The Raven
Unidentified Aerial
Everyone knows about the 1947 Roswell incident, but less well known is the wave of airship sightings over the western half of the U.S. that happened a half-century before, in 1896-1897. The hot air balloon had been around for a century by this time, but this was long before the Wright brothers and their first successful flight. In November, numerous witnesses in Sacramento and San Francisco reported seeing metallic flying craft with lights. There were even some alleged close encounters. Then the encounters seemed to move eastward, with reported sightings as far away as St. Louis and Omaha.
Phenomena and the U.S. Government “It sounds so crazy …” stated Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich of the U.S. Navy in reference to witnessing and reporting an unidentified aerial phenomenon in 2019. Preceding her statement, Alex and other U.S. Navy pilots were conducting training exercises over the Pacific Ocean when during one occurrence they observed an upside-down pyramid flying in the air and on another occasion tracked a black blob-shaped unidentified aerial object until it eventually splashed in the water and went under. In government speak, such objects are called unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), but lay people call them UFOs.
In April 1897, the Dallas Morning News reported that an airship had crashed into a windmill in the tiny town of Aurora, Texas, about 26 miles north of Ft. Worth. The owner of the windmill, Judge J.S. Proctor, reported finding wreckage and a body that was “not an inhabitant of this world”. The alien was given a Christian burial in the town cemetery, then the indicent was forgotten. Interest in the Aurora spaceman was rekindled in the 1970s when the Dallas Times Herald revived the story. The original grave marker has long since vanished. Modern investigations by MUFON and others have found metal deposits near the supposed grave site, but the town refuses all requests to exhume the grave. The mystery endures.
Ever since the government has had planes in the skies, pilots have encountered unknown flying objects. In November 2004 and January 2015, fighter pilots conducting training maneuvers in restricted airspace could be heard gibbering excitedly about UAPs. “There’s a whole fleet of them!” one pilot said. Another added, “They’re all going against the wind. The wind’s 120 knots to the west. Look at that thing, dude!” In 2019, pilots stated, “We’ve been seeing them for a couple of years.” Even though witnessing and reporting has been going on for years, it wasn’t until 2020 that the Department of Defense officially declared the videos of some of these sightings as real. Before admitting the truth of their own videos recorded on their own equipment, they wanted to ensure no “sensitive capabilities or systems” would be revealed, nor impingement “on any subsequent investigations of military air space,” according to Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough.
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Issue 4 | April 2022
