HiddenMysteries: Navy Shot at UFO in 1896

by Art Champoux

Picture this: you are standing on a small wooden bridge that leads from the shore to a wooden dock in the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth, NH. The year is 1896.

You are guarding a United States Navy ship that is tied up to the dock. It is dark and the air is still and chilly. All you hear is the slight slapping of the water on the dock and the creaking of the boards you are standing on.

You have the latest and best rifle in your hands and you are getting a chill from the river breeze in the cool night air. The ship is tied to the dock and once in a while you hear the creaking noise of the old wood that the ship is tied up to.

All of a sudden the man who is guarding the navy ship calls out to you. "Hey what is this?" There, coming down the river and heading for the ocean is a silent object that looks like a white/yellowish oblong flying thing. It is flying, but has silent: you don't hear a sound, except the slight slapping of the waves on the pier and the ship. It is getting closer. What to do? Do you fire at it or just watch in awe and amazement of the "something" flying and coming at you and the ship?

There is no one to call or ask. The object is getting closer. It is almost over your head. As it gets nearer and closer you look at each other and decide this thing, nobody has seen before and you get panicky. What to do? So both men bring their guns up and fire at the object as it passes over their heads.

You hear the bullets hit the object. The sharp ping, ping on the metal surface. Now the object brightens up and silently gains speed and heads down the river and out to sea. Both men look at each other in bewilderment. One of the guards runs to get a superior officer. As the officer and the other servicemen run back they witness the White-yellowish silent object head out to sea. This is something that no one, not even an officer, has ever seen before.

The object that two armed navy men shot at and hit was still flying. It continued making no noise and appeared to have no engine or wings. No one has ever seen any thing like that before. It was reported to the base commander. He doesn't believe what he is hearing! A flying object, completely silent and all the servicemen heard was the sound of the bullets bouncing off its hull. The officer tells the navy admiral and the admiral gets the testimony of all three men who swear to the incident in written statements. Remember it is 1896

I read the report of this sighting in the archives of the Portsmouth Herald Newspaper dated November of 1896.

The United States had nothing flying in the air in 1896, so what was it? We might never know, or now, do we?

Publisher's Note: Read more about the history of UFOS in the 1800s by reading an excellent article by B J Booth, Before the Wright Brothers...There Were UFOs.

More UFO Sightings 1896 - Newspapers carried a growing number of reports of airship experiments, setting off the "Airship Hysteria" of 1896-97. There was an increase in airship patent applications in the late 1890s. Samuel Pierpont Langley tested his first aeroplane model on May 6, 1896. Swedish explorer Solomon Andree made an unsuccessful attempt at an Arctic balloon trip May 31. William Paul crashed his airship Albatross in September. The Sacramento Bee reported Nov. 17 that three New York men would attempt to fly an airship to California, and over the next several days hundreds of reports of airship sightings came in from people around Sacramento. Another wave of hundreds of sightings took place from January to May in 1897. Most of the sightings were at night during the winter months, started in California and spread east, and were fueled by sensationalistic newspaper stories. William Randolph

Hearst published an editorial in his San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 5, 1896, critical of this sensationalism: " 'Fake journalism' has a good deal to answer for, but we no not recall a more discernible exploit in that line than the persistent attempt to make the public believe that the air in this vicinity is populated with airships. It has been manifest for weeks that the whole airship story is pure myth." (quoted in Frazier p. 20) Source: sandiego.edu.

http://www.ufodigest.com

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Art Champoux has been an UFO investigator since 1964. He have worked with Ray Fowler, Walter Webb, John Keel, a lady that he can not name, and several different UFO groups. In the 1960s he was with APRO, CAPER, NIACP, then when APRO went out he was with NICAP and then APRO, Now he is with MUFON. The world of the paranormal has always fascinated him as even as a small boy he had some eerie happenings. His Great grandmother was a spirit medium so maybe he has inherited something. He is a hypnotist and has written for several publications and his leanings are much like John Keels. He beleives there is an ultra force, not from outer space, but much like John's and even Jaques Vallees' contention...we are but one dimension out of many that reign on this planet.

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Navy Shot at UFO in 1896

Thursday, March 08 2007 @ 12:16 PM CST