The 1897 Aurora, Texas 'Martian' Airship Crash Hoax
On April 17, 1897, the Dallas Morning News published a story by local correspondent E. E. Haydon claiming that a slow-moving cigar-shaped airship had struck a windmill on the property of Judge J. S.
Narration
Before dawn, a cigar-shaped airship drifted impossibly low over Texas scrubland.
Aurora, Texas, 1897 — a dying frontier town the railroad left behind.
Distant witnesses gathered at Judge Proctor's ruined windmill, staring at debris no one could explain.
The cigar-shaped airship struck the windmill in a blinding explosion of silvery debris.
Papers found on the pilot's body were undecipherable — E. E. Haydon's account raised more questions.
Decades later, the Aurora cemetery grave yielded nothing — yet the mystery refuses burial.