|
Curiously,
this story did not make even the front page. Instead it was buried
on page five along with several other reports of UFO sightings.
It would appear the flying saucer crash at Aurora was not particularly
shocking in 1897 - run of the mill, you might say (in more senses
than one) - even if it did destroy Judge Proctor's flower garden.
The story then told by the people of the town is that the Martian
pilot, as he was termed, was given a decent Christian burial in
the town cemetery and his grave marked with a single stone. The
remains of the spaceship were taken away to an unknown location
by the authorities and the smaller pieces were thrown into Judge
Proctor's well. No other newspaper covered the story and, amazingly,
the alien's resting place in the Aurora cemetery went unremarked
for nearly eighty years, the small town settling back into obscurity.
That was until 1973 when the founder of the International UFO Bureau,
Hayden Hewes, announced to the Press Association that a grave in
a small north Texan cemetery contained the body of an 1897 'astronaut'
whom the report at the time had identified as being 'not … of this
world'. Newspapers all over America took up the story and interest
in the alien grave rapidly gathered pace. Curiously, as the press
hounds sniffed around Aurora, they found very few residents willing
to discuss the events of 1897, but despite their reticence the town
soon became a hive of activity as alien hunters from around the
world descended en masse. The International UFO Bureau claimed to
have found traces of radiation at both the crash site and the grave,
on top of which, they said, the grass glowed red. But they were
soon barred from the graveyard by local administrators, who adamantly
refused to allow them to start digging around. When the investigators
attempted to obtain a court order to exhume the body, the small
headstone marking the grave was removed and state troopers were
placed at the gates of the cemetery to prevent unauthorized access.
Hayden Hewes, interviewed for a television documentary on the subject,
condemned these actions as irresponsible, stating that there was
now no way of locating the grave - a site, he claimed, that was
of national importance. Interestingly, Bureau representatives have
never explained why they just didn't walk around looking for the
red patch they had found only weeks earlier.
Abandoning the grave, they turned their attention instead to Judge
Proctor's farm, now under different ownership. In 1945 Rollie Oats
(yes, his real name) had bought the place. He had removed the pieces
of spaceship and cleaned out the well so that his family could drink
the water. Twelve years later he developed severe arthritis in his
hands and, convinced the well water was responsible, had it sealed
over with a six-ton slab of concrete. During the 1973 investigation,
metal found on the farm was analysed at a laboratory, its name never
disclosed, and found to be of a unique composition that could only
have been produced by a very sophisticated refining process far
in advance of what was possible in the 1970s, let alone the 1890s.
This was held up as hard evidence of spaceship material and the
UFO community howled for the government to reveal any information
they had. In response the government ridiculed the amateur investigation,
describing the Aurora spaceship story as a hoax. But of course they
would say that, eh, UFO fans? Today, amid renewed calls for a full
enquiry and a thorough search of Aurora using the latest technology,
some town elders now claim that the US military returned many years
ago, back in the 1940s, and removed all trace of the spacecraft
and its pilot.
Others enigmatically refuse to talk about the incident at all. One
elderly resident was interviewed for the television documentary
in 1973 and clearly stated on camera that the whole affair had been
true. (I saw it myself, and she said it all right - there's no doubt
about that, at least.) Her parents, she insisted, went to check
the wreckage of the spacecraft and then told her all about it. But
later, her great-granddaughter revealed she had been told the whole
thing was a hoax and was puzzled why her great-grandmother would
appear on camera to claim the accident had really taken place. The
lure of the dollar possibly? But if it was all a hoax, why play
such an elaborate prank in the first place, let alone keep it up
for over a century? There is one very good reason - to do with the
town of Aurora itself. In the middle of the nineteenth century,
Aurora had been a busy, bustling trade centre with a growing population
and two schools. During the early 1890s, the Burlington Northern
Railroad had been planning to build a route through Aurora to join
the Western Railroad when disaster struck the town in the shape
of spotted fever (a form of meningitis). As the new cemetery began
to take in more and more residents, the town was sealed off and
people were confined to their homes.
As a consequence, the railway abruptly stopped twenty-seven miles
short of the town, construction never to be resumed, and Aurora's
business was devastated. Things became even worse when its major
crop, cotton, was ruined by boll weevil infestation. Its fate was
finally sealed by a fire that destroyed a major part of the borough.
All this, within the space of a few short years, left Aurora facing
ruin - that is, of course, until the spaceship conveniently flew
into town. The resulting (albeit somewhat delayed) publicity led
to Aurora, eighty years on, being declared a place of special interest
and becoming one of the most famous towns in Texas, with legendary
status among the worldwide UFO community. Even today it is rumoured
that any unusual pieces of metal found locally are quickly confiscated
by the authorities and mysteriously lost or accidentally destroyed.
One of the things that has always struck me about UFO sightings
is how they always reflect the era they are reported in.
For example, today we have grey aliens with over-sized heads who
communicate telepathically, like the alien constructed for the Roswell
hoax. During the 1970s all spacemen looked like the cast of Star
Trek and prior to that they dressed like Buck Rodgers, complete
with laser guns, and got in and out of their flying saucers by ladder.
So call me cynical, but when we hear of an interred alien whose
cigar-shaped spacecraft crashed into a windmill in 1897, we don't
need to look too far to find out that cigar-shaped airships were
first conceived in the 1890s and by 1897 were flying all over America,
to the astonishment of country folk, some of whom hadn't even seen
a train before. And Aurora was far from the only location for such
sightings, as soon afterwards alien encounters were reported all
over the US. Some people even ludicriously claimed they had been
paid by aliens, in dollars, for spare parts for their space machines.
So imagine the scene with me. In 1897 old Farmer Gilly is standing
out in his field raking the soil when a being from outer space strolls
up. 'Greetings, Earthling,' he intones in that robotic style favoured
by aliens the universe over, 'but the satellite navigation control
system on my intergalactic hyperspace craft is up the spout. Do
you have anything to repair it?' Farmer Gilly looks him up and down,
takes off his hat and wipes the sweat from his forehead with a shirtsleeve.
'Sure thing, buddy,' he replies. 'Cosmic navigation broken down,
has it? Probably explains why you're in Arkansas, son. Can't think
of no darned good reason why else you'd be all the way out here.
Let's go and see what we've got for you in that chicken shed over
there.' Presumably the alien pays in dollars for a roll of rusty
hog wire, and is on his way back to Mars by sundown. Perhaps he
even takes an old hoe with him too - as a souvenir. Now, you can
believe that if you want to …
But why jump to the conclusion that it was a spaceship that had
crashed? Even back in 1897, before planes were invented (or not
ones that could fly very far), there could have been an alternative,
rather more plausible explanation. Flying over Texas an early airship,
not unlike a Zeppelin - or, for younger readers, the Goodyear Blimp
- might have sprung a leak and lost altitude. It might then have
crashed into Judge Proctor's windmill and destroyed his flower bed.
The resulting explosion would have melted the metal framework that
then re-formed into new and unrecognizable shapes when it cooled.
The poor pilot might have lost his limbs in the explosion and ended
up burnt to a crisp, so that he didn't look human any more. But
no one in the UFO community would have bought this rather more down-to-earth
explanation.
Hayden Hewes can still now be seen on several television documentaries
standing wistfully outside the cemetery or pictured pointing forlornly
at the well, no doubt wondering how he is going to get the six tons
of concrete slab lifted that stands between himself and his place
in history. The final word on the Aurora spaceship crash should
go to the man who had the very first word, journalist H. E. Haydon.
Years later Haydon, a notorious practical joker, admitted he had
simply made up the story in an attempt to draw attention to the
plight of his home town and to help the dying community. He certainly
did that - even if publicity took some decades to arrive - as Aurora,
the town we would otherwise have never heard of, is still talked
about throughout the UFO hunting community as one of the most famous
sightings of all time. They should put up a statue of him in the
town square in Aurora, if there is a town square, that is.
Most UFO encounters can be explained as optical illusions, natural
phenomena, meteors or hoaxes, but a good many remain unexplained.
In cases of alien abduction, it is interesting to read reports of
victims who have been hypnotized and who describe their ordeals
in great detail while under hypnosis. Yet when we compare these
reports with those of volunteers who do not claim alien abduction,
but instead are asked simply to imagine it, their recollections
under hypnosis are almost exactly the same. I think this says more
for the power of the imagination than it does for the likelihood
of alien encounters, but then again, ours is a big universe. Infinite,
in fact.
Only a fool would completely rule out the idea of life on other
planets in other solar systems, the closest of which are so far
away they would take us 75,000 years to get to in the fastest craft
we currently have, which means unless aliens visit us, then you
and I will never know if there is life out there. So maybe, just
maybe, we are not alone after all …
Albert Jack - 2007
|
