5. “Ancient” UFO Reports
The selected list of “ancient” UFO reports that follows is taken mainly from various books written by contemporary ufologists. They are all writers who believe “flying saucers” really exist, and who offer various speculations on their origin, mode of “flight” and significance.
213 B. C. “In Hadria an ‘altar‘ was seen in the sky, accompanied by the form of a man in white clothing. A total of a dozen such sightings between 222 and 90 B. C. can be listed, but we have eliminated many more sightings because we felt that they could best be interpreted as misinterpretations of meteors or atmospheric phenomena.” (Vallee, 1965).
218 B. C. “In Amiterno district in many places were seen the appearance of men in white garments from far away. The orb of the sun grew smaller. At Praeneste glowing lamps from heaven. At Arpi a shield in the sky. The Moon contended with the sun and during the night two moons were seen. Phantom ships appeared in the sky.” (Trench, 1966).
100 B. C. “Pliny mentions the strange shields in Natural History Volume II, chapter XXXIV: ‘In the consulship of Lucius Valerius and Ganius Valerius (about 100 B. C.) a burning shield scattering sparks ran across the sky at sunset from east to west.”‘ (Green, 1967).
742-814 A. D. “During the reign of Charlemagne, spacecraft took away some of the earth’s inhabitants to show them something of the way of life of space people. These events are described in the Comte de Gabalis’ Discourses.” (Trench, 1966).
“However, when the spacecraft returned bringing back the Earth people they had taken away, the population was convinced that they were actual members of the spacecraft whom they regarded as sorcerers.”
1270 A. D. Bristol England: “In Otto Imperiali, Book I, Chapter XIII, Gervase of Tillbury wrote about an aerial craft over a city. The craft caught an anchor in a church steeple and an occupant of the ship scampered down a ladder to free the device. The man was stoned by a crowd and asphyxiated in the earth’s atmosphere. The ‘demon’s body‘ was said to have been burned.” This story is to be found in several UFO books and is quoted here from Let’s Face the Facts about Flying Saucers, (1967) by Warren Smith and Gabriel Green, President of the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America.
1561 A. D. “In Nuremberg, April 14, 1561, many men and women saw blood-red or bluish or black balls and circular discs in large numbers in the neighborhood of the rising sun. The spectacle lasted one hour ‘and appeared to fall to the ground as if it was all on fire and everything was consumed amid a great haze.”‘ (Cited from a mediaeval text found in the Annals of Nuremburg by C. R. Jung).
7 August 1566 A. D. “People saw a crowd of black balls moving at high speed towards the sun, they made a half-turn, collided with one another as if fighting. A large number of them became red and fiery and thereafter they were consumed and then the lights went out.” (Quoted by Dr. Jung from the Annals of Basle.)
6 March 1716 A. D. “The astronomer Halley saw an object that illuminated the sky for more than two hours in such a way that he could read a printed text in the light of this object. The time of the observation was 7:00 P. M. After two hours the brightness of the phenomenon was re-activated ‘as if new fuel had been cast in a fire.'” (Vallee, 1965).
There are hundreds of astronomical “sightings of strange lights,” to be found in the modern UFO books. For example, Jacques Vallee, quotes the following from the Journal of Natural History and Philosophy:
I saw many meteors moving around the edge of a black cloud from which lightning flashed. They were like dazzling specks of light, dancing and traipsing through’ the clouds. One of them increased in size until it became of the brilliance and magnitude of Venus, on a clear evening. But I could see nobody in the light. It moved with great rapidity and pasted on the edge of the cloud. Then it became stationary, dimmed its splendor, and vanished. I saw these strange lights for minutes, not seconds. For at least an hour, these lights, so strange, played in and out of the black cloud. No lightning came from the clouds where these lights were playing. As the meteors increased in size, they seemed to descend…
This observation was made by John Staveley, an astronomer, at Hatton Gardens, London, on 10 August 1809 and reported in the Journal of Natural History and Philosophy and Chemistry. (Vallee, 1965).
1820. Francis Arago, in Annales de chimie et de physique, wrote “concerning observations at Embrun, France: ‘numerous observers have seen, during an eclipse of the moon, strange objects moving in straight lines. They were equally spaced and remained in line when they made turns. Their movements showed a military precision.'” (Vallee, 1965).
“Lights in the dark of the moon” are considered to be UFO spacecraft by many ufologists. Fort cites many, and here are some:
November 1668. A letter from Cotton Mather to Mr. Waller of the Royal Society dated “at Boston, November 24, 1712” (now in the Library of Massachusetts historical Society, Boston) refers to “ye star below ye body of ye Moon, and within the Horns of it . . . seen in New England in the Month of November, 1668.” (Lowes, 1927).
1783. In Philosophical Transactions (Volume LZZVII) for 1787, the great astronomer reports a “bright spot seen in the dark of the moon . . . which seen in the telescope resembled a star of the fourth magnitude as it appears to the natural eye.” (Lowes, 1927).
1794. In Philosophical Transactions, 1794, a total of seven letters in Volumes XXVI and XXVII, reporting “lights in the dark portion of the moon.” The principal sighting was communicated by the Astronomer Royal, the Reverend Nevil Maskelyne, on the “observations of Thomas Stretton, who saw the phenomenon in St. John’s Square, Clerkenwell London. In another letter to the Royal Society, Mr. Wilkins reports his “sighting” in terms exactly like those used by many who claim to have seen UFOs. “I was,” writes Wilkins, “as it were, rivetted to the spot where I stood, during the time it continued and took every method I could to convince myself that it was not an error of sight, including the testimony of one who passed and said it was a star.” (Lowes, 1927).
“I am very certain,” he adds in his third letter, “of this spot appearing within the circumference of the moon’s circle.” Mr. Stratton declared that it was a “light like a star, as large asa star, but not so bright, in the dark part of the moon.” (Lowes, 1927).
July 1868. In Lo! by Charles Fort, as quoted by Jacques Vallee (196S) “at Capiago, Chile, an aerial construction emitting light and giving off engine noise was interpreted locally as a giant bird with shining eyes, covered with large scales clashing to give off a metallic noise.”
22 March 1870. “An observation was made aboard the ‘Lady of the Lake‘ in the Atlantic Ocean. The object was a disk of light grey color. What appeared to be the rear part was surrounded by a halo, and a long tail emanated from the center. This UFO was viewed between 200 and 800 elevations for half an hour. It flew against the wind and Captain Banner made a drawing of it.” (Vallee, 1965).
24 April 1874. “On the above date, Professor Schafarick of Prague saw ‘an object of such a strange nature that I do not know what to say about it. It was of a blinding white and crossed slowly over the face of the moon. It remained visible afterward.”‘ (Astronomical Register XXIII, 206 quoted by Vallee, 19 ).
15 May 1879. “On the above date, at 9:40 p.m. from ‘the Vultur‘ in the Persian Gulf, two giant luminous wheels were observed spinning slowly and slowly descending. They were seen for thirty-five minutes, had an estimated diameter of forty meters (130 feet) and were four diameters apart. Similar ‘giant wheels‘ were seen the year after, again in May, and in the same part of the ocean, by the steamer ‘Patna.”‘ Quoted by Vallee, (1965) from Knowledge, a journal.
This list of “strange phenomena” could easily be extended over hundreds of pages. The reader, if he wished, can consult the writings of Charles Fort (1941) and others. At the end of all this reading, he will probably find that the mysterious phenomena remain mysterious.
He can then exercise his option to believe that the strange phenomena reported down through the ages are reports of extra-terrestrial visitors from planets whose civilizations are infinitely older and superior to ours. On the other hand, his curiosity may be aroused in quite a different direction. The citations of “ancient UFO reports” by the ufologists have one hauntingly familiar common characteristic: the authors are uniformly highly uncritical of the authenticity of these reports, so much so that their presentations of them fall well outside the boundaries of normal scholarly skepticism.