Page 37 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - February 2023 Edition
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Mystery Airships or Phantom Airships 37
Mystery Airships or
Phantom Airships
Continued from Page 36
In 1973, MUFON investigators
discovered the alleged stone marker used
in this burial. Their metal detectors
indicated a quantity of foreign material
might remain buried there. However,
they were not permitted to exhume, and
when they returned several years later,
the headstone – and whatever metallic
material had lain beneath it – was gone.
An account by Alexander Hamilton of
Leroy, Kansas, supposedly occurred
around April 19, 1897, and was
published in the Yates Center Farmer's
Advocate of April 23. Hamilton, his son
and a tenant witnessed an airship
hovering over his cattle pen. Upon closer
examination, the witnesses realized that a 1887 wave Clark writes that any attempt to "uncover
red "cable" from the airship had lassoed the truth about the late 19th-century
a heifer, but had also become entangled Several unusual aerial events were airship scare comes up against some
in the pen's fence. After trying reported from the East Coast of the U.S. unhappy realities: newspaper coverage
unsuccessfully to free the heifer, in 1887. was unreliable; no independent
Hamilton cut loose a portion of the fence, investigators ('airshipologists') spoke
then "stood in amazement to see the ship, 1909–1913 directly with alleged witnesses or
cow and all rise slowly and sail off." attempted to verify or debunk their
Some have suggested this was the There was a series of mystery airship testimony; and, with a single
earliest report of cattle mutilation. In sightings in 1909 in New England, New unsatisfactory exception, no eyewitness
1982, however, UFO researcher Jerome Zealand and various European locations. was ever interviewed even in the 1950s,
Clark debunked this story, and confirmed Later reports came from the United when some were presumably still living."
via interviews and Hamilton's own Kingdom in 1912 and 1913. However, by
affidavit that the story was a successful this time airship technology was well The "single unsatisfactory exception"
attempt to win a Liar's Club competition advanced (Count Ferdinand von Clark cites is a former San Francisco
to create the most outlandish tall tale. Zeppelin had been flying his massive Chronicle employee interviewed via
passenger-carrying airships for nearly a telephone by Edward J. Ruppelt in 1952.
Other Cases decade by then), making the prospect Ruppelt wrote that the man "had been a
that these may have been small, private copy boy…and remembered the incident,
airships rather than evidence of but time had cancelled out the details. He
Before 1896
extraterrestrial visitation or newspaper did tell me that he, the editor of the paper,
Charles Fort cited a mystery airship hoaxes more reasonable. and the news staff had seen 'the ship', as
he referred to the UFO. His story, even
sighting in Copiapo, Chile. It was
Wallace Tillinghast, a Massachusetts though it was fifty-six years old, smacked
described as a gigantic, shining bird
businessman, gained notoriety for claims of others I'd heard when he said that no
driven by a noisy motor.
he was responsible for the 1909 wave one at the newspaper ever told anyone
In a variation of the usual airship, on July due to an airship he had built, but his what they had seen; they didn't want
29, 1880 two witnesses in Louisville, claims were never substantiated. people to think they were 'crazy'."
Kentucky saw a flying object described
as "a man surrounded by machinery Later research (Continued on Page 38)
which he seemed to be working with his
hands" with wings protruding from his Jerome Clark writes, "One curious THE ‘X’ ZONE RADIO/TV SHOW
back. Merely a month later, a similar feature of the post-1887 airship waves with
sighting happened in New Jersey. It was was the failure of each to stick in ROB McCONNELL
www.XZBN.net
written at the New York Times that "it historical memory. Although 1909, for www.SimulTV.com CH-54
was apparently a man with bat's wings example, brought a flood of sightings
and improved frog's legs... the monster worldwide and attendant discussion and PARANORMAL STAKEOUT
waved his wings in answer to the whistle speculation, contemporary accounts do with
of a locomotive." not allude to the hugely publicized LARRY LAWSON
events of little more than a decade www.XZBN.net
earlier." www.SimulTV.com CH-54
