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 & Entity Sightings Archive
1917 carries the most consequential single anomalous event of the twentieth century, measured by simultaneous witness count. On October 13, at Cova da Iria outside Fátima, Portugal, a crowd estimated 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 crowd, and ascend back into the clouds — an event that dried rain-soaked clothing and ground within minutes and left witnesses reporting heat sensations, temporary vision disturbance, and paralysis. It had been publicly predicted months in advance by three shepherd children following a private apparition sequence beginning at Cova da Iria that May, itself following an earlier apparition sequence at nearby Cabeço documented on this site’s 1915 and 1916 pages. This was not privately experienced: it was witnessed simultaneously by skeptics, journalists, and believers alike, and reported contemporaneously in the secular Portuguese press.
This page also required real editorial cleanup. Two entries — one explicitly flagged as fabricated tabloid content, one presented without that flag — turned out to be the identical Red Baron/Waitzrik story, sourced entirely to the Weekly World News, a publication that publishes openly fictional content. They’ve been consolidated into one entry, clearly and permanently marked as fiction. A similar duplication affected the Anni Lattu Finland abduction case, listed once as a bare link and once in full; merged into one entry. Two further entries — Lismore, Australia and Waco, Texas — have been moved to the 1918 archive, where independent sourcing places them.
Date: Spring 1917 — CONFIRMED TABLOID FICTION, NOT A DOCUMENTED CASE
Location: Over Western Belgium (originally also listed under “Bonn, Germany”)
Time: Early morning
Hynek Classification: N/A — fabricated content
Case Status: Explained (Fiction)
Summary: A story claiming that German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen (the “Red Baron”) shot down an alien spacecraft over Belgium in 1917, with two occupants fleeing into the woods, attributed to a retrospective 1999 account by a “Peter Waitzrik.” Correction: this story originates entirely from the Weekly World News, a U.S. tabloid publication that produces explicitly fictional content as entertainment, not field research. The URECAT catalogue (Patrick Gross) has independently confirmed this as a Weekly World News invention. This story was previously listed twice on this page, under two different framings — once correctly flagged as fabricated, once presented as a seemingly independent sighting citing “Weekly World News, August 1999” without further comment. Both have been merged into this single, clearly labeled entry. It is retained here only as a documented example of tabloid fabrication circulating in secondary UFO literature, not as evidence of any real event.
Source: Weekly World News, August 1999 — confirmed tabloid fiction, not a field report
Date: Between January and Easter, 1917
Location: Jyrinvaara, Alho village, Northern Karelia, Finland
Time: Daytime
Hynek Classification: CE-IV — abduction-type encounter
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: Anni Lattu, a woman living largely alone near Kankaanlampi Lake, disappeared for several days. On her return she described a washbasin-shaped craft that had landed beside her house; small humanoid figures descended by ladder and took her aboard against her will. She spent several days aboard, communicating with a leader figure possibly by telepathy, before being returned to the exact spot she’d been taken from. She retold the account for the rest of her life and was never believed. Correction: this entry previously cited Paul Stonehill’s Soviet UFO Files and included an unsupported detail — that Anni “became a well-known local soothsayer” afterward — which does not appear in any independently checked source. The case is far better documented through a separate research chain: a 1978 community newspaper account and a formal researcher interview that independently corroborated the story’s details and even corrected the village’s own mistaken belief that Anni was a widow. Full detail, correctly sourced, on this site’s dedicated report page. [Full Report]
Source: Latomäen Aino (contributor signature), Kurkijokelainen newspaper, No. 23, June 9, 1978; UFO Research Finland / Mauritz Hietamäki — independently corroborated across multiple sources, including a formal secondary-witness interview
Date: 1917
Location: Salida, Colorado
Time: Unknown
Hynek Classification: RV — telescope-witnessed
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: A minister and his family used a telescope to watch a silver, wagon-wheel-shaped object.
Source: Unlisted; corroborated in an independent secondary catalog of pre-war sightings
Date: 1917
Location: Peñascosa, Albacete, Spain
Time: Afternoon
Hynek Classification: CE-III
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: The Alguacil family, working a field, saw a large, hat-shaped object descend and land on four extended legs nearby. Two very tall occupants in metallic gray outfits emerged and briefly walked the area before reboarding. The family reported seeing a symbol resembling the letter “H” on the object’s side.
Source: IOCUM Portal
Date: April 1917
Location: Portsmouth, Piscataqua River, New Hampshire
Time: 02:30
Hynek Classification: CE-I
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: Three witnesses on a river observed an unidentified object at close range, with appearance and performance beyond known aircraft capability.
Source: Haines, Richard F. CE-5: Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind, Sourcebooks, 1998 — confirmed credentialed researcher
Date: May 13, 1917
Location: Fátima (Cova da Iria), Portugal
Time: Noon
Hynek Classification: N/A — apparition, opening event of the Cova da Iria sequence
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: Lucia dos Santos, Francisco Marto, and Jacinta Marto observed a luminous figure in the Cova da Iria hollow — the opening event of the six-month apparition sequence that would culminate in the October 13 mass-witness event. Correction: this event was previously misdated on this site’s 1913 and 1916 archive pages; it belongs here, in 1917, and has now been added to its correct year.
Source: Fernandes, Joaquim, and Fina D’Armada. Heavenly Lights, EcceNova Editions, 2005; Lorenzen, Coral E. Shadow of the Unknown, 1970 — confirmed primary Fatima research sources
Date: June 13, 1917
Location: Fátima, Portugal
Time: Around noon
Hynek Classification: N/A — apparition, second event in the sequence
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: The second of the six monthly Cova da Iria apparitions (May through October 1917), witnessed by approximately 50 to 60 people in the rural area.
Source: FSR (Flying Saucer Review); further sourced in Fernandes and D’Armada’s Heavenly Lights and Jacques Vallée’s documentation of the case
Date: August 1917
Location: McPherson County, Nebraska
Time: Unknown
Hynek Classification: DD
Case Status: Insufficient Data — likely duplicate of a nearly identical April 1916 entry at the same location
Summary: A daylight disc was observed by a female witness (Reams). Note: this entry is worded almost identically to an entry on this site’s 1916 archive page, dated April 1916, same location (McPherson County, Nebraska), same witness surname (Reams). This may be the same sighting duplicated across two years through a transcription or cataloging error, or it may genuinely represent a separate 1917 sighting by the same recurring witness. Flagged rather than merged, since neither source confirms or rules out the other.
Source: Eberhart, George M. A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies, Greenwood Press, 1980
Date: August 1917
Location: Lake Manasarovar, China
Time: Night
Hynek Classification: NL
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: A male witness (Schary) briefly observed an object with appearance and performance beyond known aircraft capability.
Source: FSR (Flying Saucer Review)
Date: October 1917
Location: Near Youngstown, Pennsylvania
Time: 12:30
Hynek Classification: CE-II
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: John Boback, 17, walking railroad tracks between Youngstown and Mt. Braddock, saw a saucer-shaped object with a platform and rows of lights sitting in a field 30 yards away. He watched it for one to two minutes before it departed with a high-pitched sound, rising gradually like a slow-climbing plane. It was roughly car-sized, with a domed top and elongated windows through which figures were visible. Full detail on this site’s dedicated report page. [Full Report]
Source: Hartle, Orvil. A Carbon Experiment
Date: October 13, 1917
Location: Fátima (Cova da Iria), Portugal
Time: Noon
Hynek Classification: N/A — mass-witness aerial phenomenon, the “Miracle of the Sun”
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: A crowd estimated between 30,000 and 70,000 witnessed a dull silver, rotating, disc-like object descend from overcast sky in a spiraling, zigzag trajectory, radiate successive washes of multicolored light across the gathered crowd, produce localized heat sensations, and ascend back into the clouds. Witnesses’ rain-soaked clothing and the surrounding ground were reported dry within minutes afterward. The event had been publicly predicted three months in advance and was documented contemporaneously in the secular Portuguese press. Jacques Vallée, Fernandes and D’Armada, and numerous subsequent researchers have catalogued its physical characteristics as closely matching later CE-II/CE-III UAP encounter reports. Full detail on this site’s dedicated report page. [Full Report]
Source: O Século newspaper, October 15, 1917; Fernandes, Joaquim, and Fina D’Armada, Heavenly Lights, 2005; Vallée, Jacques, Confrontations, 1990; FSR — the most heavily documented pre-1947 UAP event in existence
Date: Early November 1917
Location: Near Cambroncino, Spain
Time: Late evening
Hynek Classification: N/A — anomalous light with physiological consequence, no craft
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Summary: Nicolas Sánchez Martín, a 39-year-old pig farmer known as “Colas,” was returning home with two local women after a market trip when the group saw a strange light floating above a nearby river. The women turned back; Colas continued alone with his donkey and a machete. As he crossed the river, the light moved to intercept him and repeatedly blocked his path regardless of direction. He shouted at it and brandished the machete; it flew toward his donkey, frightening it, before finally vanishing. Colas, previously healthy and strong, fell severely ill soon after and died nine days later in significant pain. The attending physician, Don Victor Sánchez Hoyos, attributed death to sudden pulmonary edema; the family believed the light was responsible.
Source: Ovnis en Las Hurdes, Leyendas
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
The 1917 Archive — Fatima Arrives Correctly Dated, and Two Duplications Cleaned Up
- The Weekly World News Red Baron story is now a single, permanently and clearly labeled fiction entry: this is the same underlying tabloid fabrication this site’s own sourcing had already partially identified — it simply appeared twice, once correctly flagged and once not. Consolidating removes the risk that a reader encountering the unflagged version would take it as a genuine field report.
- The Anni Lattu Finland case is now a single complete entry rather than a bare link plus a duplicate full account.
- Both misdated Fatima entries from this site’s 1913 and 1916 archives have now been added here, correctly dated: May 13 (the opening apparition) and October 13 (the mass-witness “Miracle of the Sun”) both appear in their proper year for the first time across this rebuild project.
- Two entries have been moved to 1918: the Lismore, Australia cruciform UFO and the Waco, Texas cigar-shaped object (Edwin Bauhan’s account) were both vaguely dated “191?” here, but an independent period catalog places both specifically in 1918. They’ll be added to that year’s archive.
- A cross-year duplicate is flagged, not resolved: the August 1917 McPherson County, Nebraska entry (witness “Reams”) is nearly identical to an April 1916 entry at the same location with the same witness surname. Both remain in the record with the ambiguity stated plainly.
1917 is, without qualification, the most significant single year in this archive’s pre-1947 record — Fatima’s October 13 event stands alone in scale and contemporaneous documentation among everything covered so far. Getting that case’s date right, and clearing out the duplicated tabloid fiction that had been sitting alongside it, matters precisely because this page carries more evidentiary weight than almost any other year this project has touched.
“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.”
— Documented account of the October 13, 1917 Fátima “Miracle of the Sun,” per O Século newspaper and subsequent research by Jacques Vallée and Fernandes and D’Armada
