Wonders in the Sky (100 page)

15 December 1813, Connecticut, USA
First Congressional Hearings!

This episode took place during the American war against England. When unexplained “blue lights” were seen repeatedly over the harbor, they were interpreted as treacherous signals intended for the British fleet. The lights were “thrown up, like rockets, from Long Point,” and distinctly seen, but never identified. “The gentleman from whom we receive this information plainly saw the lights, and states, that they were answered by three heavy guns from the ships of the enemy (England), at intervals of about ten minutes; that he was further informed, by an officer from Fort Trumbull, that the lights were continued during the whole night.”

Considerable emotion was stirred up in the newspapers and in Congress when a letter from Commodore Decatur to the Secretary of the Navy, dated 20 Dec. 1813, confirmed the sightings: “These signals have been REPEATED, and have been seen by twenty persons at least in this squadron, there are men in New London who have the hardihood to affect to disbelieve it, and the effrontery to avow their disbelief.”

Fig. 59: Commodore Stephen Decatur

A heated debate followed at the House of Representatives:

“Mr. Law, of Conn., after some remarks, in too low a voice to be heard by the reporter, called the attention of the House to the story about certain blue lights which had been put in circulation, and had received countenance by the publication of an official letter from one of our naval officers to the head of a department. The motion Mr. Law was about to make, was not, he said, induced by any belief that the report was correct; for he could not believe that his native town contained in its bosom men so abandoned as to light those torches (…) He could not believe, under these circumstances, that these lights were exhibited as represented, but that some delusion must have existed on the subject.

It was proper, he conceived, that the fact should be enquired into, and placed on its proper footing, as it had been alluded to frequently in this House. With this view he offered the following resolution:

Mr. Mosely supported the motion. Mr. Grundy was willing such an enquiry should be made, if the matter were referred to the naval committee. Mr. Fisk said he was sorry to hear a wish expressed by the gentleman from Tennessee for the proposed enquiry. When he looked at the principle of this motion, he trembled at the consequences of its adoption. What was the principle? It was nothing more than a proposition to exercise, through a committee of this House, the inquisitorial power to enquiry whether treason has been committed in a particular instance. He hoped no such precedent would receive the sanction of the House. Mr. Eppes and Mr. Jackson of Virginia opposed it. Mr. Roberts moved to lay it on the table. Mr. Calhoun thought it a matter too diminutive to engage the House.”

The unidentified lights were never explained.

 

Source:
Proceedings of Congress, House of Representatives
Monday, January 24, 1814. Also Niles'
Weekly Register
(Baltimore, MD), Vol. 5:121 (December 25, 1813) and Vol. 6:133 (March 19, 1814).

Early spring 1820, Manchester, New York, USA
Two glorious entities

Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, writes: “It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day…I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God…I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head…

“When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description…One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other ‘This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!'…

“I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right, (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong) and which I should join.

“I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong…

“I soon found, however, that my telling the story had excited a great deal of prejudice against me among professors [believers] of religion, and was the cause of great persecution, which continued to increase; and though I was an obscure boy, only between fourteen and fifteen years of age…yet men of high standing would take notice sufficient to excite the public mind against me, and create a bitter persecution; and this was common among all the sects all united to persecute me.”

 

Source:
The Pearl of Great Price
, by Joseph Smith – History 1:5-8, 14-19, 22.

21 September 1823, Palmyra, New York, USA
Golden apparition

In this next episode, Joseph Smith was shocked to see a light appear in his room, and a human figure within the light: “Indeed the first sight was as though the house was filled with consuming fire. The appearance produced a shock that affected the whole body. In a moment a personage stood before me surrounded with a glory yet greater than that by which I was already surrounded…”

The figure, whose feet did not touch the floor, revealed itself as “angel Moroni” and gave Smith specific instructions. The scene repeated itself three times during the night. After the third time Smith was surprised to hear the cock crow and to find that daylight was approaching, “so that our interviews must have occupied the whole of that night.” The next day Smith found himself so exhausted that he couldn't work in any useful way in his normal chores. His father thought he was sick and told him to go home. On the way he fell to the ground when trying to cross a fence, and remained unconscious. The angel appeared to him once more and told him to reveal his instructions. Smith went on to found the Mormon religion.

By placing the case in this section on Myths, we do not mean to state that the story was invented or that no such event took place. Millions of people today do take the report at face value. Ufologists, on the other hand, might claim that it represents a typical “bedroom visitation” type of alien contact. We do believe that it is unrelated to the events we seek to study in our Chronology of unexplained aerial phenomena.

 

Source: Francis Kirkham,
Concerning the Origin of the Book of Mormon
(Salt Lake, 1937), and Smith's own account in publications of the Church of Latter Day Saints.

This section gives only a tiny sample of the hundreds of items we have extracted from the literature, for which we found evidence of natural explanations or strong indications of a mischievous or deluded author. A complete listing of such cases is impossible to contemplate, since it would have to include every comet, every meteor shower, every atmospheric illusion and every tornado ever mentioned in books or broadsheets down through the centuries. At the time, many of these phenomena were taken as omens of disaster or as manifestations of the divine realm. affect to disbelieve it, and the effrontery to avow their disbelief.”

In passing, one must note that in spite of such fanciful interpretations the reliability and accuracy of the observations was good enough for us, in the 21
^st
century, to reconstruct the nature of phenomena that are known to today's science, but were a complete, often terrifying enigma to ancient witnesses.

Most importantly, this compilation of mythical or legendary material demonstrates the powerful impact of this imagery, not only in folklore (including contemporary folklore) but in spiritual beliefs and mainstream history. Religious tradition in every part of the world is replete with allusions to celestial phenomena that inspired chroniclers to invoke moral principles and warnings to humanity in writing that has survived through the ages.

This work also shows that the dominant narratives in today's literature on “extraterrestrial” encounters – complete with saucer crashes, strange writing and abduction by non-human entities – were already present in widely-reported stories that predate the industrial revolution.

Anyone attempting to review the historical and social impact of unexplained aerial phenomena immediately faces two difficult challenges: (1) where to find reliable information that can be further investigated and verified? And (2) how to select suitable material for presentation without biasing the reader towards pre-established conclusions?

A fact-driven study

It is natural to begin with available sources in literature and on the Internet. Until now, mainstream believers in extraterrestrial visitors have actively discouraged such research, because it seemed obvious to them that the phenomenon was of recent vintage. Thus Budd Hopkins, a contemporary authority on alien abductions, has sharply criticized one such compilation as “an odd confluence of UFO case studies, free-wheeling speculation, and folklore
of obviously uncertain authenticity
(our emphasis).”

Indeed, most UFO books begin with the blunt affirmation that the “flying saucer era” started on 24 June 1947 when Kenneth Arnold spotted several objects apparently flying in formation over Mount Rainier, Washington, implying that any cases before that date are irrelevant. Many specialists, such as Jerome Clark, see no indication that the phenomenon existed before the mid-19
^th
century.

This attitude is driven by ideology rather than data: If the UFO phenomenon did start in the summer of 1947 with Arnold and (shortly thereafter) the infamous Roswell crash, then one is justified to claim that it originates with visitors from space who have spotted our atomic explosions and decided to come to Earth to investigate – and perhaps save us from ourselves: A seductive view, but one that is contradicted by the mass of previous cases. While it is true that the amount of available data went through a sharp rise about 200 years ago, we have seen that this was due more to progress in the publishing and dissemination of news around the world than to a dramatic increase in the actual frequency of incidents.

At the other end of the spectrum are the devotees of the Ancient Astronaut theory, who claim that contact with extraterrestrials was established very early in the history of the human race, or even, as the Raëlian cult argues, that we are the product of E.T. experimentation or inter-breeding. As we have noted, they find support for their view in many religious traditions and, indeed, in ancient writing and the Bible itself, which alludes to sexual intercourse between the Nephilim (gods from Heaven) and the daughters of men.

When we began this project we took a different approach: one that is strictly fact-driven, rather than belief-driven. Leaving ideologies aside, we were striving to compile a list of documented sightings, with as little reference as possible to a particular theory – although naturally the beliefs of the witnesses and those around them had to be noted as a factor in the way the story was transmitted to us.

One of us (JV) had long collected items from the literature and from folklore in an effort to find out whether the phenomenon of unidentified aerial objects had an identifiable “start date” in history or followed recognizable patterns in time. Beginning in the mid-sixties, he compiled and published computer catalogs of reports culled from books and newspapers around the world.

In a similar vein, Chris Aubeck began to re-examine the totality of the available literature, taking advantage of the new search capabilities of the Internet to leverage the information available in books. As an online collaboration group, the Magoniax Project he initiated in 2003 with fellow researcher Rod Brock was thus able to track down journals and obscure sources in several languages to assemble the largest collection of such stories in the world today.

The two authors began collaborating through web-based software to merge their files and catalogs of that period. As a result, we were often able to go back to original sources rather than citing popular trade books or contemporary compilations.

Classical Sources

Contrary to common opinion, we are not dealing here with “folklore of obviously uncertain authenticity,” as abductionist Budd Hopkins once asserted. Early sources are plentiful, sometimes officially certified and verified, detailed and quite distinguished, even in the remote classical era. An early researcher, Raymond W. Drake, remarked (in
Flying Saucers
No. 39, December, 1964):

“The Romans worshipped the Gods for a thousand years; their augurs prophesied the future from signs in the skies. Julius Obsequens recorded 63 celestial phenomena, Livy 30, Pliny 26, Dio Cassius 14, Cicero 9, confirming their psychological impact on the educated Roman mind. Lycosthenes writing in AD 1552 collated 59 heavenly portents in Roman times.”

No less a political and classical authority than Cicero mentions the topic in his writing (
De Re Publica
1.19.31), where a character named Laelius scolds the young Tubero for his fascination with a celestial phenomenon – a vision of a double Sun in the sky – reported to the Roman Senate. Another Roman philosopher, Seneca, on the other hand (in
Questiones Naturales
7.1.1) sides with the young man because man's imagination gets dulled by the endless repetition of ordinary phenomena. It takes an exceptional sighting, a “sweet spectacle,” to bring back our feeling of wonderment before the beauties of nature, he argued.

Fig. 60: A fragment from the English translation of Lycosthenes, whose book bore the full title “
The Doome warning all Men to the Iudgemente wherein are contayned for the most parte all the Straunge Prodigies hapned in the Worlde, with diuers Secrete Figures of Reuelations tending to mannes stayed conuersion towardes God: in maner of a generall Chronicle, gathered out of sundrie approued authors by St. Batman professor in diuinite
, by Konrad Lykosthenes, 1518-1561.” (Imprinted by Ralphe Nubery assigned by Henry Bynneman. Cum priuilegio Regal, London 1581).

In many historical periods the phenomenon was taken very seriously indeed. It should be remembered that it was the Roman custom to report every year to the Consuls anything that could be interpreted as a portent, as the Consuls wanted to be aware of it in making their decisions. Unfortunately for us, the
Annales Maximi
that contained these “prodigies” is lost, but it is supposed that Livy, Pliny and Obsequens had access to these annals and drew from them.

Among other classical sources was Boece (Boetius or Boethius), ca. 475–525 AD, Roman philosopher and statesman. There are several editions of Boece's work. An honored figure in the public life of Rome, where he was consul in 510 AD, he became the able minister of the Emperor Theodoric. Late in Theodoric's reign false charges of treason were brought against Boethius; after imprisonment in Pavia, he was sentenced without trial and put to death.

Fig. 61: Boetius

While in prison he wrote his greatest work,
De Consolatione Philosophiae
(
The Consolation of Philosophy
). His treatise on ancient music,
De musica,
was for a thousand years the unquestioned authority on music in the West. One of the last ancient Neoplatonists, Boethius translated some of the writings of Aristotle and made commentaries on them. His works served to transmit Greek philosophy to the early centuries of the middle Ages. Translations vary widely because of the unusual vocabulary used in the text. There are both prose and metrical versions and they differ in some details.

Another important source, John the Lydian (John Lydus), 490–ca. 565 AD was a bureaucrat in the praefecture in Constantinople and an antiquarian scholar. He wrote three treatises that preserve much information from earlier sources while responding to contemporary controversies.
On Offices
(‘De magistratibus') is translated as Ioannes Lydus:
On Powers or The Magistracies of the Roman State
(Anastasius C. Bandy: Philadelphia, 1983).
On Months
and
On Portents
have not yet been translated into English.

Another author often quoted in our Chronology is Matthew of Paris (or “Matthew Paris”). He was an English Benedictine monk whose extensive and detailed chronicles of events in the 13th century form one of the most significant primary sources in medieval studies.

Although Paris wrote voluminously, very little of his works shed any light on his own life. We do know he was a monk at St. Albans and that he occasionally visited the royal courts. He spent most of his life at St. Albans, but he put his acquaintance with persons of import and his few trips outside the monastery to good use in acquiring news to include in his chronicles.

Fig. 62: Matthew Paris

In 1248 he went to Norway to reform the Benedictine Monastery of St. Benet Holm; on his journey he was entrusted with letters for King Haakon IV, with whom he formed a friendship. Paris was also personally acquainted with King Henry III of England and Richard, Earl of Cornwall.

Another influential chronicler is Grégoire de Tours, a sixth-century historian. Born in Clermont-Ferrand in 595, he went to Tours seeking a cure for an illness at the tomb of Saint Martin, and stayed in that city where he became a bishop. He left many treatises on history and astronomy, including a hagiography of Saint Julian and Saint Martin; a book about ecclesiastical cycles, and a tumultuous
History of the Franks
that earned him the title of first French historian.

Fig. 63: Grégoire de Tours and Salvius facing King Chilperic.

Notable among later authors we have consulted is John Howie (1735-1793) “chronicler and biographer, who lived on his ancestral farm of Lochgoin, in Renfrewshire, a noted place of refuge in Covenanting times. He early developed an interest in the Covenanters and Reformers, and went on to amass a wealth of material from manuscript and published sources he used as a basis for series of biographical sketches which he published in 1775 under the title of
Biographia Scoticana
or Scot Worthies,” (according to
Scottish Church Hist. & Theol
., 414).

Screening

The Internet has introduced a revolution in our access to ancient texts. In particular, the network's ability to link together groups of researchers interested in the same topics and willing to share their data has allowed us to take a giant step beyond the parsimonious and often erroneous databases available prior to this work.