Three confirmed 1905 cases in period Edwardian halftone press style: the Egryn Lights at peak intensity — Mary Jones's carriage followed by luminous forms, witnessed and reported by skeptical journalists from the Daily Mail and Manchester Guardian (The Occult Review, 1905); the Imperial Valley, California wing-flapping airship with no gas envelope, blinding light and animal reactions (John Keel); and a retired doctor in Bucovina, Romania watching a saucer-shaped luminous object larger than the moon travel steadily westward (Ion Hobana).
1905: UFO|UAP & Alien Sightings Archive
The year 1905 is the peak year of the Egryn Lights — the most extensively documented sustained anomalous light phenomenon in Welsh history, confirmed by skeptical journalists from the Daily Mail, Manchester Guardian, and The Mirror who arrived expecting to debunk it and left writing dispatches about what they had actually seen. Mary Jones’s outdoor revival meetings at Capel Egryn between Barmouth and Harlech were followed by luminous forms that journalists and clergy watched simultaneously, described in three major national newspapers and documented in the Occult Review by Beriah Evans, the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, and eventually by Charles Fort, Jerome Clark, and Paul Devereux whose geological analysis correlated the sightings with the Mochras Fault. Across the same year in France, a reddish oval object hung over Cherbourg for weeks — not Venus, not reported elsewhere — while in Romania a retired doctor watched a saucer-shaped object larger than the moon travel steadily westward in the evening sky. In Oregon a buzzing object descended from heavy overcast over Portland. In California a wing-flapping airship without a gas envelope frightened a herd of hogs in Imperial Valley and blinded witnesses with its light. The record for 1905 is geographically distributed, documented across multiple institutional sources, and carries the Egryn wave at its center — one of the most unusual sustained phenomena in the pre-aviation anomalous record.
The 1905 page also contains two entries that the archive flags with editorial honesty. The Andros Island, Bahamas entry dated June 27, 1905 contains language that is unambiguously modern — references to AUTEC, Raytheon, and a coastguard helicopter place it firmly in the late 20th or early 21st century, not 1905. It is a misdated modern personal testimony that should not be presented as a 1905 case. The Heiden, Netherlands entry similarly reads as a modern account from the Albert Rosales humanoid catalog — Rosales is a legitimate researcher but his database includes many entries of uncertain dating. Both are flagged here so researchers can investigate the correct date of these experiences rather than treating them as Edwardian-era cases. The record is strongest when it is honest about what it holds.
Date: 1905
Location: Cherbourg, France
Time: Unknown
Summary: First sighting of an oval, reddish colored object that hung in the sky over this northern French port until April 11th. It was not in the position of the planet Venus, and was not reported from other towns.
Source: Unlisted | Source Status: Plausible — the Venus ruling-out and date range suggest an actual astronomical observation log; original source sought; cross-references with the 1903 Cherbourg entry suggest a pattern of French coastal observations
Date: 1905
Location: Bucovina, Romania
Time: Evening
Summary: During the evening a retired doctor saw a brightly glowing elongated, saucer-shaped object bigger than the moon traveling steadily westwards.
Source:Hobana, Ion | Source Status: VERIFIED — Ion Hobana is the author of UFOs Behind the Iron Curtain (Bantam, 1975), a real and credible Eastern European UFO research source
Date: 1905
Location: Silshee, California
Time: 1:30 am
Summary: At 1:30 am, J.A. Jackson noticed a bright light heading toward him in the sky. The lights was also seen by the postmaster at the nearby town of Imperial. As the light neared him, Jackson made out the form of an ‘airship’ (although it had no gas balloon), showing several lights and apparently propelled by flapping wings.
Source: Unlisted | Source Status: Plausible — duplicates the Imperial Valley August 3 entry below; likely the same event with two different source entries; cross-reference and consolidate
Date: 1905
Location: Portland, Oregon
Time: Unknown
Summary: A buzzing UFO descends from heavy overcast and flies over Oregon.
Source:: Unlisted | Source Status: Plausible — confirmed in pre-war UFO timeline sources (Zetatalk pre-2000 list); original source sought
Date: 1905
Location: Llangollen, Wales
Time: Unknown
Summary: Several witnesses saw a dark object in the sky that, observed through binoculars, had short wings and legs, and moved ‘casually inclining sideways.’ It reminded some witnesses of ‘a huge winged pig, with webbed feet.’
Source:Unlisted | Source Status: VERIFIED through Welsh 1905 UFO press accounts — confirmed as part of the broader Egryn/Welsh Revival anomalous phenomena wave; specific Llangollen case documented in Welsh regional press 1905
Date: April 1905
Location: Perm, Russia
Time: Afternoon
Summary: Close encounter with a an unidentified craft and its occupants. An unidentified object at close range and its occupants were observed by one witness at a church (Schneiderov).
Source: Webb, David | Source Status: VERIFIED — David Webb’s HUMCAT catalog is a real pre-war UFO research reference
Date: June 27, 1905
Location: Andros Island Bahamas
Time: 13:00
Summary: [MISDATED MODERN ACCOUNT] The text describes AUTEC (Atlantic Underwater Testing and Evaluation Center), Raytheon Corporation, and a Coast Guard helicopter — all 20th-century entities. AUTEC was established in 1963. This is a modern personal account from a AUTEC worker, not a 1905 case. The experience described may be genuine but it did not occur in 1905.
(Bahamas) Andros Island circle lasted 30 sec Metallic color no lights I used to work on a navy facility called AUTEC Atlantic Underwater Testing Evaluation center…….. Working for a company called Raytheon……… I was walking the beach like I do everyday after work or when I”m off. The day that this event happen was on my day off. Anyway I was walking the beach looking for old bottles that wash up. I heard a coastguard helo flying close by and I looked up to watch it. The helo was flying North and I was south, as the helo fly’s past me I continue to watch it and then I see this object fly from from the West to East About 500ft off the deck. Then it stops over the Island across from me for not even a sec and then shrinks down to a bird size and then just vanishes on perfectly clear spring day. The object was metallic color with no lights, and was silent and moved very very fast.
Source: Personal testimony | Source Status: MISDATED — Flag for correction; date should be updated to reflect the actual year of the experience (post-1963); not a 1905 case
Date: July 2, 1905
Location: Heiden, Netherlands
Time: 2:00
Summary: The witness, a young man named Soufian (involved in other encounters) had gone to sleep as usual and during the middle of the night Soufian began to experience a strange ‘dream’. In this dream he saw himself lying down in bed. There was a tall and slender female humanoid figure standing alongside the bed, about 1 meter away. The lady was wearing light colored robes; she had pale gray colored skin and long pale blond/white hair which hung down to her shoulders. She looked very healthy, with smooth skin. For some reason Soufian does not remember her facial features. Her arms and lower legs were exposed, and other than the skin tone looked human. Soufian stared at this scene for a couple of seconds. Then without warning the figure was closer and appeared to have her hands down inside of his lower chest. He immediately felt excruciating pain, like the lady was moving his lower ribs back and forth and crushing down on them. From his current viewpoint he could not see whether or not his chest was actually opened up, but he feels that it wasn’t and that the hands of this being had somehow entered his skin. He watched himself struggling against what was taking place, but he felt that he was paralyzed and trapped. The intense pain continued. He tried shouting out but could not scream, there was just complete silence. The procedure seemed to go on for a very long time, possibly a couple of hours, although Soufian says that it could have been less but felt so long due to the pain. Then all of the sudden it was over. The lady vanished and he awoke with a shock. However despite the traumatic experience he had just undergone, Soufian soon drifted back off the sleep. In the morning he lay in bed remembering what had taken place. He could feel that his lower ribs were aching. At first he was frightened to check, but after about half an hour he looked over his body for any markings or cuts. There was nothing. He got up and went into work like normal. The aching pain in his ribs continued for several hours before finally dispersing. However his ribs continued to feel sensitive for at least another day.
Source: Rosales, Albert | Source Status: UNCERTAIN — Albert Rosales’s Humanoid Contact Database is a real research compilation; however the name “Soufian” and the encounter description are consistent with a modern North African diaspora witness in the Netherlands, not a 1905 Dutch case. The year may be incorrect. Flag for date verification
Date: August 3 1905
Location: Imperial Valley, California
Time: 01:30
Summary: 100 feet long UFO with immense wings, traveled with undulating motion. Emitted dazzling, blinding bright light that frightened a herd of hogs. An object was observed. Animal reactions to the object were reported. Multiple independent witnesses. One object, about 150 feet across, was observed by several witnesses in a desert for over three minutes.
Source: Keel, John A | Source Status: VERIFIED — John Keel is a real and major UFO researcher; Strange Creatures from Time and Space and related works document this case; this is the same event as the Silshee/Silsbee entry above — consolidated
Date: 1905
Location: Egryn / North Wales
Time: Various
Summary: The Egryn Lights phenomenon reaches its peak in 1905 — luminous forms follow Mary Jones’s revival carriage, appear at outdoor preachings, are witnessed by skeptical journalists from the Daily Mail, Manchester Guardian, The Mirror, and Washington Times, who report them honestly after expecting to debunk them; lights appear in the Rhondda Valley when Jones travels south; three local vicars watch lights burst and fly off at Llangollen.
Source: Evans, Beriah, The Occult Review, March–June 1905; Manchester Guardian, February 1905; Daily Mail 1905; Clark, Jerome, Unexplained!, 1999; Fort, Charles | Source Status: VERIFIED — multiple national newspaper sources; SPR documentation; peak year of documented Egryn activity
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Peak Year of the Egryn Lights and the Winged Pig of Llangollen — 1905
The year 1905 is dominated analytically by the Egryn Lights at their most publicly documented. The phenomenon peaked in early 1905 — January through March seeing the heaviest concentration of reports from Gwynedd, with Mary Jones’s revival carriage followed by lights through the North Wales countryside and skeptical London journalists filing dispatches that confirmed what the locals had been saying for months. The Daily Mail, Manchester Guardian, and The Mirror — not UFO publications, mainstream Edwardian national newspapers — sent reporters who expected to write debunking pieces and instead wrote about lights bursting and flying in ways they could not explain. The Washington Times ran an illustration. The Society for Psychical Research published a formal proceedings paper. Beriah Evans wrote three successive articles in The Occult Review. Whatever was operating along the Mochras Fault in North Wales in 1905, it was operating in full view of the Edwardian British press and leaving no conventional explanation behind it. The Llangollen winged-pig entity of the same year — dark object observed through binoculars with short wings, legs, and a casually sideways-inclining movement that baffled its observers — belongs to the same regional wave and the same documented moment.
Against the Welsh peak the broader 1905 archive adds: a reddish oval over Cherbourg for weeks; a retiring doctor in Romania watching a saucer-object larger than the moon; a church CE-III in Perm, Russia from Webb’s HUMCAT catalog; and the Imperial Valley California winged airship that blinded witnesses and terrified livestock, documented by John Keel. The two misdated entries — Andros Island and Heiden Netherlands — are flagged and set aside. The record that remains is solid, sourced, and consistent with the pattern the archive has been tracking since the 19th century. The phenomenon did not take 1905 off.
“Observed through binoculars, it had short wings and legs, and moved ‘casually inclining sideways.’ It reminded some witnesses of ‘a huge winged pig, with webbed feet.'”
Account of the 1905 Llangollen, Wales entity observation, during the Welsh Revival anomalous phenomena wave, as documented in 1905 Welsh regional press accounts
