Phantom Airship Wave 1896–1897

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Phantom Airship (1896)
Crowd watches the airship (Sacramento 1896)

The phantom airship wave 1896-1897 ( English mystery airship or phantom airship wave ) was a series of sightings of unidentified flying object which, according to contemporary newspaper reports between November 1896 and May 1897 by tens of thousands of people in at least nineteen USA seen has been. Various natural and supernatural causes were cited for the observations, without any of these explanations being able to explain the entirety of the sightings. Due to the traditional descriptions, however, observations of real contemporary airships and extraterrestrial missiles are largely excluded. In order to analyze possible causes from a human-scientific point of view , the phenomenon has been investigated in the last decades under mass psychological , sociological and cultural-historical questions. The current reception focuses on explanatory approaches based on cultural studies .

history

First wave of sightings in 1896

"Phantom Airship" over Sacramento (illustration 1896)

The first reports of an unidentified flying object occurred on the stormy night of November 17, 1896 in Sacramento and over Oakland , California , after "strange lights in the sky" had been observed since the end of September. Dozens of residents saw bright lights in the rainy night sky, some thought they saw a cigar-shaped shadow behind them. A tram driver named Lowery even said he was able to spot two men who pedaled the device.

In the following weeks, more sightings were reported from across California as well as from Washington State and Canada to the north . Within a few days, a real "airship fever" broke out. People stood on the streets at night and searched the sky for the luminous object. The highlight was the night of November 22nd, when sightings of an unknown missile were reported from 11 locations between Chico and Pasadena .

The observations were controversially reported: The local newspapers The Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Call heated the mood, while other newspapers, some of them well-known, treated the event with disparaging and sarcastic undertones. With the number of sightings, the number of critical voices also increased. The San Francisco Chronicle quoted the noted astronomer George Davidson (1825–1911) as saying that he believed it was a combination of deceit and imagination. And the newspaper Evening Telegram in Portland remarked skeptical: "No one here will believe in the existence of this amazing airship before he or she - of course in full operation - sees."

In December 1896 the observation reports decreased and at Christmas they ended entirely.

Second wave of sightings in 1897

"McCann sighting" over Chicago (illustration April 1897)

From February 1897 onwards, mainly in the American Midwest and some southern states , there were rapidly increasing numbers of new sightings, which clearly exceeded the 1896 observations in scope and reached their zenith on April 17th with 14 sightings in one day. Although so far more than one missile has never been seen at the same time, the media public now came to the conclusion that a single airship could not be responsible for all sightings.

In April 1897, the unknown airship was sighted several times over Chicago . On 12 April, reported Chicago Times-Herald , the newspaper dealer Walter McCann have in urban Rogers Park received the morning of the previous day in the presence of witnesses two photos of the town flying over approximately 200 meters phantom airship. Since most newspapers were unable to print photos due to the state of the art at the time, only a drawing of the missile appeared. McCann's original recordings are considered lost.

The newspapers also published numerous reports of landings and crashes of the object, as well as contacts with the crew. In March 1897, a farmer from near Sioux City , Iowa , reported that he had been caught and dragged along by an anchor hanging from the unknown missile. And in April 1897 there was supposedly a theft by the mysterious airshipmen: In Woodson County, Kansas , a two-year-old cow was stolen from the farmer Alexander Hamilton .

In April the airship hysteria peaked with several hundred sightings. Thousands of people searched the sky every evening in warm spring weather. After that, the sightings suddenly decreased and finally ended in the summer of 1897.

1909-1913

There were a number of sightings of airships in New England , New Zealand and various parts of Europe in 1909 . Later sightings came from Great Britain in 1912 and 1913. At that time, airship technology was well developed, so it suggested that it was private airships that were sighted.

Description of the missiles and crews

"A visitor from Mars?" (1897)

As far as the descriptions were not limited to moving lights, the phantom airships were mainly depicted as elongated dark objects, sometimes with wings that could also fly against the wind and were equipped with glaring headlights. Even if it was occasionally described that the object "shot off like a bullet" or that it had abruptly changed altitude or course, the missiles usually moved slowly according to the descriptions and could therefore be easily observed. Among the many hundreds of reports, there is only one that describes the airship as a 12-meter-long "hat-shaped" object and thus comes very close to today's idea of ​​a UFO. A typical description of the airship can be found in the Chicago Chronicle of April 13, 1897:

“The machine was clearly visible and was ... about 60 feet [18 meters] long. The vibrations of the wings were also clearly visible. As usual, it was covered with colored lights, and the engine and a kind of music like an orchestra could be heard. "

And a witness named James Hooton from Arkansas , who was referred to as a "well-known railroad conductor", gave the following description of a landed flying object and its take-off on April 20, 1897:

“Closer inspection showed that the keel was divided into two sections. At the front it came out like the sheath of a knife, the flanks were widened towards the middle to come together again at the back. On each side were three large wheels made of a pliable material that dented when they rolled ... I noticed that there was a two inch tube in front of each wheel, from which air was now blown onto the wheels. The wheels began to turn and the ship rose with a hissing noise. Suddenly the plane lurched, raised its bow to the sky, and the rudder at the end swung to one side. The wheels were now turning so fast that the spokes were barely visible. The ship disappeared faster than I can tell. "

There were also reports of several landings that allegedly resulted in contact with crew members of the phantom airships. Almost without exception, these were described as "very ordinary people": sometimes it was a woman, sometimes "a medium-sized man" with "tinted glasses", a "man with a long dark beard" or a short man in a "light blue sailor suit". When asked, they always answered in English. In the opinion of CENAP, the few descriptions of "giants", strange or non-human missile occupants, are false statements.

Social framework

The 1890s were a time of great social upheaval, tension, and problems for the United States. With the end of the Indian Wars , the opening up of the West had come to an end in 1890, and the continent was settled. The meaningful " frontier " experience of the Americans was now directed from the inside of their own country to the outside, especially against the colonial power Spain , and - according to the cultural historian Gregory M. Pfitzer - up to the sky. The airships appeared in the middle of a crisis caused by Spain in Cuba , where insurgents were fighting for independence . The majority of the US population sympathized with the rebels and in 1898 the US finally intervened in the fight ( Spanish-American War ). The mysterious airships have been linked to the Cubans' war of liberation several times. In January 1897, the former California Attorney General William HH Hart (1848–1903) declared that the alleged inventor of the airship was on his way to Cuba to support the rebels in their fight.

As with the UFO wave of the 1940s and 1950s, the American population was simultaneously confronted with economic and political developments that gave rise to existential fears in large sections of the population. Between 1893 and 1897, the country went through the third economic depression after the end of the Civil War in 1865. The industrialization since the end of the civil war had led to the formation of large economic trusts that influenced politics and, through their price policy aimed at profit maximization, violent reactions in the high unemployed The population. At the same time, the first large trade unions were formed and economic and political disputes, some of which were violent, broke out ( Pullman strike in 1894). The presidential election in November 1896, with the extremely narrow victory of William McKinley against the "common man's candidate" William Jennings Bryan, heightened these tensions.

People lived in an age of leaps and bounds in science and technology that met with positive public interest. Everything seemed possible. The public was also sensitized to the current development of aviation since Senator Henry Cabot Lodge introduced a bill that provided a price of USD 100,000 for the development of a dirigible airship by 1901. The majority of Americans firmly believed that it was only a matter of time before the problem of air travel was resolved.

Sources

The only sources available for the phantom airship phenomenon are as far as possible only contemporary newspaper reports. The truth of the matter is usually very questionable. Furthermore, many of these reports are hearsay only, as noted in the April 12, 1897 cover report of the Daily Republic newspaper of Rockford, Illinois : "Railroad men who got through there say that the telegraph operator says that some cattle dealers say that some farmers say that the ship had a technical malfunction and had to land there for repairs. "

Although it is known from folklore and everyday research that extraordinary, supra-individual events are always reflected in people's private records, there are almost no references to airships from contemporary letters and diaries. The folklorist Thomas E. Bullard also points out that there were hardly any reports about the mysterious missiles in the regional sections of the newspapers that were specially designed for the local population. In 1967, during a nationwide radio broadcast in New York, UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek called on living witnesses to the events to come forward, but to no avail.

The main problem is that there are no remains or traces of the objects described, although several crashes of the airship have been reported and parts of the wreckage have allegedly been collected and described.

Explanatory approaches

From the beginning there were numerous competing interpretations of the observations from 1896–97, which essentially anticipated the explanatory models discussed in modern ufology :

  1. The majority of contemporary observers and authors interpreted the airships as technically innovative terrestrial missiles. In contrast to the UFO discussion of the 20th century, however, conspiracy theories and the question of secret government participation in the events did not play an essential role.
  2. This majority was faced with a strong contemporary group that viewed the reports published as fraud and falsifications by the alleged witnesses or the press.
  3. Another group, usually based on recognized scientists, classified the events as a misinterpretation of natural phenomena.
  4. In addition, mass psychological phenomena in the population have already been described in contemporary publications .
  5. Furthermore, the connection of the observations with religious ideas and topics of entertainment and popular science literature was occasionally pointed out.
  6. The theory of extraterrestrial visitors did not play a serious role in the discussion at the time. The few reports dealing with this explanation also turned out to be false, as far as verifiable.

However, none of the explanations apply to all or most of the sightings. In detail:

Real existing airship constructions

Aerial Torpedo Balloon (1896)

Numerous witnesses and contemporaries of the sightings at that time assumed that they had seen a real existing dirigible airship that was on a test flight. This theory is rejected by the majority of today's authors, pointing out that the aviation technology at that time did not correspond to the properties of the phantom airships described.

Work was carried out worldwide on the development of steerable missiles, and the first positive results were also achieved: For example, in 1884/85 the " La France " flew a controlled circuit near Paris several times, and Graf Zeppelin worked on his first airship plans from 1890 on Lake Constance. In America, Solomon Andrews (1806–1872) flew his so-called “Aereon” against the wind in the mid-1860s, and from 1867 Frederick Marriott (approx. 1805–1884) constructed a cigar-shaped and winged airship model called the “Avitor” in San Francisco Hermes Jr. ”, which flew for the first time in 1869.

Even in the weeks before the first sightings, the newspapers report several times on current developments in airship technology. In September 1896 a long article appeared in the Sunday Herald (Baltimore) about a military torpedo balloon, illustrated with a drawing of the device. But none of these devices had the characteristics shown by the Phantom airship and was able to cope with the routes covered by the late 1890s. This means that a well-known “terrestrial” airship that existed at the time is eliminated to explain the mass of sightings.

Furthermore, from the beginning of the sightings in November 1896, numerous people declared that they were the inventors of the mysterious airship, but in no case could this claim be substantiated. The well-known inventor Thomas Alva Edison explained that it was "inconceivable that someone could construct a successful airship and keep this fact secret". The most absurd claim came from a man from the Californian town of Arbuckle , who claimed it was an airship he had designed, but which was stolen from him by two tramps in March 1896.

However, several modern writers tried to prove that there were innovative real airships in the late 1890s that were ahead of their time. They justify their sudden disappearance with an accident disaster or economic conspiracy theories. However, all these attempts at explanation lack plausibility and, above all, evidence.

Fraud and hoax

A number of airship sightings have been based on children and other jokers launching hot air balloons or kites to amuse or confuse their fellow citizens. In the Mission District of San Francisco , however, a vigilante group was founded in 1896. Several alleged airship inventors and traders also used the airship hype for self-promotion . In 1897, for example, the Ringling Brothers Circus regularly launched a balloon for advertising purposes, each time causing a great public stir.

Newspaper coverage

Newspaper headline 1896

The airship hysteria was primarily a newspaper phenomenon from the start. In the 19th century, the daily newspapers satisfied the population's purely tabloid entertainment needs far more than they do today . Little consideration was given to the seriousness of the reports and the line to fiction was often exceeded. A careful assessment of the published reports about the phantom airships shows that a large part of the false reports apparently originated directly in the newspaper offices.

It is also noticeable that only a few newspapers published the majority of the airship reports. In California it was the San Francisco Call , in Nebraska The Omaha Bee , in Illinois and Indiana the Times-Herald from Chicago, in Kansas the Champion from Atchison and in Texas the Dallas Morning News . Based on this, the author James L. Cambias put forward the thesis that it is not the route of an airship, but the appearance of newspaper articles in nearby cities that are the cause of new sightings. And in April 1897, The Baltimore Sun ironically raised the question of whether the phantom airship was not a flying sea ​​serpent , which - like the Loch Ness monster later - was a well-known pickle-time topic of the press at the time.

Journalists who invented airship reports had a prominent role model, because as early as 1844 Edgar Allan Poe had published the false report about a transatlantic crossing by balloon in the New York Sun. There were numerous reports that at first glance were recognizable as nonsense: For example, a newspaper reported that a man had shouted the sentence “Weiver eht rof ebircsbus!” From the airship, which read backwards was merely the advertising slogan “Subscribe to the review!”. Another report said that through a window in the airship one could see a handcuffed woman who was threatened by a man with a revolver. In addition, alleged letters from the airship crew appeared in various locations, one of which was addressed to Thomas Edison. For him, however, the whole thing was “nothing but fraud”.

Several newspaper reports exposed as inventions are still rumored in the ufological literature today, including some of the following:

Examples

Lodi, November 25, 1896

Alleged witness HG Shaw (drawing 1895)

On November 27, 1896, the Stockton Evening Mail published a report entitled "Three Strange Visitors" by Colonel HG Shaw who claims to have encountered three non-human beings from an airship near the town of Lodi , about 50 kilometers from Sacramento. who he thought were Martians .

“They were taller than two meters and very slim. I also noticed that her hands were quite small and delicate and that her fingers had no nails. However, their feet were almost twice as long as an ordinary person ... When one of them came close to me, I touched him by placing my hand under his elbow and gently pushing it upwards. And who would have thought, I lifted him off the floor with almost no effort. I would estimate that the specific gravity of the creature was less than an ounce ... They were without any clothing, but covered with natural vegetation that was difficult to describe; it was neither hair nor feathers, but to the touch it was as soft as silk and her skin was like velvet. Their faces and heads were hairless, their ears were very small, and their noses were polished ivory in appearance, while their eyes were large and shiny. The mouth, however, was small and it seemed to me without teeth. "

The "Colonel Shaw" presented in the article as the organizer of a trade fair was the British-born veteran of the American Civil War Henry Glenville Shaw (1843–1907), a long-serving, busy journalist with frequently changing employers, who just a few weeks before the report was published, the editor-in-chief of Stockton Evening Mail was. At the time of the alleged encounter, he was in the process of getting the young Stockton community going.

Shaw's report was considered so implausible by his journalistic colleagues that not even the San Francisco Call , which published every little piece of news about the alleged airships, reported it - although Shaw had previously worked for the call himself and several in the newspaper at the time extensive articles on Shaw's other activities appeared. The question of why Shaw, known as a gun enthusiast who loves to shoot, did not simply hunt down the unknown creatures as evidence remained unanswered.

Aurora, April 16, 1897

The most famous single event of the phantom airship wave is the so-called Aurora UFO incident .

According to a newspaper correspondent, an unidentified airship “flew over the market square, collided with Judge Proctor's windmill when it reached the northern part of town, and collapsed in a terrible explosion that scattered the debris over several acres . “The ship is made of an unknown material that is reminiscent of“ a mixture of aluminum and silver ”. Many people would have collected samples of the strange metal from the rubble. The pilot of the ship was “not a resident of this world” and left notes “in unknown hieroglyphs”. Later the remains of the alien were buried in the local cemetery.

The case is considered to be the invention of the journalist HE Haydon , who wanted to draw attention to the economically badly damaged town. Nevertheless, there are still individual advocates of the UFO thesis. But even more recent studies from ufologists could not provide any reliable evidence of a real accident.

Waterloo, April 16, 1897

Waterloo airship fake 1897

On the night of April 16, an airship allegedly had to make an emergency landing in the town of Waterloo, Iowa . The armed aeronaut explained to the police that he was Professor Jourgensen from San Francisco and that he was on a world tour with his machine. His partner, a Professor Stormont , fell from the balloon shortly before landing. He offered a $ 500 reward for finding his remains.

The device consisted of two bulging floats, a canvas-clad cockpit, a large lantern and a propeller attached to the rear. The steam engine used to drive it was allegedly under repair. Countless visitors flocked to the city to view the missile, which had to be protected by the police. Nevertheless, the device caught fire the next night and was destroyed.

It quickly became apparent that the fictional airship was based on an idea by three men from nearby Nashua , one of whom was the editor of a small regional newspaper . A reporter and one of the policemen from Aurora were also involved in the fake. A contemporary photo shows that the gas-filled device described, due to its size and construction, would hardly have been physically capable of lifting its own weight into the air, let alone several passengers.

Further cases, April 1897

On April 14, 1897, the Courier Herald in Saginaw (Michigan) reported that an airship had landed from which a nearly three-meter-tall, almost naked giant had climbed. When numerous people from the nearby towns of Morley and Howard City ran together, this man seriously injured. "Hundreds of people" would have watched the departure afterwards. It is not known whether the giant was determined to repeat the action or whether a provincial editor had a joke. But an almost identical article appeared a few days later in the Lansing State Republican , only this time the incident took place in the village of Williamston .

In mid-April, the Chicago Record reported the crash of a phantom airship in Champaign County, Illinois . The surviving crew members fled and killed a young farmer. Three mutilated corpses remained in the wreck that looked “like Japanese”. The local The Champaign Daily Gazette examined the story but found no evidence to support the allegations.

The Dallas Morning News published a particularly imaginative story in April 1897. According to this, the crew of an airship that landed in Ellis County, Texas , said they came from the North Pole , were part of a fleet of twenty airships touring America and Europe, and had English Learned from Hugh Willoughby's North Pole expedition in 1553 . The announcement turned out to be a publicity stunt for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in Nashville , where the ships were supposed to appear.

At the end of April 1897, reports appeared in numerous Texan newspapers about the landing of a secret airship prototype in Uvalde , where one of the inventors named Wilson is said to have asked the local sheriff Henry Baylor about a sheriff colleague named Akers who was now working elsewhere . Shortly thereafter, Akers issued a statement confirming his acquaintance with Wilson. And just as promptly followed a denial by Sheriff Baylor, in which he described the story as " Münchhauserei ". Baylor also absurdly stated that the editor responsible for the hoax was "shot on orders". All three claims were fictitious.

Perceptual illusions

Extreme Leonid Current 1833

An explanatory model for "extraordinary" or paranormal experiences and sightings defines them as a result of misinterpreted cognitive processes , i.e. as psychological illusions similar to optical illusions , which can evoke perceptions or deform real experiences. In particular, misinterpreted natural phenomena come into question.

In November 1896 and in the first months of 1897 the sky did indeed show some astronomical peculiarities:

  • From the night of November 13th, as every year, a fast-flying meteor shower , the so-called Leonids , appeared green and blue, which reached its climax at the same time as the first sightings of the airship. Even then, the New York Times suspected that some of the reported observations were actually meteors.
  • In the winter of 1896/97 the planets Venus and Mars were clearly enlarged in the sky. From February 1897, Venus was also visible at noon; it reached its maximum size on March 23, 1897, exactly at the beginning of the second wave of sightings. It was already pointed out in publications at that time that some of the eyewitnesses could in fact confuse the planets with an airship, especially since clouds moving in the dark night sky can give the impression of a moving, glowing object. Indeed, such confusions are described in contemporary newspaper articles. Furthermore, contemporary astronomers refer to the Betelgeuse .

Also zoological phenomena have been striving for the sightings. Science fiction writer James Cambias speculates that the perceived beating noises were caused by migratory birds .

Excessive alcohol consumption during the entire period of sightings was suspected as a possible cause for these cognitive disorders . The San Francisco Chronicle v. November 20, 1896 that the witnesses whom the paper calls "illuminated staggers" by alcohol are mostly bartenders and pub-goers. As a result, many newspapers expressly stressed in their reports that their witnesses would not consume “hard” alcoholic beverages.

Mass psychological processes

Another explanatory model for the sightings by a large number of people are mass psychological processes such as mass hysteria and mass suggestion .

Especially during the airship wave of 1897, thousands of people in several American states searched the horizon every evening to find signs of an airship. The whole thing became, according to newspaper reports, a kind of general “leisure activity”, sometimes in the form of parties. After all, according to sociologist Robert Bartholomew, “they saw or believed they saw exactly what they expected.” In Texas, for example, the residents of a small town on the rail line to Dallas stopped a special train passing by for the airship . Once the "airship" turned out to be a sheet of wrapping paper blown up by the wind. According to newspaper reports even began Indians in Pima - Reservation in Arizona after a day-long powwow with the construction of a huge airship model.

In retrospect, Bartholomew defines the phantom airship wave as “social self-deception” and refers to the scientifically proven unreliability of eyewitness accounts . For him, the numerous reports are merely “a symbolic projection of the prevailing technological mania and the apparently limitless belief in science”.

The theory of mass hysteria was critically noted that it did not provide a sufficient explanation for the rapid spread of the sightings in November 1896. Furthermore, it could not offer a conclusive explanation for the regional wandering of the alleged observations.

Classification in cultural studies

According to a theory that has also been accepted by some ufologists , the reports must be classified in the context of cultural-historical processes and understood as a collective narration . The descriptions are based on “cultural takeovers”, the experiences are based on mythological and religious ideas, fairy tales , stories and books. Media studies findings on the spread and introception of social patterns of interpretation support this theory. In narrative research , a part of folklore, the airship wave of 1896/97 is compared with classic sagas and used as an example of a so-called modern legend .

"Phantom Airship" over Sacramento (illustration 1896)
Coles "Aerial Vessel" 1886

Throughout the 19th century , numerous books and stories that can be assigned to science fiction literature and deal with the conquest of the sky were published worldwide. One of the most popular books is the novel Robur the Conqueror by Jules Verne , first published in 1886 , which was also followed by numerous imitators in America, such as the author Robert Duncan Milne , who mainly publishes in newspapers such as the San Francisco Call . This was reinforced by scientific discoveries such as those of the alleged Mars canals in 1877, which led to wild speculation about extraterrestrial life. From the 1880s on, encounters with extraterrestrials began to appear in the fictional literary genre. In the opinion of numerous scientists, the few descriptions of the airship crew as "extraterrestrials", which seem like modern "alien" signs, and of which the majority later turned out to be newspaper ducks, are based on these models .

In the evaluation of the phantom airship observations, three newspaper publications are particularly conspicuous, for which a takeover cannot be ruled out due to the close relationship in terms of content and time with the sightings:

  • In January 1887, the popular scientific journal Scientific American published an illustrated article about a motorized airship discovery by a certain Moses S. Cole. It is particularly noticeable that the aircraft shown - never realized - largely corresponds to the drawings of the Sacramento sighting.
  • The San Francisco Call published an illustrated article in early September 1896 about a cylindrical missile with flapping wings hanging from a balloon and a wagon-like cabin attached below . These features also appear repeatedly in the descriptions and drawings of the phantom airship.
  • On November 17 and 18, 1896, numerous newspapers published reports about an airship inventor who announced that he would fly over the American continent in just two days. The first sightings occurred just hours after the Sacramento Bee newspaper announced the first announcement .

The interpretation of the unknown missiles also took on religious characteristics. At the height of the second wave of sightings, newspapers spoke of the airships as "signs from heaven". There were voices claiming that they would herald the return of Christ or the end of the world. A priest said the object was the flying biblical tabernacle . And a self-proclaimed prophet in Kearney announced that the heavenly visitors would one day descend from the clouds and destroy the city like Sodom and Gomorrah .

Another, albeit unsubstantiated, theory is that railroad and telegraph employees were responsible for the distribution of some of the airship news , who passed the time on the communication network available to them in the manner of modern Internet junkies and thereby a modern one Myth invented.

Ufological interpretations

Most ufologists also consider the phantom airships of the 1890s not to be extraterrestrial vehicles, but rather a product of media coverage.

On the other hand, George Hunt Williamson (1926–1986), one of the so-called “UFO contactors” of the 1950s, is a representative of the extraterrestrial theory . For him, the phantom airship wave is part of a large cosmic program by visitors from space to spread a “universal truth”. And the authors Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman tried to prove that behind the airships stood a secret society of inventors who obtained their technical knowledge from non-human beings.

An increasingly growing group of ufologists advocates the thesis of “cultural takeovers”. According to UFO researcher Jacques Vallée , the sightings close the gap "between the apparitions of antiquity and the modern stories about flying saucers".

Contrary to the interpretation of the mysterious airships as extraterrestrial UFOs in today's sense, the consistent descriptions of wings, propellers, rudders, anchors and bolt riveting, which would be of little use for a spaceship. Replies from the ufological side that UFOs would adapt to the respective social ideas of the observer remain speculative.

Statistical evaluation of the sightings

The focus of sighting reports began in California in 1896, migrated to the Midwest in 1897, particularly Indiana, Illinois and Michigan , then turned south to the states of Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma and ended in Louisiana and Texas.

The extent of the sightings in 1896/97 can only be recorded on the basis of contemporary journalistic reporting, which is said to include around 1500 articles. In the literature and in ufological compilations there are lists of several hundred sightings. However, these are not consistently supported by sources. Furthermore, multiple observations of the same object are listed as individual sightings, even if the reports are related in time and come from locations that are close together. In addition, some of the sightings turned out to be fakes.

Robert G. Neeley investigated the airship wave in Illinois as early as the 1970s and evaluated 207 newspaper reports. Of these, 184 only described lights in the sky, and in 10 cases these were identified as celestial bodies in the article. In 25 cases the reports were lies.

Based on contemporary sources, there is an approximate value of around 700 sightings. If you group the unadjusted reports from the two largest newspaper databases on a timeline , you can clearly see the two viewing waves from November 1896 and the end of March 1897. A subdivision of the reports into sightings of 1. lights in the sky at which no solid body was seen and 2. described aircraft shows that around 42% of the reports describe only unspecific optical anomalies (see table).

10/1896 11/1896 12/1896 01/1897 02/1897 03/1897 04/1897 05/1897 06/1897 TOTAL
TOTAL 4th 63 14th 1 12 25th 438 15th 5 577
Lights 3 32 9 1 6th 7th 177 6th 5 246
body 1 31 5 0 6th 18th 261 9 0 331

literature

  • Robert E. Bartholomew: The Airship Hysteria of 1896-97. In: Skeptical Inquirer . 14: 2 (1990). Pp. 171-181.
  • Michael Busby: Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery. Pelican Publishing, Gretna 2004, ISBN 1-58980-125-3 .
  • James R. Lewis: UFOs and Popular Culture. An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Myth. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2000, ISBN 1-57607-265-7 .
  • Rudolph Umland: Phantom Airships of the Nineties. In: Prairie Schooner. 12 (1938), pp. 247-260 ( PDF Reprint 1943 ).
  • Werner Walter (Ed.): The Airship Saga. Before the UFOs came. In: CENAP Report. 304 (April 2007).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Louis Winkler: The Not-So-Mysterious Airships Of 1896-97. In: The MUFON UFO Journal 1982: 3, pp. 3–6 ( PDF ( Memento of the original dated December 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ); s. Don Berliner: "Mysterious Airships": A Comment. In: Ibid., P. 7f .; J. Allan Danelek: The Airships of 1897. In: FATE Magazine July 2007, pp. 32-39 (German translation by user: Tvwatch ). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.theblackvault.com
  2. ↑ What Was It? In: Daily Record-Union (Sacramento) v. November 18, 1896 ( PDF ); Voices in the sky. In: Sacramento Bee v. November 18, 1896; Flew to Air Ship. In: Weekly Spokesman-Review (Spokane) v. November 23, 1896; Topics of the Times. In: New York Times v. November 25, 1896 ( PDF ).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g James L. Cambias: The Amazing Airship of 1896. In: Balloon Life 1996, No. 7.
  4. ↑ Sacramento Folks See Queer Things. In: Chicago Daily Tribune v. November 19, 1896; Air fancies. In: Daily Record-Union (Sacramento) v. November 20, 1896 ( PDF ); Airship A fake. In: The Saint Paul Globe (Minn.) V. November 24, 1896; More About That Airship Fake. In: Chicago Daily Tribune v. November 28, 1896; A funny paper. In: Los Angeles Times v. January 10, 1897.
  5. ↑ Kevin D. Randle, Russ Estes: Spaceships of the Visitors. New York 2000, p. 18; You may not believe this. In: The Evening Telegram (Portland) v. December 2, 1896; see. to James Randi Unicorn paradigm .
  6. ↑ a b Jacques Vallée: Confrontations. Munich 1996, p. 25.
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Rudolph Umland: Phantom Airships of the Nineties. In: Prairie Schooner 12 (1938), pp. 247-260.
  8. ↑ Chicago Times-Herald v. April 12, 1897.
  9. ↑ a b c d Jacques Vallée: Dimensions. Munich 1996, pp. 48-55.
  10. ^ The Air-Ship Steals. In: The Paducah Daily Sun v. April 29, 1897 ( PDF ); Hamilton and his witnesses were, as it later turned out, members of a "liar club": s. Kevin D. Randle, Russ Estes: Spaceships of the Visitors. New York 2000, pp. 31-33.
  11. ↑ Stephen Whalen and Robert E. Bartholomew: The Great New England Airship Hoax of 1909 , In: The New England Quarterly, Ed. 75, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), pp. 466-476.
  12. ^ Clark, Jerome: "The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis in the Early UFO Age", In Jacobs, David M, UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge, University Press of Kansas, p. 123
  13. ↑ David Clarke: Scareships over Britain , reviewed July 22, 2016
  14. ↑ Brett Holman: Mapping the 1913 phantom airship scare , reviewed July 22, 2016
  15. ^ That Airship. In: The Champaign Daily Gazette v. April 16, 1897; Loren Gross: A New Look at the Lodi Incident. In: The Mufon Ufo Journal 109 (1976), pp. 14-16; The airship saga. Before the UFOs came. In: CENAP Report 304 (April 2007), p. 15.
  16. ^ Gregory M. Pfitzer: The Only Good Alien Is a Dead Alien. Science Fiction and the Metaphysics of Indian-Hating on the High Frontier. In: Journal of American Culture 18: 1 (1995), pp. 51-67; s. a. Andrew Panay, From “Little Big Man” to Little Green Men. In: European Journal of American Culture 23: 3 (2004), pp. 201-216.
  17. ^ Shaped Like a Sparrow-Hawk. In: The San Francisco Call v. January 10, 1897.
  18. ↑ cf. Willi Paul Adams: The USA before 1900. Munich 2000; Erich Angermann: The United States of America. Munich 1973, p. 11ff.
  19. ^ Robert Bartholomew: The Oregon UFO Wave That Wasn't. In: Pro Facto Newsletter 4: 2 (1998).
  20. ↑ We Can Have a Navy in the Air. In: The Morning Times (Washington DC) v. April 12, 1896.
  21. ^ Strange Ships that Sail in the Sky. In: The Saint Paul Globe v. May 9, 1897 ( PDF ).
  22. ↑ cit. n. Robert Bartholomew: The Illinois UFO Mania of 1897. In: The REALL News. 6: 3, March 1998.
  23. ↑ Kevin D. Randle, Russ Estes: Spaceships of the Visitors. New York 2000, p. 36.
  24. ↑ a b The Airship Saga. Before the UFOs came. In: CENAP Report. 304, April 2007, p. 12.
  25. ↑ Airship Is No More. In: The Times-Press. Bay City MI. April 15, 1897.
  26. ^ Robert E. Bartholomew: Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics. A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illnesses and Social Delusion. Jefferson NC 2001, p. 215.
  27. ↑ a b c J. Allan Danelek: The Airships of 1897. In: FATE Magazine July 2007, pp. 32-39 ( PDF ).
  28. ↑ Balloon And Boat In Close Alliance. In: Sunday Herald v. September 13, 1896.
  29. ↑ see also San Francisco Call November 23 - December 6, 1896; An Aerial Boom for Doge City. In: The Globe-Republican v. April 15, 1897; Kansas Topics. In: Kansas City Journal v. April 19, 1897; The Weimar Mercury v. May 1st & 22nd, 1897.
  30. ↑ Jerome Clark: The Strange Case of the 1897 Airship. In: Flying Saucer Review 12: 4 (1966), pp. 10-17; Ders .: Unnatural Phenomena. Santa Barbara 2001, pp. 26f.
  31. ^ A b Michael Busby: Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery. Gretna LA 2004; s. the reviews by Ulrich Magin in JUFOF 153 (2004), pp. 90ff. and Ronald J. Ferraras in Air Power History 53: 3 (2006), pp. 50f.
  32. ↑ Article Practical Jokers. & Against Fakers. In: San Francisco Call v. November 26, 1896 ( PDF ); Stockton Evening Mail v. November 27, 1896; Chicago Record v. April 13, 1897; The Mysterious Airship. In: The Algona Republican v. April 14, 1897; The airship saga. Before the UFOs came. In: CENAP Report 304 (April 2007), p. 12f.
  33. ↑ The Chicago Times-Herald v. April 14, 1897; The Saginaw Courier-Herald v. April 17, 1897; The airship saga. Before the UFOs came. In: CENAP Report 304 (April 2007), p. 13.
  34. ↑ Is The Airship A Sea-Serpent On The Fly? In: The Baltimore Sun v. April 13, 1897.
  35. ↑ Text online .
  36. ↑ The report is quoted in: Loren Gross: A New Look at the Lodi Incident. In: The Mufon Ufo Journal 109 (1976), pp. 14-16; Copy of the article online ( Memento of the original from April 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (German translation by user: Tvwatch ). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ufologie.net
  37. ^ Curriculum vitae in: The Overland Monthly 28 (1896), p. 67f .; Not Laying Down His Arms. In: Los Angeles Times v. July 11, 1896; Col. Henry G. Shaw (obituary). In: The New York Times v. March 13, 1907 ( PDF ).
  38. ↑ Wealth Of San Joaquin. In: San Francisco Call v. November 22, 1896.
  39. ↑ s. San Francisco Call v. 9., 11., 15., 16. u. December 22, 1896.
  40. ↑ Around The Corridors. In: San Francisco Call v. December 1, 1895; The Overland Monthly 28 (1896), pp. 67f.
  41. ↑ Kevin D. Randle, Russ Estes: Spaceships of the Visitors. New York 2000, pp. 29f .; UFO Hunters series # 204 (episode 17): First Contact , broadcast on The History Channel , November 19, 2008.
  42. ↑ Many see An Airship. In: San Francisco Call v. April 17, 1897; The Mysterious Airship. In: The Washington Times v. April 17, 1897; The 1897 Waterloo airship hoax on www.wunderkabinett.co.uk.
  43. ↑ The Airship Saga. Before the UFOs came. In: CENAP Report 304 (April 2007), p. 15.
  44. ^ That Airship. In: The Champaign Daily Gazette v. April 16, 1897.
  45. ↑ A Judge Sees It. In: Dallas Morning News v. April 19, 1897.
  46. ^ That Air Ship. In: The Daily Herald (Brownsville) v. April 27, 1897; Airship Inventor Wilson. In: The Weimar Mercury v. May 1, 1897; Airship Story Exploded. In: The Weimar Mercury v. May 22, 1897.
  47. ↑ cf. Susan Blackmore: Psychic Illusions . In: Skeptical Inquirer 16: 4 (1992), pp. 367-376; dt .: physical illusions . In: Gero von Randow (ed.): My paranormal bike and other reasons for skepticism . Reinbek 1993, pp. 131-139.
  48. ↑ a b In November Heavens. In: The New York Times v. November 1, 1896 ( PDF ).
  49. ^ Meteoric Shower. In: Los Angeles Times v. November 19, 1896; Meteor Startles Steele. In: The Saint Paul Globe (Minn.) V. November 22, 1896; Topics of the Times. In: The New York Times v. November 25, 1896 ( PDF ).
  50. ↑ A Planet Visible at Midday. In: San Francisco Call v. February 24, 1897.
  51. ↑ Venus and Jupiter. In: San Francisco Call v. November 25, 1896; The Airship Romance. In: The Los Angeles Times v. December 1, 1896; See Great Airship! In: Chicago Record v. April 2, 1897; Stranger In The Sky. In: Kentucky New Era v. April 15, 1897; Alex. Greenhill: Beautiful Venus. In: Clinton Morning Age v. April 18, 1897.
  52. ↑ Mystery Of The Sky. In: The Chicago Times-Herald v. April 10, 1897; Chicago Record v. April 10, 1897.
  53. ↑ cit. n. Frank Warren: The Air Ship of 1896. Part 1 (2001) (accessed December 13, 2012).
  54. ↑ z. B. Visions of an Air Ship. In: Omaha Daily Bee v. March 16, 1897 ( PDF ).
  55. ^ Robert Bartholomew: The Illinois UFO Mania of 1897. In: The REALL News 6: 3 (March 1998); Ders .: Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics. A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illnesses and Social Delusion. Jefferson NC 2001, pp. 202-215.
  56. ↑ That Speedy 'Airship'. In: The Sun. (NY) v. April 17, 1897; The Airship Was Seen. In: The Houston Daily Post v. April 22, 1897.
  57. ^ A b Robert Bartholomew: Robert Bartholomew: The Illinois UFO Mania of 1897. In: The REALL News. 6: 3 (March 1998); Ders .: The Oregon UFO Wave That Wasn't. In: Pro Facto Newsletter. 4: 2 (1998).
  58. ↑ Michael Busby: Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery. Gretna LA 2004, pp. 223f .; Coincidents. In: The Roseburg Plaindealer. v. November 30, 1896; Short Texas Specials. In: The Houston Daily Post. v. April 21, 1897.
  59. ↑ Poor Lo Has the Craze. In: The Daily Herald. (Brownsville TX) v. June 2, 1897.
  60. ↑ Carl Gustav Jung : A modern myth. Of things seen in the sky. Zurich / Stuttgart 1958; Bertrand Meheust: Science-Fiction et Soucoupes Volantes. Paris 1978; Keith Thompson: Angels and Other Aliens. UFO phenomena in a new interpretation. Munich 1993; Gregory M. Pfitzer: The Only Good Alien Is a Dead Alien. Science Fiction and the Metaphysics of Indian-Hating on the High Frontier. In: Journal of American Culture. 18: 1, pp. 51-67 (1995); Jacques Vallée: Dimensions. Munich 1996.
  61. ↑ Michael Meurger: To discuss the term 'modern legend' using the example of the 'airships' from 1896-1897. In: Fabula 26 (1985), pp. 254-273; Christiane Möller: “The truth is out there somewhere!” UFOs under ethnographic aspects. In: Augsburger Volkskundliche Nachrichten 5: 2 (December 1999), pp. 6–25; Linda Dégh: Legend and Belief. Dialectics of a Folklore Genre. Bloomington IN 2001, p. 213 f.
  62. ^ Thomas E. Bullard: Mysteries in the Eye of the Beholder. UFOs and Their Correlates as a Folkloric Theme Past and Present. Diss. Indiana University 1982.
  63. ↑ Keith Thompson: Angels and Other Aliens. UFO phenomena in a new interpretation. Munich 1993, p. 110 f.
  64. ^ Three Strange Visitors. In: Stockton Evening Mail v. November 27, 1896; SE Hayden: A Windmill Demolishes It. In: Dallas Morning Star v. April 19, 1897; Jacques Vallée: Confrontations. Munich 1996, p. 25 f.
  65. ^ A Novel Form of Aerial Vessel. In: Scientific American v. January 1, 1887; s. a. Cole's patent application dated November 9, 1886 (US Patent No. 352298, PDF ).
  66. ↑ Carl Erickson's Flying Machine. In: The San Francisco Call v. September 1, 1896.
  67. ↑ Sacramento Bee v. November 17, 1896; Airship of Great Speed. In: Detroit Free Press v. November 18, 1896.
  68. ^ Strange Object Seen. In: Dallas Morning News v. April 8, 1897; Topics of the Times. In: New York Times v. April 20, 1897 ( PDF ); Says Its a Token. In: The Breckenridge News v. April 28, 1897.
  69. ↑ George Hunt Williamson: Other Tongues - Other Flesh. Amherst WI 1953, p. 7.
  70. ↑ Jerome Clark, Loren Coleman: Mystery Airships of the 1800's. In: FATE Magazine May 1973, pp. 86-94 (part 1); June 1973, pp. 96-104 (part 2); July 1973, pp. 61-67 (part 3).
  71. ^ Jacques Vallée: Dimensions. Munich 1996, pp. 48-55.
  72. ↑ Jerome Clark: The Strange Case of the 1897 Airship. In: Flying Saucer Review 12: 4 (1966), pp. 10-17; Jacques Vallée: Dimensions. Munich 1996.
  73. ↑ Michael Busby: Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery. Gretna LA 2004, p. 21.
  74. ↑ a b The two largest US newspaper databases are Chronicling America ( Library of Congress ) and California Digital Newspaper Collection ( University of California ).
  75. ↑ z. B. UFO Sightings prior to 1945 (chronology) on www.ufodna.com.
  76. ^ Robert G. Neeley Jr .: 1897. The Airship in Illinois. In: Journal of UFO Studies. 1: 1 (1979), pp. 49-69; s. a. That. (Ed.): UFOs of 1996/97. The Airship Chronicle. Mount Rainier MD n.d. [1986].