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Mystery airship
The mystery airship or phantom airship was a phenomenon that thousands of people across the United States claimed to have observed from late 1896 through mid 1897. Typical airship reports involved nighttime sightings of unidentified flying lights, but more detailed accounts reported actual airborne craft similar to an airship or dirigible. Mystery airship reports are seen as a cultural predecessor to modern claims of extraterrestrial-piloted UFO's or flying saucers.
Reports of the alleged airship crewmen and pilots usually described them as humanoid, although sometimes the crew claimed to be from Mars. It was widely believed at the time that the mystery airships were the product of some inventor or genius who was not ready to make knowledge of his creation public.
It has been frequently argued that the mystery airship sightings could not have represented genuine dirigibles as no officially documented test flights of long-range powered airships or airplanes of any kind in the United States from the period are known to exist and "it would have been impossible, not to mention irrational, to keep such a thing secret." Although several experimental airships had been manufactured and tested prior to the 1896–97 reports (e.g. Solomon Andrews made successful test flights of his Aereon in New Jersey in 1863 and Frederick Marriott successfully demonstrated his small airship Avitor Hermes Jr. in California in 1869), the technology of the day could not possibly have produced airships with the capabilities that people were reportedly seeing in 1896–97. Reece and others note that contemporary American newspapers of the "yellow journalism" era were more likely to print manufactured stories and hoaxes than are modern news sources, and editors of the late 19th century often would have expected the reader to understand that such stories were false.
Initially, most journalists of the period did not appear to take the airship reports very seriously; however, as the sightings continued, several newspapers covered the story with genuine wonder and interest, while others were more skeptical and even hostile. Some newspapers denounced the entire airship story as nonsense and openly mocked and ridiculed the witnesses and believers, dismissing them as drunks, fools or liars. After the major 1896–97 wave ended, the entire airship story quickly fell from public consciousness and was all but forgotten for nearly seventy years. During the mid 1960s, the airship phenomenon began to receive renewed interest as reports were gradually rediscovered in the archives of old newspapers by contemporary UFO investigators who suggested the 1896–97 airship waves might represent earlier precursors to the modern era of UFO sightings that began in the United States following World War II.
A number of popular novels dealing with airships and their secretive inventors were published in the years before the airship sightings. Especially popular among American audiences were the Frank Reade stories by Luis Senarens, which began in 1882 and frequently centered on airships. The wildly successful Frank Reade Library ran to 191 stories. Senarens' acquaintance Jules Verne borrowed the conceit of a secretive inventor who had developed a powerful airship for his novel Robur the Conqueror, which was published in the US in 1887. The airship stories of the prolific science fiction author Robert Duncan Milne were also serialized in San Francisco newspapers during the 1890s.
The late 19th century was a period of intense technological innovation, including the invention of the telephone and automobile. Widespread publications about both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air flight in the late 19th century gave rise to a common belief that the development of a successful airship was imminent.
On November 17, 1896, the very same day the first sighting of the mystery airship occurred in Sacramento, California, the Sacramento Bee printed what claimed to be a telegram from a New York inventor stating that he was flying his airship from New York to California and would arrive there within two days.
In July 1868, The Zoologist carried a report from a local newspaper in Copiapó, Chile, regarding a "gigantic bird" with "brilliant scales" that made a metallic sound had been seen flying over the town. Charles Fort, in his 1931 book Lo!, discussed this report along with various other reports of aerial apparitions from the 19th and 20th centuries. Fort observed that "inhabitants of the backwoods of China" might "similarly describe one of this earth's airships floating over their farms" (Curiously, the 1896-97 airship reports were barely mentioned in Fort's works, although at that time he was writing for some of the same newspapers that were covering the airship stories and almost certainly was aware of the enormity of the 1896-97 airship wave). Discussing the Copiapó report in 2001, Loren Coleman called it an example of "reports of weird aerial constructions" on the boundary between machines and animals that "just do not make sense".
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Mystery airship
The mystery airship or phantom airship was a phenomenon that thousands of people across the United States claimed to have observed from late 1896 through mid 1897. Typical airship reports involved nighttime sightings of unidentified flying lights, but more detailed accounts reported actual airborne craft similar to an airship or dirigible. Mystery airship reports are seen as a cultural predecessor to modern claims of extraterrestrial-piloted UFO's or flying saucers.
Reports of the alleged airship crewmen and pilots usually described them as humanoid, although sometimes the crew claimed to be from Mars. It was widely believed at the time that the mystery airships were the product of some inventor or genius who was not ready to make knowledge of his creation public.
It has been frequently argued that the mystery airship sightings could not have represented genuine dirigibles as no officially documented test flights of long-range powered airships or airplanes of any kind in the United States from the period are known to exist and "it would have been impossible, not to mention irrational, to keep such a thing secret." Although several experimental airships had been manufactured and tested prior to the 1896–97 reports (e.g. Solomon Andrews made successful test flights of his Aereon in New Jersey in 1863 and Frederick Marriott successfully demonstrated his small airship Avitor Hermes Jr. in California in 1869), the technology of the day could not possibly have produced airships with the capabilities that people were reportedly seeing in 1896–97. Reece and others note that contemporary American newspapers of the "yellow journalism" era were more likely to print manufactured stories and hoaxes than are modern news sources, and editors of the late 19th century often would have expected the reader to understand that such stories were false.
Initially, most journalists of the period did not appear to take the airship reports very seriously; however, as the sightings continued, several newspapers covered the story with genuine wonder and interest, while others were more skeptical and even hostile. Some newspapers denounced the entire airship story as nonsense and openly mocked and ridiculed the witnesses and believers, dismissing them as drunks, fools or liars. After the major 1896–97 wave ended, the entire airship story quickly fell from public consciousness and was all but forgotten for nearly seventy years. During the mid 1960s, the airship phenomenon began to receive renewed interest as reports were gradually rediscovered in the archives of old newspapers by contemporary UFO investigators who suggested the 1896–97 airship waves might represent earlier precursors to the modern era of UFO sightings that began in the United States following World War II.
A number of popular novels dealing with airships and their secretive inventors were published in the years before the airship sightings. Especially popular among American audiences were the Frank Reade stories by Luis Senarens, which began in 1882 and frequently centered on airships. The wildly successful Frank Reade Library ran to 191 stories. Senarens' acquaintance Jules Verne borrowed the conceit of a secretive inventor who had developed a powerful airship for his novel Robur the Conqueror, which was published in the US in 1887. The airship stories of the prolific science fiction author Robert Duncan Milne were also serialized in San Francisco newspapers during the 1890s.
The late 19th century was a period of intense technological innovation, including the invention of the telephone and automobile. Widespread publications about both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air flight in the late 19th century gave rise to a common belief that the development of a successful airship was imminent.
On November 17, 1896, the very same day the first sighting of the mystery airship occurred in Sacramento, California, the Sacramento Bee printed what claimed to be a telegram from a New York inventor stating that he was flying his airship from New York to California and would arrive there within two days.
In July 1868, The Zoologist carried a report from a local newspaper in Copiapó, Chile, regarding a "gigantic bird" with "brilliant scales" that made a metallic sound had been seen flying over the town. Charles Fort, in his 1931 book Lo!, discussed this report along with various other reports of aerial apparitions from the 19th and 20th centuries. Fort observed that "inhabitants of the backwoods of China" might "similarly describe one of this earth's airships floating over their farms" (Curiously, the 1896-97 airship reports were barely mentioned in Fort's works, although at that time he was writing for some of the same newspapers that were covering the airship stories and almost certainly was aware of the enormity of the 1896-97 airship wave). Discussing the Copiapó report in 2001, Loren Coleman called it an example of "reports of weird aerial constructions" on the boundary between machines and animals that "just do not make sense".