So Supernatural - ALIEN: The Aurora, Texas UFO Incident

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

On April 17, 1897, the small town of Aurora, Texas woke up to the sound of a mysterious airship crashing nearby. It supposedly destroyed a local judge's windmill, scattering debris across the property, leaving behind a pilot described as "not of this world." The remains of the unknown visitor were said to have been buried in the town cemetery. Over a century of unanswered questions has kept the legend alive — leaving many to wonder if the truth is six feet underground.   For a full list of sources, please visit: https://sosupernaturalpodcast.com/alien-the-aurora-texas-ufo-incident   Did you know you can listen to So Supernatural ad-free? Join the Crime Junkie Fan Club! Visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/fanclub/ to view the current membership options and policies. So Supernatural is an Audiochuck and Crime House production. Find us on social! Instagram: @sosupernaturalpod Twitter: @_sosupernatural Facebook: /sosupernaturalpod Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I will be the first person to admit, graveyards used to freak me out. There's nothing spookier than walking among headstones on a gray, misty day, thinking about all of the people that are buried beneath your feet. But as I got older, I started to appreciate them more. There's beauty in cemeteries, because in a way, they're almost like a local museum, telling the stories of the people who lived on the Aina, the land for generations. And in some cases, a person's tombstone may be the only written record of their life.

What's interesting is that trained historians can determine a lot from the way people are buried. Some graveyards were segregated along religious or racial lines. They can also estimate how wealthy someone was based on how elaborate their headstone is. So it's helpful to see where a particular grave was and how how much. it was made. But if they were to visit the old historic cemetery in Aurora, Texas, they'd find something no other burial site seems to have. There's an unmarked grave under an old oak tree. The ground is covered in flowers, gifts, and coins from visitors from all around the world who've traveled there to pay their respects. Why? Because legend has it that this burial plot

holds the key to one of America's deepest buried secrets. Allegedly, it's the final resting place of a creature from outer space. I'm Yvette Jintili. And I'm her sister, Rasha Pecorero. Welcome back to So Supernatural. If we told you to picture a frontier town in the Old West, you'd probably imagine a place just like Aurora, Texas. It was established in the 1850s as a tiny farming community.

It's only about 20 miles northwest of Dallas, which was also a very small town at the time. Back then, Aurora felt super remote and quiet. By 1897, Aurora had a population of about 3,000 people. Most of the residents were farmers who spent the majority of their time working in the fields. And presumably, when they did get together, people whispered about one thing in particular,

a news story that had been sweeping the nation for two years now. Since 1895, newspapers across the southern United States had been full of mysterious reports of people spotting unidentified airships in the sky, and the eyewitness reports were consistent across the board. The ships were often cigar-shaped. They traveled very fast, sometimes going hundreds of, miles per hour. And some of these ships made sudden hairpin turns. They ascended or descended quickly or accelerated well out of sight, all of which should have been impossible. It's important to note

that Wilbur and Orville Wright wouldn't fly the first airplane for nearly another decade, and that was in 1903. The only flying machines that were common at this point were blimps and hot air balloons. Despite this, most people assume these airships were man-made experimental flying vessels. In fact, rumors said there was a secret society, building and testing highly advanced blimps. Supposedly, this group had 60 members, the best inventors and engineers of the day. It was actually based just outside of San Francisco, closer to the foothills of Sierra Nevada, and apparently there was a group called the Sonora Aero Club that met every Friday night to discuss new machines and construction methods.

The gossip claimed they were also building flying machines and testing them by flying them all around the United States. Another theory said that Thomas Edison was developing cutting-edge flying crafts. The rumors became so widespread, Edison actually had to write an open letter explicitly denying it in 1897. But still, the sightings continued, as did the speculation. And over in Aurora, Texas, they were about to experience one of these flying machines firsthand. On April 17, 1897, a 10-year-old boy named Charlie Stevens was living on his family farm just outside of Aurora.

Every day, he'd wake up early to do chores. So at 6 a.m. that morning, he was outside, working with his dad in the pasture, with his cows, when something caught his eye. It was a flying vessel shaped like a cigar with a blinding bright light attached to it. The craft was also moving very slowly and low to the ground, almost like it was coming in for a landing. It's unclear if Charlie's father saw the ship, but Charlie watched as it passed. right overhead, and he noticed a big plume of black smoke coming out of the back of it. He didn't know much about blimps, but Charlie thought the vessel was on fire or having

some kind of malfunction. He kept watching as it disappeared over the horizon soaring closer towards Aurora. Then just after the vessel drifted out of sight, he heard a horrible crashing noise. Seconds later, an enormous pillar of black smoke billowed into the air, right in the area where the ship had been headed. Charlie, who assumed the ship had crashed, begged his father for permission to go to Aurora and help. Except his dad said no. There was still a lot of work to be done on the farm. I mean, duty called. Luckily, Charlie wasn't the only person to see the crash. Lots of people in town had already seen the wreck, including a 15-year-old girl named Mary Evans. Like Charlie, Mary was awake and outside at 6 a.m.

and her parents were with her when they saw the airship drift overhead. It was moving pretty slowly, and witnesses estimated it was only flying about 10 to 12 miles per hour. Plus, it was getting lower and lower and trailing lots of black smoke. Except this wasn't a controlled landing. Mary and her parents could tell the vessel was heading toward a farm that actually belonged to a local judge named J.S. Proctor. Then they watched as it collided with a windmill standing at the edge of his property. Even though the ship had been flying slowly, it hit the structure with incredible force. The vessel smashed into the windmill, sending wood and bits of wreckage flying everywhere.

And the sound of the collision was deafening, basically like an explosion. Mary's parents ordered her to stay home while they rushed over to the site. When they arrived, they found the area littered with wreckage. The windmill had been completely destroyed, as was a nearby water tank, but there were also scraps of twisted metal from the airship. Luckily, Mary's parents weren't there alone. Within minutes, a bunch of Aurora locals had gathered at Judge Proctor's farm to examine the wreckage. The towns people estimated there had to be several tons of debris spread across,

multiple acres. It appeared to be some kind of material no one had seen before. Their best guess was that it was aluminum mixed with silver, but they couldn't tell for sure. But the most perplexing discovery wasn't the debris. It was something much stranger. Located in the midst of the rubble was a body lying on the ground. And everyone who saw the body could tell it wasn't from Earth. As soon as the town doctor arrived at the crash site, he spotted a strange figure lying amongst the wreckage that clearly wasn't human. Although he didn't know much about the pilot's biology, he could tell that they were badly hurt. So he seemingly treated them the same way he would any human patient. But after a few hours, with the creature never regaining consciousness,

the doctor declared the pilot was dead. Some bystanders searched the body for clues, hoping to understand more about where they came from. They found several pieces of paper on the remains that were covered in some kind of writing resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics, but no one could decipher it. Okay, now you may be thinking that detail sounds irons. similar to the Roswell crash accounts from 1947. Eyewitnesses there also said the wreckage had hieroglyphic style symbols on it. Except the Aurora crash happened, get this, y'all, 50 years before Roswell. So the locals didn't have any context for what they were actually seeing.

Luckily, a man named T.J. Weems lived in Aurora and had also witnessed the crash that morning. He was enlisted in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, a branch responsible for handling telegrams, letters, and other methods of communication. More importantly, T.J. knew a lot about astronomy and outer space. When he wasn't busy with his Signal Corps work, he was seemingly pouring over newspaper articles and books about the latest discoveries. He was likely up to speed on all of the scientific breakthroughs of the mid-1800s, and he may have known some recent things. theories about aliens and how a lot of researchers were claiming they came from Mars. One big finding in particular was from 20 years earlier. On August 23, 1877, an Italian astronomer named Giovanni Skiaparelli had looked at Mars through his telescope, and he'd seen

something that he described as dark streaks on the planet's surface. He said they almost resembled deep trenches, and they were hundreds of miles long, sometimes running parallel to each other. Plus, they all seemed to start and end near areas that appear to be former bodies of water. Giovanni speculated he was looking at the channels of water that once connected lakes and oceans all across Mars. Giovanni couldn't tell if they were irrigation ditches or natural streams, but still he and some of his followers believe these lines were proof of intelligent life on the red planet. It took a long time for anyone to get a second opinion on Giovanni's discovery,

due to Mars's orbit. But in 1892, Mars drew closer again. And another astronomer was lucky enough to glimpse the same alleged ditches, confirming they were in fact there. But they still couldn't tell if the lines were natural or intelligent. made. Still, by 1897, when the Aurora UFO crashed, many scientists thought it was very likely that aliens were real, and they lived on Mars, and they had advanced technology. So when T.J. took one look at that pilot, he announced, this was a dead Martian. It's unclear if the other

locals agreed with him, but they wanted to pay their respects either way. They decided to give the pilot a proper Christian burial in the local cemetery, since that was the popular faith in that area. They also held a short memorial for the being on April 20th, three days after the crash. The funeral plans were even printed in the Dallas paper. Since the article ran two days after the crash, the description was short and simple. It said, quote, the pilot's funeral will take place at noon tomorrow." End quote. Reporter S.E. Hayden also gave a brief summary of the crash and declared, quote, The pilot was not an inhabitant of this world.

Then he added that T.J. Weems, quote, gives his opinion that the pilot was a native of the planet Mars. The article didn't elaborate further, which may be why the incident didn't get much attention outside of Aurora. But there was another reason why the news might not have been more widespread. there had been a ton of airship sightings all across Texas that same day of the crash. There were 17 total, often with flashing lights attached to them. Some flew low enough to the ground that eyewitnesses even saw passengers on board.

One encounter was in a small town of Beaumont, about 300 miles southeast of Aurora. Local spotted a flying ship at 1 p.m. It was shaped like a blimp or a balloon and had a bright light at one end, which sounds very similar to how Charlie Stevens described the Aurora ship, as a cigar-shaped craft with a bright light on it. Witnesses said the Beaumont vessel seemed to be headed northwest. It was unclear where it went for the rest of the afternoon, but eight hours later, that ship, or one just like it, appeared in Farmersville,

about 90 miles west of Aurora, except it was headed in the opposite direction from the previous craft. Now it was flying south, and witnesses said it was going about 60 miles per hour, making it way too fast to be an ordinary blimp, which only traveled about 15 miles per hour. And that same day, airships were also spotted in Dallas,

Galveston, Ellis County, Savoy, I mean, the list goes on. So you can see why the Aurora incident didn't cause much of a stir. Unlike a lot of UFO cases we've covered on this show, there was no immediate rush to clean or cover up the scene. No federal investigators, no men in black sightings. To be honest, the people of Aurora were on their own. They had to figure out how to dispose of all the wreckage from the airship without any help.

Some even collected pieces of debris to keep a suit. souvenirs. Unfortunately, no one kept track of who kept what. So to this day, we don't know where any of that evidence went. But we do know that a lot of the wreckage was apparently too big or heavy for anyone just to haul away. Instead, some people dropped it down a well on Judge Proctor's property, which was close to the crash site. And after that day, the people of Aurora tried to go back to their ordinary lives. Over the next half-century or so, they essentially just tried to forget about it.

Well, that's until somewhere between 1935 and 1945, and that's when Judge Proctor's descendants sold his property to a couple named Brawley and Bonnie Oates. They moved into their new home and almost immediately began having health problems. And it started when Brawley presumably noted, some aches and pains. He made an appointment with his doctor

who diagnosed him with arthritis. He and Bonnie also noticed that nothing grew in one particular patch of ground near his well. Grass just wouldn't take root. And when they planted seedlings in the area, they just withered up and died. Brawley likely heard the stories about the crash from 1897, so he figured the debris and the well

must have been toxic. He got his hands on a huge slab of concrete and put it right over the mouth of the well. This wouldn't stop the debris from poisoning the land, but at least no one could ever get water from it again. With that, the last piece of evidence related to the Aurora UFO was gone and buried. And with each year that passed,

more and more eyewitnesses grew older and eventually passed away. By 1973, it seemed like the incident might be forgotten forever. But that's when a public group called the Mutual UFO Network, or Mufon, got involved. It's unclear why they were suddenly interested in Aurora now almost 80 years after the crash, but they managed to connect with a handful of eyewitnesses who were still alive. All of them had been children at the time of the crash, like 10-year-old Charlie Stevens and 15-year-old Mary Evans. So Mufon investigators took their statements, and to this day, those are the only

eyewitness reports we have on record. They also searched for physical evidence on Judge Proctor's farm. They didn't have the right equipment to remove the concrete slab, but they found tiny pieces of metal buried in the ground around it, specifically in those patches where grass still wouldn't grow. Among that debris, the investigators found a circular piece of gray metal. They couldn't tell what it was, so they sent it to an aerospace facility for testing. This lab typically worked with parts for airplanes and rockets to make sure they were strong enough to withstand the stresses of flight. So they were the perfect people to analyze it. That's right, and their test showed it was made up of 95% aluminum and 5% iron, which was shocking.

because usually manufacturers don't mix that much iron with aluminum. There are laboratories today that can make aluminum iron blends, but usually they're only one or two percent iron. It's basically unheard of to have a 5% mixture, which made the Mufon investigators think, the metal must not have come from the earth. It had been made by an intelligence with very advanced technology. beyond anything that we have today.

But the metal still wasn't undeniable proof that aliens had come to Aurora. The UFO hunters wanted more evidence, and they thought that they could find it in the alien pilot's grave. The only problem was no one was entirely sure where it was. Newspapers said the pilot had been buried in the Aurora Cemetery near an oak tree, but they didn't specify the exact location of the plot.

And since there were multiple oak trees in the graveyard, the body could have been under any one of them. So the Mufon investigators searched the entire cemetery headstone by headstone, and eventually they spotted a grave that was marked by a miss-shapeen rock. It wasn't a traditional marker. Instead, it looked like something that had been made quickly and cheaply. There was no name or date on the stone, just an oval-shaped etching, which looked a bit like a cigar-shaped spaceship. The investigators waved metal detectors over the possible grave, and they went off.

There was something metallic under the rock. So the Mufon team asked the city of Aurora for permission to exhumed the body and perform an autopsy. If this was the pilot's grave, they'd be able to prove once and for all that they'd be able to prove once and for all that aliens existed, except the city officials refused their request. Yes, they had good reason to do so. First, because Texas laws says you can't dig up a person's grave without notifying their next of kin. And since Mufon didn't know who was buried there, they didn't know who to contact. If it turned out this was a person's tomb, they could have a huge problem.

them on their hands. Aurora officials also had health and safety concerns. The community had suffered from an outbreak of spotted fever a few months before the alleged UFO crash. In 1972, officials apparently feared the virus might still be alive on the bodies in the graveyard. And they didn't want to risk exposing the Moufon team to the disease or letting them spread it to other people. Now, the term spotted fever can refer to a number of different diseases, all of which can cause rashes that look like spots. But records from the time say that lots of locals had died and were buried in that cemetery. And while that concern of re-exposing people might sound a bit outlandish, it can actually happen. It's rare, but people have caught contagious diseases from dead.

bodies before. But there's more to the story. After the Mufon scientist left Aurora and went home, they typed up reports and published their findings. Newspapers picked up on the story, and thanks to their coverage, the crash became famous 75 years after it happened. All sorts of people began booking trips to Aurora, Texas, staying in local hotels and eating at their restaurants. the town experienced a minor economic boom. But when all of those visitors went to the cemetery to look at the pilot's grave, they realized the marker was gone. Either someone had removed it or it never existed at all. In 1972, Mufon investigators connected with a woman named Barbara Brammer.

She wasn't an eyewitness, but she was a longtime resident of a woman. Aurora. She'd even been mayor at one point, and she said the whole incident was a massive hoax. According to Barbara, Aurora was in big trouble in 1897 the year that the crash happened. Swarms of insects had descended on the fields that spring, devouring crops and destroying the economy. Then a fire on the west side of town burned multiple homes and businesses. After that, several people became sick and died of spotted fever. Texas state officials even put Aurora under quarantine to stop the disease from spreading. All of this happened within a few short months.

It was too much for the tiny town to handle. People were sick, grieving, and out of work. Many thought they'd have to move to bigger towns like Dallas just to make ends meet. And maybe Aurora officials were worried that if too many citizens, left, their town wouldn't exist anymore. So allegedly, after the quarantine was lifted, reporter S.E. Hayden wanted to find a way to draw tourists to Aurora and boost the economy. He saw how much attention the wave of unidentified airships was getting, and he decided to stage one in Aurora. He wrote a newspaper article about a ship crashing into Judge Proctor's windmill,

something that another witness and Aurora resident named Etta Paggs claimed never actually happened. In fact, she said Judge Proctor never even had a windmill. According to Barbara, everyone questioned the testimony from astronomer T.J. Weems, who said the deceased was a Martian, and he invented the details about the pilot being buried in the cemetery and the wreckage being dumped down Judge Proctor's well. Barbara said the entire article was a complete work of fiction. We have to acknowledge that S.E. Hayden apparently had a reputation for being a prankster.

But Hayden was also said to be very professional. According to an investigative reporter named Jim Mars, the other articles Hayden wrote and published were all factual and accurate. It would have been completely out of character for him to make up this story, about a UFO crash while he was on the clock. It's doubtful that he'd risk destroying his entire reputation or that of the newspaper by printing things that just weren't true. And you're probably wondering about those eyewitnesses,

the Mufon investigator's question, like Charlie and Mary. Barbara never explained how they were able to give statements about a crash that never existed. But some people thought this was a. enough. The mystery was solved. Hayden made up the UFO incident to sell papers and draw in tourists. But others still believed there was more to the story. And maybe because, as always, someone was hiding a bigger truth. In the year 2008, the cast of the History Channel series UFO Hunters went to Aurora to get to the bottom of the mystery. By then, it had been 111 years since the crash and all of

the eyewitnesses were now deceased. So the UFO hunters' team couldn't rely on their testimony, but they could search for any physical evidence that remained. And on Judge Proctor's farm near the sealed well, they found something buried underground, planks of wood that were very deteriorated, but they'd clearly been kneeled together to form the base of a tall structure. It was the foundation for a windmill, meaning Edda's claims weren't accurate after all. She was wrong when she said Judge Proctor never had a windmill. And if she was wrong about that, her entire theory may have been invalid. So next, they turned their attention to the sealed well.

With permission from the current owners, they used equipment to pull the concrete slab aside. They hoped to find scraps of wreckage from the old spaceship buried beneath. But there was nothing down there. Either the vessel had never existed, or the pieces had broken down or been removed at some point over the past century. Except, the crew wasn't discouraged. They remembered the claims made by former landowner Brawley Oates, who'd suggested the wreckage had contaminated the well's water. So the UFO hunters' team collected samples to see if the liquid had toxic chemicals in it.

And it's not unusual for water to have some aluminum, but tests showed Oates Well had elevated levels, which was very interesting, because remember, the mysterious metal shards Mufon found were also mostly made of aluminum. Now, was this indisputable proof? Well, not quite. The investigators weren't able to find any pieces of the ship, and they still didn't have permission to exhume the pilot's grave

or do any test on the body, which means to this day there's no way to prove if the Aurora UFO incident really happened or not. But the story has been covered in books and newspaper articles, there have been multiple TV specials and documentaries about it. And now, lots of tourists come to Aurora in the hopes that they'll learn something about the crash, or that they'll be able to get close to something otherworldly. Some Aurora residents are a little tongue-in-cheek about the crash.

They've since given the pilot a nickname, Ned. It's unclear where it came from, but lots of local businesses are trying to profit off of Ned's story. This includes the local smoking windmill barbecue, which offers a specialty cocktail called The Martian Margarita. Find me up for one. Well, Aurora officials have also replaced the headstone that disappeared in 1972. After all, it was a big tourist draw, and they didn't want to discourage people from visiting. It stood until 2012. That's when the city officially removed it, believing it was disrespectful to the other people buried there. Their argument was that graveyards shouldn't be tourist destinations, and I can see where they were

coming from. However, the plaque that lists everyone who was laid to rest on the grounds still includes a mention of the pilot. The inscription says, quote, this site is well known because of the legend that a spaceship crashed nearby in 1897 and the pilot killed in the crash was buried here. It's not unusual for visitors to go to the graveyard, leave flowers or trinkets on the unmarked patch of grass where Ned's grave and final resting place is thought to be. If the wreck actually was a hoax to draw on more tourism, it's safe to say that it worked. The Aurora, Texas UFO incident put the town on the map. But if it was real, then that means the Aurora incident happened way before Roswell or Cape Girardo.

It might not be the oldest UFO crash in the U.S., but it's definitely one of the earliest that's ever been reported. And it was very well documented for its time. Given what could be buried there, that would make Arroydard. Aurora a heck of a lot more than just a sleepy small town. It means Aurora, Texas may hold the key to understanding one of the biggest unsolved mysteries of our time. The question is, are we as humans truly alone in this massive, beautiful universe? This is So Supernatural, an audio truck original produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod and visit our website at sosupernaturalpodcast.com.

Joining vetting me next Friday for an all-new episode. I think Chuck would approve.