Aurora, Texas 1897 — Airship Wave and Alleged Crash

The Great Airship Wave of 1896–1897 generated hundreds of reports across the United States of large cigar-shaped or ellipsoidal flying craft flying at night, observed by thousands of witnesses from California to Texas. This occurred years before the Wright Brothers' 1903 flight. On April 17, 1897, the Dallas Morning News published an account by correspondent S.E. Haydon reporting that an unidentified airship had crashed into a windmill on the property of Judge J.S. Proctor in Aurora, Texas. Haydon reported that the pilot of the craft was 'not of this world' and the debris was scattered over several acres. According to the report, residents collected the debris and buried the pilot in the Aurora cemetery with a 'Methodist burial.' A small headstone allegedly marked the grave. Aurora's history with the incident is acknowledged by Texas historical markers. In the 1970s, a gravestone with unusual markings was reported at the site, but later disappeared. UFO researcher Bill Case brought a magnetometer to the site in 1973 and detected anomalous metallic readings in the soil. In 2008, the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell filed a formal application to exhume the grave; the Aurora Cemetery Association denied it. Ground-penetrating radar surveys conducted in 2012 detected anomalous subsurface metallic material at the reported grave location. While the incident cannot be confirmed as authentic, the 1896–1897 airship wave as a whole is documented in US Army Signal Corps logs and in hundreds of contemporary newspaper accounts across the country.