1917 anomalous events archive: Fátima Cova da Iria mass-witness disc event (30,000–70,000 observers, October 13 1917), Peñascosa Spain CE-III craft landing with tall occupants and H-symbol, Jyrinvaara Finland Anni Lattu abduction (first known Fennoscandian CE-IV), Cambroncino Spain fatal ball-of-light encounter, and Rich Field Waco Texas soldier sighting. Sources: O Século 1917, IOCUM, Stonehill/URECAT, Ovnis en Las Hurdes.
1917: UFO|UAP & Alien Sightings Archive
The year 1917 carries the most consequential single anomalous event of the entire twentieth century, measured purely by the number of simultaneous witnesses. On October 13, at Cova da Iria outside Fátima, Portugal, a crowd estimated variously between 30,000 and 70,000 people watched a dull silver rotating disc-like object descend from overcast sky in a spiraling, zigzag trajectory, radiate successive washes of color across the gathered crowd, and then ascend back into the clouds — an event that dried soaked clothing and rain-saturated ground within minutes and left witnesses reporting heat sensations, temporary blindness, and paralysis. The event had been publicly predicted months in advance by three shepherd children following a series of private apparitions. Whatever the October 13 phenomenon was, it was not privately experienced: it was witnessed simultaneously by skeptics, journalists, scientists, atheists, and believers alike, and reported contemporaneously in the secular Portuguese press. Researchers Jacques Vallée, Joaquim Fernandes, and Fina D’Armada have documented in detail the extent to which the physical characteristics of the Fátima event — luminous spheres, color cycling, falling-leaf descent motion, localized heat and electromagnetic effects, paralysis in witnesses, and telepathic-style communication — match the modern UAP encounter template precisely. The year’s dominant technology for documentation was silver gelatin press photography; the event produced no usable photographs of the object itself, only crowd images. What it produced in abundance was sworn testimony.
The 1917 archive page carries that anchor case alongside a cluster of entity and craft encounters that span four continents and include the first documented CE-IV (abduction) case from the Fennoscandian region, a CE-III craft landing with two tall occupants in Spain, a saucer with visible occupants in Pennsylvania, and the month-long fatal illness of a Spanish farmer who was trapped and menaced by a ball of light that seemed to know where he was going. Against this the page also carries two entries derived from the Weekly World News — the Red Baron / Waitzrik story chief among them — which require explicit source flagging as tabloid fiction, not field research. The 1917 record demands careful editorial triage: its genuine high-quality cases are among the most significant of the pre-1947 era, and they deserve not to be contaminated by uncritical inclusion of fabricated tabloid content.
Date: 1917
Location: Bonn, Germany
Time: Unknown
Summary: The flamboyant fighter pilot Baron Manfred von Richtofen, known as the Red Baron not only shot down 80 enemy planes for the Germans during World War I, he also was the first human in history to gun down an alien spaceship! That’s the fascinating claim of former German Air Force ace Peter Waitzrik, who says he watched in astonishment as the deadeye fighter pilot shot a UFO with undulating orange lights out of the sky over Belgium in 1917. Then, Waitzrik says, he stared in disbelief as two bruised and battered occupants of the downed craft climbed from their spaceship and scampered off into the woods — apparently never to be seen again. “The Baron and I gave a full report on the incident back at headquarters and they told us not to ever mention it again,” the feisty, 105-year-old retired airline pilot recently told a reporter. “And except for my wife and grandkids, I never told a soul. But it’s been over 80 years, so what difference could it possibly make now?” The aging Waitzrik said he and Baron Manfred von Richtofen — the renowned Red Baron — were flying an early morning mission over western Belgium in the spring of 1917 when the UFO suddenly appeared in a clear, blue sky directly ahead of their Fokker triplanes. “We were terrified because we’d never seen anything like it before,” recalled the easygoing great-great grandfather of five. “The U.S. had just entered the war, so we assumed it was something they’d sent up. “The Baron immediately opened fire and the thing went down like a rock, shearing off tree limbs as it crashed in the woods. Then the two little baldheaded guys climbed out and ran away.” Waitzrik said he assumed the glittering silver spaceship was some sort of enemy invention until the flying saucer scare that began in the late 1940s convinced him that his buddy had shot down a UFO. “The thing was maybe 40 meters (136 feet) in diameter and looked just like those saucer- shaped spaceships that everybody’s been seeing for the last 50 years,” the awed oldster said. “So there’s no doubt in my mind now that that was no U.S. reconnaissance plane the Baron shot down, that was some kind of spacecraft from another planet and those little guys who ran off into the woods weren’t Americans, they were space aliens of some kind.
Source: Unlisted on page; text is reproduced verbatim from a tabloid account | Source Status: PROBLEMATIC — FABRICATED SOURCE. This story originates entirely from the Weekly World News, a U.S. tabloid that publishes explicitly fictional content. URECAT catalogue (Patrick Gross) has confirmed it is a WWN invention, not a field report.
Date: 1917
Location: Finland
Time: Unknown
Summary: Link to individual report page “1917: First Known Abduction Case in Finland?”
Source: listed inline | Source Status: VERIFIED via research — This is the Anni Lattu (also spelled Enni Lettu) case from Jyrinvaara, Northern Karelia, Finland
Date: 1917
Location: Salida, Colorado
Time: Unknown
Summary: Minister and family use a telescope to watch a silver UFO shaped like a wagon wheel.
Source: Unlisted
Date: 1917
Location: Karkiyeki, Karelia Finland
Time: Unknown
Summary: Anni Lattu observed a saucer shaped object that landed near her house. After a short while something resembling a staircase protruded from the object, and small humanoid shapes descended to the ground. The beings apparently approached the frightened witness and insisted in taking her along, and she was taken to their ship. The object flew for several hours and throughout the journey she was engaged in telepathic communication with a being she thought to be the leader of the others, before being returned to Earth. After her abduction Anni became a famous soothsayer in the area. [Full Report]
Source: Paul Stonehill, The Soviet UFO Files
Date: 1917
Location: Peñascosa, Albacete, Spain
Time: afternoon
Summary: The Alguacil family was, working in a field when they saw a large hat shaped object descend to the ground and land on four legs nearby. Two men exited the object and briefly walked around the area. They were described as very tall, wearing metallic gray outfits. The family claimed to have seen a symbol resembling the letter “H” on the side of the object. .
Source: IOCUM Portal
Date: Spring 1917
Location: Over Western Belgium
Time: early morning
Summary: German Air Force Ace Peter Waitzrik and the famed Baron Manfred von Richtofen were flying a mission over western Belgium when an object with undulating orange lights suddenly appeared in a clear, blue sky directly ahead of their Fokker triplanes. Both were terrified and assumed it was some type of US aircraft (The US had just entered the war). The Baron immediately opened fire and the thing went down like a rock, shearing off tree limbs as it crashed in the woods. Then two little bald headed occupants climbed out of it and ran away. Waitzrik described the craft as silvery in color about 40 meters in diameter and resembling a saucer placed upside down. The two bruised but otherwise unhurt occupants ran into the woods and were never seen again. (The 105-year old Waitzrik recently broke his silence as to this allege incident that occurred over 80 years ago).
Source: Peter Waitzrik; “Weekly World News, August 1999.”
Date: April 1917
Location: Portsmouth, Piscataqua River, New Hampshire
Time: 02:30
Summary: An object was sighted that had an appearance and performance beyond the capability of known earthly aircraft. An unidentified object at close range was observed by three witnesses on a river
Source: Haines, Richard F. CE-5: Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind Sourcebooks, Naperville, 1998 ISBN:1-57071-427-4 | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: May 13, 1917
Location: Fátima (Cova da Iria), Portugal
Time: Noon
Summary: First Fátima apparition — Lucia dos Santos and Francisco and Jacinta Marto observe a luminous figure in the Cova da Iria hollow; this is the opening event of the six-month apparition series culminating October 13. [Full Report]
Source: Fernandes, Joaquim and D’Armada, Fina, Heavenly Lights, EcceNova Editions, 2005; Lorenzen, Coral E., Shadow of the Unknown, 1970 | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: June 13 1917
Location: Fatima, Portugal
Time: Around 1200
Summary: Close encounter with a craft and its occupants. An apparition of the Virgin Mary was observed by 50 witnesses in a rural area.
Source: FSR (Flying Saucer Review) | Source Status: VERIFIED — FSR is a primary source journal. NOTE: The June 13 event was the second of the six monthly apparitions (May through October 1917). Approximately 50–60 witnesses were present for this one. The October 13 event (the main mass-witness event) is linked separately on the page. Both are correctly placed on the 1917 page. The FSR citation is valid; fuller sourcing exists through Fernandes and D’Armada’s Heavenly Lights and Jacques Vallée’s documentation.
Date: August 1917
Location: Mcpherson County, Nebraska,
Time: Unknown
Summary: A daylight disc was observed by a female witness (Reams).
Source: Eberhart, George M. A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies Greenwood Press, Westport, 1980 ISBN:0-313-21337-2 | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: August 1917
Location: Lake Manasarovar, China
Time: Night
Summary: An object was sighted that had an appearance and performance beyond the capability of known earthly aircraft. One object was observed by a male witness briefly (Schary).
Source: FSR
Date: October 1917
Location: Near Youngstown Pennsylvania
Time: 1230
Summary: John Boback, 17, was walking along the railroad tracks between Youngstown and Mt Braddock when he saw a saucer shaped object with a platform & rows of lights, sitting in a field 30 yards to his left. He watched the object for one or two minutes until it took off with a high-pitched sound, rising gradually like a slow plane. Its size was that of an average car. The top of the object was a dome with elongated windows, through which figures could be seen
Source: Orvil Hartle, A Carbon Experiment
Location: Fátima (Cova da Iria), Portugal
Time: Noon
Summary: The Miracle of the Sun / Fátima mass-witness event. A crowd of 30,000–70,000 witnesses observed a dull silver rotating disc-like aerial object descend in a spiraling zigzag trajectory from the overcast sky, radiate successive multicolored light washes across the crowd, generate localized heat sensations, and ascend back into the clouds. Witnesses’ rain-soaked clothing was found dry within minutes. Event predicted publicly three months in advance. Documented in secular Portuguese press (O Século, O Dia). Jacques Vallée, Fernandes and D’Armada, and numerous subsequent researchers have catalogued the physical characteristics as consistent with CE-II/CE-III UAP events. Individual report page exists on site.
Source: Multiple — O Século newspaper, October 15, 1917; Fernandes and D’Armada, Heavenly Lights, 2005; Vallée, Jacques, Confrontations, 1990; FSR | Source Status: VERIFIED — most heavily documented pre-1947 UAP event in existence.
Date: early November 1917
Location: Near Cambroncino, Spain
Time: late evening
Summary: Local pig farmer, 39-year old Nicolas Sanchez Martin known by his nickname of “Colas” was returning home, accompanied by two local women, Maria Iglesias and her sister Pepa, after selling some of the hogs at a nearby market. Near an isolated field all three noticed a strange light floating above the nearby river, concerned the two women decided to return and to continue no further, but Nicolas continued on with his donkey and armed with a machete. As he attempted to cross the river, the strange light flew in his direction and apparently waited for him on the other side of the river, floating just above the ground. Undaunted Nicolas and his donkey crossed the river but as immediately after the strange light blocked their path. It seemed that every time he attempted to move a certain direction the light would block him. Somewhat annoyed, “Colas” grabbed his machete and yelled at the light to leave or he would “make it leave”. At this, the light flew towards the donkey scaring the poor animal, which “Colas” had to almost drag away from the area. The light finally vanished, but “Colas” remained almost in shock and breathless. Soon “Colas” a healthy and strong man, became deathly ill, and during the following nine days remained bedridden in wrenching pain, he died finally on the ninth day. The attending physician Don Victor Sanchez Hoyos attributed his death to sudden pulmonary edema, but “Colas” family was convinced that the strange ball of light had caused their loved one’s demise.
Source: Ovnis en Las Hurdes, Leyendas
Date: 191?
Location: Lismore, Australia
Time: Unknown
Summary: Luminous cruciform UFO seen hovering over Lismore, N.S.W., Australia.
Source: Unlisted
Date: 191?
Location: Waco, Texas
Time: Unknown
Summary: Edwin Bauhan, one of several soldiers at Rich Field in Waco Texas who observed a 100-150 foot long cigar-shaped object after leaving the mess hall. “It came directly overhead, and was no more than five hundred feet high so we got an excellent view of it. It had no motors, no rigging, it was noiseless, a rose or sort of flame color, I could observe no windows. We all experienced the weirdest feeling of our lives, and sat in our tent puzzling over it for some time.
Source: Unlisted
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Fátima Threshold — 1917 and the Mass-Witness Event
**The Year the Record Changed Scale — Fátima and the Pre-Modern UAP**
No year in the pre-1947 anomalous record produces anything comparable to October 13, 1917. The Fátima event is not a single-witness account, not a retrospective claim, not a recovered memory, and not a tabloid story. It is a contemporaneously documented mass-witness event involving a structured aerial object, predicted in advance, observed by a crowd that included practicing skeptics and secular journalists, and reported in real time by mainstream Portuguese newspapers. The physical characteristics catalogued by Jacques Vallée and by Fernandes and D’Armada — zigzag descent, color cycling, localized heat effect, sudden drying of wet surfaces, temporary visual disturbance in witnesses — map directly onto the modern CE-II encounter template. The event sits at the top of any honest evidentiary ranking of the pre-1947 UAP record. The 1917 archive page is, in this sense, the most important single archive year page on the site: it contains the anchor case for the entire 1910–1919 era, and potentially for the entire pre-modern period.
The year’s remaining cases fill out a picture of 1917 as anomalously active across multiple categories. The Peñascosa, Spain CE-III (tall occupants, hat-shaped craft, “H” symbol) and the Youngstown, Pennsylvania saucer with visible figures extend the occupied-craft pattern established in 1915 and 1916. The Anni Lattu case from Northern Karelia, Finland — a CE-IV abduction reported to the local community in the early twentieth century, decades before post-1947 saucer lore could contaminate the account — is among the most chronologically unimpeachable abduction reports in the pre-modern record. The Cambroncino, Spain ball-of-light encounter, with its fatal nine-day illness outcome, adds a physiological-consequence case to a year already loaded with contact events. Against this, the page’s two Weekly World News entries (the Red Baron / Waitzrik story) represent the most egregious source contamination problem in the 1910–1919 archive series and must be resolved before the page can be considered research-grade.
From the Cambroncino, Spain entry (early November 1917), sourced via Ovnis en Las Hurdes, Leyendas:
“Every time he attempted to move a certain direction the light would block him.”
Summary text describing Nicolas Sanchez Martin’s encounter with the anomalous light near Cambroncino, Spain, November 1917
