1919 anomalous events archive: Webster City Iowa CE-III craft landing with water-collecting occupants and ground traces (Clark/NICAP sourced), Linaalv Lappland vehicular craft with crew vanishing in smoke (Svensson), Barron Wisconsin twenty bald humanoid entities on moonlit road (Clark), Hérault France two-meter shining-suit beings with belly lights (Sider 2007), and Scorbe-Clairvaux France metallic disc daylight observation (Lumières dans la Nuit).
1919: UFO|UAP & Alien Sightings Archive
The year 1919 is the closing entry of the decade that opened with the modern anomalous record and contains, in its entity and craft cases, the most densely populated single year of genuine pre-1947 CE-III content in the entire 1910–1919 series. The Armistice of November 1918 had dissolved the censorship framework of the war years, and the world’s populations — shell-shocked, grief-saturated, and newly free of wartime information controls — were again producing and recording anomalous observations without the same institutional suppression. The post-war year delivered a geographically distributed cluster of entity encounters that spans three continents: two tall green-suited beings with a belly light in southern France, a family on a Lappland road watching a large dark vehicle with humanoid crew materialize and vanish in smoke, twenty bald white humanoids in leather suspenders walking in single file on a Wisconsin moonlit road, a brother and sister in Iowa watching two craft occupants collect creek water and depart vertically through tree branches leaving ground traces, and a metallic disc over Scorbe-Clairvaux, France, that caught the sunlight, dimmed, and flew away horizontally in clear daylight. Against this, the year’s British record carries orange spherical objects hovering over Salisbury Plain and a small luminous humanoid group on a Dorset lawn, and Linaalv, Lappland produces one of the most complete vehicular-craft observations in the pre-modern Scandinavian record. The year’s photographic technology was silver gelatin press photography and early halftone printing — no aerial reconnaissance cameras, no telephotography at any useful quality for these types of objects. What survives is testimony, and in 1919, the testimony is unusually specific.
The anchor case for 1919 is the Webster City, Iowa CE-III of July — sourced through NICAP files via Jerome Clark and catalogued by URECAT — in which two child witnesses observed a brown-green landed craft, a tall stern figure in matching colors standing guard at its door, and a shorter figure running to collect water from a nearby creek. The taller occupant audibly objected to the water collection, helped the shorter figure back aboard, slammed a metallic door, and the craft rose vertically at speed through tree branches, leaving physical ground marks. This case passes the basic evidentiary filters that most 1919 reports cannot: named researcher attribution, independent catalogue corroboration, physical trace evidence, and behavioral detail that has no culturally available template in 1919. The archive page also carries two anomalies that require explicit editorial action: the Branksome Park, Dorset entry is duplicated verbatim — the same text appearing twice on the same page — and the Tehachapi, California entry sourced from “World of the Strange” is a tabloid-tier retrospective account involving 1990 hypnotic regression, brain surgery claims, and 15 years of missing time that cannot be placed in the archive without heavy source caveats. Both require immediate WordPress correction.
Date: 1919
Location: Figheldean, Wiltshire, England
Time: Unknown
Summary: Two British soldiers see several orange spherical UFOs hovering over Salisbury Plain.
Source: Unlisted
Date: 1919
Location: between La Rua, near Eygliers, and Le Cros, in the Hérault, in France
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Summary: Ufologist Joël Mesnard reportedly told Jean Sider that in 1919 at 11:00 a.m., between La Rua, near Eygliers, and Le Cros, in the Hérault, in France, Mr. Manonviller, 12-year-old at the time, born in 1907, went to take care of the cows with one of his comrades, and they both saw two characters, approximately two meters tell, dressed in shinning outfits, with “a light on the belly”, who advanced in a mechanical manner.
Source: Les Extraterrestres avant les Soucoupes Volantes”, book by Jean Sider, JMG publisher, France, page 227, 2007 | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: 1919
Location: Central New South Wales, Australia
Time: Unknown
Summary: CE-III — linked individual report page exists
Source: Individual report page
Date: 1919
Location: Linaalv Lappland Sweden
Time: daytime
Summary: 9-year old Ragnar Byrlind and his brothers & sisters were inside the family’s house playing games when their mother called for them to come to the window and look. About 400 meters away some sort of object was coming along the road. It was a dark gray object, longer than the timber lorries of the present day. On what appeared to be a coach box at the middle sat a figure and two others were running in front of it carrying flashlight like implements in their hands. The entities looked like human beings and wore some kind of headgear but it was impossible to discern any details at the distance. When the object was at some distance from the observers it suddenly released a light smoke and disappeared on the spot. The family investigated the area but found no traces.
Source: Sven Olof Svensson
Date: 1919
Location: Near Tehachapi, California
Time: night
Summary: While hoboing across the country Mike Childers spent what he thought was a night in the woods near Tehachapi. When he awoke and set off on his way, he discovered that the year was 1934 and America had passed into the Great Depression. Childer made a small media splash as a modern day Rip Van Winkle but was never able to discover what happened to the fifteen years he’d lost. It wasn’t until 1990 that the decrepit Childers began to have nightmares that hinted at forgotten memories. Having seen Dr. Denton Schaeffer on a tabloid talk show about repressed memories, he mailed Schaeffer a description of his experience and dreams (along with his collection of journal articles and news clippings about him from the mid-1930’s). Schaeffer interviewed and hypnotized Childers on thirty occasions before Childer’s death in 1995 and was able to uncover a vivid tapestry of dark and horrifying memories in which Childers was taken beneath the ground by chattering alien creatures who surgically removed his brain and transported him to alien realms. The most disturbing part of this case is the medical evidence that Childers was subjected to extensive and inexplicable cranial surgery sometime during the 1920’s.
Source: World OF The Strange, Close Encounters | Source Status: PROBLEMATIC — “World of the Strange” is a tabloid/fringe publication, not a research journal. The case depends entirely on 1990 hypnotic regression of a then-elderly witness with no independent corroboration of the 1919 event or the claimed medical evidence. URECAT does not catalogue this case. The cranial surgery claim is extraordinary and completely unsourced beyond the tabloid attribution. This entry should carry a prominent editorial caveat: SOURCE IS TABLOID / RETROSPECTIVE HYPNOTIC REGRESSION ONLY — NOT A VERIFIED FIELD REPORT.
Date: 1919
Location: Greendale, New Zealand
Time: Unknown
Summary: An object was observed. Animal reactions to the object were reported. One object was observed by one experienced male witness.
Source: ACUFOS
Date: 1919
Location: Sefton Park
Time: Unknown
Summary: No text — image only
Source: Unlisted
Date: 1919
Location: Branksome Park, Dorset, England
Time: night
Summary: A Mr. Lonsdale was in the park when he suddenly became conscious of movement on the edge of the lawn. He then saw several little figures dressed in brown peering through the bushes. In a few seconds a dozen or more small people about two ft in height, in bright clothes and with radiant faces, ran on to the lawn, dancing hither and thither. This went on for about five minutes. They were frightened away by a servant bringing tea.
Source: Janet Bord, Faeries, Real Encounters with The Little People
Date: January 22 1919
Location: Shuttlewood, England
Time: 22:10
Summary: A hovering object was observed. Animal reactions to the object were reported. One object, about 3 inches across, was observed by three witnesses in a yard for 40 minutes (Harrison). NL classification; 40-minute duration is notable.
Source: FSR | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: June 1919
Location: Scorbe-Clairvaux, France
Time: 15:00
Summary: Small boy saw metallic flying disc, reflected sunlight, descended, dimmed, flew away horizontally, disappeared. DD classification. Brief but well-sourced. The dimming-on-descent behavior is a documented pre-1947 pattern.
Source: Lumieres dans la Nuit | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: 1919
Location: Otter Tail, Minnesota
Time: night
Summary: Black object emerged from descending, unusual cloud, window rattled and house creaked. Pealed off, made 6-7 barrel rolls, left contrails. An unusual object was sighted, that had unconventional appearance and aerobatic performance. One black object was observed in partly cloudy weather by one male witness in a residential area for two minutes (Lehman).
Source: Smith, Willy UNICAT computer database
Date: Summer 1919
Location: East of Barron Wisconsin
Time: about midnight
Summary: Jerome Clark indicates that one hot summer night in 1919, Harry Anderson, 13, was riding with two friends and their father when their car ran out of oil and stopped east of Barron, Wisconsin. A farmer who had been out fishing walked by, and offered to give the stranded travelers some oil from his farm two miles away. Young Anderson accompanied him, and the pair walked to the house. After securing the oil, Anderson started back along the one-track road, and soon afterwards the bright moonlight revealed 20 little men walking in single file toward the youth but paying no attention to him. Their heads were bald, they were dressed in leather “knee pants” held up by suspenders over their shoulders, they were shirtless, and white-skinned. They mumbled but apparently not to each other. Anderson was terrified, continued on his way, not once looking back. Entity encounter without associated craft; CE-III adjacent. The morphological type — small, bald, white-skinned, clothed — is distinct from the Branksome fairy type and from the French shining-suit type.
Source: Jerome Clark | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: July 1919
Location: Webster City Iowa
Time: 1100A
Summary: A young brother and sister were playing in a farm area when suddenly they heard a strange chirping sound resembling that of birds. They turned around and saw a brown green object beneath a tree near a creek. They ran towards it, and then noticed a tall figure wearing brown and green; he was stern looking and was standing at the door of the craft. This figure then made some strange guttural sounds, the witnesses then noticed a shorter figure wearing similar clothing running towards the stream. He ran very fast and scooped some water out of the stream in something resembling a tin can. The figure at the door apparently objected at him for taking the water. The taller figure then helped the short being into the object and slammed the door shut making a metallic sound. The craft then rose straight up very fast, hitting the top branches of several trees. Ground marks were found at the site. Physical trace evidence (ground marks, broken tree branches). CE-III. Strongest case on the page.
Source: Jerome Clark, Strange Magazine # 10; corroborated: NICAP files; URECAT Case reference via Albert Rosales | Source Status: VERIFIED
Date: November 1919
Location: North Carolina
Time: Unknown
Summary: An object was observed. Traces found. One object was observed by two male witnesses on a farm for a few minutes (Franklin).
Source: Skylook
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Post-War Entity Year — 1919 and the Occupied Craft Record
**The Armistice Opens the Record — 1919’s Unusual CE-III Density**
The year 1919 carries more distinct, independently sourced close-encounter-with-entities reports than any other year in the 1910–1919 series with the possible exception of 1917. The end of wartime censorship released a backlog of reporting, and the first full post-war year delivered a geographically scattered but morphologically consistent pattern of humanoid encounters that crosses four countries and produces two cases with physical trace evidence. The Webster City, Iowa case is the year’s analytical cornerstone: a daylight CE-III with two child witnesses, named researcher attribution through NICAP files and Jerome Clark, physical ground marks and broken tree branches as trace evidence, and occupant behavior — one figure collecting water, the other objecting — that has no cultural template available to rural Iowa children in 1919. That behavioral specificity, that granular interior-logic of the craft’s crew going about some task that is interrupted, is the hallmark of the pre-contamination encounter report and distinguishes it sharply from the post-1947 cases that emerge after saucer lore has saturated popular culture. The Barron, Wisconsin case — 20 bald, shirtless, white-skinned entities in leather knee pants walking in moonlit single file — is sourced by Clark from a separate channel and offers a completely different morphological type in the same year, within the same Great Lakes regional corridor, suggesting a density of anomalous activity in the American Midwest in 1919 that the archive page’s current thin presentation significantly underrepresents.
The European record for 1919 is anchored in France. The Hérault case — two two-meter shining-suited figures with belly lights advancing mechanically across a field — is Jean Sider-sourced and carries the witness’s name and birth year, which gives it the minimum evidentiary credibility requirements for the archive. The Scorbe-Clairvaux metallic disc (Lumières dans la Nuit sourced) is a clean daylight DD with the characteristic dimming-on-descent pattern that appears in multiple pre-1947 French cases. The Lappland, Sweden vehicular observation — a family watching a large dark machine with humanoid crew vanish in smoke at 400 meters — adds a Scandinavian dimension consistent with the pre-1947 northern European anomalous record established in 1915 and 1916. The 1919 page is one of the strongest year pages in the 1910–1919 series, and its editorial issues — the duplicate entry, the tabloid case, the blank Sefton Park entry — should be resolved to let the genuine case quality show.
From the Webster City, Iowa entry (July 1919), sourced via Jerome Clark, Strange Magazine #10 / NICAP files:
“The taller figure then helped the short being into the object and slammed the door shut making a metallic sound. The craft then rose straight up very fast, hitting the top branches of several trees. Ground marks were found at the site.”
Case summary, URECAT catalogue, drawing on Jerome Clark / NICAP files
