That damnable, alleged Airship wave of 1896/1897

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Just when I think have a handle on the Airship wave of the late 1890s, I’m brought up short by reality.

When I lived in Florida and had an active UFO operation [The UFO Lab], prominently alluded to in a newspaper I owned, I, once, while discussing the 1896/1897 Airship wave among a group of people in my apartment building, an 81 year old artist, Fred Hoertz told me he saw one of the Airships at the time. (He was 8 years old at the time of his sighting.)

[http://www.artnet.com/artists/frederick-j-hoertz/]

I asked what it looked like and what he felt at the time, about his sighting. His wife said, sharply, that it was a long time ago and how could I expect him to remember such details.

I dropped the matter. (He did give me a painting when I left for Washington D.C.)

Later, while in Indiana, I had a few discourses with Lucius Farish (some of that discussion online here) who had, often, written about the Airship wave, a few times with Jerome Clark.

That material convinced me that the Airship observations were as they were depicted and reported.

I came across a photo of one of the Airships, or so I thought, by Alfred Stieglitz, pictured here:

That was a convincer for me but than I discovered the date of the Stieglitz photo, 1910, apparently. That’s outside the wave dates by a long shot.

But was the photo taken before 1910 and published for that date? (I’m trying to find out.)

To date I’ve read as much as possible about the Airship wave and have accumulated dozens of references to them or reports about them.

I’m convinced that something odd, in the form of Airships, often with passengers and crews, appeared, or seemed to, to many honest, mentally healthy citizens in various areas around the country. (Some of that information online here recently.)

There are a few skeptics. More than a few it seems, who think the Airships came about or were configured in the mind of some witnesses by hoax newspaper accounts or misperceptions of astronomical entities (Venus, the Moon, meteors) and, thus, not as outlined by those regurgitating the supposed sightings, me among them.

But a review of the reports, as found in the Humanoid Encounters books by Albert Rosales, magazines (of the 1970s/80s mostly), a few books (by Redfern and Swords, among others), and materials offered from the Magonia Exchange, show me a litany of “real” Airship observations, whether as described/reported or as a mass hysteria (hallucination) at the time…a matter I’ve dealt with here many times.

Skeptics of the purported wave are energized by the idea that the sightings are bogus or sensory misperceptions. But those views are errant and closed-minded.

What the raft of Airship reports are is up for grabs, and I’m thinking, that like UFOs, to discount them out-of-hand as skeptics do, is bad thinking or stupid thinking.

There is a malady at work here, perhaps for the Airship witnesses, the newspapers that provided the reportage, and the polluted presentations of skeptics.

For me, it’s been a small joy ride, one that persists, because I’m thinking that Spanish UFO researcher Jose Antonio Caravaca’s interesting Distortion Theory may be a viable answer to the enigma of the wave sightings.

More to come (despite the groans of those who hate to see ongoing materials about  old UFO reports or even older Airship accounts).

RR