It''s Been Over A Week...

... since my laptop died and to be honest I don't want to fix the problem until at least the new year. I realised just how much free time the internet was eating up and have rediscovered the joy of reading!

But I thought I'd just post to say I will be back in the new year and hopefully you'll stick around. In the meantime I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Eat, drink and be merry!

And in an act of shameless self promotion that has become a festive tradition on my other blog I submit for you my Christmas Wishlist.

Change To Your Usual Programming

My laptop is dead. So until I can afford a new one (think years rather than months here people!) I'm afraid there shall be few/no new posts. Sorry guys!!

Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part Three

Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part One

Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part Two

Throughout the early 20th century reports came in of mysterious airships from places as far afield as California, London and New Zealand. What could they have been?

Charles Dellschau and the Sonora Aero Club

Behind every great unexplained event is a conspiracy theory waiting to see the light of day and the phantom airships are no different.

Dellschau was born in Prussia in 1830 but emigrated to America in his early adulthood. At that time (and for many years after) Germany was at the forefront of aeronautical innovation and perhaps that is what influenced Dellschau's later works.

He wasn't famous during his lifetime, in fact he was considered a recluse and his grouchy nature made him few friends. But after his death several personal journals and artworks were discovered which perhaps might shed some light on the phantom airships.

Dellschau began this work in 1899 and his works tell a story. If his work (written in badly spelt English, German and his very own code language) is to be believed some 50 years previously he had been a member of a secretive organisation named the Sonora Aero Club which was established by eccentric men dedicated to furthering the cause of powered flight in California.It was supposedly part of a larger secret society called NYMZA. Some see these claims as a possible explanation for at least some of the reports of mystery airships over the USA. Many encounters with the airship crews record the crews stating various ambitions to fly on to another destination as part of some great adventure. 

But it must be remembered that Dellschau was an artist, his artistic airships not in anyway resembling those reported (or those that could ever fly!) and his ramblings could either simply be part of his art or part of some sort of mental health issue. There's a bit more on this here.

Contemporary Zany Inventors?

The rather interesting thing about the sightings is that they occurred at a time when it is very possible there were people inventing such ships such as:



Henri Giffard flew a steamed powered airship 27km in 1852 near Paris.

Solomon Andrews flew Aereon in 1863 over New Jersey which consisted of three 80-foot cigar-shaped balloons, with a rudder and gondola.

Henri Dupuy de Lôme flew an airship in the last days of the Franco-Prussian War

By the late 1890s rigid, metal hulled airships were beginning to be flown thanks to inventors such as David Schwarz.

And there were rumours of other inventors at work, some stories are on this site including this one, which I particularly like:

In 1848 gold fever seized America. On January 24 a workman discovered the precious metal in Sutter's millrace in California's Sacramento Valley. Within weeks the entire Pacific coast knew about it and a few months later "gold" was on the tongue of every easterner who ever dreamed of easy fortune.
Getting to those goldfields, however, was a problem, for the inland parts of the young nation were largely unsettled. A unique solution -- air travel -- came from "R. Porter & Company," a firm which listed its address as Room 40 of the Sun Building in New York City. In the latter part of 1848 the company distributed an advertising flyer in the eastern United States which promised more than it ever delivered.
Touting "THE BEST ROUTE TO THE CALIFORNIA GOLD!" the flyer read in part that the company was "making active progress in the construction of an 'Aerial Transport' for the express purpose of carrying passengers between New York and California.
"It is expected to put this machine in operation about the first of April, 1849, and the transport is expected to make a trip to the gold region and back in seven days..."
On the flyer the "aerial locomotive" is illustrated -- a huge cigar-shaped device, identified as a "gasbag," with a tail. Under it, attached with "sturdy material arrows can't puncture," is a similarly-shaped car with windows in its midsection.
"Snug gondola with benches for 50 or more passengers," the caption reads. From the top of the gondola stretches a long pipe which is identified as "a steam engine for controlled propulsion through sunny skies at 60 miles the hour."
Except for this pipe, entrepreneur Porter's vessel is almost a dead ringer for the type of "UFO" widely reported in the late 1800's and early 1900's which came to be called "the airship," although obviously there had to be more than one of them and they did not all look alike. But in the advertisement of an obscure company lie the first hints of a bizarre mystery which is staggering in its implications.

So yes those ships described by the witnesses would be futuristic and advanced but not completely impossible. For all we know they were simply the product of over enthusiastic inventors. But why would they not have reported such marvels? Well my other half is always making and creating new things, a jukebox from scratch was my favourite, and he does it simply for the joy of doing so. Soon after he's made them he tears them down to move on to his next project. Could these guys have not been like that? Sure it's far fetched but anything is possible!

Aliens?

 On April 19 the Dallas Morning News reported that the airship had crashed into a windmill in Aurora and exploded. The body of the pilot was recovered, and was identified as a native of the planet Mars. Despite this, the remains were buried in the local Masonic cemetery. The Amazing Airships of 1896

Of course with these reports of crafts in the sky so greatly resemble later UFO and extraterrestrial encounters it is not difficult to go one step further and claim these sightings are also extraterrestrial in origin. Sure some of the lights in the sky type sightings might well be alien space craft but more likely are simply natural phenomenon. 

The more detailed encounters suggest that these airships could not be alien in origin. The technology described was not that advanced (certainly not advanced enough for intergalactic travel) and most reported humans in the vehicles, or at least heard human voices and laughter from them. I find it highly unreasonable to connect the airship flaps with aliens, as the evidence is very much against that idea and more in favour of a more earthly origin. 

A Hoax?

History shows us that hoaxes are more likely an explanation for the sightings than any other possible cause. If you think news reporting is unreliable and biased now, then you have obviously not seen anything about news reporting in Victorian times. Given to exaggeration, and sometimes downright lying, just to sell papers many reporters would happily seize upon a light in the sky story and turn it into several pieces on strange craft generating more reports by people who think they've seen something which ends up generating more stories and so on. 

If you look at the flaps, starting off slowly and become more feverish and outlandish as time passes before petering out, the chronology bears out this sort of scenario perfectly. I'm not suggesting anyone person intentionally set out to hoax others, but I am suggesting a combination of factors may have exaggerated the stories from mere misunderstandings into crazy airship stories. 

One article even goes on to cite the possibility, that newspapers at the time suggested, that some of these hoaxes may even have been an elaborate advertising scam!

Foreign Powers?

The scareships show us that paranoia about the abilities of an adversary can lead to exaggerated reports. There is no way airships could have reached parts of the country they were reported in from anywhere else in Europe. The very idea is absurd. Perhaps the Sheerness sighting reported last time was a German airship but in Wales? Or in the north? Absolutely not. 

Perhaps there were airships in the sky during some of those encounters, but sadly the general media situation at the time of the sightings and people's enthusiasm for the subject leave me unable to believe the majority of reports which can be put down to hoaxes, exaggeration and mistaken identity. 

Further Reading

Mystery Airships In The Sky - Steven A. Arts (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery - Michael Busby (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

The Great Airship Mystery - Daniel Cohen (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Big Cats In Britain Part Two: The Evidence

Big Cats In Britain Part One: The Surrey Puma

"Alien big cats" are reported throughout the country (and throughout the world). But all such reports should be treated critically as human perception can be flawed. So what other evidence is there that large big cats wander our woods, fields and sometimes towns? Let's take a look.

There's plenty of video "evidence" on Youtube and the following video is certainly intriguing but only if that fence is 12 foot high. If it's not then this would be the smallest big cat in history.



In 1991 an European Lynx was shot near Great Witchingham, Norfolk. See the picture below.



Many think this animal was an escapee from a zoo or private collection who preyed upon local livestock until it was killed. It does at least show big cats have survived in the wild in the UK before. Another lynx was captured in 2001 and earned the nickname "the Beast of Crinklewood". She's now called Lara and lives at London Zoo.

Across the country in Shropshire, Devon and even on the Isle of Wight Jungle cats and Leopard cats have been shot or run over (on more than a few occasions!) over the last couple of decades. Now these cats aren't "big cats" but they are large ecologically alien cats and it is very interesting to see that they can be found living wild in this country.

The Times carried a story headlined "Puma Cub Caught Near Hospital" on the 28th of October 1976. That same year the Dangerous Wild Animals Act went through Parliament. This act is often cited as a cause for the release of captive animals into the wild in an effort to avoid breaking the law (it wasn't illegal to release them until the eighties). Although my article on the Surrey Puma shows big cat sightings do predate this event, perhaps this is when a larger more widespread population was introduced. In 1980 Ted Noble caught a puma, later named Felicity at Cannich, Inverness-shire, Scotland. This however didn't stop sightings of a large cat that had preceded her capture and they carried on as she lived out her days as a tourist attraction at the Highland Wildlife Park, Kinguisse. Another incident happened in Greenwich Park (just a few minutes walk from where I sit typing this) in 1987 when police shot a puma near the famous Greenwich Observatory.

Big cats mark their territory in a number of ways including tree scratching. Check out some pictures from Surrey here.

Worrying footage can be found about 7 minutes into this video. Part one of this documentary can be found here. I'm not big on conspiracy theories (as you, Dear Constant Reader, know) but I'm at a loss to explain away that footage of firemen and men with guns turning up at this man's property after a big cat sighting. Either there is an established extermination programme or the authorities have reason to take such reports extremely seriously. Now if they were simply taking things seriously surely it would be uniformed firearms officers who attended? Not a ramshackle group of guys who look more like guns for hire than officers of the law? Really rather interesting footage which I will take with a big dose of "reality" but will still ponder for quite some time. The big dose of reality is simply that the "big cat" looks to be a large domestic cat in this instance. Can they really grow that big? YES! I myself am desperate to own a Maine Coon which is a very large (and beautiful!) breed of felis catus. So I'm wary of the rest of the story as the premise (as featured in the video beforehand) is faulty. Another similar sort of report of police involvement can be read here. Again I make no claims of belief in such a cover up but simply put it out there for consideration.

Neil Arnold has an interesting article (among many) on what sort of big cats could survive and remain relatively hidden in the wilds of Kent (and hence most of Great Britain).

Check out the Monster Quest episode The Black Beast Of Exmoor for some more supposed footage of big cats in Britain.

Don't get me wrong, I believe most reports of such cats are simply mistaken identity as most pictures are very clearly domestic cats or some just dogs (I really despair when I see a picture supposedly of a big cat and see instantly it's a dog). But there is too much evidence to dismiss the fact that somewhere out there, right now, a large cat is lurking. Whether it's a rogue or a member of a thriving breeding population... that is what we need to establish.

Further Reading

Big Cats Loose in Britain - Marcus Matthews (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Mystery Big Cats - Merrily Harpur (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

The Surrey Puma: The Natural and Unnatural History of Britain's First Alien Big Cat - Roman Ilmar Golicz (UK Amazon)

Interesting Squid Video Released

This week National Geographic released a video of a rather interesting squid called a Magnapinna "Big Fin" squid.

This squid is not a newly discovered species although no examples have yet been caught dead, or alive.

Isn't the way it just seems to float there, almost looking directly at the camera, really rather wonderful? Brilliant video.

Haunted Sofa? News (if you could call it that)...

Sometimes I truly am amazed at the guff the news media print in this country. I can almost forgive the Sun, but the fact the Telegraph also went with this story proves that it has gone to the dogs.

Nigel and Christine Strange (cue five million jokes) from Bristol think their leather sofa is haunted because... it makes squeaking noises when they sit on it. The noises appear to be getting louder over time and their "fearless Yorkshire Terrier" is scared by the noises. 

1. Anyone ever had a leather sofa? I hate the things, the squeaky noises can be totally irritating. 

2. Sofas often BREAK and if something is broken inside it will often make a noise, especially when sat on, and over time the noise might get worse as the problem gets worse. 

3. Yorkshire Terriers will bark at anything. 

How can anyone take this seriously? It's obviously a set up story to enable the Sun to push it's parent companies latest release "The X-Files: I Want To Believe" (I did too but I was very much off put by the terrible plot). Only an idiot would assume something was haunted just because it squeaked when you sat on it!

And really... it's just a boring story. Unlike these tales of the unexpected (with a furniture twist)

Further Reading

Possessed Possessions : Haunted Antiques Furniture and Collectibles -  Ed Okonowicz and Kathleen Okonowicz (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Possessed Possessions 2: More Haunted Antiques Furniture and Collectibles - Ed Okonowicz and Kathleen Okonowicz (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part Two

The Steampunk UFOs Part One

The Airship Wave Of 1909

Less well known than the 1896-97 spat of sightings, the 1909 wave is still worthy of mention. This wave occurred at the true dawn of air travel and appropriately enough had a much more international flavour.

The "scareships" appeared across Britain that year causing panic and fear. We must remember that the early years of the 20th Century spelt the end of Britain's splendid isolation thanks to the invention of controlled, powered flight. The British truly were scared of what that could mean, and sadly we all know we Brits were quite right to fear what lay ahead. So "scareships" was the phrase the papers coined for that year's mystery airships.

The first ascent of the Zeppelin LZ1 in 1900

The Airship Wave Of 1909 - Dr David Clarke is a rather brilliant article about the scareships and their immediate historical setting. I'll give you a few examples of the sights Dr Clarke mentions:

In May 1909, the skipper of the Suffolk-based fishing smack Superb, J.H. Stockman, reported how in October the previous year, when fishing in the North Sea 35 miles out of Lowestoft he had seen what at first appeared to be "a large star rising out of the water" and approaching his ship. After calling one of his crew, Stockman decided to signal to the "airship" with a red flare, and to his surprise he was immediately answered by a red flare from above his ship. He then showed a white flare, and received a blue flare in response! The "airship" appeared to be sausage shaped, and carried a single light; it eventually disappeared out to sea in the direction of the Continent

No German Zeppelin would have been able to make such a crossing and the report is remarkably similar to many latter day UFO sightings.

From the point of view of the London newspapers, however, the scare can safely be said to have begun with the sighting made by Police Constable Kettle in the Cathedral city of Peterborough, early on the morning of 23 March 1909. It was this sighting which was the first to appear in a London evening newspaper, the Daily Mail, and was subsequently noted by Charles Fort in his account of the airship scare.

In his original statement, published in the Peterborough Citizen and Advertiser, Kettle said: "I was on duty in Cromwell-road at 5.15 am when I heard what I took to be a motorcar some 400 yards distant. It was quite dark at the time, and I looked along Cromwell-road expecting to see the lights of an approaching car. Nothing appeared, but I could still hear the steady buzz of a high-powered engine. Suddenly it struck me that the sound was coming from above, and I looked up. My eye was at once attracted by a powerful light, which I should judge to have been some 1,200 feet above the ground. I also saw a dark body, oblong and narrow in shape, outlined against the stars. When I first sighted the machine it was not straight overhead but appeared to be over the railway in the direction of Taverners-road. It was travelling at a tremendous pace, and as I watched, the rattle of the engines gradually grew fainter and fainter, until it disappeared in the northwest."

The Daily Mail's account mentions that a second policeman in another part of Peterborough had corroborated Kettle's account, but no further reference has been located referring to this fact in the local Press. Newspaper reporters, however, were quick to locate other witnesses in the town who claimed to have seen a similar object in the sky over Peterborough at around the same time. One of these was a Miss Gill, daughter of the city electrical engineer, who upon returning from the theatre with friends that same night saw "a brilliant flashing light in the sky...apparently attached to some dark object moving slowly in the direction of Cromwell Road.

This was to be the first in a series of sightings in East Anglia and soon enough fevered reporters and onlookers descended on the counties thereabouts in search of the lights in the sky. Soon the craze moved further afield...

"a report was made by a police constable Day, of the Lincolnshire force, to the effect that he had seen an airship hovering over Immingham Dock at night. PC Day claimed he was patrolling on the banks of the Humber at 2am when his attention was attracted to a bright light hanging over the river nearby.

"Having been in the navy for several years, the officer states emphatically that it was not a searchlight," maintained the Sheffield Telegraph. "He also states that he distinctly saw the outline of a car, which was swaying gently in mid-air. For an hour the mysterious body and light remained visible until, in fact, the officer went off duty."

As usual there may well have been a less sensational explanation for this sighting, for the account went on to say: "It so happens that there was a remarkable display of the Northern Lights early [on the morning of 22 May] and it is quite possible that this may afford an explanation."

I just imagine him staring at this strange sight, amazed and bewildered than seeing his watch and thinking "Wooooo... what am I doing standing around here, it's time for a beer!" Typical Brit... ;)

At Herne Bay in Kent, five independent witnesses in different parts of the town observed the passage of an airship shaped like "a big cigar" or a sausage, carrying a brilliant light, which travelled inland from the sea between 9 and 9.30 pm on 13 May.

On the same night hundreds of miles to the north in Hull, on the East Coast of Yorkshire, Mr A. Walker was walking home when he observed a flash of light in the sky above the Humber at 11pm. "It was working to the west and seemed to be tracking a little as if going against the wind which was forcing it back," he told the Hull Daily Mail. "It was a luminous body seen through a cloud, and appeared arc-shaped, and I also heard a peculiar whirring noise. The light was high up, about a mile up, I should think. It was dark and cloudy at the time and I had the light under observation for about two minutes. I immediately called my father and mother who were in the house, and they also both saw the light as it travelled westwards."

Several other Hull residents also came forward and claimed they had seen an airship hovering over the Humber the following night, and that "for a brief space, a piercing searchlight was directed on the river."

Did you think Kent would escape a mention? Never!

That is just a few of many sightings in Britain that spring and I've left out some actual encounters with "Germans" and even a few Men In Black stories too mentioned in the article which I really urge you to read. Given the huge amount of publicity and the sheer quantity of witness statements it's quite astonishing that so few people have even heard of the scareship wave, whether it was aliens, pre-WWI delusions or German recon flights it's still a fascinating phenomenon. The reports continued right up until the outbreak of the First World War and the first waves of real "scareships" which brought misery to our isles. In fact one incident in 1912 when the sounds of an airship were heard flying over Sheerness in Kent (trust me, if you are of right mind you'd want to ensure you flew above Sheerness and not ever touch down there...) lead to questions being asked in Parliament.

Another place that was home to a wave of sightings of strange craft was quite a long way away from any possible threatening Zeppelins; New Zealand.

This site has quite a few sightings listed:

New Zealand, Dunedin: On July 28, an airship apparently came down over the city of Dunedin. A resident in the North Eastern Valley reported that he was awakened by a horrible noise at about two o'clock this morning,' he told a reporter. “The noise was like a ship dragging her anchor up or a windlass of a steamer with dry-gear wheels working. I got up and went round to the front and I saw something floating up past Knox College. It was a great black thing with a searchlight attached.'"
• New Zealand, Fairfax: The afternoon of July 31, 1909, a resident reported seeing an airship while he was at Akatore. At 4:55 p.m., he saw a dark object shoot over the brow of the hills in the east and rapidly climb towards the west. He got a side view of the object which he described as cigar-shaped but bulkier, with a box-like structure underneath in the centre.
• New Zealand, Gore: Early the morning of August 1, a resident of Grosvenor Street in Dunedin reported seeing an airship. At one stage, he saw a bright yellow light shoot up what looked like a mast and stay at the top.
• New Zealand, Greenvale: On July 31, there was a UFO incident during the early morning hours at Greenvale, near Gore, South Island. While feeding the horses, a Greenvale farmhand heard a strange whirring sound, which frightened the animals. On looking out, he saw an airship overhead about 150 feet long. It had head and taillights and was moving so fast that, when he woke up his mates, the lights were faint in the distance.
• New Zealand, Kaka Point: New Zealand was repeatedly visited by UFOs, then known as "airships". On July 24, 1909, some half dozen boys were playing on the beach at Kaka Point saw a huge illuminated object moving about in the air. It appeared as if it was going to alight at Kaka Point. The light from it was distinctly reflected on the roof of Mr. Fitzgerald's cottage. The boys thought it was being attracted by their lantern and left it on the beach. The airship then glided around the rocks at the old pilot station and nearly came in contact with them. It shortly afterwards disappeared. The boys said it was as big as a house.
• New Zealand, Kaitangata: On Sunday night July 25, the mysterious object again made its appearance at the beach and was seen by Mr. George Smith and Mr. Poulter about 8:30. Mr. Smith viewed it through a very powerful night glass. It was apparently over Mr. Aitkenhead's house when he first saw it, but it glided high in the air and sailed north in the direction of Kaitangata, swooping west and east and finally disappearing over the horizon. About 10:30 Mr. Smith was called out by Mr. Poulter to see the airship, which again had made its appearance. This time it headed out to sea and eventually disappeared. As seen through the glass, Mr. Smith said it appeared to be a fair size, dark superstructure with a powerful headlight and two smaller lights at the side.
• New Zealand, Kelso: On July 23, a small group of schoolchildren and some residents reported that an airship came down and bobbed around in the sky over the school for a few minutes.
• New Zealand, Lambourne: On July 27, about 10 a.m., Mr. Allan Mitchell and Mr. Alex Riach, while working at Lambourne near the mouth of the Pomehaka River, saw high in the air a large boat-shaped structure floating in the air.
• New Zealand, Oamaru: On July 19, three residents of Oamaru, reported "a flickering light" moving about in the sky.

And just to prove it wasn't just the British Empire losing it's marbles, New England too was host to a fresh wave of American airships.

With sightings also reported in the Middle East and Vietnam the final few years before the First World War truly were the last great mystery airship wave. So what could be behind these reports? Are they lies, or misidentification of other phenomena? Are they steampunk aliens? The work of crazy inventors? A Government conspiracy? Or war machines sent by foreign powers? Next time we'll look at the evidence... Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part Three.

Further Reading

Mystery Airships In The Sky - Steven A. Arts (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery - Michael Busby (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

The Great Airship Mystery - Daniel Cohen (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

The Secret: Again

As the topic of the Secret seemed quite popular I thought I'd just show you all a video from the Infidel Guy debunking the whole thing. Long live the Infidel Guy!

Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part One

On November the 21st 1783, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes ascended to the skies in the worlds first known manned flight using a hot air balloon. Seeing that anniversary the other day sort of reminded me about those anomalous flying machines of the late 19th Century; the "Mystery Airships"

New Hampshire in 1870

Things began to go bump in the sky in the 1870s. Paris was occupied by the Prussians and Alexander Graham Bell was tinkering with a prototype which would one day drive us all insane and in America strange reports were appearing of "airships" in the sky. Over the next few decades the sightings continued, mostly in sporadic bursts, right up until the foo fighters took their place as the UFOs of the 1940s.

Although the major "flap" didn't occur until 1896 there were significant unidentified flying object sightings before that, with the below being the best known, and best documented, one.

On March the 26th 1880, in a small dot on the map named Galisteo Junction, New Mexico, a worker on the railroad and couple of friends were walking after a hard days work when they heard voices in the sky. The voices were in an unknown language, punctuated with laughter, and when they raised their eyes to the sky they were greeted with the sight of a gigantic craft floating above them occupied by a dozen or so men. They would later describe the craft as "fish shaped" because of it's cigar body shape with a tail, all driven by some sort of propeller.

The occupants threw out some objects and pieces of paper which were carefully examined by the men. The writing on the paper made them think of Oriental script and a cup was later described as being unlike any they'd seen before.

Later a strange visitor to town bought the objects and they were never seen again but, according to this site and the April 5th 1880 Santa Fe Weekly New Mexican, there is a postscript:

A party of tourists which included a wealthy young Chinaman stopped in the vicinity and found the stranger engaged in archaeological work. The young man grew excited on seeing the articles dropped from the airship, because among among them was a note in his fiancee's hand, and he explained that CHINESE EXPERIMENTS IN FLYING HAD AT LAST SUCCEEDED, meaning, the airship which crossed the skies of Galisteo Junction was THE FIRST FLIGHT OF a CHINA-TO-AMERICA airline.

China. To America. By Airship. In 1880. Hell, it's one heck of an idea!

But the real excitement started in 1896. Sightings began in California and over the next few months moved gradually eastwards.

In Sacramento in November 1896 some men "Not Addicted to Prevarication", as one newspaper put it, reported seeing a light moving across the sky and heard voices (in a remarkably similar manner to the New Mexico sighting that happened nearly two decades before).

"The most detailed report of the evening came from one R.L. Lowery, a former street railway employee who said he heard a voice from above call, "Throw her up higher; she'll hit the steeple." When he looked up he saw two men seated on a bicycle-like frame, peddling. Above them was a "cigar-shaped body of some length." Lowery said that the thing also had "wheels at the side like the side wheels on Fulton's old steam boat." The Mystery Airship Of 1896

A few days later even greater numbers of people observed the phenomenon in Sacramento and also in San Francisco. After that the sightings, and the claims about them, became increasingly weird and worryingly common. Sightings were reported all along the west coast from Canada down to California and people claimed the airships to be the works of crazy inventors or military machines destined for war against the Spanish (read any right wing blog and insert the word Spanish for Muslim and you'll understand America's feelings towards our European cousins in the late 19th Century). The feverpitch gradually dissipated and all was calm until... 

In February 1897 the airship(s) made another appearance, this time over Hastings, Nebraska and few days later 40 miles away in Invale. Soon they were again coming from all over with one farmer reporting:

"It is cigar shaped, about 200 feet long and 50 feet across at the widest point, gradually narrowing to a point at both ends,"

The Nebraska sightings grew so numerous many people began spending their evenings watching the skies, nearly one hundred years before Mulder and Scully! The sightings moved into other states near and far and that's when things got a little weird... 

The airship was first spotted in Kansas on March 26, and reports came in through April and early May. The most amazing account out of Kansas came from a farmer named Alexander Hamilton, in the little town of Le Roy. According to Hamilton, the airship had dropped down on his farm on the night of April 20. The pilots lassoed a heifer from Hamilton’s herd and carried it off into the air. Mr. Hamilton even produced a notarized statement from twelve prominent men of Le Roy, attesting to his honesty and truthfulness.

The small town of Aurora, Texas, had an even more dramatic incident. On April 19 the Dallas Morning News reported that the airship had crashed into a windmill in Aurora and exploded. The body of the pilot was recovered, and was identified as a native of the planet Mars. Despite this, the remains were buried in the local Masonic cemetery.

Chicago awaited the airship with great anticipation, and was not disappointed. The mysterious lights reached Illinois at the beginning of April, and lasted through the first half of the month. After a handful of reports during the first week of April, a spectacular series of airship sightings swept Illinois and Indiana during the week of April 9-16, with 110 reports over the course of seven nights. It was spotted all over Illinois, frequently in different parts of the state on the same night.

In nearby Wisconsin, a farmer found a letter, apparently from the pilots of the airship, describing its construction in Tennessee. Other letters turned up in Michigan and Texas, obviously practical jokes. The most celebrated “airship message” was found in Astoria, Illinois. It was addressed to Thomas Edison, and was seemingly a coded report to him from the pilot of the mystery airship. The great inventor called it a “pure fake.”

After Illinois and Indiana, the sightings began to taper off. They did not end at once; reports were still being published in June of 1897. But they were scattered and few in number. The great wave of airship mania had broken and receded. The Amazing Airship of 1896

I believe the below picture to be one taken in Chicago at the time of the ships appearance there, although even then it was widely assumed to be a fake.



Things didn't end there.... Mystery Airships: The Steampunk UFOs Part Two

Further Reading

Mystery Airships In The Sky - Steven A. Arts (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery - Michael Busby (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

The Great Airship Mystery - Daniel Cohen (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Shadows

The Shadow Man is the only thing that holds me back from falling completely into scepticism and losing the last vestiges of my imaginative youth. Maybe I should thank him for that, although I have no doubt if he ever presented himself to me again I'd be beating a hasty retreat for the nearest exit.

For many years he was a secret between me and my Auntie Melly. But one day when I was about sixteen I was at a BBQ with my Mum and lots of her arty friends (she was into that stuff that year, no doubt prompted by her Salvador Dali obsessed artist boyfriend) I happened to tell a group of people the story. One woman stared at me open mouthed and told me her own story. In her house she and her family often found a shadow man crouched in the corner of her landing. Whenever they spotted him he'd get up and run away but not before they'd catch a glimpse of his bright red eyes. It chilled me then to think that we had both encountered/imagined something so similar.



I put it out my mind until a few years ago when I was busy writing up my Shadow Man story for a Halloween blog post. I decided to do a little search on the net and was truly horrified to discover... the shadow people are something many people have encountered. Be it an illusion of the human mind or a group of entities, there is something in it worthy of further investigation.

After I wrote my blog post on the shadow man many Halloweens ago, one of my workmates read it and got freaked out by it. She told her entire department about it and later that day one quiet member of the marketing team sidled up to my desk and asked to talk to me. Jo told me about how she'd woken up one day to find the shadow man in her bedroom... and he didn't just stand and watch her but "freaked out" and attempted to attack her before she fled the room screaming with terror. Again I felt a chill run down my spine... she told me she had never told anyone before because she was afraid they'd laugh at her and she'd never heard anyone else talk about them but my description matched hers exactly. And it scared her quite a bit. How many others around us have met a shadow and keep it to themselves because they are afraid of ridicule?

As I said in one of my first posts on this subject on this blog, the Shadows is a particularly good website. Yes it's a fundie site. But it has some good info hidden in there too. The Shadow Gallery is the most useful part for me and page 3 especially interesting; it was here I discovered something even more disturbing.

The pair of Hooded Shadows haunted me at Sharnall Lane (where I saw the Shadow Man). I'd often see them hiding behind things outside, staring through windows and even running off down alleyways if I caught a glimpse of them. I know, it sounds insane, but even though I'm referring to them as "beings" I am more than open to the probability they are but figments of my imagination, and others imaginations too. But still the question that interests me the most is why do so many people reports the exact same things? Are our brains wired up to see shadows? Possibly. Pareidolia is the condition that causes our minds to interpret some images from our eyes as human faces or forms like the Face of Mars, and Hypnagogia is a form of waking dread that causes hallucinations, feelings of dread and the feeling of paralysis. Plus there are multiple other explanations... but still whilst my rational mind nods with approval my other mind, my now tiny irrational brain, that has slowly given up territory on religion and supernatural phenomena to my rational side, clings with desperation to this one last thing. I just can't shake the feeling that there's something more to shadow men. And if there is something more to shadow men, then the entire rational world I've bought into these last few years will go up in smoke and I'll have to reevaluate my entire way of thinking. That is why this topic will return again and again.