Wonders in the Sky (98 page)

15 September 1749, Rutland, England Watering intruder

An object created a sprout that roared, took water from a river, shot light beams to the ground, and broke rocks. Although this case sounds similar to that of Hartfield in Yorkshire, the two locations are separated by a fair distance.

The weather was calm, warm and cloudy with some showers. The witnesses described “great smoke with the likeness of fire” either as a single flash or as multiple arrows darting down to the ground, whose “whirling, breaks, roar and smoke frightened both Man and Beast.”

The phenomenon went down the hill, took up water from the river Welland, and ran over fields and trees, tearing branches. The Royal Society correspondent reports: “I saw it pass from Pilton over Lyndon lordship, like a black smoky Cloud with bright Breaks; an odd whitling Motion, and a roaring Noise, like a distant Wind, or a great Flock of Sheep galloping along on hard Ground…”

 

Source: “An Account of an extraordinary Meteor, which resembled a Water-Spout, communicated to the President, by Tho. Barker, esq.” Read on Dec. 14, 1749.
Philosophical Transactions
(Nov-Dec. 1749), no. 493.

September 1768, near Leipzig, Germany
Goethe's unknown lights

On the way to the University at Leipzig, 16-year old Goethe and two companions see a bright “tube” at ground level with blinding small lights jumping around. The trip was difficult, under steady rain. The travelers had to get out of the carriage to help the horses in steep slopes. During one of these walking sections, Goethe noticed something unusual:

Fig. 56: Goethe

“Suddenly, in a ravine on the right side of the road, I beheld a sort of amphitheater, marvellously illuminated. Within a space shaped like a pipe an incalculable number of small lights were shining, stacked like steps one on top of the other. They were so bright that the eye was blinded. But what was the most troubling in this sight was that the lights were not fixed, they jumped this way and that, going up and down and in all directions. Most of them, however, remained stable and radiated.”

“It is with the greatest reluctance that I consented, when I was called, to move away from this spectacle that I would have desired to examine closer. The postillon, when I interrogated him, stated that he had never known of such a phenomenon, but in the neighborhood there was an old quarry, the hole of which was filled with water. It remains to be known whether it was a pandemonium of elementals or an assembly of luminous creatures, I would be unable to decide.”

While the great writer and philosopher is more likely to have observed a display of spontaneously burning methane (marsh gas) than the dance of the Fairies, his observation is interesting.

 

Source: Goethe's autobiography, 6th book. As published in
The Autobiography of Goethe. Truth and Poetry: from my own life.
Translated by J. Oxenford. Vol. 1 (London, 1867), 203.

18 August 1783, Greenwich, England
Ten Balls of Light

“At 11 minutes after nine in the evening, a very singular phenomenon was seen at Greenwich. It being rather dark, of a sudden an uncommon light appeared, without any cause visible, for full two minutes; this phenomenon, coming from the N.N.W. perfectly horizontal in its course, and without any vibration, continued to the S.S.E. It passed over Greenwich, and near the Royal Observatory, till the elevated trees in the park took it from the sight.
Though it was transitory, the motion was not rapid, for you could distinctly discover its form, colour, &c. Its duration was near two minutes, during which there was no variation in its lustre
. Its magnitude and animated effect, made it appear near our earth. Two bright balls parallel to each other, led the way, the apparent diameter of which appeared to be about two feet, and were followed by an expulsion of eight others, not elliptical, seeming gradually to mutilate, for the last was small.

Fig. 57: The Greenwich train of meteors

“Between each ball, a luminous serrated body extended, and at the last a blaze issued, and terminated in a point. Minute particles dilated from the whole. While this luminary was passing, the atmosphere was exceedingly bright; but immediately after it became dark, though the moon was up.

“The balls were partially bright, as imagination can suggest; the intermediate spaces, not so exquisite in their colourings. The balls were tinted first by a pure bright light, then followed a tender yellow, mixed with azure, red, green, &c. which, with a coalition of bolder tints, and a reflection from the other balls, gave the most beautiful rotundity and variation of colours, that the human eye could be charmed with.

“The sudden illumination of the atmosphere, the form, and singular transition of this bright luminary, rendered much to make it awful; nevertheless the amazing vivid appearance of the different balls, and other rich, connective parts, not very easy to delineate, gave an effect equal to the rainbow, in the full zenith of its glory. It appeared also almost all over the island of Great Britain nearly at the same time, as well as in France, Flanders, &c.”

Although this event is often cited in UFO compilations, this was undoubtedly a meteor, first seen over the Shetland isles with the apparent size of 1/3 the moon, equal to twice the full moon over Kent. It seemed to burst into two over Lincolnshire. When it passed over Windsor it was about 60 miles up, traveling 20 miles a second. It was heard to explode over York some minutes later. The phenomenon was observed from as far away as Ireland and Burgundy.

 

Source: “Singular Phenomenon,”
The Annual Register
(Aug. 18, 1783): 214.

17 July 1790, Alençon, France
Crashed UFO, the pilot escapes!

This is another account in the long series of “crashed UFO with occupant” stories. At 5:00 in the morning, several farmers saw a huge globe in the sky, surrounded by flames. They first took it to be a balloon that had caught fire, but its speed and the strange whistling sound coming from it led them to think otherwise. The globe descended slowly, touching the top of a hill, where it tore up the plants along the slope. The flames from the object set fire to the small trees and the grass. Fortunately, the locals managed to stop the fire from spreading.

In his report on the incident, police inspector Liabeuf wrote that the sphere was still hot in the evening. It showed no signs of damage despite the heat. “It stirred up so much curiosity that people came from all directions to see it.”

After some time, a much unexpected thing happened. A door burst open in the sphere and a human came out! “This person was dressed in a very strange fashion. He wore a suit which clung to his body, and when he saw all this crowd he said a few words which could not be understood, and ran to take flight in the woods.”

The peasants drew back from the sphere instinctively – which was fortunate for them, because the object exploded, throwing pieces everywhere. A search was undertaken to find the mysterious visitor but he was never discovered.

The Alençon incident has been included in many anthologies of UFO reports, dozens of books, and has become one of the best-known “folkloric” cases in the field. The reader may feel a little disappointed, therefore, though perhaps not very surprised, to discover that the event never really occurred.

The earliest reference to this case comes from an article published by Italian author Alberto Fenoglio, whom we've already met in connection with the supposed ufological deeds of Alexander the Great. A writer known to have invented some UFO reports in his time, Fenoglio seems to have created the story about Inspector Liabeuf for a purportedly serious article about sightings in ancient history, published in the Italian magazine
Clypeus
. This article was widely distributed and translated into several languages. The truth of the matter finally came to light in 1975 when Italian researcher Edoardo Russo conducted an investigation into Fenoglio's claims. In spite of this, books and magazine articles presenting the story of the Alençon ‘crash' as a genuine case continue to be published in good faith every year in many countries.

Three or four historical cases may have inspired Fenoglio to compose a story dated June 17
^th
, 1790. For instance, on July 24th, 1790, an incident occurred in the municipality of La Grange de Juillac, France, involving several black “stones from heaven” that fell with a hissing noise before hundreds of witnesses.

On April 26
^th
, 1803, at 1:00 P.M., a fireball was seen over Caen, Pont-Audemer and near Alençon. Up to 3,000 stones are said to have fallen amid detonations, one of which weighed 17 lbs. (
Astronomie populaire
, Paris, 1840. Tome IV, 225.)

More famously, precisely a year before the date given by Fenoglio, a fireball witnessed near the city of Worms, in the Rhineland, led to the writing of a controversial book. The canon of Trier, Worms and Spires cathedrals, Johann Friedrich Hugo von Dalberg (1760-1812) saw a meteorite from his family's country house and was told by neighbours that it had crashed nearby.

Dalberg went on to write
Über Meteor-Cultus der Alten, vorzüglich in Bezug auf Steine, die vom Himmel gefallen
(On the Meteor Cult of the Ancients, Especially with Regard to Stones Fallen from the Sky), published in 1811, a book suggesting that meteorites originated in space, where they defied gravity and waited for an opportunity to drop. “These Air-stones have from the start an inner, electrical life,” he wrote, “and can consequently stay floating, so long as they are surrounded by the neutral-electric ether…As blazing spheres, sometimes exploding in the upper air, sometimes on their descent, they plunge down towards the heavenly body into whose spherical electrical atmosphere they are drawn.” Did Fenoglio envision one of these plunging down at Alençon?