Aurora Texas UFO Incident

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A newspaper clipping on the incident.
A newspaper clipping on the incident.

The Aurora UFO Incident is an alleged UFO crash that occurred on April 17, 1897 in Aurora, Texas.[1] A UFO is said to have hit Judge J.S. Proctor's windmill[2] resulting in its crash, and the burial of the dead pilot at an unmarked grave at the Aurora cemetery. The Aurora cemetery contains a Texas Historical Commission marker mentioning the incident.[3] A portion of the second paragraph on the marker states, “This site is also well known because of the legend that a spaceship crashed nearby in 1897 and the pilot, killed in the crash, was buried here.” At the time of the incident, the Dallas Times Herald reported that the pilot of the craft was "not of this world" and that the "being" was buried at the local cemetery.[4]

A plaque near the site.
A plaque near the site.

A MUFON investigation in 1995 uncovered a piece of metal that was 95% aluminum, and 5% iron.[1] This is very uncommon in nature, leading to the assertion raised in MUFON's report that, given the presumption that it originated in 1897, the sample could not be of terrestrial nature. However, even MUFON's report does not discount the explanation that the sample was simply left there at some point during the last century. The graveyard was also searched, where a marker was uncovered that appeared to show a flying saucer of some sort. MUFON asked for permission to exhume the site, but the community resisted. The report speculated that the people of Aurora did not want to lose the notoriety that the alleged crash had brought them. The previous owner of the land where the crash had taken place is known to have discarded the metal from the wreckage by throwing it into his well. Having subsequently developed severe arthritis that he blamed on contaminated well water, the same previous owner sealed over the well with a concrete slab.[5][6] A document with unknown hieroglyphics was also found after the crash.

In an interview with Time magazine in 1979, Etta Pegues claimed that S.E. Hayden, the local correspondent who sent the news of the incident to nearby newspapers in Dallas and Fort Worth, "wrote it as a joke and to bring interest to Aurora. The railroad bypassed us, and the town was dying."[2]

[edit] In popular culture

  • The 1985 movie The Aurora Encounter is based in part on the story of the UFO incident in Aurora, Texas.
  • The incident was featured in an episode of the show UFO Files.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Aurora Texas Crash Part 1. MUFON. Retrieved on 2007-04-12.
  2. ^ a b Close Encounters of a Kind. Time (March 12, 1979). Retrieved on 2007-04-12.
  3. ^ Fink, Mike (February 17, 2004). Alien country: Earthlings welcome. CNN. Retrieved on 2007-04-12.
  4. ^ Aliens: a conspiracy out of this world. BBC News (October 2, 1998). Retrieved on 2007-04-12.
  5. ^ [http://ufo.whipnet.org/xdocs/aurora.texas/ (UFO.WHIPNET.ORG) "The Aurora Encounter. UFO Crashes in early morning hours April, 1897."]. Retrieved on 2008-01-28.
  6. ^ [http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4587362.html (The Houston Chronicle) "Can a space alien rest in peace? "]. Retrieved on 2008-01-28.

[edit] External links

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