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The Aurora Encounter.
UFO Crashes in early morning hours April, 1897.

10.01.2006

Page 1

· Mysterious Airship Sightings across the United States
· Airship Crashes near Aurora Texas, pilot killed

Texas' Roswell While the most famous UFO crash story of all time might be the one describing the Roswell, New Mexico incident, it is not the first. On April 17, 1897 a mysterious airship would promote the town of Aurora Texas to legendary UFO at Roswell fame. It was not first time that the Texas Airship had reportedly been seen, nor was it the last. The significance of the Aurora Encounter is that there was a alien body left to be studied, along with hundreds of reported sightings of the same description across the central United States at that time. The Dallas Morning News carried the story but, as current expectations would have it, the story was not a headline, nor was it even on page 1.

The story was on page 5, listed among more than 12 other articles discussing sightings of mysterious airships. In the two days prior to this incident, there were another 16 articles describing sightings by reputable people in the same area of Central Texas. In late November 1896, there were thousands of witnesses reporting a sighting of airships over California, some 1500 miles to the west. Between November 1896 and April 1897, many additional airship sightings were documented in several states from California to Michigan. Between April and May 1897, the airship sightings continued in more than 30 Texas counties reported by hundreds of real Texans with the most common element being that it was cigar shaped and could do things that today's airships can barely do. What they saw may never be determined, but they did see something of extraterrestrial origin fly overhead. Granted, many UFO sightings and pictures are hoaxes, but at the turn of the century, people had no motive to make up a story such as this other than simply stating that they saw something and wanted to tell others about it. The story was all but forgotten until 2005 when Hayden Hewes, the founder of the International UFO Bureau would arrive in Aurora to reopen the UFO investigation.

The Aurora crash differs from the Roswell crash in that original documentation was not tampered with by the military nor were the still living eye witnesses debriefed, or told to keep quiet by the military.  Hewes found that many residents, wanted very little if anything to do with the story of the crash, but 3 or more people who were alive at the time were willing to talk to investigators.  Robbie Hansen although not a direct witness considered the incident to be untrue simply because her father laughed at the story and thought it was a hoax.  Two other witnesses provided first hand accounts of the sighting, contradicting Robbie Hansen.  Mary Evans, who was 15 at the time, recalled that something did crash; her parents went to see the crash, but would not let her view the scene.  Charlie Stevens was 10 years old the time, says he saw the smoke trailing airship fly overhead and disappear near Aurora, he heard an explosion and saw the smoke plume.  The young Mr. Stevens wanted to go and view the site but, his turn of the century farmer father would not let him because there were chores left to complete.  The following day after returning from town, his father told him about all of the scattered wreckage he saw at the scene.

A twist to the legend was added in 1945 when Rolley Oats moved to Aurora, Texas. Needing water, he had the well that reportedly had the pieces of the spaceship thrown into it more than 40 years earlier, cleaned out. Under the presumption that radiation from the well, or the well water, caused him to develop severe arthritis conditions in his left hand, and after more than 12 years of getting drinking water from the well, he sealed it with a 6" concrete slab. It has been suggested that the bulk of the debris was hauled away to a currently unknown location and the remaining, smaller items were thrown down the well.

Aurora Newspaper Article

Related: Roswell UFO 1947

Aurora UFO Image library

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