Reported by Robert M.
Source: Project Blue Book Archive, MAXW-PBB19-100
On August 9, the Manitoba Free Press carried a story that described lights in the sky across Canada over British Columbia and Manitoba, wondering if Andrée’s airship was off course and wandering throughout the North. It printed a letter from a reader who advised them:
Douglas (Manitoba), Aug. 6, 1897. / To the Editor of the Free Press .
Sir, In case some of your numerous readers may have noticed something similar at some other point I would draw your attention to a peculiar matter noticed on the night of the 5th. About 11 p.m., just before retiring, a something that at first looked like a falling star appeared directly north of the residence of Mr. John Kyle, some four miles east of here. The person first to notice the strange object was led to call the attention of all in the house to the matter. For over half an hour we watched the strange visitor, as it seemed to rise and fall and sway from east to west, but gradually travelling further and further northward, until about 11:45, it disappeared from view. At times several of those watching the peculiar object, which all the while shone brightly, thought they could discern the shape of a massive balloon just above the bright light. It would be interesting to know if the circumstance was noticed by any others, and if so, what the impressions conveyed were. R.M. SCOTT
The editor then noted, “Any who have noticed similar objects are asked to inform the Free Press. If Andrée persists in floating about Manitoba barn yards let us find him.”
Similarly, the Manitoba Morning Free Press for September 14, 1897, printed a letter from a correspondent in Scotland who explained that on August 5, 2005, a large light assumed to be a balloon passed over Prince Albert shortly after 6:00 p.m., heading west-north-west. To compound the mystery, the same paper on September 18 carried another account of a sighting:
Was it Prof. Andrée?
St. Petersburg, Sept. 17th. A telegraphic message was received here from Krasnoyarsk, in the interior of Siberia, which says on September 14, the inhabitants of the village of Antzifiroskoje, in the district of Veniselsk, Arctic Russia, saw a balloon, which is believed to be that of Prof. Andrée, the Swedish aeronaut, who left the island of Tromsoe shortly before 2:30 p.m., July 11, in an attempt to cross the Polar region. The balloon, it is added, was in sight for five minutes.
Over the next several months, people around the globe reported seeing Andrée’s aerial expedition flying through the sky, but no actual trace of him or his companions was ever found.
Then, in 1939, the remains of the frozen bodies of the crew were discovered on a small island in the Arctic Ocean north of Spitzbergen. Investigators concluded that not long after they launched, the balloon had become covered in ice and they were forced to make a crash landing on the rocky outcrop. Therefore, none of the sightings thought to be Andrée’s balloon could have been that craft, despite speculations to that effect. The sightings could not have been fireballs or bolides, the proper name for cometary debris burning up in the atmosphere, because the durations were usually many minutes, too long for astronomical objects. On the other hand, the objects moved too swiftly for misidentified stars or planets.
What had everyone seen?
Comments made in the press in 1897 and later during the early part of the 1900s bear a strong resemblance to those made regarding modern-day UFO reports. Doubt was expressed over the veracity of the witnesses. Many people were unwilling to use their names in reports.
Skywatchers speculated about craft built by secret organizations, and many people were outright skeptical and simply didn’t believe that the objects were anything other than meteors. However, those who had witnessed an airship were adamant and insisted they had definitely seen the thing, in the same way that UFO witnesses today insist that what they observed was really there.
Researchers have found that, although the idea of awkward and mechanical flying machines in the late 1800s is fanciful, the reality is that dozens of patents were issued to inventors of “aerial cars” and “flying gyrators” as far back as 1844, with many more in the years following 1880. It is quite possible that some airship reports were of experimental vehicles, although there is no question that many simple observations of lights in the night sky were misidentifications of stars and planets, exactly as today.
At the time airship stories were in circulation, the world was going through a rapid boom in economy, technological development, exploration, settlement, and communication. The atmosphere was rife for wild speculation about wonders in the skies. There was some skepticism, but there was also a wide range of speculation as to their origin and mechanisms. The press noted that the objects brought puzzlement and wonder at the strange sights in the heavens.
A certain amount of ridicule was present, and there were satirical pokes at the witnesses by various institutions. The airships sold newspapers and products through their depiction in broadsheets and posters. Eventually, the sightings decreased in number (or, at least, the media lost interest), and reports slowly ceased being recorded.
The airship wave of the closing years of the 19th century subsided, and the next era of strange sky wonders began.
DID YOU KNOW?
The modern era of flying saucers began on June 24, 1947, when pilot Kenneth Arnold saw several metallic disc-like objects flying near Mt. Rainier.
COMETS, METEORS, OR SOMETHING ELSE?
The most written-about case of a strange flying object in historical Russia took place on June 30, 1908, over Siberia. Early in the morning of that day, hundreds of people in and around the Tunguska region reported seeing an oval fireball passing overhead, changing direction and speed, with a luminous trail behind it. A massive explosion was felt throughout the continent, with seismic stations in Irkutsk and Tashkent registering tremors. The sky glowed so brightly that people could read newspapers at midnight in Moscow, Paris, and even in London.
It was not until 1927 that an expedition funded by the Soviet Academy of Sciences managed to visit the swampy wilderness area, and what they reported was more astounding than anyone had imagined. A wind-driven firestorm had swept the area, uprooting and charring trees in a region measuring thousands of square kilometres in diameter.
Many theories have been proposed to explain the event, ranging from an asteroid impact, a comet, black hole, nuclear blast, and even an alien spaceship. Most scientists now favour a cometary impact as the most likely explanation. If it had been a relatively small asteroid, like the object that created the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona, there would be some evidence of a well-defined gouge on the landscape.
At about 9:05 p.m. EST on the night of February 9, 1913, a strange phenomenon was seen in the skies over much of Canada and the United States. Beginning in Saskatchewan and heading to the east, a “procession” of brilliant lights made their way slowly and majestically overhead. Some witnesses described the sight as a red object with a long, fiery tail. Others saw two, three or more sources of light travelling one behind the other, each with separate trails of sparks. As soon as these were out of sight, dozens of smaller lights in groups of twos, threes, and fours again passed overhead on the same apparent path from northwest to southeast, all with glowing tails. There were even reports of the strange phenomenon as far east as Bermuda.
Estimates of the total number of objects in the procession ranged as high as 1,000 or more, although the best approximation was that 10 or 15 objects, each possibly composed of a number of smaller bodies, were seen over a 4,000 kilometre path over the entire continent. The duration of the event was said to be as long as three and a half minutes.