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The
Aurora Incidentby
James L. Choron
One hundred and seven-odd years ago, a most unusual incident occurred in
the tiny North Texas town of Aurora.
It was here that one of the earliest documented encounters with an alien life
form took place, in the early morning hours of April 19, 1897.
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Aurora,
Texas, is literally "the town that almost was" as the town’s tiny history
book states, and one of its few, if not its only, claim to fame is the burial
site of an alien pilot that crashed there in his “airship”, the most memorable
event in a string of UFO sightings which covered a three state area between 1895
and 1898.
Aurora
is located just off US 287 west of Rhome,
about a mile south, on State Highway 114 to Bridgeport. There is a sign beside
the highway that says CEMETERY, and points south toward the graveyard. Interestingly
enough, the historical marker at the site actually includes the word "spaceship".
Newspapers, along with diaries and letters by local residents, reported that an
alien craft hit a windmill and was torn to pieces, along with its occupant in
April, 1897. A 1986 movie, "The Aurora Encounter," produced by Charles
B. Pierce, tells the tale. The official historical marker was installed by the
State of Texas, and although nobody knows exactly where the grave is located,
it is certain that the alien was, in fact, buried in the Aurora Cemetery, after
the efforts of the local doctor failed to save it’s life following the crash.
There is, unfortunately, no sign of the tombstone. It was stolen some years ago
and never recovered. There are, however, picture records of its existence. There
is currently a renewed movement in town to exhume the body of the alien, replace
the headstone and do a complete search for remains of the crash. Also, there have
been several interesting pieces of metal found in the area that have been confiscated
for analysis by the military and never returned. |
| | Aurora
Cemetery gate
TE Photo, 2-04 |
The
historical marker reads as follows:
“Aurora
Cemetery”“The oldest
known graves, here, dating from as early as the 1860s, are those of the Randall
and Rowlett families. Finis Dudley Beauchamp (1825-1893), a Confederate veteran
from Mississippi, donated the 3-acre site to the newly- formed Aurora Lodge No.
479, A. F. & A.M., in 1877. For many years, this community burial ground was known
as Masonic Cemetery. Beauchamp, his wife Caroline (1829-1915), and others in their
family are buried here. An epidemic which struck the village in 1891 added hundreds
of graves to the plot. Called "Spotted Fever" by the settlers, the disease is
now thought to be a form of meningitis. Located in Aurora Cemetery is the gravestone
of the infant Nellie Burris (1891-1893) with its often-quoted epitaph: "As I was
so soon done, I don't know why I was begun." This site is also well-known because
of the legend that a spaceship crashed nearby in 1897 and the pilot, killed in
the crash, was buried here. Struck by epidemic and crop failure and bypassed by
the railroad, the original town of Aurora almost disappeared, but the cemetery
remains in use with over 800 graves. Veterans of the Civil War, World Wars I and
II, and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts are interred here”. |
Aurora
brings up images of high-speed space travel. In fact, the newest space shuttle
in the NASA fleet is named 'Aurora' after the UFO incident that took place in
1897. In 1997, the 100th anniversary of the crash of the unknown “airship” in
Aurora, the TV show "Sightings"
brought renewed interest to the topic with a special called “One Hundred Years
of UFO Cover-ups”, that featured the crash, the efforts of the local doctor to
help the dying alien, and the burial of his body in the town cemetery.
This incident has been covered up and ridiculed by the U.S. Government (a standard
operating procedure of the MAJESTIC 12 group) and has been widely reported to
be a hoax (a weather balloon?). This, to say the least, sounds a lot like Roswell
in 1947? The US government has a long history of cover-ups in regards to such
occurrences. It is hoped that the current, renewed interest in the incident will
last, and that a new investigation will clear up the Aurora event for good, although
much time has passed. It is tragic that most, if not all of the original witnesses
are long dead, for, at one time, up until around the early seventies, there were
quite a few people still living who had been children at the time and not only
remember the crash, but remember a rash of “airship” sightings, all over East
and North-Central Texas,
as well as the stories which were passed down to them from their “elders”. Almost
everyone who grew up in those parts of the state have heard stories from their
grandparents, or other “old folks” about such events, many of whom were “substantial”
citizens, including doctors, clergymen, judges, army personnel, sheriffs and other
professionals.
The
Aurora crash was, in fact, the culminating event in a rash of “airship” sightings
in East and Northeast Texas, Oklahoma,
North and Central Louisiana in the period between 1895 and 1898. Robert Atkinson,
of Center, Texas, a veteran of the Spanish
American War, often told of seeing, as a teenager, strange, “flashing lights”
in the sky, as did Polk Burns of the same city. Similar incidents were recountered
by Bud Knight, a prominent resident of San
Augustine, Texas, who died in 1981 at the age of 108. Lee Choron, who died
in 1976 at the age of 94 recalled seeing “moving lights flashing in the sky” while
living in Swift, Texas (near Nacogdoches)
while in his “teens”. Nor, were civic records and town newspapers of the time
completely silent on the matter. Reports, although not common, do exist. On April
22, 1897 in the small central Texas town of Rockland, John M. Barclay was intrigued
when his dog barked furiously and a high-pitched noise was heard. He went out,
saw a flying object circling about 20 feet above ground. He described it as having
an elongated shape, with protrusions and blinding lights, it went dark when it
landed, only a short distance from his home. Barclay was met by a man who informed
him that his purpose was peaceful and requested some common hardware items to
repair the craft. He paid with a ten-dollar bill and took off "like a bullet out
of a gun."
On that same day, April 22, 1897, some one hundred miles
away, in the community of Josserand, Texas, Frank Nichols, who lived some five
miles east of Josserand, and was one of its most respected citizens, was awakened
by what he called a “machine noise”. Looking outside, he saw a heavy, lighted
object land in his wheat field. He walked toward it, but was stopped by two men
who asked permission to draw water from his well. He then had a discussion with
half a dozen “short, dark men” men, apparently the crew of the strange machine.
He was told how it worked but could not follow the explanation.
Three
days later, on April 25, 1897, in Merkel,
Texas. People returning from church served a heavy object being dragged along
the ground by a rope or cable, attached to a “cigar shaped” lying craft. As the
assembled crowd watched, the line managed to get caught in a railroad track. The
craft was too high for its structure to be visible but protrusions and a light
could be distinguished. After the craft hovered in place for about 10 minutes,
a man came down along the rope cut the end free, and went back aboard the craft,
which flew away toward the northeast. The man was described by all witnesses,
as being small and dressed in a light blue uniform.
The next day, late
in the evening of April 26, 1897, near the town of Aquila, in South
Texas. A local lawyer, whose name was not reported by the press, was surprised
to see a lighted object fly quietly overhead as he was riding from his office
to his home, just outside the city limits. His horse was scared and nearly toppled
his carriage. The object was large, and “oblong”, and sported a bright light that
was observed to be sweeping the ground below the object. When the main light was
turned off, a number of smaller lights became visible on the underside of the
dark colored, metallic craft, which revealed an elongated, transparent canopy.
It continued forward, toward a hill, some seven miles to the south of Aquila.
When the witness passed the same way, approximately one hour later, he saw the
object rising. It reached the altitude of the cloud ceiling and flew to the northeast
at a fantastic speed with periodic flashes of light.
These
accounts, all given by respectable witnesses, separated by several hundred miles,
yet all in a direct line with Aurora,
describe a very similar object. It must be remembered that in 1897, distances
were much greater than they are today, and news traveled at a much slower rate.
It is inconceivable that there could have been any collusion between witnesses,
and highly unlikely that people living in towns separated by several hundred miles,
could have heard news or read accounts of happenings in other towns within the
space of two or three days. This was a time, it must be remembered, when most
news traveled by wire, or by railroad, and unless there was a critical need for
residents of one region to have news of another, the expense of wiring such news
was avoided.
Much may be made, in some quarters of the “quaint” descriptions
given of the object… it, indeed, must be a single object, or at least identical
objects… such as the presence of “machine noises” and “ropes”. This is perfectly
understandable in light of the fact that this was a time before sophisticated
machinery, especially sophisticated flying machinery was common, or even, for
that matter, known. It would be six years before the Wright Brothers would take
their first, halting, leap above the ground, and the dirigible airships of such
pioneers as the Count von Zeplein, were in the very early stages of development,
a continent and an ocean away. Certainly no native of East,
Central or South
Texas had ever seen such an object. It is highly unlikely that very many of
them had even heard of such things. Science Fiction of the day was limited to
the works of Jules Verne, and the very early works of Herbert George Wells, and
it is unlikely in the extreme that residents of a tiny Texas town, only a few
years removed from fighting for it’s survival with the Apaches and Comanches would
have access to such current works.
The point, is this. The residents
of Aquila, Hillsboro,
Merkel, Jossarand, Nacogdoches,
Swift and Aurora, would
describe what they saw in terms that they understood, and could relate to. Any
unusual sound, emanating from an obviously “manmade” object would be described
as a “machine sound”. Likewise, any form of line, tie-down or connector would
be described as a rope, cable or line. A classic example of such a description
would be the existence of the “cargo” cults of the South Pacific… religious sects
of islanders who being members of a pre-industrial, stone age culture, worship
the airplanes that their ancestors first saw during the Second
World War, and revere the crews as Gods who brought gifts… “cargo” from the
sky. Far fetched? Not at all. Imagine how anyone living today might describe an
object from a thousand years or, or so, in our own future.
It is also
worthwhile, at this point, to repeat the fact that people of this time and place,
late 19th Century Texas, were extremely conservative
in nature, skeptical by necessity, and most unlikely to take off on flights of
fancy. There would simply be nothing to be gained from concocting a story concerning
such a thing as an “airship." They would not only not be believed, their
sanity, sobriety and competence would have come into serious question. Unlike
today, when, as one must admit, such accounts are commonly hoaxed as an attempt
to gain attention and momentary fame, this simply would not have been the case
in 1897. The most likely result of such a story, unless absolutely and verifiably
true would have been shunning by the community as the “village idiot” or as the
“town drunk”. Worse, in the primarily Protestant Fundamentalist religious atmosphere
of the time, which, by the way, has changed but little since that time, one would
have been considered “blasphemous”, “sacrilegious” and possibly even “Satanic”,
and definitely shunned by most “upright” and “upstanding” citizens of the community.
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: ... next
page
©
James L.
Choron August 5, 2004
More Ghosts
/ Paranormal |
Aurora
Encounter ForumSubject:
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
The
Aurora story is a total hoax as far as I'm concerned. I spent eight hours searching
at the cemetery where the alien is supposed to be buried and found nary a grave.
Even if the headstone had been stolen you would think that some one would put
something in it's place so people would at least know where he is buried. Plus
it is said that photos exist of the headstone but none are ever posted on the
internet. We have an eyewitness account that is completely false. The great granddaughter
of the woman who supposedly witnessed it said that her grandmother had said it
was a hoax at the time she was interviewed but instead it said she is quoted as
saying she remember it happening as though it was real. As for the newspaper article
in the Dallas Morning News I have searched their archives and no such article
exists or was ever written. The only thing about Aurora in that days paper is
the farm report. Also mentioned is the city's town square. Unless it was totally
demolished in the last few years it doesn't exist either. I drove every road in
and out of town and at some point I would have found the town square but never
did. This is a very small town. If traveling on highway 114 you pass through the
town in about 2:30 min and that's going 45 mph. I doubt one could miss a town
square. The newspaper article in all websites but two I've seen credit it to a
E.E. Hayden and on the other two the say it was written by a S.E. Haydon who was
an amateur writer who wrote the story as a fictional account to help revitalize
a dying community. I never found signs of an old military airfield although there
is a road in town that is called old base road which seems to [suggest] there
was some sort of base in the area. The town doesn't seem to be laid out in base
fashion - it just looks like a very small country town with a population of 376.
No town to speak of - just farms and houses no main street or town square. If
any one can give me better geographic info I would be glad to go out there again
and see what I can find because I could never find the "old Proctor place." If
someone knows where these things are send it to me and I'll investigate. - Tomy
Dudley, tomylee@rock.com, December 27, 2005
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