In 1896 something was flying over the state of California and scaring the bejessus out of everyone. Numerous residents stated that they saw something "long and cylindrical" with "wings and a light that blinked at the bottom." Other eye-witnesses said the device was "over a 100 feet long" and "shaped like a cigar with huge fish fins on the side and back." By the middle of November, several articles about the mysterious airships were published in papers including the San Francisco Call and the Oakland Tribune.

At one point a lawyer named George Collins came forth to say that he represented the inventor of this ship who was named E. H. Benjamin and had personally been taken to see the airships as they lay in a clearing in a nearby wood. Benjamin was a dentist who "tinkered on the side" and had invented 2 of these great airships in hopes of selling the plans to them to the US Army. Over anxious reporters descended on the offices of Mr. Benjamin and beat the door down when they found he was not there. Inside they found only dental instruments. Collins later said he was the victim of fraud and recanted his entire story.

By 1897 stories of the flying monstrosities had died down in California and resurfaced over the American midwest. A Kansas farmer in February reporter to the local paper that he had seen "a great and gigantic ship float over his home" as he was walking from his barn one night. "The flying craft was cone shaped and upwards to 50 feet long with lights on all sides. A woman was visible through a window and waved at me as the thing passed over," continued the farmer in his statement to the paper. Other areas of Kansas picked up on the story and by the next month several newspapers in Kansas and Nebraska was reporting similar stories. A report from the Topeka Morning Star reported that a family in Inavale has "been witness to another of those mystery ships" The family had been astounded when the airship had landed and "the occupants were ordinary Americans who were traveling from California to New York courtesy of a great inventor who had made the craft himself."

A Dallas newspaper one upped it's neighbors to the North by declaring that one of the mysterious airships had exploded over Aurora Texas on April 17, 1897. Many people in the town took souvenirs of "the highly unusual wreckage which was strewn for miles." A pilot of the airship was found who resembled "no one from this earth." The paper noted that this "man from the stars" was given a proper Christian burial in the local church grounds.

San Francisco newspaper illustration from 1897.

Not to be out done the Houston Daily Post newspaper reported two weeks that a man in El Campo Texas had once been shipwrecked on an uncharted island in 1862. While there he had been witnessed to a crash of an unknown airship. gathering his courage the man approached the wreckage and was surprised to find metals "such as never seen before." Even more frightening was the discovery of several bodies of the crew men of that ill fated craft who measured over 12 feet in height! The paper reported that these bodies were treated with the utmost respect before they were tumbled back off the island and into the sea. The shipwreck survivor used the lightweight materials of the crashed aircraft to make a raft which he used to escape. The raft was left to the sea after the survivor was picked up by a Russian ship. He did, however, kept a ring from one of the corpses fingers which measured over 2 1/2 inches in diameter.

It helps to realize that in the late 1800's newspapers often came up with "tall tales" to fill up space when the paper was short of interesting news. Since it took several days for information to come from either coast, the urge to invent news was a strong one and many an editor succumbed to the feeling. Still there may be a kernel of truth to the reports buried beneath the hyperbole. Could it be possible that someone did see something up in the sky that shouldn't have been there?

sources

"The Great 1890's Airship Scare" Rose D. Leonard, 1991, Peniscott Printing

"The Oakland Tribune Indexed Collection 1890 - 1900" Oakland Tribune Publisher

"Flying Objects Over America" Jacob Nashton, Unknown Magazine Vol. 3, Issue 291

photo courtesy of San Francisco Media Out-Source