Message #208202

[Jennie McGrath]

These accounts, all given by respectable witnesses, separated by several hundred miles, yet all in a direct line with Aurora, describe a very similar object. It must be remembered that in 1897, distances were much greater than they are today, and news traveled at a much slower rate. It is inconceivable that there could have been any collusion between witnesses, and highly unlikely that people living in towns separated by several hundred miles, could have heard news or read accounts of happenings in other towns within the space of two or three days. This was a time, it must be remembered, when most news traveled by wire, or by railroad, and unless there was a critical need for residents of one region to have news of another, the expense of wiring such news was avoided.

Much may be made, in some quarters of the �quaint� descriptions given of the object� it, indeed, must be a single object, or at least identical objects� such as the presence of �machine noises� and �ropes�. This is perfectly understandable in light of the fact that this was a time before sophisticated machinery, especially sophisticated flying machinery was common, or even, for that matter, known. It would be six years before the Wright Brothers would take their first, halting, leap above the ground, and the dirigible airships of such pioneers as the Count von Zeplein, were in the very early stages of development, a continent and an ocean away. Certainly no native of East, Central or South Texas had ever seen such an object. It is highly unlikely that very many of them had even heard of such things. Science Fiction of the day was limited to the works of Jules Verne, and the very early works of Herbert George Wells, and it is unlikely in the extreme that residents of a tiny Texas town, only a few years removed from fighting for it�s survival with the Apaches and Comanches would have access to such current works.