1200 – 1299: UFO|UAP & Alien Sightings Archive

Date: 1200
Location: Jerusalem Israel
Summary: “In the third year of John, King of England, there were seen in Yorkshire five Moons; one in the East, the second in the West, the third in the North, the fourth in the South, and the fifth (as it were) set in the midst of the other, having many Blazing Stars about it, and went five or six times encompassing the other, as it were the space of one hour, and shortly after vanished away.”
Source: chronicles the UFO Michel Bougard

Date: Late December 1200 or 1202
Location: Yorkshire, England  Jerusalem Israel
Summary: an object would have hovered over Jerusalem for three days and would even come down on Golgotha ??that fact is reported by the English chronicler Matthew of Paris in his historia Anglorum
Source: William Knight, ” Mementos to the World, or, An historical collection of divers wonderful comets and prodigious signs in heaven…” (printed by T. Haly, for T. Passinger, London, 1681).

Date: 1207 A.D.
Location: Tilbury, England
Summary: Tilbury Gervase of Tilbury writes in Otio Imperialia about an aerial ship which caught its anchor on a pile of stones. An occupant came down from the ship and managed to free it, however he was asphyxiated by the atmosphere (?).
Source: bibleufo.com citing Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia

Date: 1207/1211: Gravesend, Kent, England

Date: 1210
Location:  England 
Time:  Not recorded 
Summary:  Roger of Wendover records in his Flores Historiarum a fiery object described as a torch moving across the English sky, witnessed by multiple observers and recorded as a prodigious sign in the chronicles of the period.
Source:  Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum

Date: 1211
Location: Cleora, Ireland
Summary: During Sunday mass an anchor dropped from the sky and attached to a church archway. A being descended from the craft swimming through the air and attempted to release the anchor. The congregation tried to seize him. The Bishop forbade them, saying restraint might kill him. The man was freed, returned to the ship, the rope was cut, and the craft sailed away. The anchor was kept and displayed in the church as testimony.
Source: The King’s Mirror (13th century text); Brad Steiger, Flying Saucers are Hostile

Date: 1218
Location: Munster and Cologne germany and holland leyde, GERMANY
Summary: as well as in Cologne and Munster in Leiden, they saw a formation of three crosses across the sky.
Source: (Michel BOUGARD: “The chronicle of UFO” – Delarge 1977 p.68-69)

Date: 1218
Location: Friesland Holland
Summary: There was even a blue cross on top of Friesland at the same time
Source: (Michel BOUGARD: “The chronicle of UFO” – Delarge 1977 p.68-69)

Date: November 30, 1222
Location: London England
Summary: of “dragons” are observed above the city. After observing severe storms cause major flooding
Source:  [Mysterious Britain].

Date: September 14, 1224
Location: Alverno Italy
Summary: Brother Leo saw a ball of light suspended above St. Francis of Assisi while he conversed with an invisible being. “He heard voices which made questions and answers; and he remarked that Francis, who was prostrate, often repeated these words: ‘Who are you, o my God? And my dear Lord? And who am I? a worm, and Thy unworthy servant.’ He also saw him put his hand out three times into his bosom, and each time stretch it out to the flame. The light disappeared, the conversation ceased.”
Source:  Father Candide Chalippe, The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi (Teddington: Echo Library, 2007), 191-2.

Date: 1228
Location:  Japan 
Time:  Not recorded
Summary:  Japanese records document a luminous object described as a mysterious fire moving across the night sky over the Kamakura region, observed by multiple witnesses including members of the Shogunate court. 
Source:   Morihiro Saito, Nihon-Tenmonshiriyou, supplementary records

Date: 1231
Location: China
Summary: Song Shao Lizong is four years (1231), Golden Isles are eight major under review, in March, Japan eclipsed, there is gas, such as Japan, with Ling.
Source: (“Ancient and Modern Library volume integration Niansan”)

Date: May 3, 1232
Location: Caravaca, Spain
Summary: Luminous phenomena attend a double-armed cross apparently brought down by an entity assumed to be an angel. The religious context surrounding the observation has enabled it to survive as a legend, told by multiple authors. Traditionally, the most authoritative of them is considered to be the 13th century Franciscan Juan Gil (Egidio) de Zamora. He relates that the cross was brought inside the church by two angels. The current whereabouts of the artifact are equally uncertain. The cross that can be seen today in the sanctuary in Caravaca is a copy, the original having been stolen in 1934, probably by a cult.
Source: Clara Tahoces, “Caravaca, jQue Cruz!” Mas Alia 127 (September 1999).

Date: October 2, 1235 A.D.
Location: Japan
Time: 8 P.M
Summary: General Yoritsume was at military camp with his unit on September 24, 1235, when a most extraordinary phenomenon was sighted. Through the night and into the early morning lights in the sky were seen swinging, circling, and looping. General Yoritsume had some astronomers working for him investigate this phenomenon. They came up with perhaps the first explanation offered for UFOs, ‘The whole thing is completely natural, General, it is only the wind making the stars sway’. The lights were seen in the southwest for many hours, swinging, circling, and moving in loops. The general ordered a “full-scale scientific investigation” of these strange events. The report finally submitted to him as the “soothing” ring of many contemporary explanations offered for UFO phenomena. In essence it read: “The whole thing is completely natural, General. It is… only the wind making the stars sway.”
Source: Jacques Vallee, “Passport to Magonia”, p.5

Date: 1237
Location: El Puig, Valencia, Spain
Summary: According to one record, seven mysterious lights in the night sky were seen on four Saturdays in a row. They appeared to be falling from the sky and entering the earth at a particular spot. Quoting from Tirso de Molina’s Historia de la Orden de la Merced, the chronicle in which the story was originally written: “The sentries and custodians of the castle [at El Puig] observed that every Saturday, at midnight, a fleet of luminous stars, seven in number, consecutively descended upon the summit nearest the said fortress, in the same place where our monastery now lies.” When the guards informed their masters, Pedro Nolasco (1189-1256) and the mayor, supposing that the phenomenon was trying to announce something important, went up to the site together and carefully excavated the spot. Whether by some amazing coincidence or divine providence it did not take too long to find a hidden treasure: a bell, and below that a sculpted image of the Virgin Mary. Nolasco thanked the angels for the wondrous gifts and a little time afterwards constructed an altar at the spot.
Source: Tirso De Molina, Historic de la Orden de la Merced (1637).

Date: July 24, 1239
Location: England – France
Summary: “On July 24, 1239 at dusk, but not when the stars came out, while the air was clear, serene and shining, a great star appeared. It was like a torch, rising from the south, and flying on both sides of it, there was emitted in the height of the sky a very great light. It turned quickly towards the north in the aery region, not quickly, nor, indeed, with speed, but exactly as it wished to ascend to a place high in the air.”
Source: Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora (London: Longman, 1880), vol. 3, 566.

Date: 1252
Location: Padua, Italy
Summary: This event is described in the Cronaca di Rolandino da Padova, where a witness reports: “A certain great star, like a comet, but it was not a comet because it did not have a tail and it was a portentous thing because it looked almost as large as the moon, and it moved faster than the moon, but as fast as falling stars, and indeed it was not the moon. It was observable for an hour and then it vanished.”
This object, as described, was not a comet or a meteor.
Source:U. DaH’Olmo, “Meteors, meteor showers and meteorites in the Middle Ages: From European medieval sources,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 9 (1978).

Date: October 14, 1253
Location: England
Summary: Nicholas of Findern reported to Burton Abbey that “About the hour of vespers, the sky being clear, suddenly a large bright star appeared out of a black cloud with two smaller stars in the vicinity. A battle royal soon commenced, the small stars charging the great star again and again, so that it began to diminish in size, and sparks of fire fell from the combatants. This continued for a considerable time, and at last, the spectators, stupefied, by fear and wonder, and ignorant of what it might portend, fled.”
Source: Annales de Burton, in H. R. Luard, ed., Annales Monastici vol 1 (London: HMSO, 1864).

Date: January 1, 1254 A.D.
Location: St. Albans Abbey England
Time: midnight
Summary: At midnight in the clear and serene sky with the stars shining and the moon eight days old, there suddenly appeared in the sky a kind of large ship, elegantly shaped, amd well-equipped of marvelous color. Certain monks of St. Albans saw it for a long time, as if it were painted, and a ship made of planks, but finally it began to disappear.”
Source: Vallee, Jacques Anatomy of a Phenomenon Henry Regnery, Chicago, 1965

Date: 1255
Location:  France
Time:  Not recorded 
Summary:  Multiple luminous objects were observed in formation over the Loire Valley and recorded in French regional chronicles of the period as extraordinary signs in the heavens, distinct from known astronomical phenomena. 
Source:  Referenced in Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia supplementary records

Date: 1258
Location: Cologne Germany
Summary: USE OF FIREWORKS ROCKET IS ALREADY REPORTED IN 1258 IN THE CHRONICLE OF THE CITY.
Source: (“In Space Assault” Georges H. Gallet, ed. Of Modern Thought, p. 26)

Date: December 6, 1269
Location: Krakow Poland
Summary: Martin Cromer in his “History of Poland” says that on December 6, “at dusk, a strange cross-shaped brilliance shone high in the sky and lit up the city of Krakow.”
Source:  Martin Cromer, History of Poland.

Date: 1270
Location: England, Bristol
Summary: A spaceship was seen, which landed and an occupant came down from a ladder and was suffocated in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Source:  Not recorded in original entry

Date: September 12, 1271
Location: Tatsunokuchi, Kamakura, Japan
Summary: At midnight one of Japan’s greatest saints, Nichiren Shonin (1222-1282), was being escorted to the beach to be executed. Just before the fatal moment, a brilliant sphere as large as the moon flew over, illuminating the landscape. The authorities were so frightened by the apparition that they changed their minds about putting Shonin to death. Instead, they exiled him to Sado Island, though this did not prevent his teachings from spreading. A branch of his teachings, the Sokka-Gakkei, has millions of adherents throughout the world today.
Source: Rev. Ryuei Michael McCormick, Lotus Seeds: The Essence of Nichiren Shu Buddhis (Nichiren Buddhist Temple of San Jose, 2000).

Date: 1273
Location: Naples, Italy
Summary: The biography of St. Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225 to 7 March 1274) states that on the year before his death he returned to Naples, staying in that city for a few weeks during an illness. While he was there two monks saw a light described as a big star coming through the window. It rested for a moment on the head of the sick man and disappeared again, just as it came.
Source: Antonio Borrelli, “San Tommaso d’Aquino Sacerdote e dottore della Chiesa,” citing the Life of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Date: June 3, 1277
Location: Baoding Hebei China
Summary: Extract of Liu Ying: I get up at dawn and through the window, I very bright nearby star that crosses the Milky Way. Now I see three bright objects appear in the southern sky, two fly away and disappear suddenly from my sight. One who remains has five unequal lights under it and on its upper part I noticed something domed. The unknown object begins to zigzag, like a dead leaf. At the same time something falls from the sky on fire. Shortly after the sun rises but its luster is tarnished by the luminous object that moves rapidly in the direction of north. In the western sky, a green cloud is suddenly shaken by another unknown object, oval, flat, going down quickly. This item has more than three meters long, is surrounded by burning flames, shortly after it began its descent.
Source:  Shi Bo, La Chine et les Extraterrestres, op.cit., 37.

Date: 1284
Location: Parma, Saint Rufiino, Italy
Summary: On 6 August 1284 the naval battle of the Meloria, between the forces of Genoa and Pisa, took place. It is said in the Chronicon Parmesan, of the Franciscan monk Salimbene de Adam (1221-1287): “It should be known that this battle and massacre between the Genovesi and Pisani had already been foretold and announced long before it happened. In the town of Saint Ruffino, in the diocese of Parma, some women peeled [washed?] the linen at night: and they saw two great stars meeting in the sky. They drew away from each other and still collided again, and chased one another, and more than once…”
Source: Giuseppe Scalia, ed., Cronica Fratris Salimbene de Adam ordinis minorum (Laterza, 1966).

Date: 1290
Location: Byland, North Yorkshire, England
Summary:  William of Newburgh’s Chronicle in Yorkshire, England contains this description: “The abbot and monks were at a meal, when a flat, round, shining, silvery object flew over the abbey and caused the utmost terror.” “At Byland, or Begeland Abbey (the largest Cistercian abbey in England), in the North Yorkshire Riding, while the abbot and monks were in the refectorium, a flat, round, shining, silvery object [“discus” is the word used in the Latin account] flew over the abbey and caused the utmost terror.” William of Newburgh’s Chronicle” of a flying saucer seen in England toward the end of the 12th century:
Source: The Ampleforth Manuscript”  Harold T. Wilkins, “Flying Saucers on the Attack”, p.18

Date: August 3, 1294
Location: Japan
Summary: During a parade, a red shining object appeared, coming from the direction of a shrine. It resembled the Moon, and flew north.
Source: Morihiro Saito, Nihon-Tenmonshiriyou. Chapter 7, “Meteor, the Messenger from Space.”

Date: May 1295
Location: Hing, China
Summary: A strange phenomenon was witnessed in the fifth month of the year yih-wei, which corresponds with 1295: “In a short time a heavy wind came riding on the water, reaching a height of more than a chang (ten ch’ih or feet). Then there fell from the sky more than ten fire balls, having the size of houses of ten divisions. The two dragons immediately ascended (to the sky), for Heaven, afraid that they might cause calamity, sent out sacred fire to drive them away.” The 14th-century chronicler of this incident, Cheu Mih, adds that he had personally observed the results of another ‘dragonfall.’ Seeing the scorched paddy fields of the Peach garden of The Ts’ing, he interviewed one of the villagers. “Yesterday noon a big dragon fell from the sky,” he was told. “Immediately he was burned by terrestrial fire and flew away. For what the dragons fear is fire.”
Source: M. W. De Visser, The Dragon in China and Japan (Amsterdam: Johannes Miiller, 1913), 48-49.

Date: September 8, 1296
Location: Loreto, Italy
Summary: Before dawn, mysterious globes of light appeared repeatedly in the sky of Loreto, falling, stopping and disappearing suddenly. The phenomenon was witnessed by a hermit, Paul Selva, who wrote a famous letter to Charles II dated June 1297. The phenomenon appeared as a body of elliptical shape. A writer named Mantovano who obtained the information from a record dating back to 1300, notes: “He saw a light in the shape of a very bright comet measuring twelve feet in length and six in width, coming down from heaven in the direction of the church and after it approached, vanished at the site.” The object, obviously, was not a comet.
Source: G. Garrat, Loreto, nuova Nazaret (Recanati, 1894); O. Torsellini, Laurentana istoria, trans. B. Quatrini (Bologna, 1894).

Date: December 24, 1299
Location: Tier (Treves), Germany
Summary: The Chronicle of the Archbishops of Trier, the Gesta Trevirensium Archiepiscoporum, makes an interesting reference to an object in the sky. The term they employed, cometa, could actually refer to virtually any luminous body in the sky, not necessarily to a comet as we define it today. In fact, this particular “comet” behaved very strangely. It was just after midnight. The sky was unusually misty and a foggy frost covered the land. “Inside the darkness itself, a comet the size of the moon appeared as if hanging in the air, tinted by an ardent redness and which disappeared after an hour. And again, in between a small interval, two comets appeared simultaneously a short distance from one another, exhibiting the same size and color as earlier; but they disappeared immediately. A third time, after a short hour, [another] one appeared, in all respects visible in the size and color of its predecessors, and which also vanished immediately.”
Source:  Gesta Trevirensium Archiepiscoporum, in E. Martene and U. Durand, Veterum 91 Scriptorum et Monumentorum…amplissima collection, vol. IV (Paris, 1729, Col. 370).

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Ships in the Sky and Stars That Fought — The Complete 13th Century UAP Record

The 1200–1299 CE archive documents one of the richest and most analytically significant centuries in the ThinkAboutIt Docs chronological record — over thirty confirmed incidents spanning England, Ireland, Japan, China, Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, France, and Holland, recorded by some of the most credible institutional sources of the medieval world. The century opens with five simultaneous moons over Yorkshire and closes with a Christmas Eve luminous object over Trier. In between, sky ships leave anchors in Irish churches and English churchyards, a Japanese general orders the first recorded scientific investigation of aerial lights in history, a luminous disc terrifies the monks of Byland Abbey, Matthew Paris records deliberate aerial objects moving by apparent choice rather than natural trajectory, Chinese witness Liu Ying describes a domed zigzagging craft with multiple light sources at close range, and a sphere of light saves the life of a Buddhist saint at the moment of his execution. The 13th century UAP record is not a collection of superstitious medieval misidentifications — it is a multi-continental, institutionally documented archive of a phenomenon operating continuously across the known world.

The 13th century also marks a threshold in the archive’s analytical depth. General Yoritsume’s commissioned investigation in 1235 Japan — and its dismissive conclusion that the lights were “only the wind making the stars sway” — establishes a pattern of official non-explanation that persists identically into the modern era. Matthew Paris’s repeated documentation of aerial events across multiple decades of English chronicle writing demonstrates that the phenomenon was recurring, observable, and considered worthy of permanent historical record by the most careful historian of 13th century England. The Byland Abbey disc sighting — described in Latin as discus, round, flat, silver, and shining — predates the term flying saucer by nearly seven centuries and uses the same geometric precision. Whatever was operating over the medieval world in the 1200s, it was the same thing operating over it in the centuries before and after. The archive holds the record. The pattern is unmistakable.

“At midnight in the clear and serene sky with the stars shining and the moon eight days old, there suddenly appeared in the sky a kind of large ship, elegantly shaped, and well-equipped of marvelous color.”

Monks of St. Albans Abbey, England, January 1, 1254 CE