Hello and welcome to the program UFO Warning.
In this episode, we're looking at the 1897 UFO airships.
That's correct, 1897 UFO Airships.
I want to look at a couple of different cases here, some of
those sightings that happened in the Ozark Mountains and also
some that happened in Iowa. Now, this first article comes to
us from Explorer Southern history.com.
Explorer Southern history.com The title says a 19th century
UFO report Question mark One of the most mysterious incidents in
Arkansas history was actually tied to a series of similar
reports that appeared around the nation in the years 1897 and
1898. It's got a beautiful picture of
the Ozark Mountains. Now it goes on.
It says the alleged incident took place on May 6th in 1897 in
the Oichita Mountains near Hot Springs.
As the story goes, Constable John J Sumter Junior and Deputy
Sheriff John Macklemore were investigating reports of cattle
rustling near the community of Jesseville when they came across
an unexpected site. The two men were riding
northwest over Blue Ochida Mountain when they saw a bright
light in the sky. The light disappeared behind the
hilltops and the men continued their ride.
After a ride of a few more miles, they again saw the light.
This time it was much closer to the earth and appeared to be
descending. It once again disappeared, but
after a ride of another half mile, the men's horses suddenly
refused to continue. Now you don't have to ask
yourself why would these guys want to lie about this.
There's two local lawmen that they depended upon having their
respect to the people in their community in order to carry out
their duties. I just.
I just have to think that these guys would have had, would have
had no benefit by just making the story up, it says.
Looking into the darkness, the two the two officers quickly saw
the reason why people could be seen moving around with lights,
drawing their weapons. They approached to investigate,
demanding that that the mysterious people identify
themselves. The two lawmen were startled
when a man with a beard approached holding a Lantern and
announced that he and two companies were traveling the
country in an airship. Now this is something we
frequently hear in these stories of these ships landing human
like creatures, at least walking around the ship and oftentimes
they approach the onlookers or the witnesses with a Lantern,
kind of like a exposure railroad conductor or engineer would do.
They needed this Lantern to see by.
Of course, this is 1897. He showed them this unusual
craft. They reported it to be cigar
shaped and about 60 feet long. The mysterious man tried to coax
them aboard the craft, but they refused to go.
When they returned by the same place later in the night, no
trace was seen of the airship or its occupants.
Now, you know, a lot of us would think this could have been an
attempted abduction. For some reason they had to get
these guys to go on board, you know, voluntarily, I guess.
Exactly what the men saw remains a mystery to this day.
Airplanes and power blimps had not yet been invented in 1897,
yet newspapers across the country were filled with such
reports. Some speculate that the late
19th century eyewitnesses saw a spacecraft from another planet
and aliens. Others believe in more earthly
explanations. Either an experimental aircraft
was still being kept secret or an outright hoax.
Now this leases with two alternatives That this kind of
the same sort of thing being said today?
Well, a secret project is if somebody could have kept
something that difficult to build secret.
It just seems out of it, out of the question to me.
And then also saying this was a hoax, like I said before, why
would this? Why would these two lawmen have
any motivation whatsoever to just make the story up?
Just it would just make them look crazy to probably tell a
lot of people at that time. It says it's interesting to know
that a resident of the Hot Springs area applied for a
patent for a flying machine at about the same time he did not
receive his patent, but obviously was experimenting with
some type of aircraft. Whether he actually constructed
a flying machine is not known. That's very deceptive paragraph
and I don't know if the writer did that intentionally or not,
but experimenting with something?
OK, that implies that you have a physical model that you're
experimenting with. And then the next sentence says
whether he constructed the flying machine or not.
Well, if he didn't construct the flying machine that he's not
experimenting, he's just daydreaming.
OK, big difference. Whatever the two lawmen saw in
Ochita Mountains that night remains unidentified to this
day. No claims of responsibility for
the incident have ever surfaced. Not long after the Arkansas
incident, a man in Mississippi reported a similar encounter
with the quote UN quote airship and described the craft in much
the same way, barring the discovery of more evidence.
The 19th century Arkansas UFO sighting must remain one of the
mysteries of the Ochita Mountains.
For now, it's a simple story and that's what that's what makes me
really trust the veracity of this, because these guys weren't
trying to get anything out of it.
They were just doing their job looking for cattle rustlers and
they come across as what they described as a cigar shaped
airship, which by 1897 people would have heard of balloons and
been familiar with the idea that someday maybe there would be
this propelled airship going through the sky, but nobody had
been able to put the technology together yet to build it.
I mean this at that time would would have taken a tremendous
amount of resources to build one of these things.
This is something that was done on a national scale.
Not something, not, not like a hobby crap that somebody just
built, you know, in their backyard so they would have had
no reason just to make this stuff up.
It just seems like it's got such a down to earth ring to it to
me. That's why I like that story so
much. Here's one from Iowa.
This is in the davenportlibrary.com.
It says the mysterious airship of April 1897.
Now this is posted on April 5th, 2024.
Says by CSC Blogger. The Mysterious Sightings were
reported in a Sioux City, IA newspaper article on February
3rd, 1897. Something was seen floating in
the night sky by local citizens near Hastings, NE.
The object was described as lingering about 800 feet off the
ground with a bright light that beamed in the darkness.
Then it circled around in the sky before disappearing into the
horizon as quickly as it had appeared.
And once again, there was nothing man made at that time
that could possibly have done that.
For the next three months, sightings of an airship in the
night sky were reported in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa,
Illinois, and Michigan. Residents of Davenport responded
to the news with both amusement and fear.
Would the mysterious airship visit them?
They begin to search the night sky for strange lights.
So here you have the same being seen all over the Midwest there
in multiple states. According to newspaper accounts,
the airship would usually appear in the night sky between 8:00
and 9:00 PM. Some people would know it
disappeared from the sky around midnight, while others saw it
until almost 5:00 AM. Sometimes it left and then
returned, while others saw it briefly.
Only once the sightings became more frequent, news of the
object would be telegraphed to surrounding towns to see which
direction the object flew throughout the night.
The first thing most people noted was a large white light
that would shine from from the front of the airship, while two
smaller lights were seen on the body.
At first people might think they were seeing stars in the sky,
but soon realized the unusual movement of the lights were not
stars or planets. It was noted that the lights
faded in brightness as the objects flew, but became
brighter when the object stopped and hovered over an area that
sounds kind of like what the lawmen down in Arkansas were
seeing goes on. It says the white front light
was described as larger than the headlight on a train.
There is some discrepancy with one of the colors of the two
smaller lights. The majority of accounts
mentioned one small light being red in color.
The other smaller light was observed to be white by some
witnesses, while others thought it might be a light green in
color. The two smaller lights were each
estimated to be the size of a human head.
The shape of the airship was described as an upside down
schooner or cigar shape with a small basket or canoe shaped
object attached. There were two wings or fan like
projections attached to the main body as well.
Newspapers reported the airship was about 30 feet in length.
According to the witnesses. A modern 90 passenger school bus
is about 35 to 40 in comparison, pretty good size object.
Now they describe the one in Arkansas as being around 60
feet. This one is around 30 feet.
And I think it's also important to remember these people,
they're going to describe something, you know, based on
their own experiences, based on things they've seen.
These guys have never seen, you know, modern aircraft or or the
a lot of the modern things that we've seen.
So they're just basing their descriptions on stuff they'd
seen, like schooners or maybe even, you know, some of the
early steamships. The airship was spotted above
rural farms, small towns and cities alike.
This meant on any given night, you might have a handful of
witnesses to hundreds of people viewing the flying mystery.
There were those in the newspaper columns who doubted A
mysterious airship was traveling over Midwestern states.
The Davenport Democrat poked fun at the stories in early 1897 as
most sightings had been in the western part of Iowa along the
Nebraska along with Nebraska and Kansas.
They joked that Sea Serpents were falling out of favor and
those who are seeing a flying airship might need to stop their
alcohol consumption or seek medical help.
On April 8th, 1897, the Davenport Democrat reported that
the airship had been seen in Belle Plaine IA.
Belle Plaine is a little over 100 miles from Davenport and
near the larger city of Cedar Rapids.
The witness descriptions were of an airship that appeared in the
southwest horizon at about 9:00 PM, rising and falling in the
sky under complete control. It circled the area as the
airship was soon reported in Cedar Rapids and Burlington.
The Davenport newspaper reported on the growing fear of the
Flying Dutchman. As it was nicknamed, it seemed
everyone had an opinion on the flying object.
Some thought it was a star that seemed to move in the night sky.
Others were certain it was a flying airship.
The remaining people thought it was a great hoax, hysteria or
people drinking too much at night.
Soon there were those looking to make copycat airships in the
night sky. As a prank.
They began to fly balloons or kites with lights attached as
soon as darkness set in. Most pranksters were eventually
found out, as their creations never had the height or size of
the mystery airship, the Davenport Democrat reported on
April 10th, 1897. The flying aircraft was seen in
Rock Island, our neighbor across the Mississippi River.
It was thought to be about a half a mile off the ground and
had a noise similar to an electric motor.
The witnesses were Rock Island police officers.
The Democrat took full opportunity to poke fun at the
situation. The Daily Times reported on
April 12th, 1897 that a secretary for the Trans
Mississippi Exposition to be held in Omaha, NE in 1898
received a letter with an Omaha postmark from AC Clinton stating
that he was behind the flying airship and wanted a large
enough space to display his ship at the exposition.
He would arrive at their offices on April 17th to meet the
subject. The question seemed to be if the
letter was authentic or another airship inspired prank.
You know, here you have it's it's bizarre to me how this
works. This is 1897.
I mean you would think before the deep state existed.
And yet we have almost a campaign of debunking.
It seems like an organized campaign of debunking.
They get a, you know what, a semi anonymous letter from some
supposed person at Clinton or some supposed some supposed
person in Omaha by the name of AC Clinton.
And all of a sudden we're to believe that this fellow has
invented this advanced airship that can just stay up there for
hours and hours projecting, you know, these beams of light
tooling around you. Get out into Nebraska, western
Iowa, Kansas. We're talking about pretty windy
areas. So this would have had been
something that could fly against a sustained West to east wind of
thirty 40-50 mile an hour, pretty common for 30 mile an
hour wind out there. So this is not the sort of thing
I would imagine that was built in 1897.
A machine that could do that would have been so valuable that
it would have certainly been patented and and have been
commercially used. The Davenport Democrat reported
on April 13th that several 100 people may have witnessed the
mysterious flying object over Davenport after 8:00 PM the
night before. Reporters said it was hard to
see as there was a break in a cloud filled sky as a
thunderstorm was approaching. The light from the front of the
ship was described as pure white and color that seemed to flare
up and glow as it traveled through the sky.
It slowly flew away toward the horizon, then stopped briefly
while the light flared again. Then it disappeared into the
gathering storm clouds. The newspaper reporter did write
that it could not have been a star seen that night, but that
it actually might have, but what it actually might have been was
unknown. The Daily Leader in Davenport
asked again if people were drinking alcohol before seeing
the flying ship. So they have a mass sighting,
but the newspaper is not interested in doing anything but
debunking. The people that pay to read the
newspaper reports in rural Scott County, Moline and Rock Island
that night were more detailed. A witness in Scott County said
the object appeared to be cigar shaped and Moline.
It was first spotted after 7:00 PM As in Davenport, the bright
front light was the first thing noticed.
Some said it had a funnel shape to it.
Most degrade. It stayed moving in the sky at a
rapid pass for about an hour in Rock Island.
Passengers getting off arriving passenger trains reported they
had watched the object in the sky as they approached the
station. The Rock Island Argus did report
that clouds blocked some of the view.
Most witnesses on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River
agreed. The object seemed to move
quickly, was in the area for about 40 minutes, and the most
noticeable thing about the experience was a bright front
light. They could still see the light
even when the clouds began to gather.
What was it? No one was sure, except
moisture, greed. It was not a star or planet.
So you have hundreds of people seeing this thing and they're
all saying the same thing. We don't know what it is, but
it's not a star or a planet. Then the newspaper picked up a
surprising story out of Kalamazoo, MI.
From April 14th, 1897, residents near Pavilion, Michigan reported
an airship exploded in the sky in the early hours of April 13th
into April 14th, 1897. A couple who reported the
incident were tending a sick horse late into the night.
They described the bright front light, smaller lights on the
sides and propellers. The object moved at a rapid
speed when it disappeared. The same time they heard an
explosion or Thunder. The next morning, a nearby
farmer found a large metal coil on his property.
Another local resident found a propeller like piece on his
farm. Another resident have been
shingling a barn the day before. The next morning, he and two
other men returned to finish the job and found the roof covered
with small pieces of metal. Sadly, it appeared to be the end
of the mysterious ship. Well, we don't know if it was
that or if it's just this thing, this UFO, whatever.
It was ejecting UFO meta material.
I mean look what happened years later in I think it was around
Sioux City, IA. We had the the UFO ejected the
molten iron onto the ground and these things happen all over the
place. Then the announcement from
Waterloo on April 16th 1897 that the airship had been found in
that city. The 42 foot ship was found
tucked away on the circus grounds behind the cheese
factory and with it was a builder, Professor Jergerson,
along with his log book of his flying over multiple states.
Thousands flocked to see the airship and the news was
reported from coast to coast and newspapers.
The great airship mystery was solved.
And that's just ridiculous. I mean, if this thing was was
was airworthy, this guy would have been flying it all over the
place. But here you go, 1897, the same
thing we're dealing with today, parallel narratives.
It's just so insidious. But some took note that the
materials used to build a craft were extremely heavy.
Under questioning, the story soon fell apart.
This is probably the most elaborate airship hoax created.
Several businessmen in town designed and crafted the air
shift from $60 worth of materials, wrote the log book,
and paid a man named Feathers from another town to be
Professor Jerkinson. The stunt made Waterloo briefly
famous. You want to write?
People are so in so insecure about the notion of UFOs that
they have to go to these kind of links that create hoaxes and and
attempts at debunking. It just shows.
And people are people. I mean this is 1897, a hundred
130 years ago. People are doing some of the
same crazy nonsense we're doing today.
All eyes return to the night sky but with no results.
The mysterious flying airship had vanished.
AC Clinton never appeared for his appointment in Omaha on
April 17th to meet with a Trans Mississippi exposition board and
imagine that. Was that letter real or hoax?
Pretty clearly a hoax. Had there ever been an airship
over the Midwestern states that spring of 1897?
Was it a Planet Star Comet? Was there an AC Clinton who died
when his airship exploded over Pavilion, Michigan?
Was it mass hysteria or as Davenport newspapers like to
promote too many people staying up late drinking?
Or was it a UFO that exploded over Michigan or simply return
from wherever it came from? That's not the job of people
that witness UFOs to answer all these questions.
Our job is simply to document what we see and report it.
And pretty much a fairly decent article overall written.
But I what I find I think almost as interesting as this mass
sighting was the way it was treated.
You had the media even then attempting to debunk it, mocking
and ridiculing the hundreds if not thousands of people that saw
these this UFO or these UFOs, whatever they were all over the
Midwest. And and then you had this core
group of jokers trying to claim that it was a hoax, writing
letters, building some sort of a really primitive model.
That couldn't begin to fly, claiming that they've been
flying this thing all over the place.
I mean, just borderline stupidity really.
And all this gets mixed in with this original narrative of just
common folks seeing these aircraft, these UFOs flying
about the countryside, and about even even reliable witnesses
like these lawmen down in in the in Arkansas, there in the
Ozarks, just reporting what they saw.
But that over time that all gets mixed in with the depressing
that the mass media is trying to do and the really silly parallel
narratives being created by these random people.
And you look at the day the same thing happens.
I mean, the Phoenix lights occurs.
Thousands of people see this, this giant triangle shaped UFO
fly over multiple cities in Arizona.
They report it. They talk about it.
Supposedly there's a pretty good video floating around there
somewhere, some really sketchy stuff surrounding that.
We'll have to go back and talk about that again at some point.
And then you have all the debunking that happened after
it. So you have the people that
experience it, the people that see it, And then you have all
the people that didn't see it, that have no idea what they're
talking about. Just creating this, these
parallel narratives and attempting to debunk and
deperson the people that actually witnessed the UFOs.
It's really wild, but it's but the saying holds true.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Until next time, this is UFO Warning Over now.