Aurora, Texas Airship Crash

Spring 1897. Mysterious airships were being reported across America. The Texas Almanac counts 38 sightings in 23 counties between April 13 and 17 alone. Aurora, in Wise County, was a town in trouble. Spotted fever struck in 1888. Around 1891 the railroad bypassed it, and residents moved to Rhome, two miles southeast.

April 17, 1897. About 6 o'clock in the morning. S. E. Haydon wrote that the early risers of Aurora saw the airship "which has been sailing through the country." It flew due north, nearer the earth than ever before, directly over the public square. At the north part of town it struck the tower of Judge Proctor's windmill and "went to pieces with a terrific explosion." Debris covered several acres. The windmill, the water tank and the judge's flower garden were wrecked.

The pilot's remains were badly disfigured. Still, Haydon wrote, enough was picked up "to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world." T. J. Weems, named as the signal service officer, believed the pilot "was a native of the planet Mars." Papers found on him were in "some unknown hieroglyphics." The craft was made of an unknown metal resembling "a mixture of aluminum and silver." The Dallas Morning News printed the story on April 19 under the headline "A Windmill Demolishes It."

For decades the story lay quiet. Then, in 1973, Bill Case of MUFON got metal detector readings at a grave in Aurora Cemetery. The marker was removed. The readings stopped. The cemetery association refused to allow an exhumation.

Two elderly witnesses came forward. Charlie Stephens, about 10 in 1897, remembered an airship trailing smoke as it headed north, and then an explosion. His father made him finish his chores, then rode into town the next day and saw debris. Mary Evans, 15 at the time, said her parents went to the site and a body was found.

The grave's crude stone was carved with a cigar or saucer shaped figure. It was reportedly stolen in 1973. In 2008 the History series UFO Hunters opened a well on the old Proctor property, sealed years before by a later owner, Brawley Oates. The water was normal apart from large amounts of aluminum. A windmill base lay near the well. Ground penetrating radar found an unmarked grave from about the 1890s. What it holds is still unknown.

Everything rests on one article. No other report from 1897 has surfaced. Oscar Lowery, about 11 at the time, remembered no crash. He said Weems was the town blacksmith and there was no windmill on the site. Columnist Frank X. Tolbert concluded that Haydon made it up. Local historian Etta Pegues told Time that Haydon "wrote it as a joke and to bring interest to Aurora. The railroad bypassed us, and the town was dying." Mary Evans was later quoted as saying, "They wrote that up to suit themselves." The Texas State Historical Association calls it "a fictional 'news' story." The wider airship wave was full of such inventions, from Lanark, Illinois, to San Francisco. Believers still point to the aluminum, the windmill base and the unmarked grave.

In 1976 a Texas Historical Commission marker at the cemetery acknowledged "the legend that a spaceship crashed nearby in 1897 and the pilot, killed in the crash, was buried here." A 1986 film, The Aurora Encounter, followed. So did UFO Files, UFO Hunters and Ancient Aliens. Since 2016 the town has hosted the Aurora Alien Encounter festival. Locals call the pilot Ned. And Aurora has its nickname. The Texas Roswell.