| |
Book
Your Hotel Here & Save
Decatur
Hotels
The
Aurora Incident
Page 2by
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
Related
Topics: Ghosts / Paranormal
Aurora Area Hotels
Decatur
Hotels
More Hotels
| |
|
