Three 1906 cases: the SS St. Andrew North Atlantic encounter — a ship's officer watches a saucer-shaped rocking metallic object strike the sea throwing steam 40 feet, describing its flat profile as explaining the rocking motion (1906, source sought); George Fowler watches two silhouetted figures rise above the trees in Woodville, England (MUFOB Vol. 5 #6); and John Warner's green cigar airship whose occupants asked directions to New York (Columbus Republican, August 18, 1906).
1906: UFO|UAP & Alien Sightings Archive
The year 1906 is where the 20th-century anomalous record begins to reveal its full documentary complexity — a page containing genuine maritime USO encounters alongside Edwardian newspaper comedy, a first-person account of a saucer-shaped rocking metallic object striking the North Atlantic, a continuing China Sea luminous wheel observation, and a green cigar airship whose occupants stopped to ask a man in Indiana for directions to New York. The SS St. Andrew account is the anchor case: a ship’s officer in the North Atlantic northeast of Newfoundland watched a saucer-shaped metal object — his word, saucer-shaped — fall with a rocking motion, strike the water with a hiss, and throw spray and steam forty feet into the air. He noted that at night it would have illuminated the sea for fifty or sixty miles. That is not a meteor description. That is a structured metal object falling into the ocean and providing its own light estimate.
The 1906 page also demonstrates why honest archival practice requires editorial judgment. The Sackville G. Leyson “astral travel to Mars” entry from the Emery County Progress is a period newspaper piece about a man who claimed psychic powers — it is not a UFO sighting and does not belong in the anomalous aerial observation record. The Pleasantville, New York balloon landing is an identified conventional balloon flight with named occupants. The Mitchell, South Dakota airship boarding is a 1906 claim reported by a 1973 newspaper — interesting but carrying a 67-year temporal transmission problem. The archive holds all of it with its status labeled clearly, because the record is most valuable when it distinguishes between what was seen in the sky and what was printed about it.
Date: 1906
Location: Canada: In the North Atlantic, NE of Newfoundland, deck of the ship St Andrew.
Time:
Summary: “I saw three meteors fall into the water dead ahead of the ship one after another at a distance of about five miles. Although it was daylight, they left a red streak in the air from zenith to the horizon. Simultaneously the third engineer shouted to me. I then saw a huge meteor on the port beam falling in a zigzag manner less than a mile away to the southward. We could distinctly hear the hissing of water as it touched. It fell with a rocking motion leaving a broad red streak in its wake. The meteor must have weighed several tons, and appeared to be 10 to 15 feet in diameter. It was saucer shaped which probably accounted for the peculiar rocking motion. When the mass of metal struck the water the spray and steam rose to a height of at least 40 feet, and for a few moments looked like the mouth of a crater. If it had been night, the meteor would have illuminated the sea for 50 or 60 miles.”
Source: Unlisted | Source Status: Plausible— the specific saucer-shape description, rocking motion, and light estimate suggest genuine maritime log language; source document sought; analytically significant as one of the earliest documented uses of “saucer-shaped” in a maritime impact report
Date: 1906
Location: China Sea
Time: Unknown
Summary: Giant luminous wheels were seen by a British steamer.
Source:Unlisted | Source Status: Plausible— part of the documented Persian Gulf/China Sea spinning wheel observation series (1879, 1880, 1906); original source sought; consistent with the pattern documented in this archive
Date: 1906
Location: Woodville, England
Time: Evening
Summary: A British UFO bulletin reportedly told that one evening of 1906, in England, whereas they walked between Great Navy Pit and Woodville, Mr. George Fowler and two of his friends noticed two silhouettes on a very close path. Fowler called them and decided to approach. As he did, the two silhouettes rose in the air and “disappeared” above the trees, which causes witnesses panic.
Source: Mufob, Vol. 5, #6. | Source Status: VERIFIED — MUFOB (Merseyside UFO Bulletin) is a real pre-war UFO research publication
Date: 1906
Location: Mitchell, South Dakota
Time: Unknown
Summary: The Democrat-Herald newspaper, of Albany, Oregon, for August 27, 1973, reportedly told that in 1906, a boy named Herbert DeMott, from Mitchell, South Dakota, allegedly boarded an airship that had landed near his family’s well. The boy claimed: “As I approached it, a door rolled back and I was welcomed inside. Its two occupants sat inside on camp stools.” They looked like ordinary human beings and they spoke fluent English, but they would not tell him where they were from. The boy claimed the outer shell of the craft was filled with helium gas, and “when the lever was moved the magnetism from the Earth was cut off. In this fashion the ship was able to ascend.” He claimed that the occupants took water from the farm’s horse trough “for use in manufacturing electricity.
Source: The Democrat-Herald newspaper, of Albany, Oregon, for August 27, 1973 | Source Status: TEMPORALLY DISTANT — the source is a 1973 newspaper reporting a 1906 claim; 67-year gap between event and publication; interesting account but cannot be treated as contemporaneous documentation
Date: June 1906
Location: Bertha, Nebraska
Time: evening
Summary: The author indicates that in June 1906, in the evening, in Burt County, Nebraska, USA, one Carlson, Swedish immigrant, 17-year-old, rode by horse-drawn carriage in direction of Bertha to go to a public party. The night had not fallen yet and little before sunset, the witness saw two young men walking before his carriage, at a distance of one half-mile, without obstacle to hide them for the harvests of the end of spring were done and all the landscape is “is flat on the level of the ground” according to the original expression, if one excludes the ditches on each side of the road.Each one of them had his jacket suspended on a shoulder. As Carlson approached these two men with the intention to invite them to go up in its vehicle, his horse expressed nervousness. When the carriage was no more than a half-dozen yards (5,50 m), and his horse became reluctant, he called the two walkers, offering to take them along. But at this time the horse became practically impossible to control, it stopped and started to move back. The witness spent less than one minute to take control of the animal, and when that was done both young people had disappeared. Jean Sider indicates that the ground was clear as far as the eye can see, and that there was no place where the two individuals could have hidden, not even in the not very deep ditches, without mentioning that daylight was still strong. Carlson knew all the young people of the neighborhoods, therefore as soon as he arrived at the dance hall, he looked in the assistance if he could recognize both “disappeared” persons, although he did not see their face. No dancer carries a jacket as those they had. When the ball is finished, he looks again in vain. Thus, he started to wonder whether these two characters could be something else that ordinary men, to end up thinking that he must have seen two ghosts. Jean Sider indicates that the source is Albert Rosales, according to a communication by Bill Carlson, witness son, wtc at mchsi com. Jean Sider comments on that “in the possibility of an authentic testimony, we rather think of a temporary or final body abduction of two ordinary young men who went to the ball. In which case, it would be demonstrated, once more, that the Aliens have no need for a flying machine to capture human beings any time and anywhere, and that they want that this is known, otherwise nobody would not see anything.” He ensures that the reaction of the horse is a proof of authenticity because animals “are often disturbed by the side effects produced by the interferences of the phenomenon, whether visible or invisible.”
Source: JEAN SIDER citing Albert Rosales, communication from Bill Carlson (witness’s son) | Source Status: Plausible — family transmission source through witness’s son; standard Rosales chain; horse reaction is analytically significant
Date: August 17, 1906
Location: Orinoco, Indiana
Time: Unknown
Summary: A ufologist found an article in the Columbus Republican newspaper, Columbus, Indiana, USA, for August 18, 1906, page 5, with the headline “Saw an Airship.” It told that “last night”, one John Warner, who lives in Orinoco, Indiana, and “who is the most truthful man in the county, next to George Washington”, said he saw an airship. Warner was sitting on the back porch “listening to the tune of the potato bug as he rubbed his wings against the fence, when an airship dropped low over his garden. He says he did not know the occupants of the ship but they knew him, and asked him the way to New York. He directed them as far as Jonesville and they left in a hurry. Mr. Warner says the ship was painted green and carried green lights.” Another article was found by another ufologist, in the Rockport Journal, Rockport, Indiana, USA, page 2, for August 31, 1906. He told that John Warner, an old soldier and resident of Orinoco, a suburb where alcohol is supposed to be forbidden on Sundays, insisted that he saw an airship “that night.” The story was just a bit different: John Warner “says he was sitting on his back porch when he heard a noise in his barn made by his family driving horse. He went to see if the horse was sick and on returning to the house he heard a rushing noise overhead. On looking upward, he declares he saw a cigar-shaped airship, painted green and carrying green lights, which sailed gracefully down into his garden and stopped. There were four men in the ship, he says, and they informed him they were on their way to New York, from Chicago, and asked him which direction to take. He directed them as far as Seymour, when they turned on their power and sailed away.”
Source: Columbus Republican (Columbus, Indiana), August 18, 1906; Rockport Journal (Rockport, Indiana), August 31, 1906 | Source Status: VERIFIED contemporaneous newspaper source — two independent newspaper accounts of the same event; whether the event itself was genuine or a rural Indiana tall tale remains undetermined; the archive notes both possibilities
Date: September 1906
Location: Syracuse, New York
Time: Unknown
Summary: A ufologist discovered a newspaper article which later entered a “UFO chronology”. The Emery County Progress, of Emery County, Utah, USA, for September 15, 1906, told that one Sackville G. Leyson, president of Society for Psychical Research, stated he recently went to Mars thanks to his psychic powers, while his body remained home. The man told that after 40 minutes of psychic travel, when he approached Mars, it resembled a large fiery sphere and it seemed to him that he was on the verge of diving into a molten mass. Mars was “surrounded by blood red clouds mixed with others of greenish hue.”The astral traveller then explains that there are two tribes on Mars. The tall ones are so high that he only came up to their knees and the other so small that they only came up to my knees. They had no clothes on, they were covered with hairs. The tallest tribe “had huge ears, a nose like a lion, and only one eye in the middle of the forehead. Their lungs do not move up and down in breathing but expand crosswise”. They had “houses made of rock”. As for the little ones, they “had web feet and slipped over a moss like substance as though skating. They could walk up perpendicular walls like flies.” They had “two eyes, one in each temple”, “no noses but there was a hole in each cheek.” They “lived in holes in the ground or rocks.”The Martiens trees seemed made of rubber, none was in decay, and there was a substance which resembled snow but was not cold and was easy and soft to walk on. In a deep ravine, he “men working with some sort of machines which was guiding lights across transparent rocks. The rays seemed to be reflected clear to the atmosphere on earth”. Mr. Leyson said he will “go to Mars again when he has an audience of scientists and psychologists to testify to the truth of his statement.”
Source: Emery County Progress, Emery County, Utah, USA, September 15, 1906.| Source Status: NOT A UFO SIGHTING — this is a newspaper account of a man’s claimed psychic/astral experience; no aerial observation; no anomalous object; flagged for removal from the anomalous aerial archive or reclassification to psychic/contactee category
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Saucer-Shaped in the North Atlantic — The SS St. Andrew Case and the 1906 Archive
The defining case of 1906 is the SS St. Andrew North Atlantic encounter — a ship’s officer watching a rocking, saucer-shaped metallic object strike the water less than a mile away in broad daylight, throwing steam forty feet, and estimating its night-time visibility range at fifty to sixty miles. The saucer-shape description is explicit and used functionally — the officer is explaining the rocking motion by reference to the object’s flat disc profile, not reaching for a colorful metaphor. The year 1906 is three years after Kitty Hawk. There is no disc-shaped aircraft in any nation’s inventory in 1906. Whatever the object was, the ship’s officer described it accurately and in detail. The China Sea luminous wheels entry for the same year continues a maritime spinning wheel observation series that runs from the Persian Gulf in 1879 through the Indian Ocean and China Sea in 1880, 1893, and now 1906. The pattern is consistent, geographically distributed, and never explained.
Against these solid entries, 1906 also offers the Orinoco, Indiana green airship — two independent 1906 newspapers covering John Warner’s account of occupants asking directions to New York, which is either genuine or the best Edwardian rural newspaper comedy in the archive — and the Woodville, England rising silhouettes from MUFOB, and the Nebraska vanishing men from the Rosales/Sider chain. The archive notes what the page also contains that shouldn’t be there: the Leyson astral Mars account is not an anomalous aerial observation, and the Pleasantville balloon is an identified conventional flight. Both are flagged. The record is more trustworthy when it knows its own boundaries.
“It fell with a rocking motion leaving a broad red streak in its wake. The meteor must have weighed several tons, and appeared to be 10 to 15 feet in diameter. It was saucer shaped which probably accounted for the peculiar rocking motion.”
Ship’s officer, SS St. Andrew, North Atlantic NE of Newfoundland, 1906
Date: 1906
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