|
|
Book
Your Hotel Here & Save
Decatur
Hotels
The Aurora
Incident
Page 2
by
James L. Choron |
Page 1
The old “Judge Proctor” place in Aurora, site of the crash, is still
locatable, and the town square is still in its original position,
but unfortunately most of the original buildings of the town, those
dating to the 1890s, are long gone. Some evidence, however, does endure
to the present day. The original article, reporting the Aurora Incident,
as written in 1897, in the April 19th edition of the
Dallas Morning News reads as follows:
“About 6 o’clock this morning, the early risers of Aurora were astonished
at the sudden appearance of the airship which has been sailing around
the country. It was traveling, due north, and much nearer the earth
than before. Evidently some of the machinery was out of order, for
it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles an hour, and gradually
settling toward the earth. It sailed over the public square and when
it reached the north part of town, it collided with the tower of Judge
Proctor’s windmill and went into pieces with a terrific explosion,
scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill
and water tank and destroying the judge’s flower garden. The pilot
of the ship is supposed to have been the only one aboard, and while
his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been
picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.
Mr. T. J. Weems, the U. S. Army Signal Services officer at this place
and on astronomy gives it as his opinion that the pilot was an native
of the planet Mars. Papers found on his person… evidently the records
of his travels… are written in some unknown hieroglyphics and cannot
be deciphered. The ship was too badly wrecked to form any conclusion
to its construction or its motive power. It was built of an unknown
metal, resembling somewhat a mixture of aluminum and silver, and it
must have weighed several tons. The town, today, is full of people
who are viewing the wreckage and gathering specimens of strange metal
from the debris. The pilot’s funeral will take place tomorrow”.
The article was written by E. E. Haydon, who was a part time reporter
for the Morning News. As startling as the news was, no other newspaper
in the world ran the story in their pages. This is, to say the least,
unusual considering the widespread sightings of the “airship” and
other aerial phenomenon in the time and place which was completely
devoid of even the primitive air transport which was prevalent at
the time. It should be remembered that in 1897, air travel consisted
of hot air balloons and very early experiments in lighter than air
craft such as the dirigibles of Count von Zeppelin in Germany. Neither
of these were known to the Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana area. Needless
to say, the first airplane was still more than six years in the future,
and it is highly unlikely that anyone had experimented with one anywhere
near the area. Even at that, the primitive flying machine of the Wright
brothers was hardly capable of the speed, altitude or maneuverability
of the Aurora “airship”. |
Another
story that circulated in the area, at the time, but was not recorded
in the pages of the press has it that the pilot actually survived
the crash, briefly, and that Aurora’s town doctor attempted to render
aid to the strange being. His anatomy was so vastly different from
our own, the story goes, that the ministrations of the local physician
were pointless, and the being died within a few hours of the crash,
never regaining consciousness. To support this story, which was widely
told at the time, persistent rumors have circulated about a diary
kept by the doctor, which disappeared in the late 1940s or early 1950s,
when a team of United States Air Force officials made an examination
of the crash site and collected all remaining evidence, both on the
site, and form private individuals, that could be found. Likewise,
there have been numerous reports that the United States Air Force
did, in fact, recover some fragments of the mysterious metal that
the “airship” was built of, and took them away for evaluation. Many
local residents say, to this day, that the only thing that prevented
these government representatives from exhuming the body of the pilot
was the fact that the grave was unmarked, and the exact spot unknown,
or at least claimed to be so.
This is, to say the least, unusual, considering the widespread sightings
of the “airship” and other aerial phenomenon in a time and place which
was completely devoid of even the primitive air transport prevalent
at the time. It should be remembered that in 1897, air travel consisted
of hot air balloons and very early experiments in lighter than air
craft such as the dirigibles of Count von Zeppelin, in Germany. Neither
of these were known to the Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana area. Needless
to mention, the airplane was still some six years in the future, and
even at that, the primitive flying machine of the Wright brothers
was hardly capable of the speed, altitude or maneuverability of the
Aurora “airship”.
This area, especially Texas, is, however, known as an ideal place
for flying. This is evidenced by the fact that Kelly Air Force Base
in San Antonio (formerly Kelly Field) was one of the first training
centers for the fledgling Army Air Corps in the period following the
invention of the heavier than air flying machine in 1903, and it’s
initial acceptance by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1905. |
News
of the Aurora incident remained dormant for almost a century, until
May 24, 1973, when newspapers around the country published
the following United Press International account:
"Aurora, Tex. -- (UPI) -- A grave in a small north Texas cemetery
contains the body of an 1897 astronaut who "was not an inhabitant
of this world," according to the International UFO Bureau. The group,
which investigates unidentified flying objects, has already initiated
legal proceedings to exhume the body and will go to court if necessary
to open the grave, director Hayden Hewes said Wednesday.
"After checking the grave with metal detectors and gathering facts
for three months, we are certain as we can be at this point [that]
he was the pilot of a UFO which reportedly exploded atop a well on
Judge J.S. Proctor's place, April 19, 1897," Hewes said. He was not
an inhabitant of this world." |
|
A few days later,
another UPI account datelined Aurora quoted a ninety-one-year-old
who had been a girl of fifteen in Aurora at the time of the reported
incident. She said she "had all but forgotten the incident until
it appeared in the newspapers recently." She said her parents had
gone to the sight of the crash, but had refused to take her along.
She recalled that the remains of the pilot, "a small man," had been
buried in the Aurora cemetery.
Not to be outdone, the Associated Press, in a story datelined
Denton, Texas, reported that "a North Texas State University professor
had found some metal fragments near the Oates gas station (former
Proctor farm). One fragment was said to be 'most intriguing' because
it consisted of primarily of iron which did not seem to exhibit magnetic
properties." The professor also said he was puzzled because the fragment
was "shiny and malleable instead of dull and brittle like iron."
The Aurora Cemetery
Association was successful in blocking the attempts to dig up the
grounds in search of the "Martian Pilot" , and the incident once again
went underground (pun intended) until its centennial in 1997 which
brought about another round of widespread press coverage.
In 1997, MUFON
, the “Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network” made a
field investigation in the small town of Aurora, Texas, just north
of Fort Worth. The results of our research were “unusual” to say
the least... One of the first things that any visitor would notice
when arriving in Aurora is that there are military traces everywhere
in the town. It even boasts a small military type airport, circa
1940's, which was one of a chain of such minor installations built
as emergency landing sites for aircraft being ferried from one coast
to the other for wartime transshipment to Europe or Asia. Even the
streets of town are laid out in typical "base" fashion. To anyone
who ever served in the military, the signs of military habitations
are clear. Of course, this is not unusual for the area, and as most
researchers realize, it is extremely common for UFO activity to
center around areas of military activity. The Roswell incident of
1947 occurred near the (then) only nuclear capable bomber base in
the United States, as well as the U.S. nuclear test range, not to
mention the primary aircraft test facility. This trend in Unidentified
Flying Object activity continues to the present time, with numerous
sightings taking place in, or near military reserves or facilities.
North Central
Texas has always been a staging area for troops, going all the way
back to the Indian Wars. Notably, there was an outpost in Aurora,
or near it, during the Spanish American War of 1898, less than a
year after the “airship” incident, and again during the 1916 “Border
Action” against General “Pancho” Villa This post was reactivated
for the First World War, and again during the Second World War to
service the small military airfield located near the town. Connally
Air Force Base (now closed) in Ft. Worth, (which is less than 10
miles from Aurora as the crow flies), was for some time the headquarters
of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, and it was there that the debris from
the Roswell, New Mexico crash of 1947 were taken. Even now, Eighth
Air Force headquarters is located in the same geographic area, only
180 miles away, at Barksdale Air Force Base, in the Shreveport/Bossier
City, Louisiana area, which lies well within the area covered by
the 1895/98 UFO sightings, and is still a hotbed of UFO activity.
Ft. Worth,
itself, derives its name from a pre-civil war era army post, established
to defend the area against marauding Indians. The installation was
an active military reserve, actually made up of Fort Worth proper
and several outlying outposts, on and off, until the mid 1880’s.
One of these, Fort Phantom Hill, was known, even as early as the
1850’s for unusual sightings in the night sky.
Was
the Aurora incident a hoax? Was it the result of some natural occurrence?
Was it simply the crash site of some primitive, experimental airship?
It seems highly unlikely that the citizens of a tiny Texas town would
combine their efforts to fabricate a story about concerning something
which had, up to then, been mentioned only rarely in fiction. One
must ask what the possible gain from such a fabrication would be,
and the answer is, of necessity, “none”. The likelihood of a fabrication
becomes even more remote when one considers the overall makeup of
the local population at the time. The people who settled Texas were
a resilient and resourceful group, however, flights of fancy of this
nature were, in general, beyond them. Less that thirty percent of
the population of Texas in the 1890’s was functionally literate. It
is highly unlikely that any of the citizens of Aurora had ever heard
of an airship, of any kind, let alone seen one. Those who were literate,
and had, therefore, possibly been exposed to the works of Wells and
Verne (the most prominent writers of that time of what is now known
as Science Fiction), were generally doctors, clergymen and teachers…
men and women unlikely to engage in flights of fancy. It must also
be remembered that almost the entire population of the town witnessed
the crash, and saw the body of the pilot. Even though Aurora was small,
even by the standards of the time, it is unlikely that a group of
such numbers could consistently maintain the same, identical story.
With regard to the other sightings of the time, the geographic area,
while small, by today’s standards, was great enough, at that time,
to effectively eliminate any collusion. In short, the Aurora incident,
and the sightings of 1895/98 have the ring of truth, given the circumstances
of the time. It is hoped that future investigation will remove the
stigma of ridicule that the U.S. Government has so laboriously applied
to this event, and that the facts will, at long last, be known.-
|
©
James L. Choron
August 5,
2004
Readers'
Forum
Subject: Aurora, Texas alien
I am the great-great-great granddaughter of Finis Dudley Beauchamp.
Dudley is the person who donated the family cemetery to the town of
Aurora. My great grandmother, Robbie Reynolds, was the 91 year old
person that so many of the online articles mention as having been
interviewed in the 1970's.
As much as I wish the whole story were true, the fact of the matter
is, it's not. My great-grandmother and I were very close. She said
that the whole story was a hoax, and the original interview included
that. I'm not sure how the story went from her saying it was a hoax
to the story that her parents went to check out the situation, and
wouldn't allow her to go. In your article you mention that most people
of the time were illiterate. I know for sure that my great-grandmother
and her mother and father could read and write very well. I also know
that Robbie Townsend, the woman for whom my great grandmother was
named, was a teacher.
I know the truth isn't nearly as cool as the stories that have been
told for the last 100 years. I just wanted to set the story straight.
- Sincerely, Robbie Fields, El Paso, Texas, April 09, 2005
See Aurora, Texas
Book Your Hotel Here & Save
Decatur
Hotels
More Hotels
More Ghosts / Paranormal |
|
|
