Back in the late 1880’s to the late 1890’s, many, many thousands of people across the USA reported seeing strange “airships” traveling throughout the sky. The most common shape of the airships was a cylindrical or “cigar shaped”, but there were also a small group of aircraft being circular or tear drop shaped. In some cases, low flying large airships were seen to have a horizontal row of portholes on them, like ocean traveling ships. The aerial sightings seem to have first started in the Western states, especially California, then moved to the southern states as Texas, then progressed to Midwest states, and traveled to the eastern Great Lakes states. Many, many of these floating, moving vessels were seen at night, just before sunrise with the faint sunshine showing a dark, shadowy elongated object.
Other airships were seen late in the night with a strong glowing field emitted by them. Some of the mysterious flying objects were observed in the sky as being very large, some were small, some moved slowly, some moved rapidly; some made noises, some were silent. Some moved slowly, then moved quickly. The airships displayed a very impressive great technical mastery of flight.
Newspapers across America wrote stories on these airships. Eyewitnesses gave scant details so the newspapers greatly “spiced up” the accounts with much fictionalized information to sell a great many of their editions. In Texas, in the city of Aurora, that had a population of 4,000 people in the late 1800’s, there was a UFO crash on April 17, 1897, that was one of the highly seen airship that sailed through the sky. A newspaper article in “The Dallas Morning News” of April 19, 1897 by S.E. Haydon appeared with the title: “A Windmill Demolished It”.
The story mentions about a low flying, slowly moving airship that came downward, then crashes into a windmill and there was a huge explosion which shattered the ship with debris spread over several acres. Some people took some of the metal fragments as souvenirs. The accident destroyed the windmill, a water tank, and a garden, all belonging to a Judge Proctor. A dead body of the only occupant aboard was “not of this world”. A scientist with the military believed the alien pilot to be from Mars. The alien carried papers with strange “hieroglyphic” like writing. The flying ship was so badly wrecked that there wad no clue to its construction or its propulsion engine. The aircraft was thought to have weighed several tons and was made of an unidentified metal that resembled aluminum and silver. The killed pilot would be given a burial the next day at half day (12:00 midday; noon). There was no “follow up” newspaper article on the burial of the dead alien pilot. The newspaper article, written on April 19, 1897, describes about the fatal UFO crash that allegedly took place 2 days earlier on April 17, 1897 at around 6:00 am, local (Central) time. The crash occurred on a farm near Aurora, Texas. The alien was given a Christian burial by a traveling pastor named William Russell Taybor at the close by Aurora cemetery. Some of the metal fragments from the airship wreckage were included in the grave. Other metal fragments were released in the explosive wreckage of the water mill.
The alien’s corpse was placed in apart of the cemetery that contained graves from the 1890’s. A stone marker was placed over the grave. In 1973, the Texas state director of the non profit organization called MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) along with Bill Chase, aviation writer for “The Dallas Times Herald”, wanted to exhume the grave, but was denied permission by the authorities. Only the next of kin could receive authorization for the exhumation. After that, the stone grave marker vanished, was presumably stolen. By the use of a metal detector, the grave was found, and a 3 inch pipe was placed in the ground to act as another marker. But, when the metal detector was put in front of the grave, no more metal was indicated; the metal pieces were previously removed. It seems that even the small pipe, in the soil, eventually disappeared.
Quite a long time later on, UFO investigators found the grave again and used ground penetrating radar and took photographs. The results of the ground penetrating radar were inconclusive in regards to the analysis of bodily remains and the images showed a grave in a state of strong deterioration. Metal remains that were cleaned out of the water storage area decades ago; some of them were given to UFO investigators by the much later owners of the property. The metal pieces indicate they are made mainly of aluminum and an unknown element. Today, at the Aurora, Texas Cemetery there is a historical sign which talks about the cemetery, its history, and little bit of old city history, and the legend of the killed pilot of the smashed spaceship being buried there. There is also a boulder marker over the grave site.
