Either could be true, however, only a few weeks later another disk-shaped object was seen by a different pair of pilots flying flight 105.
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