Off the Wall: When 1800's Arkansas Lawmen Chased Otherworldly Tech That Still May Not Exist
The UFO/Airship Crisis of 1896-97, Where Up-Standing Citizens Witnessed Some Amazing Shtuff!
The UFO/Airship Crisis of 1896-97, Where Up-Standing Citizens Witnessed Some Amazing Shtuff!
(Dixie Drudge) - People from all walks of life have been seeing strange things in the sky since time immemorial. Most are misidentifications. Others, like the recent Tic-Tacs are witnessed by the most highly skilled observers and they even bring back the high-tech proof that , “The Truth is out there.”
Such it is with the Mystery Airship Sighting wave that occurred across the US from 1896-1897. Many notable and responsible people saw what the couldn’t explain. During that time, before the terms ‘Flying Saucer’ and ‘UFO’ were coined, Airship was the logical title used for these mystery vehicles. People not only saw them, several claimed to have interacted with the crews. Even saying that they were humanoid beings claiming to be from Mars. The Southern states, particularly Arkansas, were no exception as several of the most detailed accounts show.
April 20, 1897, Captain Jim Hooton, a railroad conductor for the Iron Mountain Railroad, reported to the Arkansas Gazette that his experience as he was visiting Texarkana to pick up a train engine to return to Little Rock. Having time before the train was ready, he went near hunting near Texarkana. While poking through some brush, he heard what he was certain to be a locomotive air pump. Curious, he followed and found the source of the noise. A large airship had moored in a clearing. Hooton approached and talked to a crewman who wore strange smoked glasses. The crewman told him that yes, the ship used compressed air and that, “you will know more later on.”
The most known sighting was by two respected lawmen near Hot Springs. As chronicled in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas:
On the rainy evening of May 7, Constable John J. Sumpter and Deputy Sheriff John McLemore were riding horseback outside the city limits. As they were riding, they saw a bright light in the sky that quickly disappeared. Puzzled, but not too alarmed, the two kept on their journey. Suddenly, they saw the light again, this time much closer to the ground. The two lawmen rode on to investigate. According to the account they gave to the Hot Springs Sentinel, they rode until their horses refused to go any farther. They dismounted and drew their weapons. They described seeing a cigar-shaped vessel, sixty feet long. Walking around the ship were several men, all shining lights while another filled a sack with water. Sumpter and McLemore asked the men what they were doing. A bearded man, holding a lantern, came near the policemen and told them that they were traveling through the country on an airship. The presumed pilot of the airship asked if the two lawmen would like to ride in the ship, “saying that he could take us where it was not raining. We told him we believed we preferred to get wet.” The pilot said their eventual destination was Nashville, Tennessee. The lawmen let the airship go on its way.
There were enough credible sightings in the state that the Arkansas Senate decided to cash in and passed a resolution declaring that the airships should be paying taxes on the freight they carried.
It is true that lighter than air ships had been tested in the US and Europe, but these sightings could not have been genuine dirigibles as no documented test flights of long-range powered airships or airplanes of any kind in the United States from the period are known to exist. Also, technology necessary for the performance reported by some that these vehicles displayed did not yet exist. Since, even before social media this was the golden age of home inventors and self-promotion, flights would have almost certainly been attended by members of the press to attract investors.
So, what were these credible witnesses seeing? Were they simply reading too much Jules Verne? What was flying across the US years before it was even invented and just what crashed in Aurora, Texas?
Another good article on the Hot Springs Incident
