1890s Airship Wave

Hi I am new to the forum, though I very much enjoy listening to the show. I am hoping to finish my dissertation next year. It is about American-German relations around 1900.

The reason I am writing is that I remember reading several threads in which the "Airship Craze of 1897" was referenced. I wanted to weigh in on this since it is one of the few areas of paranormal research I am able to talk about in a somewhat informed manner. I did some preliminary research because I was thinking about writing a dissertation on it. I didn't because (if I may be frank) if I am going to invest 5 years of my life to writing the project, I want to be able to get a job afterwards. I've got a family I need to support. Maybe I can do it in a later book if I'm lucky enough to get tenure, but it absolutely couldn't be my first. I am not sure what I could really write about it other than a discursive analysis or something like that. All I could say is that these people claimed to have seen it.

Using random newspaper clippings from the 1890s as one's main primary sourcebase wouldn't really be useful historical data, and are probably doubtful. Let me tell you why I think any historical account about this would be very difficult to do and probably unconvincing.

1. The late nineteenth century was a very wierd time. If anyone reads local American newspapers during the time (to a lesser extent in the German press, but still there) it becomes immediately apparent that journalists commonly reported as fact things that I think is safe to say were patently false. It was very common practice to go to the local town idiots, get them to say something ridiculous, and report it. It was entertainment -- terrible entertainment revealing that society didn't understand mental illness -- but entertainment nonetheless. You did it so the local town people could laugh and say, "did you see what Old Man Joe said..." Especially in smaller towns were people knew one another. If you go to small town press, you will constantly find reports about people seeing sea monsters in small mill ponds. There was an airship craze, but in the nineteenth century there was also similar craze in which people claimed to have invented perpetual motion machines. I would tend to see the airship craze in this context rather than necessarily seeing it as an objective truth.

2. I've already motioned toward this, but mental illness was simply not understood at the time. No one would have been able to diagnose someone with schizophrenia, much less treat it with thearpy/medicine/etc. They didn't have the basic language to deal with mental illness, let alone treat it. There might have been two or three "psychologists" in a state and they either worked at a university or were in charge of an asylum. By the time crazy people got to them they were already off the deep end (very much so). This was doubly the case in rural areas where even the most basic medicine was often unavailable. Mental illnesses went untreated (presumably getting worse) until the sufferer killed himself, killed someone else or died. Even for people in the 1890s who had no biological presuposition to illness could have it foisted upon them by a number of toxins that were simply a part of daily life in rural America. Lead, Mercury, Arsenic were commonplace. I am not meaning to call every one of these people crazy, but it is an undeniable fact that most of these sightings occurred in rural areas.

3. The way in which the craze geographically progressed, it seems like a case of mass hysteria. The craze started in Texas and slowly spread north from there through Kansas and eventually reaching Wisconsin/Illinois/Iowa. Why did the 1897 craze dissappear? After the Spanish American War dominated the headlines the events quit being reported. Perhaps the Alien visitors feared their ships would be shot down by stray bullets from McKinnley's skirmishes in Cuba, but I doubt it.


[edit on 4-10-2007 by XBadger]

4. So what if a few people said they saw these things. I guarantee you that more people claimed to have seen women use witchcraft to damage fields in the 16th c. There probably weren't witches flying broomsticks at night, there probably weren't Jews poisoning wells, and there probably weren't airships.

5. On a practical level, I am just not sure a comprehensive account would be possible. You might be able to do a case-study of a certain sighting, but reaching a fuller understanding of these people would be possible I suppose, but you would have to write indepth biographies about the people who saw these. Unfortunately there probably isn't a lot of surviving archival material about these people. At most you will probably get some geneological material, tax records, and maybe some employment records. Also even if there were it would cost a fortune to go between the local archives of dozens of states that these sightings occurred in. YOu would have to spend a minimum of a week or two at each town (per person you were researching). No way you will ever get a grant to visit 20 or 30 different archives unless you are one of the preeminent names in the field.

The 1897 craze is probably similar to other "historical waves" but of course it is outside my area of expertise so I can't really speak to that.

Ultimately I think that UFOlogists should quit making reference to this one year event to show that (aha!!) there have always been airship sightings. Likely the same could be said for ancient sightings, but that would be a matter for a Classicist or midieval historian. It seems to me that the current appearence of UFOs are not a one year flash in the pan, but rather a sixty year occurrence. We no longer have to rely on the words of isolated farmers and villagers, but rather a phenomomon that has been photoraphed and videotaped. This evidence can be tested unlike scattered newspaper clippings from 1897.

As a historian, I know the shortcomings of my discipline. We can say that, for example, the Battle of Gettysburg (or for some of the stupider people in ATS the Holocaust) because there are thousands of accounts from the same time that coorelate basically the same thing; quartermaster reports; orders from participating generals and their memoirs; archaeological data shows a battle happened there; etc. For these historical UFO reports only scattered reports by individuals that curiously started one place spread from there and then quit when the Spanish American War started.

Professional historians can do some pretty neat things with their discipline and methodology, but no responsible historian can possibly use this "craze" as anything close to substantiating a long tradition of actual UFO visitations. Rather we should look to other disciplines for validation (or since we must necessarily keep an open mind, rejection) of this phenomonon.

Curious for your responses. What do you think can be gained by studying these reports?

[edit on 4-10-2007 by XBadger]

I don't think it's all mass hysteria. One of these craft allegedly crashed near a small town in Texas, and allegedly there was a nonhuman occupant who was buried. The town has successfully fought any attempts to exhume and study the body to this day. I don't think they're trying to promote the town like Roswell has done, in fact, the town doesn't promote the supposed crash at all, It's more like a coverup.

Well uberarcanist,

You say "in fact, the town doesn't promote the supposed crash at all, It's more like a coverup." Then if you go to there official site you will read
"The city is most famous for the legend of the spaceship crash of April 1897."
To me it is more a puzzle why some folks just make comments as if they where the truth. I mean, you made the above comment and I thought that was weird concidering how small towns with big mysteries normally try to incorporate that info in there discriptions of there small towns. And low and behold, a simple google search cleared that right up for me.
Here is a link to the "Town that doesn't promote the supposed crash at all".
Auroua, Texas Official SIte

Sometimes "dis-information" comes by mistake.

Vance

Google biblical ufo's and take a good look around.

Be wary though.... a lot of those UFOs are in religious artwork, and are incorrectly seen as UFOs, instead of known symbolism and other representations.

I'm not saying all are, but a good many are actually far more mundane in nature. There are some old threads around that go into some of the examples of specific artworks. Common misconceptions such as anthropomorphic man, the sun and the moon, even islands in the water vs. hatlike UFOs in the sky.

While there are (relatively speaking) a handful of older UFO accounts, the primary phenomenon seems to be from the early 40's and on.

As the historian mentioned, prior to modern times, the "news" was more of an entertainment medium than governed by fact-checking, lawsuits, etc., so older accounts are often unreliable at best.

reply to post by vance


Well, I don't think it's exactly on the level of Roswell. I had never heard of the town until a special on the History Channel, and the researchers interviewed on the History Channel all claimed that the town was downright unwelcoming to them. Heck, maybe they are fostering a atmosphere of coverup just for the publicity. Nevertheless, I would like to see what, if anything, is in that grave.

[edit on 4-10-2007 by uberarcanist]

Why wouldn't they want the "body" exhumed:

1. There is secret knowledge passed down from one mayor of the town to the next with the hideous truth that we are visited. That combined with the probable pressure brought to bear by the NWO means they staunchly opppose any efforts to uncover the body

2. It is a still functioning municipal cemetary in a small rural town and they don't want to have the national press (maybe) descend into this small cemetary, trample on the graves of families still in the town. If someone has the misfortune of dying when they are doing the digging (I guess if the person who died forgot to plan ahead ) then that poor family would have to see them digging up a one hundred year old grave.

I am sorry, but of the two explanations, I think the second one seems more reasonable. Regardless, though, you can't say that just because testing is refused means that there is something hidden. You have to look at what the undertaker/coroner/mayor who made the decision says as justification. I'm sure its closer to the latter, and in the absence of better evidence then I guess I will just believe him.

Of course I wish that they would dig it up, but that is just because I am curious. I might have a different opinion if my grandmother was buried next to it. I might have a different opinion if I were a politician in a small town who feared cow-towing to the "crazy" UFOlogists could cost me my job. (Just to be clear, I don't think they are crazy but this is sadly how it might be presented on the local news) Sadly, Absence of proof is not proof.