The Aurora Incident

In 1897 at 6 am, a very strange incident occurred in a sleepy North Texas town called Aurora.

A cigar-shaped UFO, metallic silver in color, appeared suddenly in the sky above the town. It was moving from south to north and unlike the balloon airships of its time, this UFO was built of “an unknown metal, resembling somewhat a mix of aluminum and silver.” A witness guessed that the ship weighed “several tons.”

The sighting occurred during a time when many strange airships were being seen all over the United States. For this reason, the UFO is called an “airship” in a newspaper article written later by Aurora resident S. E. Haydon.

Haydon told the Dallas Morning News that the strange craft seemed to be having some kind of mechanical problems. It slowed down to about ten or twelve miles per hour and began settling toward the ground.

Haydon said the townspeople watched in amazement as the slow-moving airship drifted over the town square and then moved north toward the property of Judge J. S. Proctor.

Next, the UFO collided with a windmill on the judge’s land and “went into pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground.” The crash destroyed the windmill, the adjacent water tank and the judge’s flower garden.

the explosion and crash drew many spectators to Judge Proctor’s land. Among the wreckage, the townspeople found the dead body of the ship’s pilot. Then the story got really weird. Witnesses said that the pilot was not a human being.