This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/ufos by /u/MKULTRA_Escapee on 2024-11-23 17:51:18+00:00.

I decided to put together a little collection of newspaper articles so that people could get an idea of what was reported, how it was reported, and when. I’m basically just trying to add a little bit of perspective. If anyone has a subscription to newspapers.com or some other similar service, you can find countless other articles. The terms I was using to locate these include “flying saucer, mystery airship, ball of fire, ghost plane, silver sphere, strange object in the sky, foo-fighter, ghost rocket,” and so on. This probably won’t be the only post I do on this because there are so many articles.

After reading through countless articles in these various different decades, it seems to me that there have always been weird things in the sky, and over time, a large portion of them will get explained, often correctly. Even before the Kenneth Arnold sighting, I also found some explanations for some of these sightings that were stretched beyond the breaking point, so the two “sides” have been kind of going at it since even before the modern version of the UFO phenomenon.

Weird things in the sky are not new, the whittling down of the sightings to a small percentage remaining is not new, and the terrible ‘swamp gas’-type explanations are also not new. Multiple people taking credit for sightings when they clearly couldn’t all be responsible is not new, and of course hoaxes are not new, and neither is the ridicule of people who see weird things in the sky.

I’m pretty big on timelines, so these were put in chronological order, and anything in parentheses is a personal short description of the articles. The article information will be: date, newspaper name, location, and page, then title of the article/link underneath.

November 05, 1865 - The Daily Phoenix - Columbia, South Carolina- Page 3

A Stone Falls From The Sky With Characters Engraved Upon it (This was the earliest account of an alleged crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft that I could locate, and it features dark liquids, glass-like materials, mysterious hieroglyphic-like writing, and a sulfurous odor)

May 14, 1883 - The Vincennes Sun-Commercial - Vincennes, Indiana- Page 2

Evansville river water mixed with beer bring about queer results (A 30 foot long dark brown object shaped a bit like a whale is seen in the sky by multiple residents, speculated to be a flying machine)

Nov 27, 1896 - The Evening Mail - Stockton, California- Page 1

Three Strange Visitors- Who Possibly Came From The Planet Mars (7 foot tall, bald headed aliens with small mouths and large shiny eyes, interacts with witness and a companion, then the beings scurry off into a cigar-shaped UFO and fly away. The witness is obviously describing a silky skintight suit they were wearing)

Feb 11, 1897 - The Victoria Daily Times - Victoria, British Columbia, Canada- Page 8

Insane On Airships - Japanese Student In San Francisco Loses His Reason (A student claims credit for all of the airships and attempts are made to send him to an insane asylum)

Dec 24, 1909 - Kennebec Journal - Augusta, Maine- Page 9

Strange Object Passes over Augusta early Thursday Evening, Believed To be Airship Or Dirigible Balloon (At least one person here seems to have witnessed Venus or a bright star rather than the airship everyone else was seeing)

Apr 30, 1910 - The St George Call - Kogarah, New South Wales, Australia- Page 6

Airship Mystery (Mystery Airship drops pickle and sausage, then speeds away)

Jan 14, 1930- The Waco Times-Herald - Waco, Texas - Page 1

Ghost Plane with Bat Wings Hovers Over Scene of Crash

Nov 20, 1932- Sunday Mirror - London, London, England - Page 2

“Ghost Planes” -Mystery of Nightly Visitants to Field of Death

Nov 21, 1932 - The Citizen - Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England - Page 11

“Ghost” Plane Mystery- Crashes at Scene of Tragedy (A shiny, silvery, luminous object, described as a “plane” by witnesses, and which was reported to sound like an airplane, routinely “crashes” into the same lake over multiple nights)

Dec 27, 1934 - Seminole Evening Reporter - Seminole, Oklahoma- Page 1

Ball Of Fire Is A Mystery In 4 States (Object described as a meteor or flaming airplane crashing by various witnesses)

Nov 7, 1935 - Chadron Chronicle - Chadron, Nebraska- Page 1

Report Strange Object Floating In Sky Here (Witnesses called paper to ask about stratospheric balloon, noticed a huge dark spherical object ascend into the sky rapidly)

Dec 13, 1944 - Fort Worth Star-Telegram - Fort Worth, Texas- Page 1

Balls Of Fire!- Mysterious Silver Spheres Over Germany

Jan 2, 1945 - The Kansas City Times - Kansas City, Missouri- Page 1

Mystery In Nazi Skies- Yank Pilots Can’t Figure Out The “Foo Fighter”

Aug 12, 1946 - The Cincinnati Enquirer - Cincinnati, Ohio- Page 10

“Ghost” Rockets With Fiery Tails Flashing Across Swedish Skies From Great Distance

Feb 13, 1947 - Chronicle - Adelaide, South Australia, Australia- Page 6

Strange Objects Seen In Sky (Multiple witness sighting of 5 “quivering” egg-shaped objects flying in formation)

Jun 26, 1947 - The Oregon Daily Journal - Portland, Oregon- Page 1

Whizzing Pie-Pan Plane Report Gets Army Skepticism (witnessed by Kenneth Arnold, UFO sighting gets widespread publicity)

Jul 8, 1947 - Tulare Advance-Register - Tulare, California- Page 1

Real! Experts Studying Roswell Discovery (original Roswell press release reported in a local paper)

Fri, Aug 26, 1949 - Greater Oregon - Albany, Oregon- Page 1

Men From Mars? (A flying saucer crash lands in the desert and two little people jump out and run away into the dunes)

A couple bits of context because I didn’t find articles yet on these:

1941:

There was a lot of stuff going on in Sweden and surrounding areas during the 1930s, very similar to the “ghost planes” happening elsewhere. Here is a post covering that:

I’m also not going to be able to find articles on stuff that happened before newspapers, so if anyone is interested in stuff further back, here are some sightings from the 11th century: and a few sightings from the 1600s: