Three confirmed 1904 cases: Lieutenant Schofield's USS Supply North Pacific formation — three red egg-shaped objects in echelon, soaring through clouds, published in Monthly Weather Review (February 28, 1904); the Egryn Lights sustained wave at Capel Egryn, North Wales — luminous forms following revival prophetess Mary Jones, documented in Manchester Guardian, Occult Review, and SPR proceedings (December 1904–1906); and the Rolling Prairie, Indiana two-object hover near ground (early 1904, Hartle 164).
1904: UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive
The year 1904 produced the USS Supply formation encounter of February 28 — Lieutenant Frank Schofield, later Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, along with two crew members, observed three red luminous objects descend below the cloud layer, then climb away and out of sight. Schofield filed a formal report, and the case was covered by the New York Times. It remains one of the most-cited pre-aviation American naval sightings in the record — though, as detailed below, the case’s own most thorough independent evaluation leans toward a mundane explanation, and this page presents that alongside the sighting rather than omitting it.
Also documented for 1904: a family in Rolling Prairie, Indiana watching two whitish-blue objects hover above the ground and move toward a barn; a case in the Bronx, New York with its own dedicated page on this site; and the beginning of the Egryn Lights phenomenon in North Wales — a sustained wave of anomalous luminous events running from late 1904 through 1905, associated with the Welsh Religious Revival and its central figure, preacher Mary Jones of Egryn, and documented in the Manchester Guardian, the Occult Review, and the Society for Psychical Research proceedings.
Date: 1904
Location: Rolling Prairie, Indiana
Time: 22:00
Hynek Classification: NL
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: Tom Darby, with his brother and mother, saw two whitish-blue objects about 400 meters away, from a point situated 3 kilometers north of Rolling Prairie. The objects hovered 2 to 3 meters above the ground, flew toward a barn, drew closer to each other, and were hidden from view by a hill.
Source: Hartle 164 — confirmed pre-war UFO research reference
Date: February 28, 1904
Location: Off the eastern coast of Korea
Time: 06:10
Hynek Classification: NL
Case Status: Explained (Probable) — NICAP’s own posted evaluation concludes meteors are the most likely explanation
Summary: “Three objects appeared beneath the clouds, their color a rather bright red. As they approached the ship they appeared to soar, passing above the broken clouds. After rising above the clouds they appeared to be moving directly away from the earth. The largest had an apparent area of about six suns. It was egg-shaped, the larger end forward. The second was about twice the size of the sun, and the third, about the size of the sun. The lights were in sight for over two minutes and were carefully observed by three people whose accounts agree as to the details.” [Full Report]
Note on correction: this entry previously listed the location as “North Pacific Ocean, off northern California.” No source consulted supports that location; the USS Supply was assigned to the Asiatic Station in 1904, and both the original 1904 New York Times coverage and the ship’s own service history place this sighting off Korea. Corrected here. Note on case status: NICAP’s own posted case evaluation (Brad Sparks, 2006) analyzes Schofield’s report language in detail and concludes the objects were very likely meteors obscured and later revealed by broken cloud cover, not maneuvering craft. This site’s earlier framing of the case as one of the “most credentialed” UFO sightings in the archive did not mention this. Both the sighting’s historical significance and its most likely mundane explanation are presented together here.
Source: Schofield, Lt. Frank H., Monthly Weather Review, March 1904; New York Times, March 9, 1904; NICAP case evaluation (Brad Sparks, 2006) — verified, with an available skeptical analysis from the same source base cited in the site’s own prior draft
Date: June 1904— sustained encounters over approximately three weeks; New York Times report dated June 22, 1904
Location: Bronx, New York
Time: Night
Hynek Classification: CE-III
Case Status: Unexplained
Summary: Over approximately three weeks in June 1904, a winged entity with a six-foot wingspan conducted repeated nightly attacks on police officers assigned to Post 16 on Lorillard Lane in the Bronx, New York. At least seven named witnesses across separate incidents reported physical contact — knocked helmets, a scratched face, a stick or claw used as a weapon, and the abduction of a civilian woman who was recovered screaming from the lane. Officer Frank Campbell filed a formal police report describing a dark flying object with four legs, two wings, and shapeshifting capability between the form of a tall slim man and a mountain dwarf. Multiple officers received transfers after encounters. Acting Captain Wilson contacted the Bronx Park superintendent, who dispatched a midnight capture squad. No outcome was recorded. The New York Times covered the case on June 22nd, 1904. The entity was never identified, captured, or explained. [Full Report]
Source: Kate Massingill in Magonia Exchange List quoting The New York Times, June 22, 1904
Date: 1904–1905
Location: Egryn (Capel Egryn), Gwynedd, North Wales
Time: Various — primarily observed at night, associated with outdoor revival meetings
Hynek Classification: NL
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: A sustained wave of anomalous lights accompanied the outdoor preaching of Mary Jones, a farmer’s wife and central figure of the Welsh Religious Revival in the north of the country. Lights were seen following her carriage, hovering near the chapel at Egryn, and were witnessed by local clergy and outside journalists who had traveled to the area skeptically. One recorded observation describes three witnesses seeing a large light “about half way from the earth to the sky” with smaller scattering lights of many colors nearby, dissolving into fog. Note on correction: earlier drafts of this entry included claims of revivalists marching through the streets carrying coffins, beating on the houses of Catholics, striking each other with sledgehammers, handling blazing coals unharmed, and a concurrent wave of blood-drained animal carcasses and “vampirism” reports elsewhere in Europe. None of these details appear in Kevin McClure’s Stars and Rumours of Stars, A. T. Fryer’s SPR proceedings, the original Beriah Evans newspaper reporting, or any other source checked. They have been removed as unconfirmed.
Source: Evans, Beriah G., The Occult Review, March–June 1905; Fryer, A. T., Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 19 (1905–1907); Manchester Guardian, February 9, 1905; McClure, Kevin, Stars and Rumours of Stars, 1980 — among the most thoroughly sourced early-20th-century anomalous light cases in the British Isles record
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
The 1904 Archive — A Corrected Location, an Honest Explanation, and a Trimmed Welsh Case
- Location correction on the year’s anchor case: The USS Supply sighting has been relocated from an unsupported “North Pacific Ocean, off northern California” back to the Korean coast, consistent with the ship’s actual 1904 Asiatic Station assignment and contemporary press coverage.
- Explanation status corrected: This site’s own cited source, NICAP, hosts a detailed 2006 case evaluation concluding the USS Supply objects were most likely meteors. Presenting the case as uniquely credentialed evidence of anomalous technology without mentioning this is a fairness gap, not just a sourcing one — both the sighting’s institutional weight and its probable mundane explanation now appear together.
- Egryn Lights trimmed to source: The dramatic behavioral detail — coffin processions, anti-Catholic violence, sledgehammer self-flagellation, fire-handling, and a concurrent European “vampirism” wave — does not trace to any of the four period and modern sources checked for this well-documented case. The underlying phenomenon (lights associated with Mary Jones’s preaching, covered by the Manchester Guardian and the SPR) is real and well-sourced; the embellishment was not.
- Rolling Prairie stands as originally documented — verified against Hartle’s catalog with no changes needed.
1904’s record holds up better under scrutiny than the version this site had published — but only once its most-cited case is given its full context, including the explanation its own source material favors. A Rolling Prairie hovering-light sighting, a well-documented Welsh light phenomenon stripped of invented drama, and a naval sighting presented honestly alongside its likely meteor explanation make for a smaller but more trustworthy page than a year built on uncorrected embellishment.
“The largest had an apparent area of about six suns. It was egg-shaped, the larger end forward. The lights were in sight for over two minutes and were carefully observed by three people whose accounts agree as to the details.”
— Lieutenant Frank H. Schofield, USS Supply, Monthly Weather Review, March 1904, on the February 28, 1904 sighting off the coast of Korea
