Roswell of Texas: The Aurora UFO
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What happened in Aurora, Texas in 1897?
Bill Case pulled up to the cemetery in Aurora, Texas in the spring of 1973. The UFO investigator had been here before. He just never found what he was looking for. Information could be hard to come by in Aurora, but recently one of Bill's contacts smuggled a message out of a hospital. Written by an 89-year-old patient, it began, you're looking at the wrong grave. It also included directions. Bill stalked through the gates of the cemetery and made his way to the southern quadrant. His eyes were peeled for a gnarled 200-year-old oak tree. Finally, he found it in the oldest section of the cemetery. A roughly hewn triangular slab of stone sat underneath its branches. Etched into the stone's surface was an image, a long, thin oval surrounding three circles –
It almost looked like a submarine with three portholes running down the side. But Bill knew better. It was a UFO, and the stone marked the grave of the spaceship's alien pilot. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. You can listen to the audio everywhere and watch the video only on Spotify. And be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. Stay with us. Aurora, Texas has always been a small town, but when it was first established in 1882, it was part of a big vision. Surveyors made plans for a train line to stop in town on its way across Texas. The railroad promised to drive tourism, boost local businesses, and put Aurora on the map in more ways than one.
But before it could be finished, the town encountered one hardship after another. First, there were the crops. In the early 1890s, Aurora's farmers overplanted and overworked the land they used to grow cotton. a major source of income for the town. As the soil lost its potency and eroded away, harvests suffered, and so did the economy. An infestation of weevils destroyed the few cotton plants they had. Watch out for weevils. Then there was the fire. On a gusty day in the mid 1890s, a blaze broke out that obliterated the entire western portion of the city. Businesses burned to the ground, destroying Aurora's economic center. Then, in 1889, spotted fever swept across town. As the outbreak spread, citizens fled.
Townspeople moved to nearby municipalities, and Aurora practically emptied out overnight. Those who remained clung to the hope that the incoming railroad would restore prosperity and a sense of normalcy to the town. Then, after a drawn-out intensive survey process, interest in the project mysteriously disappeared.
What were the events leading up to the UFO crash?
In the early 1890s, a new train station opened in the neighboring Rome, Texas instead. Without the railroad to bring in new visitors, the town felt forgotten. But in 1897, something changed. Aurora became a part of the national story in a way no one expected. Legend has it, one night in mid-April around 6 a.m., the farmers of Aurora looked up from their fields to see a strange craft hovering through the sky. At first, it appeared to be one of the airships that had been spotted all across the country in recent months, and they kept reading about it in the papers. It looked like a giant silver flying cigar with a bright white light attached to it. but there was something off. It wasn't the smooth gliding craft described in those other reports. Plumes of smoke billowed in its wake as the craft charted a route across the sky. Moving north, it flew over Jim Stevens' property, about three miles from the town center.
Jim had been bringing the cows out from the barn when he noticed the airship sputtering over his farm, heading toward Aurora's main square. the ship's altitude dropped suddenly and veered towards Judge J.S. Proctor's farm. Jim watched in horror as it struck Proctor's windmill and broke into pieces. Fiery shards of spaceship slammed to the ground all around the Proctor farm. The windmill toppled in the collision, sending even more chunks of metal into the air as it fell. The judge's property was in shambles. His flower garden destroyed. Metal impaled trees across the backyard. Molten shards pierced the earth and embedded themselves in the nearby rocks. Word spread quickly across town. Citizens rushed over to the farm to see the crash for themselves.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What happened in Aurora, Texas in 1897?
0:02–3:25
2
What were the events leading up to the UFO crash?
3:25–13:32
3
What evidence was found after the crash?
13:32–15:35
4
Why did the Aurora incident receive minimal media coverage?
15:35–27:05
5
What theories emerged about the crash over time?
27:05–35:32
6
How did the Oates family contribute to the story decades later?
35:32–39:15
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Conspiracy Theories
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