1100–1199 CE — Over thirty documented UAP and entity encounters across medieval Europe and Asia. Aerial armies, sky ships, burning humanoids, captured entities, green-skinned children, and luminous vessels recorded by the most credible chroniclers of the medieval world.
1100 CE – 1199 CE: UFO|UAP & Alien Sightings Archive
The 12th century CE was one of the most turbulent and consequential centuries in medieval European history — the Crusades reshaped the known world, the Catholic Church reached the height of its institutional power, and the great cathedrals of Europe began to rise from the earth. It was also a century in which the sky was unusually busy. From Germany to Japan, from England to China, from Spain to Russia, chroniclers, clergy, and common witnesses recorded aerial phenomena, entity encounters, and high strangeness events with a consistency and geographic breadth that no single cultural tradition can explain. The 1100–1199 CE archive documents over two dozen recorded incidents across three continents — burning men running the hills of Germany, a captured dwarf escaping through a tunnel beneath a German monastery, sky ships observed over London, fiery dragons emerging from English seas, luminous objects over Japanese mountains, and armed troops witnessed fighting in the air over crusading Europe.
What makes the 12th century record particularly significant for serious researchers is the quality of its sources. Many of the events documented in this archive were recorded by named, credible witnesses — priests, chroniclers, military commanders, and monastic scholars who were operating within institutions that valued accurate record keeping. Ekkehard of Aurach, Nestor the chronicler of the Russian Primary Chronicle, Ralph Niger, Gervase of Canterbury, William of Newburgh, and Ralph of Coggeshall were not sensationalists. They recorded what was observed and what was reported to them because it was their job to preserve the historical record. The phenomenon they documented did not care about the Crusades. It did not pause for the coronation of Barbarossa or the siege of Jerusalem. It operated continuously, across every geography this century touched, leaving a record that the ThinkAboutIt Docs archive now holds in chronological order for the first time in one place.
Date: 1100
Location: Germany
Summary: “The signs in the sun and the wonders which appeared, both in the air and on the earth, aroused many who had previously been indifferent… A few years ago a priest of honorable reputation, by the name of Suigger, about the ninth hour of the day beheld two knights, who met one another in the air and fought long, until one, who carried a great cross with which he struck the other, finally overcame his enemy…Some who were watching horses in the fields reported that they had seen the image of a city in the air and had observed how various troops from different directions, both on horseback and on foot, were hastening thither.
“Many, moreover, displayed, either on their clothing, or upon their forehead, or elsewhere on their body, the sign of the cross, which had been divinely imprinted, and they believed themselves on this account to have been destined to the service of God.”
Source: Ekkehard of Aurach. On the Opening of the First Crusade (1101).
Date: 1102
Location: Ieronimus Cathedral, Salamanca Spain
Summary: The carved figure known as the “Cosmonaut of Salamanca” — a relief carving on the facade of the New Cathedral of Salamanca depicting what appears to be a figure in a spacesuit — is associated with this location and period. The carving, embedded among traditional medieval and Renaissance decorative figures, depicts a detailed humanoid in what modern observers describe as an astronaut suit with helmet and boot treads. [Note: The New Cathedral was begun in 1513; this entry may reference earlier carvings on the original Romanesque structure or is misdated — verify against source.]
Date: 1104
Location: Switzerland (or England?)
Summary: Wolffart notes that “torches of fire, glowing lines and lights were often seen flying in the air then. There had that looked like swarms of butterflies or small glowworms a funny species. They flying through the air and obscured the sunlight as if it was the clouds. “(Christiane Piens: “The UFO past” – Marabout 1977 – p.46: Great Britain) Wolfart note that in Switzerland, in 1104, “torches … etc..”
Source: “UFO Files”, ed. Marshall Cavendish, 1998 Paris, Special issue, p.3)
Date: February 16, 1105
Location: Unknown — France likely based on chronicle source
Summary: during the first week of Lent, a strange star appeared on the evening of Friday, February 16 and long after we saw a shining moment each night the star was emerging in the southwest and seemed small and dark but the light that emanate was very bright and was manifested in the form of a huge beam of light projected in a northerly direction is an evening it seemed that it was singing ray of lightning in the opposite direction towards the star. Some said they saw other stars inconnues about the same time but we can speak with reserve cars we did not see us themselves. On the eve of the cena dominici Thursday before Easter two moons were seen in the sky before it was light, one to the east and the other to the west and both were full moon was then about fifteen of days
Source: chronicles the UFO michel Bougard page 67
Date: Feb. 11, 1110
Location: Pechersky Monastery, Russia
Summary: There was an omen in the Pechersky monastery: “On February 11th there appeared a fiery pillar that reached from the ground to the sky, and lightning lit all earth, and thunder rattled at the first hour of night, and everyone saw it. The pillar first stood over the stone trapezitsa (monastery dining room), blocking the sight of the cross, and, after a short while, moved to the church and stood over Feodosiev’s (Theodosius) tomb; it then went to the top of the church, turning its face to the east, and afterwards made itself invisible.” The record reads: “It wasn’t an usual fiery column, but the apparition of an angel, because angels often appeared as a fiery column or a flame.”
Source: Nestor, Russian Primary Chronicle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), 296-297. The date is sometimes given as 1111.
Date: 1113
Location: Christchurch, Wessex, England
Summary: A group of churchmen from Laon in France were going from town to town in Wessex, bearing with them relics of the Virgin Mary, which they used to perform miracles of healing. At the coastal town of Christ church, they were astonished to see a dragon come out of the sea, ‘breathing fire out of its nostrils.’
Source:Not recorded in original entry — corroborated in UFO Files, ed. Marshall Cavendish, 1998
Date: 1116
Location: China
Summary: Emerging figure in Vision and Kingdoms of the song, “” governance Huizong and six years (in 1116) in November, with stars like the moon, slowly southward, and down light, with the same month. “The next year,” in December Jiayin moon, a star Kisaragi “(” continued Mirror “)
Source:Song Dynasty records, Continued Mirror chronicle
Date: 1123
Location: London England
Summary: In the chronicle of Geoffrey of Breuil mention is made of observation in London of “ships to the stopover between the clouds.”
Source: Michel BOUGARD: “The chronicle of UFO” – Delarge 1977 p.67
Date: 1125 CE: Railbach, Freienstein, Germany Burning Man?
Date: 1130
Location: Bohemia, Czechoslovakia
Summary: “A sign (or “a monster”) resembling a flying serpent” is said to have flown over Bohemia, and was recorded by two separate historians.
Source: Czech magazine Vecerni Praha, quoted in The Washington Post, August 2, 1967. The original sources are Canonici Wissegradensis Continuatio Cosmae, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH) SS 9, 136 and Annates Gradicences in MGH SS 17, 650.
Date: 1133
Location: China
Summary: “Golden Shitian Wen-chi”: “Jin day Taizong of 10 years (1133) May Yi Chou, suddenly lost online on the south, are the complex it is.”
Source: Golden Shitian Wen-chi, Jin Dynasty records
Date: August 12, 1133
Location: Japan
Summary: A large silvery object is reported to have come down close to the ground.
Source: Morihiro Saito, Nihon-Tenmonshiriyou, chapter 7
Date: 1133
Location: Christchurch, Hampshire England
Summary: A group of clergymen from Laon went from town to town in Wessex, bringing with them the relics of the Virgin Mary, which enabled them to effect miraculous cures. Arrived in the city of Christchurch in Hampshire, they were amazed to see a dragon out of the sea “throwing fire through his nostrils”
Source: (“UFO Files”, ed. Marshall Cavendish, 1998 Paris, Occasional, p. 3, 4)
Date: 1138: Dwarf sighting in Germany
Date: 1142
Location: Prague Czech Republic
Summary: fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky above Prague Czechoslovakia in 1130 and 1142 according to historians of the day. they also show us that in the 18th and 19th centuries flying objects were so frequent in children seens of Bohemia informed about them at school
Source: Czech magazine Vecerni Praha, quoted in The Washington Post, August 2, 1967. Original: Monachi Sazavensis, cont. Cosmae (a. 932-1162), in MGH SS 9, 159.
Date: 1148
Location: Trier, Germany
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A luminous object was reported seen in the sky over Trier by multiple witnesses and recorded in German monastic chronicles of the period
Source: Referenced in Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia supplementary records
Date: 1150
Location: Visoki Decani Monas, Serbia
Summary: Hovering objects were observed. Two objects were observed at a building.
Source: Hobana, Ion; UFOs from Behind the Iron Curtain Bantam Y8898, New York, 1975
Date: 1155
Location: Rome, Italy
Summary: During the coronation of Federico (Frederick) Barbarossa by Pope Eugene III “there appeared in the sky three lights, and a cross formed by stars.”
Source: B. Capone, “Luci dallo Spazio” in II Giornale dei Misteri, Dec. 1972, which gives the year as 1152. While Barbarossa was declared king of the Holy Roman Empire in that year, the coronation did not actually take place until 1155 because of widespread unrest within the lands he supposedly controlled, and the disloyalty of his rival Henry the Lion. We hope that future researchers will be able to trace a more precise reference.
Date: 1161
Location: Thann, Alsace, France
Time:
Summary: Three lights or luminous objects were observed by the Lord of Engelburg over the village of Thann, in Alsace, in 1161. A servant of Ubald, bishop of Ombrie, had stolen a relic from the Saint’s body, hiding it in his walking stick, which he planted in the ground next to a pine tree. Three aerial lights were seen coming over the top of the tree. The next morning the servant found his stick immobilized and was unable to pick it up. This impressed people so much that they built a chapel to commemorate the ‘miracle.’ Each year in Thann, on the 30th of June, three fir-trees (in reference to the three lights) are cremated in front of the main church in celebration of this foundation legend. The celebration is known as the “cremation des trois sapins” and still occurs today.
Source: Johannes Andreas Schenck, Sanctus Theobaldus (Freiburg, 1628)
Date: 1166
Location: China
Summary: “Xiaozong roads to two years (1166), Zhao Qingxian take a commitment on the Imperial Way House Division, to the summer months insomnia, Kai families enjoy fresh air, see the day full moon in the yard, such as, instead sigh, said: “moonlight good.” fades under Russian Ting, Yuehen slightly reduced, Sri Lanka in the light off, looking radiant stars, but the evening is a dark day, in fact nobody knows what that light also. “
Source: “Yi Jian A Volume 19
Date: Christmas Eve 1167
Location: England
Summary: Two “stars” appear on Christmas Day. The actual quote is from Nicholas Trivetus (Annales): “At the watch night (vigilia) of the Lord’s Nativity, two fiery stars appeared in the western sky. One was large, the other small. At first, they appeared joined together. Afterwards, they were for a long time separated distinctly.” It is probable, but not certain? that the sighting was made in England.
Source: Nicholas Trivetus (1258-1328), Annates sexregum Angttae. Trivetus was not contemporary with the event, so he must have copied it from an older chronicle.
Date: 1169
Location: China
Summary: In the history of the Song Dynasty it is written that in the fifth year of the K’ien Tao (now known as Qiandao) era, which corresponds with 1169 AD, dragons were seen battling in the sky during a thunderstorm:“Two dragons fled and pearls like carriage wheels fell down on the ground, where herds’ boys found them.”
Source: Dr. M. W. De Visser, The Dragon in China and Japan (Amsterdam: Johannes Muller, 1913), 48. Visser quotes from “the Wu ki.”
Date: March 9, 1170
Location: St Ostwyth Sussex England
Summary: The twelfth century chronicler Ralph Niger reports that March 9, 1170, in St Ostwyth in Sussex, south-east England. The chronicler Ralph Niger twelfth century tells of a “dragon incredibly large” was observed, leaving Earth to fly through the air. The air was aflame with fire by his action and a house was burned to ashes, and its dependencies.
Source: (“UFO Files”, ed. Marshall Cavendish, 1998 Paris, Special issue, p. 4)
Date: 1171
Location: Teruel, Aragon, Spain
Summary: Alfonso II and his men observed a wandering bull and a mysterious, star-like luminous object hovering above. As described in a current historical brochure about the town, “Tradition says that in the XII century, during the Reconquest of Spain, King Alfonso II, after taking several important positions, continued along the banks of the River Martin and upon reaching what is now Teruel, he split his army up, leaving part of his warriors in the Cella Plains with orders to remain on the defensive, and he then proceeded to confront the rebels in the mountains of Prades. This is the point where history and legend blend together. The warriors disobeyed the king’s orders and ran after a bull that was being followed by a star from heaven because they had seen it in premonitory dreams: a sign, according to them, which marked the place where a new town was to be established. In this way they took the fortress of Teruel planting their banner in the conquered fortress.”
Source: Javier Sierra and Jesus Callejo, La Espana Extrana (Madrid: Ediciones EDAF,
1997), 122-4.
Date: 1173: 2 Strange children in Woolpit, Suffolk, England
Date: June 18, 1178
Location: Canterbury, England
Summary: Gervase of Canterbury wrote that about an hour after sunset five witnesses watched as the upper horn of the bright new moon suddenly split in two. From the midpoint of this division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out fire, hot coals and sparks. The moon “writhed [and] throbbed like a wounded snake.” This happened a dozen times or more, “turning the moon blackish along its whole length.” When a geologist suggested in 1976 that Gervase’s account referred to the meteor impact that created the 22 kilometer lunar crater called Giordano Bruno, the theory was widely accepted. However, as reported in several scientific journals in 2001, new calculations show that such an event would have resulted in a fierce, week-long meteor storm on Earth with 100 million of tons of ejecta raining down on our planet. Of course, this did not take place in the twelfth century AD, or archives all over the world would have recorded it! This begs the question “What did Gervase’s contemporaries really see?” Did they observe the dramatic entrance of a comet into the Earth’s atmosphere – or something even stranger? Were they even looking at the moon?
Source: University of Arizona news release dated 19 April 2001
Date: October 27, 1180
Location: Kii Sanchi, Nara, Japan
Summary: A term equivalent to our “flying saucer” was actually used by the Japanese approximately 700 years before it came into use in the West. Ancient documents describe an unusual shining object seen the night of October 27, 1180, as a flying “earthenware vessel.” After a while the object, which had been heading northeast from a mountain in Kii province, changed its direction and vanished below the horizon, leaving a luminous trail.
Source: Jacques Vallee, “Passport to Magonia”, pp. 4-5
Date: 1182
Location: Friesland, Holland
Summary: “The Chronicler Winsemius (1622) reports, in his Croniek van Vriesland that fours Suns and a score of armed men were seen in the sky”.
Source: Volksverhalen en Legenden van vroegere … . Groningen, 1843.
Date: 1185
Location: Mount Nyoigadake, Japan
Summary: First there were red beams behind the mountain, and then an object like a luminous wheel flew over, and entered the sea. The witnesses were fishermen.
Source: Brothers Magazine III, 1, 1964
Date: 1188
Location: Ireland
Time: Not recorded
Summary: Gerald of Wales recorded in his Topographia Hibernica an account of a ship anchor snagging on a church arch in Clonmacnoise — a variant of the aerial ship and anchor encounter type seen at Gravesend in 1207. Crew descended from the vessel, one was seized by the congregation but released, and the vessel departed.
Source: Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis), Topographia Hibernica, 1188
Date: August 9, 1186 or 1189
Location: County of Bedford Dunstable England
Summary: Benedict of Peterborough in his “Gesta Regis Henrici Secundum” said that at the ninth hour (about 14 hours) the sky opened suddenly and the laity and the clergy of the Abbey saw a very long and cross of astonishing dimensions. The appearance lasted until midnight. Walther Hemingford columnist and canon at Gisburn also reported the event in his “Chronica” but is in 1189, indicating that this cross was bright and white as silk. By William of Newburgh is also against the event in 1189 but Dunstaple this time on the road to London and adds “one o’clock we saw the Emblem of the Lord and the form of a crucified man.” But that’s not all of these mysterious cross. The archives of the abbey of Dunstable relating majestic course the passage of a huge cross, high in the sky, from east to west, but this time the observation is made in 1217.
Source: (Michel BOUGARD: “The chronicle of UFO” – Delarge 1977 p.68-69)
Date: 1193
Location: Byland Abbey, Yorkshire, England
Time: Not recorded
Summary: A large round flat silver disc flew slowly over the abbey and the assembled monks, causing great consternation among those present. Recorded by a monk of Byland Abbey in a marginal note in a manuscript now held at the British Museum.
Source: M. A. Hall, “UFOs in the Middle Ages” — citing the Byland Abbey manuscript
Date: June 7, 1193
Location: London, England
Time: 6
Summary: “On the 7th of the Ides of June, at 6 o’Clock, a thick black Cloud rose in the Air, the Sun shining clear all round about. In the middle of the Cloud was an Opening, out of which proceeded a bright Whiteness, which hung in a Ball under the black Cloud over the Side of the Thames, and the Bishop of Norwich’s Palace.”
Source: Thomas Short, A general chronological history of the air, weather, seasons, meteors, &c. in sundry places and different times (1749).
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
The Century the Sky Would Not Be Still — 12th Century UAP Activity Across the Medieval World
The 1100–1199 CE archive is one of the most geographically and typologically diverse centuries in the ThinkAboutIt Docs chronological record. Over thirty documented incidents span Germany, England, Russia, Japan, China, Spain, France, Bohemia, Serbia, Holland, Austria, and Ireland — recorded by some of the most credible institutional chroniclers of the medieval world. The century opens with aerial armies fighting over crusading Europe and closes with a large silver disc terrifying the monks of Byland Abbey in Yorkshire. In between, the archive documents a burning humanoid with visible ribs on a German hillside, a captured non-human entity escaping through an unknown tunnel beneath a monastery, green-skinned children emerging from underground in Suffolk, sky ships over London, fiery dragons from English and French seas, a luminous wheel entering the sea off Japan, a flying earthenware vessel over Kii Province, armed men and multiple suns in the sky over Holland, and two entities whose encounter with an emperor in 460 CE finds its 12th century echo in the green children’s account of coming from an underground realm.
The 12th century is also notable for what its encounters reveal about the consistency of the phenomenon across cultures that had no contact with one another. Japanese records describe vessel-specific aerial objects. Chinese Song Dynasty chronicles record dragon battles and falling pearl-like objects. English monastic scholars record sky ships with anchors and subterranean children from twilight lands. Russian chronicles record fiery pillars moving intelligently between monastery buildings. Spanish chronicles record hovering star-objects that led armies to found cities. None of these cultures shared a common interpretive framework. All of them were seeing the same thing.
“Some who were watching horses in the fields reported that they had seen the image of a city in the air and had observed how various troops from different directions, both on horseback and on foot, were hastening thither.”
Ekkehard of Aurach, On the Opening of the First Crusade, 1101 CE
