1918 Spanish Newspaper UFO Story

I found this little jewel, I just love old school UFO stories. As usual, very difficult to corroborate but delightful for sure.



El Conquistador was a 4 pages newspaper edited between 1910 and 1919 in the Spanish city of Orihuela.



In April 27 of 1918, #188, page 3, the paper reports an interesting incident, here is the translation :



"By some countrymen our very early risers have expressed the great surprise and even the horror that have felt this morning, seeing descending from the sky describing large Zic Zac, two luminous lightbulbs as if they were warships, which evolved to the height of the population's lands; ascending and forming spiral circles around the saw of the castle, separating from each other, one circling around Callosa and the other by the Cruz de la Muela and losing sight making Zic Zac.

They must have been airplanes even though no noise was noticed from the engines or the black silhouette that the artifact was supposed to present".



prensahistorica.mcu.es...
es.m.wikipedia.org...

Orihuela (Spain) seems to be a hot area, literally. During my research, I found a few more events that took place in the same area. Here a very interesting one from 12/31/2015.


"A ball of fire falls in Orihuela

The firefighters had to suffocate a fire caused by an object that fell from the sky"

The object hit a populated area, I found a little video. A voice says : " It's falling, it's falling...."



www.lasprovincias.es...

a reply to: Trueman
Thanks for posting. I love old UFO/crop circle accounts. Old newspaper stories are always a fun read.

1918, the same year as the Spanish Flu pandemic.

a reply to: Morningglory
These older articles and other, even way older stuff like artwork and even cave paintings refute the myth that it all started with Roswell and Kenneth Arnold! That people are just influenced by the pop culture, from comics and movies, for example.

Very good find!!!

a reply to: Trueman

Interesting case.

Here's a slightly corrected version of the translation.


"By some countrymen our very early risers have expressed the great surprise and even the horror that have felt this morning, seeing descending from the sky describing a large zigzag, two luminous lights as if they were from warships, which evolved to the height of the population's lands; ascending and forming spiral circles around the mountain of the castle, separating from each other, one circling around Callosa and the other by the Cruz de la Muela and getting out of sight making zigzag.

They must have been airplanes even though no noise was noticed from the engines or the black silhouette that the artefact was supposed to present".

a reply to: ArMaP

Thanks, this one got me when I was about to go bed yesterday, kind of sleepy and you know Spanish is different in every country. For me, "Foco" is "Lightbulb", considering the way people in those years concepts. But "luminous lights" works fine too and more understandable for us today.

Love these old UFO stories.... good find!!! S&F

originally posted by: manuelram16
Love these old UFO stories.... good find!!! S&F

Me too, they are the best. The candidness of these stories make them a bit more credible for me.

originally posted by: Morningglory
a reply to: Trueman

1918, the same year as the Spanish Flu pandemic.

The "Spanish Flu" was a misnomer, or at least it was based on a misunderstanding. That flu (a strain of H1N1) really had nothing specifically to do with just Spain alone -- at least no more than other countries.

Since the flu hit during WWI, many of the counties who were affected were also involved in the war (such as the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, etc). These countries did not want to report exactly how many of their population were affected, and many downplayed the number of those infected in their countries at the time.

However, Spain was neutral during WWI, and fully reported the number of their citizens who were infected, making it appear that Spain was especially affected by the flu, which led to the nickname "Spanish Flu".

a reply to: Trueman

I didn't notice the redundancy of "luminous light".


I wonder why they compared the lights to those on war ships, what kind of lights were they thinking of?

a reply to: ArMaP

I think they mean Nav Lights. Interesting because I don't think planes had Nav Lights in those days.

UFOs could be a lot of things
“There’s no escaping the jaws of these aliens in time...open wide...this is the end of your life”
Or extraterrestrials or even AI

a reply to: Trueman

I forgot they used signal lights at the time, and after a little search I found this page with some examples of lights used in signalling different situations, making it even harder to understand what they meant in the newspaper.

Besides that, ships also had searchlights.

a reply to: ArMaP


I think Nav Lights were added to planes in WW2.

originally posted by: ArMaP

I wonder why they compared the lights to those on war ships, what kind of lights were they thinking of?

Maybe zeppeliners, or something dropped from a zeppeliner?

originally posted by: Hellmutt

originally posted by: ArMaP

I wonder why they compared the lights to those on war ships, what kind of lights were they thinking of?

Maybe zeppeliners, or something dropped from a zeppeliner?

Hmmmm..., I don't know man, the article says they were flying describing a large zigzags.