What happened
After California went quiet, a second and much larger airship wave began in Nebraska in February 1897 and rolled east through the spring. Lights and occasionally dark, cigar-shaped bodies were reported over Omaha, Topeka, where Governor John Leedy was among the witnesses, and Kansas City, where thousands watched a searchlight-bearing black object on 2 April. By 9-11 April the 'Kansas airship' had reached Chicago. Crowds filled streets and rooftops; in Evanston, a resident with field glasses described a white searchlight followed by green and white lights moving in unison, and the lake life-saving crew trained their large glass on it. Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Texas all filled their columns with sightings through April. Alongside the sober reports came wild ones: talking Martians, kidnapped doctors, a stolen heifer and a crash in Texas. By May the wave had largely passed, and the episode lay forgotten until UFO researchers rediscovered it in old newspapers in the 1960s.
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The original account
High over the tallest buildings of the city last night a strange light gleamed and moved and was stared at by thousands of people in the streets and on housetops, who said it was the Kansas airship... Robert Lowen... noticed the moving light in the sky. The light appeared to be over the lake and was moving in a westerly direction. Lowen got a field glass and was able to discern four lights a short distance apart and moving in unison. The first was a bright white light and appeared to be operated like a searchlight.
Topeka State Journal, 12 April 1897, p. 1, reprinting Chicago dispatches including the Times-Herald (public domain; OCR corrected)
The official explanation
Astronomers of the day attributed much of the Chicago excitement to bright stars and planets. Professor G. W. Hough of Northwestern University's Dearborn Observatory identified the Chicago light as Alpha Orionis (Betelgeuse), and Venus was blamed elsewhere. Pranksters launched tissue-paper hot-air balloons with lanterns: on 10 April 1897 staff of the Burlington Hawk-Eye in Iowa did exactly that and received a stream of airship reports, one witness offering an affidavit that he heard voices. Historians such as Robert Bartholomew describe the wave as a social contagion amplified by competitive newspapers, many of whose most colourful stories were invented.
The anomalous case
The scale is extraordinary: thousands of reports across a dozen states in a few weeks, with modern estimates of witnesses running into the tens of thousands. Many came from people with optical instruments and a duty to watch the sky, such as Evanston's life-saving crew, and they described multiple coloured lights moving together, apparently under control, sometimes against the wind. Betelgeuse does not cross the sky from the lake and then fade at half past midnight, as the Chicago light did, nor does a star show separate white, green and white lights to someone with a field glass. Writer Michael Busby, analysing reported flight paths and speeds in Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery, argued that the Texas reports fit three real airships built by a private group, while Danelek proposes a secret prototype following rail lines eastward. Either way, the wave suggests something flew that history did not record.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- Topeka State Journal, 12 April 1897, p. 1 (Chicago and Evanston sightings; Professor Hough's star explanation) newspaper, loc.gov
- Rock Island Argus, 12 April 1897, p. 1 (Burlington Hawk-Eye balloon test) newspaper, loc.gov
Sources
- Topeka State Journal, 12 April 1897, p. 1 Library of Congress, Chronicling America
- Rock Island Argus, 12 April 1897, p. 1 Library of Congress, Chronicling America
- Mystery airship Wikipedia
Witness reports elsewhere
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