Latest / Ridiculous History / The Infamous Aurora UFO Incident of 1897

Transcript

The Infamous Aurora UFO Incident of 1897 · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Uh. That's our number one
0:35
Speaker 1: super producer, Mr Max Williams. Give him a hand, don't
0:40
Speaker 1: give him a probe. You'll see what we're talking about. Uh.
0:42
Speaker 1: They call me Ben Noel. You and I over the
0:46
Speaker 1: years have not just on Ridiculous History, but we've done
0:48
Speaker 1: another show called stuff. They don't want you to know.
0:52
Speaker 1: It's true, Ben. And you know, while I don't think
0:55
Speaker 1: Max deserves the kind of probe that we may be
0:57
Speaker 1: talking about today, he is great for probing for for knowledge.
1:00
Speaker 1: He's a veritable font of trivia and and wisdom. So
1:04
Speaker 1: for that probe away from from from the other areas
1:09
Speaker 1: that might be probed by visitors from another world. Why
1:19
Speaker 1: do they get such a bad rap for touching people's
1:21
Speaker 1: butts all the time? I don't get it. Where does
1:23
Speaker 1: this contromt? Yeah, it's it's weird because if you look
1:26
Speaker 1: at the stories of alien abductions through the lens of folklore,
1:30
Speaker 1: they have a lot in common with stories of like
1:33
Speaker 1: earlier supernatural abductions, the fay or the fairies, Right, the
1:38
Speaker 1: fair folk or you know, Rip van Winkle is basically
1:41
Speaker 1: a story of alien abduction with different stuff Mad lived in.
1:45
Speaker 1: As far as the occupation with nether regions, that's an
1:50
Speaker 1: interesting question. Sometimes it says more about the people who
1:53
Speaker 1: are telling the story of the abduction than it does
1:56
Speaker 1: from people. Yeah, because they've never been on record explaining
2:02
Speaker 1: their perceived rationale. So maybe we should maybe we should
2:05
Speaker 1: hold judgment on them until we hear directly from the source.
2:10
Speaker 1: But I bring up stuff that once, you know, because
2:12
Speaker 1: over the years, you and me and our ride or
2:16
Speaker 1: die uh Mr Matt Frederick first of his name, we
2:20
Speaker 1: have looked at any number of alleged UFO sightings, and today,
2:25
Speaker 1: for ridiculous history, we thought we would flex our UFO
2:29
Speaker 1: muscles just a little bit and talk about a UFO
2:33
Speaker 1: crash that didn't just happen here in the US, didn't
2:36
Speaker 1: just happen in Texas. It is indeed considered the most
2:39
Speaker 1: famous UFO crash in the entire history of Texas. Yeah,
2:44
Speaker 1: and it's like it's like pre nineteen hundreds. It took
2:47
Speaker 1: place in April of eighteen nine seven. I would consider
2:50
Speaker 1: this a historic UFO incident. A cigar shaped craft of
2:56
Speaker 1: some description was reportedly seen crashing into a windmill in Aurora,
3:03
Speaker 1: which is a tiny old town just north of Fort
3:06
Speaker 1: Worth there in Texas, and over the years it's almost
3:10
Speaker 1: taken on the stature of like a urban legend or
3:15
Speaker 1: a myth of some kind. It really is some of
3:17
Speaker 1: that's sort of been carried over through generations through oral tradition. Uh.
3:21
Speaker 1: There are varying accounts of it that differ wildly from
3:25
Speaker 1: you know, an alien actually popped out of the craft
3:28
Speaker 1: and said, how do you do to um the idea
3:32
Speaker 1: of it ending up dead as a result of the crash,
3:36
Speaker 1: and the residents of the town purportedly holding its tattered
3:42
Speaker 1: frail carcass aloft and carrying into the town for a
3:45
Speaker 1: proper Christian burial. Yeah, which is kind of Yeah, it
3:49
Speaker 1: seems kind of sweet. You know, it sounds like the
3:52
Speaker 1: people of the town and if that version of the
3:54
Speaker 1: story of true, were you know, doing doing what they
3:57
Speaker 1: thought was the right thing. We're gonna dive into some
4:02
Speaker 1: reporting of the day, particularly Ee Hayden, who is a
4:06
Speaker 1: reporter from the Dallas Morning News at the time. But
4:10
Speaker 1: maybe we we set the stage a little bit first,
4:13
Speaker 1: because you pointed out something that should be very interesting
4:17
Speaker 1: to any budding ufologists in the crowd today. Would you
4:21
Speaker 1: ask most people who are not UFO heads themselves about
4:24
Speaker 1: the first major modern UFO incident, they'll probably tell you Roswell,
4:31
Speaker 1: New Mexico, and that's when that was in July. We
4:36
Speaker 1: have an episode on that and something ill what you know, uh,
4:39
Speaker 1: And we are pretty sure that we nailed down the
4:44
Speaker 1: actual the most likely explanation for this one spoiler alert.
4:49
Speaker 1: For a while, people were trying to say it was
4:53
Speaker 1: a weather balloon, but Uncle Sam kept changing its story
4:57
Speaker 1: and just made things worse and worse. But hold the phone,
5:01
Speaker 1: hold the spacecraft. Roswell was not the first UFO incident,
5:06
Speaker 1: not not at all. Like the idea far predates this crash,
5:11
Speaker 1: long long before the story of Roswell. We saw people
5:16
Speaker 1: from California and people from Texas who were talking about
5:21
Speaker 1: things falling from out of the sky. Yeah, and it
5:24
Speaker 1: was like that they didn't have have context, probably too,
5:26
Speaker 1: you know, because it just wasn't in the zeitgeist. I mean,
5:29
Speaker 1: there certainly was science fiction, you know, older you know,
5:32
Speaker 1: classic pulpy kind of sci fi novels, But it's just
5:35
Speaker 1: the idea of a UFO crash or an alien abduction
5:38
Speaker 1: just wasn't in the public consciousness the same way as
5:41
Speaker 1: it was after Barney and Betty Hill, you know, in
5:44
Speaker 1: that whole situation that you can hear a lot about
5:46
Speaker 1: in um Strange Arrivals The Fantastic Podcast with Aaron Manky
5:51
Speaker 1: and Grimm and Mild hosted by the incredible Toby Ball,
5:54
Speaker 1: who you've heard on this very show, that that really
5:57
Speaker 1: was the incident that kind of popularized the idea, and
5:59
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the reports and sighting it just
6:01
Speaker 1: like went through the roof and we actually had an
6:03
Speaker 1: episode and stuff they don't want you to know about
6:05
Speaker 1: a similar sighting um that took place in New Mexico
6:09
Speaker 1: from a guy named Lonnie's a more a very credible
6:11
Speaker 1: kind of workaday law enforcement officer. And some of the
6:15
Speaker 1: resource we did for that episode, you find a lot
6:17
Speaker 1: of like, um, almost evangelical Christian explanations for these things,
6:22
Speaker 1: uh kind of liking these visitors to you know, angels
6:25
Speaker 1: or something like the Nephelum, these giants from you know,
6:29
Speaker 1: heaven that essentially are coming down to uh wage war
6:33
Speaker 1: against Satan and all his you know, evil doings and stuff.
6:36
Speaker 1: So you know, it's interesting the way these kinds of
6:38
Speaker 1: things don't really start to kind of develop like a
6:42
Speaker 1: real clear narrative until many years later. So eighteen nine seven,
6:46
Speaker 1: to your point, we've already had some reports in small
6:48
Speaker 1: towns in California and around Texas and all that was
6:52
Speaker 1: more than fifty years before Roswell. So it all starts
6:55
Speaker 1: with two fellas from Lodi, California, reporting an attempted abduction
7:00
Speaker 1: by three uh strangers, um, you know that were unfamiliar
7:05
Speaker 1: described as alien strangers in eighteen nine six. Uh that year,
7:09
Speaker 1: Colonel H. G. Shaw and Camille Spooner, We're traveling from
7:15
Speaker 1: Lodi to the Fresno Citrus Fair when they claim to
7:19
Speaker 1: have come across three in human looking beings organisms. Uh
7:26
Speaker 1: and they were reportedly quite tall, around seven ft tall
7:29
Speaker 1: and super skinny. Yeah, okay, yeah, let's live in this,
7:33
Speaker 1: which is real quick before we get to Texas. This
7:35
Speaker 1: is a year before the Aurora incident. Colonel Shaw says
7:40
Speaker 1: that these aliens tried to abduct him and Spooner, but
7:44
Speaker 1: they were saved because they were too heavy to carry.
7:47
Speaker 1: So essentially, the three seven foot tall creatures run up
7:52
Speaker 1: and I guess you know, trying to grab them by
7:54
Speaker 1: their armpits or something. They go, oh snap, no different gravity,
7:58
Speaker 1: they hide tail it to their ship and they leave,
8:01
Speaker 1: and and Show writes about this in the evening Mail,
8:05
Speaker 1: and he has he has the weirdest statement. He says,
8:08
Speaker 1: I have a theory, which of course is only a theory,
8:11
Speaker 1: that those we beheld were inhabitants of Mars who could
8:14
Speaker 1: have been sent to Earth for the purpose of security
8:17
Speaker 1: one of its inhabitants. So I like that he I
8:20
Speaker 1: like that he caveats this wild statement where it's like, Okay,
8:24
Speaker 1: it's it's only a theory, but I think they were
8:27
Speaker 1: from Mars. And also, if we could ask Show today,
8:31
Speaker 1: I'd be very interested in hearing how they tried to
8:36
Speaker 1: pick the guys up, Like if they only needed one inhabitant,
8:39
Speaker 1: why didn't all three of them focus on picking up
8:42
Speaker 1: one earthly anyway? Yeah, and it just come on, that
8:45
Speaker 1: sounds like a pretty poorly planned kidnapping. You know, he
8:49
Speaker 1: just cannat grab him. You don't have a van defilman too.
8:52
Speaker 1: They're just on foot like v I don't think they
8:57
Speaker 1: were the top brass of Mars if that's If that
9:00
Speaker 1: to the case, I don't think they were the brightest
9:01
Speaker 1: crayons in the intergalactic Crayola box. I agree with jokingly.
9:06
Speaker 1: When we refer to a lot of these things, it
9:07
Speaker 1: tends to seem like the ones that get spotted or
9:11
Speaker 1: like the you know, the sightings of these UFOs are
9:14
Speaker 1: probably like rogues, sort of dumb, dumb aliens that like
9:17
Speaker 1: you know, didn't do a good job of like hiding there.
9:20
Speaker 1: They're covering their tracks, right, I mean, yeah, I'm just
9:23
Speaker 1: thinking of this SNL recurring sec they do where it's like,
9:27
Speaker 1: you know, it's the three people in there and like
9:29
Speaker 1: two of them having this wonderful experience when they got abducted,
9:32
Speaker 1: and then there's Kate McKinnon and she's like, oh man,
9:34
Speaker 1: I must have gotten like the B team on mind. Yeah, yeah,
9:39
Speaker 1: that's all I'm thinking about when we're having this conversation
9:41
Speaker 1: right here, Dude, check it out. That that's what I
9:45
Speaker 1: was thinking about as well. It's like my experience was
9:48
Speaker 1: a little different. I suppose. Uh, it's maybe not fit
9:51
Speaker 1: for family show, but if you enjoy a good laugh,
9:54
Speaker 1: please do check it out. Kate McKinnon always kills it
9:57
Speaker 1: on Saturday Night Live. There's something interesting As. There's a
10:01
Speaker 1: guy named John Callahan who was writing a book about this.
10:06
Speaker 1: You see him mentioned in a Mental Flaws article called
10:09
Speaker 1: Seven Strange Tales from the wild West by Kyla Cathy.
10:12
Speaker 1: And John Callaghan tracks down other reports of UFO sightings
10:18
Speaker 1: in this area, and he is a great source for
10:22
Speaker 1: a lot of these descriptions. Whether or not you think
10:24
Speaker 1: they're true, whether you think that it's all a hoax,
10:27
Speaker 1: or whether you think aliens are real and for some
10:31
Speaker 1: reason just don't have the upper arm strength to abduct humans,
10:34
Speaker 1: that's that's on you. What we're saying is this was
10:36
Speaker 1: already kind of in the zeitgeist the year before this
10:41
Speaker 1: famous event in Aurora, Texas. So the claim is that
10:53
Speaker 1: on the morning of April, a bizarre looking flying craft
10:59
Speaker 1: plummeted into town from the sky and it hit the
11:02
Speaker 1: local windmill on the property of a very credible dude,
11:07
Speaker 1: one Judge J. S. Proctor, and then it broke away
11:12
Speaker 1: from the windmill and fell to the ground, destroyed his
11:16
Speaker 1: flower garden. Uh and no one knew what to make
11:19
Speaker 1: of it. Just for a side note, this happened about
11:23
Speaker 1: six years before Kitty Hawk and the Right Brothers made
11:27
Speaker 1: their first successful flight, so it's not as if this
11:30
Speaker 1: was a misidentified plane. Yeah, you don't get much more
11:33
Speaker 1: credible a name than Judge Proctor, like too nominated determinism.
11:40
Speaker 1: Isn't a Proctor kind of like a stern like taskmaster
11:43
Speaker 1: or someone that like oversees the test taking much like
11:47
Speaker 1: the episode I was describing for something that I wants
11:49
Speaker 1: you to know this is a very credible witness. And
11:51
Speaker 1: then you make a good point. I sort of lead
11:53
Speaker 1: with the idea that this was early in the days
11:56
Speaker 1: of these UFO sightings, the very earliest of days, so
11:58
Speaker 1: it wasn't in the zeitgeist in the same way that
12:01
Speaker 1: it would have been after these really big, high profile
12:04
Speaker 1: events that made national news. But you're right, that had
12:07
Speaker 1: happened enough time where people were kind of like had
12:10
Speaker 1: heard about it, you know, enough to be like, what
12:12
Speaker 1: is that? But the question is are they aliens? Are
12:15
Speaker 1: they from Mars? Are they angels? Whatever they might be.
12:17
Speaker 1: I don't think that was necessarily as entrenched as it
12:20
Speaker 1: would have been, you know, a generation later, A hundred percent. Man,
12:24
Speaker 1: this is strange because people would have read newspapers of
12:28
Speaker 1: the time, they would have maybe known that some stuff
12:31
Speaker 1: was getting weird. In California, but they wouldn't have had
12:34
Speaker 1: the language to hang their perspectives upon. They wouldn't have
12:39
Speaker 1: said ufo or flying disc. They ran to see this
12:44
Speaker 1: wreckage all the local townspeople of Aurora. And this is again,
12:49
Speaker 1: like we said at the top, this is where the
12:51
Speaker 1: stories start to diverge a little. In one they find
12:55
Speaker 1: the mangled and burned remains of whoever was piloting this raft.
13:00
Speaker 1: But even though it was burned, they could recognize the
13:05
Speaker 1: body was quote world, World. And then an army officer
13:14
Speaker 1: comes from Fort Worth and he says, you know, this
13:18
Speaker 1: is definitely not a human. This is about even alien
13:20
Speaker 1: being quite possibly, in my opinion, a Martian. They were
13:24
Speaker 1: very dead set on these being Martians. I'm not sure why,
13:29
Speaker 1: but uh, but maybe we go back to Hayden, the
13:32
Speaker 1: Dallas Barning news guy. Let's maybe get a report from
13:35
Speaker 1: the day. What do you think you got a good
13:36
Speaker 1: old time? Ever? Yeah, if if, if I might, uh,
13:40
Speaker 1: let's see, I'm not gonna I'm just gonna do a
13:42
Speaker 1: do an interpretive reading here. About six o'clock this morning,
13:45
Speaker 1: the early rises of Aurora were astonished at the sudden
13:48
Speaker 1: appearance of the airship. It sailed over the public square,
13:51
Speaker 1: and when it reached the north part of town, it
13:54
Speaker 1: collided with the tower of Judge Procta's windmill and went
13:57
Speaker 1: into pieces with a terrific explosion. Kubo Um, the pilot
14:01
Speaker 1: of the ship, is supposed to have been the only
14:03
Speaker 1: one aboard, and on his remains were badly disfigured. Enough
14:06
Speaker 1: of the original has been picked up to show that
14:09
Speaker 1: he was not an inhabitant of this world. That was
14:14
Speaker 1: a wildly varying all over the place reading there. But
14:17
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it, and I hope it's good info, really
14:21
Speaker 1: good writing, and it's I would say, it's a wildly
14:24
Speaker 1: accurate representation of voices of the time. You know what
14:27
Speaker 1: I mean, That's how the town sounded. And if you
14:30
Speaker 1: don't believe us, you can go back to the late
14:33
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds and check for yourself. Uh we will. We
14:37
Speaker 1: will accept all apologies, uh in cash. So this wreckage
14:42
Speaker 1: like there's a lovely thing there. They they say airship, right,
14:47
Speaker 1: they don't say ufo, they don't say flying disc because
14:50
Speaker 1: people aren't thinking in those terms at this point, but
14:53
Speaker 1: they do know, like we do know some interesting things. First,
14:58
Speaker 1: there were multiple people who play him to have seen this.
15:01
Speaker 1: Multiple members of the town, including the judge, including reporters,
15:05
Speaker 1: including members of the military. The debris that they saw
15:09
Speaker 1: looked like it was made of metal, but it was
15:12
Speaker 1: a metal that was unfamiliar to the townsfolk of Aurora.
15:16
Speaker 1: They said, it looks kind of like silver, kind of
15:19
Speaker 1: like aluminium, maybe a blend of the two, but it
15:21
Speaker 1: was much much heavier. And they also found what they
15:24
Speaker 1: described as paper like artifacts with hieroglyphic like writing on them.
15:31
Speaker 1: And there weren't you know, they don't have dumpsters, they
15:35
Speaker 1: don't have a big recycling center, so they just eventually
15:40
Speaker 1: get rid of the wreckage the way they would throw
15:42
Speaker 1: away anything else. They put it in the well. And
15:46
Speaker 1: fast forward oh decades later, this guy named Brawley Oates
15:52
Speaker 1: takes over the land where the well is located and
15:56
Speaker 1: he says, Okayvin had cleaned the debris out again, not
15:59
Speaker 1: because I'm solving a big mystery, but because I want
16:01
Speaker 1: to be able to use the well water. Uh. And
16:05
Speaker 1: when he was doing this, it took a long time.
16:08
Speaker 1: If you've ever cleared out a well, it's a it's
16:09
Speaker 1: a real pain. So he spent hours and hours and
16:12
Speaker 1: hours cleaning out this well that was just full of dunk.
16:15
Speaker 1: And then later he developed a pretty serious case of arthritis.
16:21
Speaker 1: His hands were knotted and twisted, you know what I mean.
16:24
Speaker 1: It was the kind of thing where he would know
16:25
Speaker 1: what the weather was going to be like in a dance.
16:28
Speaker 1: And he went to his grave believing that the water
16:35
Speaker 1: in the well was contaminated by wreckage from the stars,
16:40
Speaker 1: and that that's what gave him out arthritis. So even
16:43
Speaker 1: though he had dug out the well pretty pretty well,
16:46
Speaker 1: he dug out the well pretty well. Even though he
16:49
Speaker 1: did all that, he later went back and he covered
16:52
Speaker 1: the well up, He filled it with concrete, and he
16:55
Speaker 1: built a shed on top of it because he didn't
16:57
Speaker 1: want anybody else to have this experience. That it's important
17:00
Speaker 1: because it shows us the people in the town after
17:02
Speaker 1: the eight nineties, they still believed that there was something
17:06
Speaker 1: extraordinary about this wreckage. And according to the story, you know,
17:09
Speaker 1: the folks in Aurora weren't quite sure what to do,
17:12
Speaker 1: so they did what I kind of ended at the
17:16
Speaker 1: top of the show, what would have been natural for
17:18
Speaker 1: them to have done, which is to take the alien
17:21
Speaker 1: and bury it uh and give it a proper Christians
17:23
Speaker 1: send off at the local cemetery. Their historical records UM
17:27
Speaker 1: connected to the Aurora Cemetery that even contain information about
17:32
Speaker 1: this funeral having taken place. And rather than you know,
17:35
Speaker 1: give it a proper headstone, that was like you know,
17:38
Speaker 1: jizzled and all that. Granted, they used a just a
17:42
Speaker 1: stone to mark the site. So pretty interesting. In nineteen
17:45
Speaker 1: seventy three, Mary Evans, who actually lived in Aurora during
17:49
Speaker 1: this time, Um, she spoke with a reporter and kind
17:53
Speaker 1: of did her best to remember what it was like,
17:55
Speaker 1: and she talked about it in terms of the excitement
17:58
Speaker 1: that it caused, but also the fear that was kind
18:01
Speaker 1: of spreading through the community because folks didn't really know
18:04
Speaker 1: what to make of it or what the intentions were. Um,
18:07
Speaker 1: this was before you know, she points out there were
18:10
Speaker 1: any airplanes even in the area. You know, I mean
18:13
Speaker 1: there were what will you say, you said, Ben Kitty
18:15
Speaker 1: Hawk was a couple of years later, correct, right, that's right. Yeah,
18:19
Speaker 1: so that would have been the first man's you know,
18:21
Speaker 1: uh flight. So this was the technology that maybe there
18:25
Speaker 1: were rumblings of, you know that this was not something
18:27
Speaker 1: that people had seen. So folks were very perplexed when
18:31
Speaker 1: me when they saw something like this, because it wouldn't
18:33
Speaker 1: have been like today, or you could easily mistake you know,
18:35
Speaker 1: a distant plane or an airship or a drone or
18:38
Speaker 1: something like that for a U a P. Which is
18:41
Speaker 1: the proper term for for UFO these days. It was
18:44
Speaker 1: unidentified aerial phenomenon. Nailed it. Yeah, that's and that's such
18:49
Speaker 1: a good observation. So these folks would have known if
18:52
Speaker 1: something was a bird, for instance, Uh, those would have
18:55
Speaker 1: been the flying things that they were familiar with. This
18:59
Speaker 1: is definitely not a bird. Uh. They weren't aware of
19:03
Speaker 1: planes because planes weren't a thing. So they were at
19:06
Speaker 1: a loss. And again, multiple people saw this. It wasn't
19:09
Speaker 1: just one isolated witness. So this person you mentioned, Mary Evans,
19:16
Speaker 1: her parents didn't let her go to the crash site,
19:18
Speaker 1: but they did tell her that the townsfolk had found
19:22
Speaker 1: some kind of humanoid or alien pilot and they buried it.
19:26
Speaker 1: And one physics professor in the same story said that
19:30
Speaker 1: they've found iron near this alleged crash site, and the
19:34
Speaker 1: iron did not have the usual magnetic properties of that metal.
19:39
Speaker 1: But if you go forward and you dig a little deeper,
19:43
Speaker 1: you'll see that in ninety nine in an article for
19:47
Speaker 1: Time magazine, at least one resident, Eda Phughughes, who was
19:53
Speaker 1: eighty six at the time, said the whole thing was
19:56
Speaker 1: a hoax. She said that journalists we just mentioned a
20:00
Speaker 1: couple of times here Hayden made it up as a
20:03
Speaker 1: joke to bring some interest and hopefully maybe some tourism
20:06
Speaker 1: dollars to Aurora. And then there's another story, which to
20:11
Speaker 1: me is even even more plausible because it's so silly,
20:15
Speaker 1: you guys. Some townsfolk later would say the whole story
20:20
Speaker 1: of an alien was made up by two notorious drunks
20:24
Speaker 1: who accidentally set a fire at the windmill and then
20:27
Speaker 1: wanted to cover up their tracks, and so they made
20:30
Speaker 1: the most ironclad, waterproof alibi ever. Aliens are real, and
20:36
Speaker 1: they landed on the windmill. Sorry, judge, Yeah, sorry, sorry
20:41
Speaker 1: about that. Um, aliens didn't. So yeah. Then, um, the
20:45
Speaker 1: grave site that we talked about that was marked with
20:49
Speaker 1: a rock, it became kind of an attraction. Um, Like
20:53
Speaker 1: you said, then there was almost this like tourist draw
20:55
Speaker 1: for this thing. But even locally it became a spot
20:58
Speaker 1: of of significant an interest. Children would come by and
21:02
Speaker 1: take a look and talk about what might be buried there. Uh.
21:05
Speaker 1: In the early seventies, someone went and took a metal
21:08
Speaker 1: detecture to the grave and the readings indicated that, um,
21:11
Speaker 1: there were three giant pieces of metal buried along with
21:16
Speaker 1: the pilot. And then, of course, you know, as sites
21:20
Speaker 1: like this tent to be subject to there were you know,
21:24
Speaker 1: people stealing the gravestone and then it would you know,
21:27
Speaker 1: come back, it would, it would show back up, and
21:28
Speaker 1: things like that. Someone eventually discovered a giant metal pipe
21:31
Speaker 1: sticking out of the ground of the grave site and
21:33
Speaker 1: it was removed and the site was once again gone
21:38
Speaker 1: over with a metal detector. In this time there were
21:40
Speaker 1: no readings for metal, so it appears that whatever was
21:44
Speaker 1: once in there was no longer there. It had either
21:48
Speaker 1: been taken by a single person or a group. But
21:51
Speaker 1: for what purpose, I ask you, right, yeah, if you
21:56
Speaker 1: are a believer in government cover ups of UFOs, and
22:00
Speaker 1: maybe maybe some military members went and robbed the grave
22:07
Speaker 1: to keep it secret, but what again, what would their
22:10
Speaker 1: motivation be? This is why the Aurora incident remains so
22:22
Speaker 1: fascinating to enthusiasts of UFO history. But we do have
22:26
Speaker 1: to say there are a couple of other there there's
22:29
Speaker 1: another explanation we should mention. An author named Michael Busby
22:33
Speaker 1: researched this pretty in depth, and he had a theory
22:36
Speaker 1: that might be new to a lot of us in
22:38
Speaker 1: the crowd today. He says, yes, it is true that
22:43
Speaker 1: the Right brothers hadn't made their first flight when the
22:46
Speaker 1: Aurora incident occurred in April of eight, but he believes
22:51
Speaker 1: there is evidence of a secret cabal of aircraft builders
22:56
Speaker 1: called the Sonora Aero Club a e er oh, and
23:00
Speaker 1: that this club was experimenting with flying machines in California
23:05
Speaker 1: around the time of the crash. So in Bisbee's mind,
23:09
Speaker 1: it's possible that whatever crash and Arora was an experimental
23:12
Speaker 1: craft by this secret club, and that the pilot was
23:17
Speaker 1: badly mangled, all too human victim of the crash. If
23:21
Speaker 1: you want to read more about this, there's a great
23:23
Speaker 1: article by Rebecca J. Rossin called The Airship Club That
23:27
Speaker 1: Might never have existed, and it's on the Atlantic. It's
23:32
Speaker 1: free to read online. Now, you know what, it's almost
23:35
Speaker 1: its own episode. It's it's so weird because the only
23:40
Speaker 1: reason we know about some of this stuff is due
23:43
Speaker 1: to a house fire in Houston in the nineteen sixties,
23:46
Speaker 1: someone found twelve scrap books that appear to tell the
23:50
Speaker 1: story of a secret group of airplane builders. How wild
23:55
Speaker 1: is that? I had never heard of that one, So
23:57
Speaker 1: that one doesn't have aliens in there, but it does
23:59
Speaker 1: have a heck of a conspiracy if it's true. We're
24:03
Speaker 1: calling the National Treasure people were getting Nikki Cage on
24:06
Speaker 1: the line. We're gonna see if he wants to make
24:08
Speaker 1: a movie. What do you say? I love it. Yeah,
24:11
Speaker 1: you have me at National Treasure and Nikki Cage. Yeah,
24:15
Speaker 1: we can call him movie. He truly has not no
24:18
Speaker 1: irony here. Um. He's one of my favorite living actors.
24:21
Speaker 1: I think when he's used correctly, he's like a cruise missile.
24:24
Speaker 1: He is laser focused. He gets the job done. I
24:26
Speaker 1: think Big was one of the best movies of two
24:28
Speaker 1: Thoe question. Yeah you know, actually I meant to This
24:33
Speaker 1: is unrelated to anything, but I'm meant to tell you guys.
24:35
Speaker 1: I know we're well. I know about you, Max, but
24:38
Speaker 1: Noel and I are both big, big Nick Cage fans
24:40
Speaker 1: and big big fans of some of the more experimental
24:44
Speaker 1: stuff he's done recently, like Mandy, which is awesome and
24:47
Speaker 1: Color Out of Space. I just I just saw this
24:51
Speaker 1: really weird adult animated fantasy epic called like in the
24:57
Speaker 1: spine of Night or something. It's got that box sheet
25:00
Speaker 1: type Rhodo Scope animation, and I wanted I almost texted
25:06
Speaker 1: you guys because it's it's worth watching. It's got a
25:09
Speaker 1: killer cast. Pat and Oswalt's in it, a bunch of
25:13
Speaker 1: other famous people. What's her name is it? Uh? Oh Zena, Yeah, yeah,
25:18
Speaker 1: Lucy Lawless is in it. Uh. It's free if I
25:22
Speaker 1: think it's free if you have Amazon, but they don't
25:25
Speaker 1: sponsor the show. It's just we're always we're nerds, were
25:28
Speaker 1: always sharing cool stuff to watch. You should hear us
25:31
Speaker 1: talk about Moon Night off air. So so the way
25:35
Speaker 1: Nick Cage aside, he'd be perfect for this if it
25:38
Speaker 1: were a film. I love that you brought up the
25:42
Speaker 1: grave and the grave appeared to either have been robbed
25:45
Speaker 1: or to not have anything in it. Because so many
25:48
Speaker 1: of the questions about what actually crashed there could be
25:51
Speaker 1: cleared up easily by exhuming the grave, it to this
25:56
Speaker 1: day has not been permitted. The Aurora Cemetery Is Association
26:01
Speaker 1: has stonewalled every single attempt to exume the grave full
26:07
Speaker 1: stop and the well has been tested in modern times,
26:11
Speaker 1: but the only the only weird thing that the well
26:13
Speaker 1: shows is a high level of a luminium, which means
26:17
Speaker 1: if you're a researcher and you're operating within the balance
26:21
Speaker 1: of the law, all you can do is count on
26:23
Speaker 1: eyewitness testimonies from contemporary newspapers, and those are notoriously unreliable.
26:30
Speaker 1: No one has found any any physical proof at this time.
26:36
Speaker 1: It may just be nothing more than a bit of
26:38
Speaker 1: modern American folklore. But we have to go back to
26:44
Speaker 1: se Hayden. What did he I mean, if he made
26:49
Speaker 1: it up? Why did he make it up? Pretty risky, like,
26:55
Speaker 1: you know, to be a shrewd kind of even handed
26:59
Speaker 1: um journey a list of some note to start spreading
27:03
Speaker 1: a story like this, Yeah, it's It's strange because one
27:08
Speaker 1: of the stories that we found, one of the proposed
27:11
Speaker 1: explanations we found in Dallas news dot com called fake
27:16
Speaker 1: news from Wise County brought UFO believers to Aurora. Eventually.
27:21
Speaker 1: This was by Jin Graffender, and Grafender argues that Hayden's
27:27
Speaker 1: made up tail was concocted as a last resort to
27:32
Speaker 1: help revive the town because it had fallen victim to
27:35
Speaker 1: an outbreak of spotted fever, and people were dying of this.
27:39
Speaker 1: But also everybody was healthy who could afford to leave
27:43
Speaker 1: was leaving. So the town was beset by a plague
27:48
Speaker 1: almost and people were terrified to go into town and
27:51
Speaker 1: do business. We know it's true that Hayden lost his wife,
27:55
Speaker 1: then two of his own children to the outbreak. One
27:58
Speaker 1: of his other kids actually lost their eyesight. So the
28:03
Speaker 1: idea here is that he made this up as a
28:07
Speaker 1: way of saving the town or maybe even you know,
28:11
Speaker 1: for being cynical getting something about the town in the
28:14
Speaker 1: news that wasn't spotted fever. Right, Yeah, that's not the
28:18
Speaker 1: kind of that's not as much of a tourist draw
28:21
Speaker 1: as alien grave, is it, right? And no, what is
28:25
Speaker 1: spotted fever? I think? Is it something like like the pox?
28:29
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's a I bet it's got to
28:31
Speaker 1: have to do with box or or bubbles, pustules, you know,
28:35
Speaker 1: So spotted fever is from ticks enough and just right now,
28:51
Speaker 1: no way, it's the bacterial infection that takes takes like
28:55
Speaker 1: latch onto you. If they stay there for too long,
28:57
Speaker 1: like a couple of hours, then boot him. You got
29:00
Speaker 1: spotted Fever Max with the fag excut theme song Just
29:12
Speaker 1: for you. I love it right now, just for you. Yeah,
29:21
Speaker 1: that's first it would have been. It would have been
29:22
Speaker 1: funny if we could have have had Matt on this
29:26
Speaker 1: episode and placed to join. He was unfortunately booked up
29:30
Speaker 1: at this time, but we'll have him back again soon.
29:33
Speaker 1: But we gonna have a live rendition. That'd be great.
29:36
Speaker 1: Matt was here. Wow, sorry to just jeez my favorite. Yeah,
29:43
Speaker 1: he's everyone's favorite. Oh man, all right, I'm rethinking my favorite.
29:48
Speaker 1: You blame him. I mean, Matt's basically God's gift. I
29:51
Speaker 1: mean guys like Mats basically my work older brother. All right, yeah, wow,
29:58
Speaker 1: Ben feels ways about the well you can you can
30:02
Speaker 1: you can hear what behind Alex be your work older brother,
30:06
Speaker 1: like my actual older brother. Yes, mutually exclusive. I don't
30:10
Speaker 1: think they don't think it is. It's it's hard to explain, guys. Alright, well, okay,
30:18
Speaker 1: it's an emotion. Passwords for you, and we respect that.
30:21
Speaker 1: If you want to see what all the hype is about,
30:23
Speaker 1: you want to hear our pal Matt Frederick live and
30:25
Speaker 1: direct or recorded and direct check out stuff. They don't
30:29
Speaker 1: want you to know where he is Uh, the third
30:32
Speaker 1: amigo of our show. And then also check out video
30:36
Speaker 1: Games Part two of Ephemeral, wherein Max and Matt make
30:41
Speaker 1: A have an epic interview. I say it's epic. I
30:45
Speaker 1: can't wait to listen. I'm falling behind Max and Matt.
30:47
Speaker 1: A friendship a podcast friendship for the ages. Check it out.
30:50
Speaker 1: So this kind of takes an interesting turn. Um years later,
30:54
Speaker 1: around ten, a lawyer from Dallas offers a reward for
31:00
Speaker 1: the return of that grave marker that had been stolen
31:03
Speaker 1: from the the area where the alien, which by the way,
31:06
Speaker 1: it was affectionately known by the locals as ned Uh
31:10
Speaker 1: was married. Yeah. Yeah, he wanted to get to the
31:15
Speaker 1: bottom of this. We know the grave marker we're stolen
31:18
Speaker 1: sometime in ninety two. Coincidentally, around the same time, Mouf
31:23
Speaker 1: on the Mutual UFO network published an investigation into the incident.
31:29
Speaker 1: And then there was that other replacement marker that was
31:31
Speaker 1: put down that was stolen in UH. You can find
31:35
Speaker 1: descriptions of the marker. But currently, as we record today
31:40
Speaker 1: is where the story ends. The town has a standing
31:46
Speaker 1: call for the return of either of those markers. And
31:51
Speaker 1: if you return it, if you have it. You're listening now,
31:53
Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historians. You will not have any criminal charges
31:57
Speaker 1: brought to you. They just want it back because it's,
31:59
Speaker 1: for better or worse, a piece of the town's history.
32:02
Speaker 1: I love UFO stories. This is as you said, this
32:06
Speaker 1: is where the story stands now. But we want to
32:09
Speaker 1: hear weird UFO tails from your neck of the Global Woods.
32:13
Speaker 1: You can find us on Facebook where we're ridiculous Historians.
32:16
Speaker 1: You can find us on the Internet, not just as
32:20
Speaker 1: a show, but as individuals. We get into all kinds
32:23
Speaker 1: of hijaks. That's right. You can find me on Instagram
32:26
Speaker 1: exclusively where I'm at how now, Noel Brown, Ben bull
32:29
Speaker 1: and I believe you can be found in a couple
32:31
Speaker 1: of locations. That's true. Like the Catholic Saints of old,
32:35
Speaker 1: I've mastered the art of by location on social media.
32:38
Speaker 1: At least you can find me on Instagram where I'm
32:40
Speaker 1: at ben Bullen b w L I n get a
32:43
Speaker 1: sneak peak of some weird things I'm up to. You
32:46
Speaker 1: never know what you'll find. And you can also find
32:49
Speaker 1: me on Twitter where I'm at ben bullan hs W
32:53
Speaker 1: mostly getting clowned by Max Williams, who used to be
32:58
Speaker 1: my favorite, but that has changed. Max. What's your Twitter handle? Yeah?
33:02
Speaker 1: I know I'm still your favorite, so you don't even
33:04
Speaker 1: have to pretend. Yes, you can find me on Twitter
33:06
Speaker 1: and Twitter alone at at L Underscore Max Williamson, as
33:10
Speaker 1: Bed said, Yeah, a lot of trolling, HAMP, but other
33:12
Speaker 1: fun stuff like me getting way too passionate about the
33:15
Speaker 1: you know, Atlanta sports scene and stuff. What about that
33:19
Speaker 1: new season of Picard? I heard that Jordan Theforge is
33:22
Speaker 1: making a triumphant return. Oh. I wasn't gonna say. I
33:27
Speaker 1: haven't sent Ben the trailer or anything because I didn't
33:29
Speaker 1: want to spoil any of it. But yes, but yes,
33:32
Speaker 1: LaVar Burnon is going to be in it, and some
33:34
Speaker 1: other people as well. Since you won't be hosting Jeopardy,
33:37
Speaker 1: I guess you need something to do. Here we go,
33:40
Speaker 1: Uh well, thank you so much as always for tuning in, folks. Big, big, big,
33:45
Speaker 1: big thanks to our own crash Landing alien, Jonathan Strickland
33:50
Speaker 1: a k. The Quister. You know him, you know him.
33:53
Speaker 1: Big thanks to Alex Williams who composed this track. Max.
33:57
Speaker 1: Big thanks do you of course, Big thanks to h
34:00
Speaker 1: E see pegram with us in spirit and and NOL
34:03
Speaker 1: I wonder if Okay, so earlier we established we're gonna
34:07
Speaker 1: go do our try to do a live show in Iceland,
34:10
Speaker 1: our first first post COVID live show. I think we
34:13
Speaker 1: can get Aurora in the budget. Let's make the weirdest,
34:16
Speaker 1: most inconvenient tour. I just like to plan Man Aurora, Texas.
34:21
Speaker 1: I'm all about inconveniencing the public. We'll see you next
34:26
Speaker 1: time Fox. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
34:35
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
34:38
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.