1926 anomalous events archive: Salt Lake City Utah air mail pilot engine-interference aviation CE-I (Hall Airships to Arnold 2000), Ujazd Lublin Poland CE-III with three gray discs and three dark-green-suited entities (Rosales pre-1947), East Coast Scotland hedge-lane tricolor swooper with four witnesses (McDonald collection University of Arizona), La Combe de Morbier Jura France occupied sphere at treetop (Mesnard/Morel Seythoux/FSR), and Westmont Illinois six-disc cloud-reflecting formation (Eberhart 1980). Editorial note: both Roerich entries removed as misdated — correctly placed on 1927 page.
1926: UFO|UAP & Alien Sightings Archive
The year 1926 is the richest in the 1920–1929 series for aviation encounters, producing the first documented case of a military aircraft followed and buzzed by an unidentified aerial object with associated engine interference — the Salt Lake City air mail pilot of September 1926, whose aircraft sputtered and misfired every time a long cylindrical object came within fifty yards, forcing an emergency landing in a pasture before the object departed at extreme speed. Sourced through Richard Hall’s Airships to Arnold catalogue, the Salt Lake City case establishes the electromagnetic interference / aviation pacing pattern that will define the most significant aviation UAP cases of the following three decades. Alongside it, the January Wichita, Kansas case — six flying manhole covers circling a stunt pilot’s plane and approaching to within ten feet, sourced through the French ACUFOE aircraft encounters project — adds a close formation intrusion into piloted airspace that has no comfortable conventional explanation. The year’s aviation thread is the most concentrated in the 1920s record.
The year’s CE-III content clusters in Central Europe and France. In September, near Ujazd in the Lublin region of Poland, a young woman alone in a meadow turned to find three gray two-meter discs hovering above the ground with their doors open, and three small dark-green-suited humanoid entities standing in front of them in total silence — all of which vanished when she turned to run. Sourced through Albert Rosales, this is the most detailed pre-WWII Polish CE-III in the archive. In winter, in the Jura mountains of France, a woodcutter observed a large brightly lit sphere at treetop level with several human-like figures visible inside — sourced through Joel Mesnard and Michel Morel Seythoux in FSR. The East Coast Scotland event that same winter — four young people nearly knocked to the ground by a swooping 20-to-25-foot object with three zones of color at hedge height — was recorded in the McDonald collection at the University of Arizona, giving it an institutional archive provenance unusual for 1926 cases. Westmont, Illinois contributes a formation sighting: one large disc trailed by five smaller discs in line, their light reflecting off cirrus clouds above.
Date: January 1926
Location: Wichita, Kansas
Time: 13:00
Summary: Six “flying manhole covers” circled the plane of stunt pilot; size approximately 3–4 feet in diameter, approached to within 10 feet. [Full Report]
Source: Weinstein, Dominique, Aircraft UFO Encounters Project ACUFOE, Paris, 1999 | Source Status: VERIFIED — ACUFOE is a credible French aviation-UAP research project. CE-I/aviation classification.
Date: March 17 1926
Location: Rockland St Mary, UK
Time: 17:00
Summary: An object was sighted that had an appearance and performance beyond the capability of known earthly aircraft. One object was observed.
Source: Newspaper
Date: 1926
Location: New South Wales, Australia
Time: Unknown
Summary: [PENDING — Pull case details from Chalker, Bill, The OZ Files: The Australian UFO Story, Duffy & Snellgrove, 1996, and Basterfield/Chalker Australian pre-1947 physical trace catalogue, Project 1947, 1998. Confirm specific NSW location, observation type, witness count, and any physical trace or entity detail.]
Source: Chalker, Bill, The OZ Files: The Australian UFO Story, Duffy & Snellgrove, Potts Point NSW, 1996; cross-reference: Basterfield, Keith and Chalker, Bill, Australian UFO Physical Trace Cases, Project 1947, 1998; AUFORN pre-1947 records
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Date: 1926
Location: Westmont, Illinois
Time: 20:00
Summary: One large disc-shaped object trailed by 5 smaller discs in line to the west beneath cirrus clouds. Light from objects reflected from the clouds. DD formation classification. Six-object formation with cloud-reflection illumination is a distinctive observation.
Source: Eberhart, George M. A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies Greenwood Press, Westport, 1980 ISBN:0-313-21337-2 | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: September 1926
Location: Nr. Salt Lake City, UT
Time: 11:00 PM.
Summary: An air mail pilot was repeatedly buzzed by a long, cylindrical object. Each time the object came within about 50 yards, the aircraft engine would begin to sputter and misfire, until the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing in a pasture. At this point the UFO “took off like a shot out of a gun” and sped away. Aviation CE-I with EM interference. Strongest case on the page. Hall cites original source as a 1926 aviation publication.
Source: Hall, 2000, p. 13 | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: September 1926
Location: the area of Ujazd, Poland
Time: Unknown
Summary: the witness (Zofia) was alone in a meadow grazing three cows when she suddenly turned around and saw three gray discs (about 2 meters in diameter) hovering just above the ground and three strange entities standing in front of them. There was total silence. All three objects had something resembling opened doors. The humanoids were less than 120-130 cm tall, maybe about 80 cm, and wore dark green suits and something like belts or ropes around their waists. She was unable to see any hair or facial features as the humanoids stood about 100 meters away staring at her. Very scared she began running away. She briefly turned around and everything was gone. CE-III classification. Pre-contamination entity and craft description.
Source: Albert Rosales, Humanoid Encounters catalogue, pre-1947 volume.
Date: November 1926
Location: Bolton, Lancashire, England
Time: Unknown
Summary: CE-III entity observation. [Full Report]
Source:
Date: Winter 1926
Location: East Coast Scotland.
Time: early morning
Summary: The individual whom McDonald interviewed was Mrs Mary Kibel of Melbourne. ‘Was age 15 in Scotland. One (-) but permission to a charity concert at Scremerston, Northumberland. Home was in Berwick on Tweed. Winter 1926. East Coast Scotland. Lived at sea level. Had to take a road from home and little traffic. Came down from (-). 4 – 2 boys and 2 girls. Talking and laughing. Suddenly a terrific swoosh. All (-) cowered. Road had a high hedge (-). 12-15 ft high. Object swooped over hedge and over to field. All was cowering. Noise was (-) (-). Brilliant red and blue white. (-) glow. (-). Banding of colors. Swept over it +50ft. Went too fast to see shape but feels it was possibly round. (-) (-) near to village, into homes. She (-) into houses, told by parents it was a falling star. Next AM, all decided if it was a falling star, must be in field. But when checked found nothing, so decided to forget it. Three zones of color. White in middle, red on top, blue at bottom. She recalls saying to aunt it was colored just like the red-white-blue lifeboats at (-) station. Hedges were ca. 25 ft apart. Object must have been 20 to 25 ft diam. It did not get down onto the roadway. Came d. a bit. Subtended ca. 20 degree angle. She (-) over. Girl was Edith Ward (now Mrs Bruce.) Boy was Athol Whitfield (killed in war), John Brown also killed in war.’ Named witness (Edith Ward/Mrs. Bruce). CE-II classification. Institutional archive provenance.
Source: McDonald collection at the University of Arizona. | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: Winter 1926
Location: La Combe De Morbier, Jura, France
Time: evening
Summary: A woodcutter reported seeing a large brightly lit sphere hovering at treetop level, several figures, human-like in appearance could be seen inside the object. These apparently ignored the witness.
Source: From French researchers Joel Mesnard & Michel Morel Seythoux we get a brief summary mentioned in the UFO magazine FSR Vol. 37 # 1 | Source Status: VERIFIED
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Aviation Interference Year — 1926’s Electromagnetic Pattern
The year 1926 is the first in the archive to produce two separate documented aviation encounters with unidentified craft in a single calendar year — the Wichita stunt pilot formation intrusion in January and the Salt Lake City air mail pilot engine-interference case in September. This is not a coincidence of reporting density; both cases are independently sourced through credible aviation-specific catalogues. The Salt Lake City case is analytically significant beyond its aviation context: the EM interference pattern — engine sputtering correlating precisely with the object’s proximity within fifty yards — is the pre-modern equivalent of the CE-II electromagnetic effect that will become one of the defining evidential markers in the post-1947 literature. Hall’s documentation of this case at page 13 of Airships to Arnold places it in the most carefully researched pre-1947 aviation catalogue in the field. The pattern the Salt Lake City case establishes in 1926 — engine failure correlated with UAP proximity, forced landing, object departure at extreme speed — will recur in documented aviation encounters across the following four decades.
The 1926 CE-III record adds a Polish and a French entity case of genuine pre-contamination quality. Zofia’s Ujazd encounter — total silence, three gray discs with open doors, three small green-suited entities staring at her from one hundred meters, everything gone when she looked back — is the most formally complete CE-III on the page. The Jura woodcutter’s hovering sphere with human-like figures visible inside adds France’s second contribution to the decade’s occupied-craft record after the 1919 Scorbe-Clairvaux disc. The McDonald-collected East Coast Scotland event — four young people nearly flattened by a tricolor 25-foot object swooping at hedge height with a terrific noise — carries institutional archive provenance from one of the most credible researcher collections in the field. The year’s six-object Westmont Illinois formation, reflecting its light off the clouds above, rounds out an archive page whose aviation and entity content together make 1926 one of the analytically stronger years in the 1920–1929 series.
From the September 1926 Salt Lake City, Utah entry, sourced via Hall, Richard H., From Airships to Arnold, 2000, p. 13:
“Each time the object came within about 50 yards, the aircraft engine would begin to sputter and misfire, until the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing in a pasture. At this point the UFO ‘took off like a shot out of a gun’ and sped away.”
Case summary, Hall 2000, describing the September 1926 Salt Lake City air mail pilot encounter
