CONSPIRACY THEORY

REMEMBER WHEN

REMEMBER WHEN A GROUP OF ALIENS ALMOST ABDUCTED LODI RESIDENTS? US EITHER.

BY NORA HESTON TARTE

In honor of spooky season (or spooky szn if you prefer), we’re resurrecting this old tale from 1896. Back then there were no iPhones to take on-the-fly videos of UFO and alien sightings like there are today, which means we have little more than firsthand accounts of this strange situation to go off of.

Regardless of your beliefs, this eerie story has a habit of popping up now and again, like when local retiree John Callahan started diving into the event looking for clues to clarity. The Lodi News Sentinel even wrote a story about it in 2015. And a recounting of the tale can be found in Alien Contacts and Abductions: The Real Story from the Other Side by Jenny Randles, published in 1994. The event's significance is partly due to the fact that it’s one of the first documented stories of its kind. So, what happened exactly? Here’s what we know.

In 1896, two men, Colonel H.G. Shaw and Camille Spooner, were traveling through Lodi to Stockton by horse and carriage when their stead stopped in fright. In front of them stood three tall creatures, with big eyes and spindly fingers (as the two men described to authorities). The creatures’ noses and mouths were small and they had a light fuzz over them. When they spoke, Shaw and Spooner said it sounded like chants with no discernible English words.

Beyond the three creatures, who were using bags with hoses to breathe on Earth’s atmosphere, the glow of their lanterns illuminated a spaceship. Allegedly, the vessel was shaped like a cigar and hovered over the water beneath a bridge at the Woodbridge Canal. Perhaps most curious was how the two men described the aliens entering the spaceship, shooting up above it and seeming to go through an unseen opening.

According to Shaw and Spooner, the aliens attempted to abduct them, but their mass overtook the aliens and the efforts were unsuccessful, allowing them to share their tale of almost abduction with a team of local authorities. When questioned, Shaw said he assumed the aliens and their craft came from Mars, which was the most common theory at the time. His firsthand account was first published in The Evening Mail on Nov. 27, 1896.

On November 25, believers can celebrate the 126th anniversary of this out-of-this-world tale.