Aurora, Texas
33°03′N, 97°31′W — Wise County, North Texas — small town northwest of Fort Worth on State Highway 114
What's documented
Aurora is a small town in Wise County, Texas, with a population of ~1,300. On 17 April 1897, the Dallas Morning News published a story by correspondent S.E. Haydon claiming an airship had crashed into Judge J.S. Proctor's windmill at dawn the previous day, killing the pilot — described as "not an inhabitant of this world." The account is generally considered to have been a hoax intended to attract attention to the dying town following the failure of its cotton crop, a recent spotted-fever epidemic, and the railroad's decision to bypass it.
Notable & intriguing
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On 19 April 1897, the Dallas Morning News printed S.E. Haydon's report that the pilot had been buried in Aurora Cemetery 'with Christian rites' and that wreckage 'covered with strange hieroglyphics' had been thrown down Judge Proctor's well. The cemetery's headstone purportedly marking the grave has gone missing on multiple occasions; the United Foot Press Association currently uses a stamped marker.
Dallas Morning News, 19 April 1897, p. 5
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In 1973, MUFON investigator Hayden Hewes obtained Texas State Historical Commission permission to attempt exhumation of the alleged pilot's grave. The Aurora Cemetery Association blocked the exhumation. A metal-detector survey conducted in 1973 reportedly detected an anomalous mass three feet down at the site; later surveys (1998, 2008) found nothing.
Hewes, MUFON case file 8901-A; Wise County Messenger archives 1973-2008
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Judge Proctor's well at the alleged crash site was sealed by the family in 1945 after years of complaints about contaminated water. Brawley Oates, who lived on the property and used the well, developed severe arthritis he attributed to it. He sealed the well with a concrete slab; the slab was removed in 1979 and the well found empty.
Wise County Historical Survey, 1973 inventory; Time-Life 'UFO: The Continuing Enigma' (1992), p. 41
Public-record imagery
