1866 – 1869: UFO|UAP & ENTITY SIGHTINGS ARCHIVE

The four years from 1866 to 1869 produced one of the most geographically and phenomenologically diverse anomalous records of the entire 19th century — and at its center sits Bracken County, Kentucky, which in the space of less than three years hosted three separate entity encounters of extraordinary morphological specificity, each documented by Jerome Clark from named newspaper sources. The February 1866 Bracken County monster — gigantic, horned, shaggy-armed, blue-fire breathing, sulfurous, visible to an entire plantation household and their workers — drove two witnesses to permanent insanity. The October 1868 Willow Creek figure — six feet tall, man-faced, flame-curled, horse-legged, cloven-hoofed, sword-carrying, breath a solid sheet of fire vibrating like a pendulum — led a prominent tobacco merchant to organise an impromptu civilian investigation that confirmed its presence to some witnesses and not others at the same moment. The December 1868 Independent Hill, Virginia entity — three times the width of a man, six to eight feet of horizontal back, colossal arms, pale blue in color turning deadly white when approached, emitting smoke and sickening brimstone smell, capable of throwing a stone so hot it could not be held — moved through a stable yard in December 1868 and was confirmed by a skeptic who had gone specifically to disprove it. Whatever was operating in the post-Civil War American south in these years, it was doing so with extraordinary consistency and with physical effects that multiple named witnesses documented in named newspapers.

Outside Kentucky and Virginia, the 1866–1869 archive ranges from Chatham, England — where James Beveridge wrote a detailed eyewitness letter to a local newspaper describing numberless black discs passing in groups for over twenty minutes, appearing like cannon shot in front of the sun and leaving puffs of grayish-brown vapor — to Young, New South Wales, where three fencing workers watched a small white object grow into an eight-foot white humanoid figure that they struck (hollow) before it chased them. The Fort Wayne, Indiana pre-dawn display of June 1869 — an object larger than the full moon blazing red with radiating rays and Roman candle sparks for thirty minutes — was documented the following day in the Fort Wayne Daily Democrat by name and time. The Norwegian encounter of Summer 1869, in which a small man in brown clothing opened his coat to reveal a blinding interior light and gave the witness a letter of claimed celestial origin, is one of the earliest documented Scandinavian close encounters in the archive. The 1866–1869 window is the anomalous record operating in the Reconstruction era South, the post-Civil War American Midwest, and simultaneously on three other continents — and producing reports of sufficient specificity that the archive holds them without difficulty.

Date: 1866
Location: Wellesley, Massachusetts
Time:  UnKnown
Summary: Close encounter with a craft and its occupants. An unidentifiable object and its occupants were observed at close range (Denton).
Source: Steiger, Brad Strangers From the Skies Award A171X, New York, 1966

Date: 1866
Location: Monongah, West Virginia
Time:  UnKnown
Summary: “An unidentified object at close range was observed by one female witness (Bender).
Source: Eberhart, George M. A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies Greenwood Press, Westport, 1980

Date: February 13 1866
Location. Bracken County, Kentucky
Time: late night
Summary: On Monday night the owner of a local plantation and his family had retired to rest when suddenly they were aroused by a great outcry from the Negro quarters, which was immediately to the rear of the house.

They heard men, women and children screaming in terror, creating a scene of utter pandemonium. His wife and him sprang from their bed. Their room was illuminated as brightly as by a flood of sunlight, though the light was of a bluish cast. At first they thought that the Negro cabins were being consumed by fire. They rushed to the windows and beheld a sight that fairly curdled the blood in their veins with horror and filled their hearts with utmost terror. Their daughters, shrieking loudly, came flying into the room, hysterical with fear. They beheld, standing to the right of the upper cabin, near the fence that separated the Negro’s garden from the house yard a creature of gigantic stature, and the most horrifying appearance. It was nearly as high as the cabin and had a monstrous head not similar in shape to that of an ape, with two short white horns above each eye, and it had long arms, covered with shaggy hair of an ashen hue that terminated in huge paws, not unlike those of a cat, and armed with huge and hooked claws. Its breast was as broad as that of a large sized ox, its legs resembled the front legs of a horse, and only the hoofs were cloven. It had a long tail armed with a dart shaped horn, which it was continually switching about. Its eyes glowed like two living coals of fire, while its nostrils and mouth were emitting sheets of blue colored flame, with a hissing sound, like the hissing of a serpent only a thousand fold louder. Its general color, save the arms, was a dull dingy brown. The air was powerfully impregnated with a smell of burning sulfur. The poor Negroes were evidently laboring under extreme terror, and two of them, an old woman and a lad were actually driven to insanity by their fears and have not recovered their reason up to this writing. The strange creature then was enveloped in a spiral in a spiral column of flame that reached nearly to the top of the locust trees adjacent, and which hid its horrid form completely from view. The extinction of the flame was instantaneous, and with its disappearance they were relieved of the presence of this remarkable visitor. It was reported that the same or similar creature appeared on several nights at neighboring plantations.
Source: Jerome Clark, Anomalistic List, quoting Nathaniel G. Squires

Date: June 9 1866
Location: Knysahinya, Hungary
Time:  UnKnown
Summary: An object was observed. Metallic traces found. An unidentifiable object was observed at close range and caused physical effects. June 9, 1866, a tremendous explosion in the sky of Knysahinya, Hungary, and about a thousand stones had fallen from the sky. Rosenau and Knyahinya are about 75 miles apart.
Source: Contact U.K.; Report B. A., 1867-430

Date: November 8 1866
Location: Cartagena, Bolivar, Colombia
Time: Evening
Summary: One object was observed by one male witness for over three minutes (Fonblanque).
Source:  Leslie, Desmond Flying Saucers Have Landed British Book Center, 1953

Date:  1867
Location: Maco, North Carolina
Time:  UnKnown
Summary: Ghost lights.
Source: Unlisted — flag: source missing

Date: January 8, 1867
Location: Fort Klamath, Oregon
Time:  UnKnown
Summary: Metallic traces found. Two objects were observed by a male witness (Tennyson).
Source:  Contact U.K.

Date: May 30, 1867
Location: Birmingham, England
Time: Around 1100
Summary: Numerous objects were observed by one experienced witness (Bird)
Source:  Lore, Jr., Gordon I. R. Mysteries of the Skies: UFOs in Perspective Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1968

Date: November 4, 1867 or  December 4, 1867
Location: Chatham, England
Time: After 1500
Summary: “On the afternoon of Monday the 4th, between the hours of 3 and 4,1 witnessed a very extraordinary sign in the heavens…The facts are as follows: I was passing the Mill by the water-works reservoir. On the gallery I observed the miller uttering exclamations of surprise, and looking earnestly towards the west. On inquiring what took his attention so much, he said: ‘Look, sir, I never saw such a sight in my life!’ “On turning in the direction towards which he was looking, the west, I also was astounded—numberless black disks in groups and scattered were passing rapidly through the air. He said his attention was directed to it by his little girl, who called to him in the Mill, saying, ‘Look, father, here are a lot of balloons coming!’ “They continued for more than 20 minutes, the time I stayed. In passing in front of the sun they appeared like large cannon shot. Several groups passed over my head, disappearing suddenly, and leaving puffs of grayish brown vapor very much like smoke. “I am, sir, your truly, James E. Beveridge, Darland, Chatham.”
Source: Letter to the editor of Chatham News and Symonds’ Monthly Meteorological Magazine (Dec. 1867): 8.

Date: March 17 1868
Location. Copiapó, Chile
Time: 1700
Summary: When the day’s work in the mine was over and all the workers were gathered together waiting for their dinner, we saw arrive through the air on the side of the mine known as “La Ternera” an enormous bird that at first we took for the clouds that a that moment were covering a part of the atmosphere, supposing that it had been separated from other clouds by a chance gust of wind as the object in question approached, causing us great surprise, we could see it was an unknown flying object. It was moving from the northeast to the southeast and its flight was fast and in a very straight line. It passed over just above our heads and we could see the strange structure of its body. Its great wings were covered in brownish feathers, the head of the monster looked like that of a lobster and its eyes open wide and bright like embers, and it seemed to be covered in something resembling thick hair, like a sow. Its body was long like a snake’s and only bright scales could be seen on it, which sounded like metallic pieces when the strange animal moved them. Surprise soon became panic amongst the workers before such a strange phenomenon. Some claim they detected a terrible smell in those moments, a smell similar to arsenic when it is burnt. Others say their senses were not so injured in such an odd manner. The superstitious believe it was the devil himself who they saw pass over, while others remember having witnessed in that city, years ago, the passing of a similar monstrous bird.
Source: Chris Aubeck, Return to Magonia

Date: 1868
Location: Australia
Time: Unknown
Summary: Linked to individual report page (Fred Birmingham, Parramatta).
Source: [Read the File]

Date: July 1868
Location: Copiapó, Chile
Time: 17:00
Summary: Linked to individual report page (La Ternera mine creature).
Source: [Read the File]

Date: August 1868
Location. Nice, Alpes Maritime, France
Time: unknown
Summary: An unspecified number of witnesses watched an enormous sphere of flames land on top of a hill. Two very small occupants, about 1.20m, wearing with greenish luminous clothing exit the sphere and disappear into the woods. No other information.
Source: Yves Naud, “UFOs and Extraterrestrials” Famot 1977

Date: October 10 1868
Location. Willow Creek, Bracken County, Kentucky
Time: night
Summary: A wonderful phenomenon has recently made its appearance in this locale about two miles from Brooksville and has been seen by quite a number of the worthy citizens of the county. On the above date one of our citizens, a prominent tobacco merchant, residing in Brooksville was returning home from the southern portion of the county where he had been buying some crops of tobacco and belated was riding along the road when suddenly he beheld a most frightful object in the middle of the road, immediately in front of him. The “object” was about six feet in height and walked upright. The face was at times that of a man, very pale, with curls of flame falling over his shoulders, eyes of sulfurous blue, changing constantly in size, one moment large as a tin cup, and then gradually decreasing in size until it was almost invisible. Its arms were those of a man, and hands deadly pale. In one hand, it held a torch, and in the other a sword that seemed to be about four feet in length. Its lower extremity was that of a horse, with legs well proportioned, and hoofs as those of a horse. Its tail, which was about three feet in length, was of flame. Its breath was a solid sheet of fire, which vibrated with the heaving of its breast, like the pendulum of a clock. It was certainly the most frightful thing the witness ever beheld. It walked off to the side of the road, and then vanished. When it disappeared the witness immediately put spurs to his horse and galloped by the spot where he had seen it. When he arrived at the summit of the hill, about 200 yards off, he looked back and saw the creature in the same spot where he had first beheld it. He stopped his horse and watched for a moment, it walked over to the left side of the road and mounted a rail fence that stood there, and commenced running toward the witness. The witness did not stay to see remainder of the drama. He immediately rode to town, and having told the adventure to some of the citizens, they immediately formed a party and started out to see the strange visitant. When they arrived at the spot, some of them beheld the specter and the others could not see it. It was when they saw it on the fence, and running rapidly along up and down it passed the crowd for the distance of a quarter of a mile. About 2300 it vanished and was seen no more that night. Since then it has been on hand every night, and the excitement is at a very high state now and is increasing.
Source: Jerome Clark, Anomalistic List, quoting Atlanta Daily Constitution November 4 1868

Date: December 1868
Location. Near Independent Hill, Virginia
Time: night
Summary: A man named Silas Brown who lived at the edge of a wooded area reported that for the last few weeks he has had visions or encountered an alarming character in the nearby forest but more particularly in the copse adjacent to Mr. Brown’s barn and stable. At numbers of times has an immense figure been seen passing to and fro near the barn, with large horns and terrible claws, which it contracts to a sort of hoof, and has assaulted Mr. Brown, when he attempted after dark to feed his horses and stock, in such a manner and with such violence that he has been compelled to flee to his house for safety. The figure, to the best of Mr. Brown’s recollection seemed about three times as large as a man in its front, and having a back converging from its neck and shoulders horizontally to the distance of some six to eight feet, and supplied on each side with huge and tremendous arms. It is of a pale bluish color when first seen, but upon being irritated by the near approach of any person becomes a deadly white, and issues from its surface a small volume of smoke, accompanied with a sickening smell. This ghoul or unnatural and horrible animal or demon, has been see as often as four times near Mr. Brown’s stable, and when seen, it has lingered till its deadly effluvia has completely impregnated the surrounding atmosphere. One evening Mr. Brown, desiring to have another beside himself see this terrible visitant, induced a courageous gentleman called Siger, who happened with his wife to spend the evening at Mr. Brown’s to go to the stable to feed his horses. Siger, not believing the story, went without hesitation, when, upon entering the stable, he was alarmed by the fall at or near his feet, with a deep rumbling sound, of a tremendous stone. Siger without looking to see whence the rock came, picked the stone up, and it was so hot that he was compelled to drop it. Upon looking up he beheld the unearthly monster not over fifty yards from him, and the air became quickly filled and inoculated with brimstone. Not wishing to be thought a coward, he did not mention anything of this at the house, but upon walking home with his wife the same night he told her of what happened at the stable, and instantly she became alarmed, and was carried home in a state of apparent insensibility.
Source: Jerome Clark, Anomalistic List, quoting Petersburg Daily Index December 18 1868

Date: January 10 1869
Location.  Weston-super-Mare, England 
Time: 21:00
Summary: One object was observed.
Source: Unlisted 

Date: January 15 1869
Location.  Swaffham, England 
Time:  UnKnown
Summary: An object was observed. Animal reactions to the object were reported. One object was observed.
Source: FSR

Date: May 2 1869
Location.  Oxford, England 
Time:  UnKnown
Summary:   An unusual object was sighted, that had unconventional appearance and performance. One object was observed at a building
Source: Contact U.K.

Date: June 8, 1869
Location: Fort Wayne, Indiana
Time: 2:30 A.M.
Summary: About 2:30 A.M. an object “larger than the moon when full” was observed in the western sky for half an hour. “It was of a bright red color, and at intervals of a few minutes, darted forth on every side bright rays like the straws of a broom, and from the ends of these were sent out sparks like those of a Roman candle. Suddenly this would cease, and only the circle or ball of fire remained, when again the rays would blaze out around the whole circumference of the central ball.” Two witnesses, including the doorman of Pike’s Opera House, watched the phenomenon as it went down behind Mount Davidson, following the motion of the stars and “still blazing and sputtering forth sparks and jets of fire.”
Source: “Singular Celestial Phenomenon,” Fort Wayne Daily Democrat (Fort Wayne, Indiana), 9 June 1869.

Date: Summer 1869
Location. Åsen, Norway
Time: unknown
Summary: A man named Just encountered a small man, that wore brown clothing, without any buttons, and on its head he had a large hat. The small man claimed he was an angel and opened up his coat and a bright light shone from inside of it. Apparently the small man gave the witness a letter of “heavenly” origin.
Source: Ole Jonny Braene

Date: July 7 1869
Location. Vevay, Indiana
Time: unknown
Summary: A meteor-like object was observed. A daytime object was reported.
Source: Lore, Jr., Gordon I. R. Mysteries of the Skies: UFOs in Perspective Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1968

Date: 1869
Location. Ashland City, Tennessee
Time:  UnKnown
Summary: A whirlwind came along over the neighboring woods, taking up small branches and leaves of trees and burring them in a sort of flaming cylinder that traveled at a rate of about five miles an hour, developing size as it traveled.  It passed directly over the spot where a team of horses were feeding and singed their manes and tails up to the roots; it then swept towards the house, taking a stack of hay in its course. It seemed to increase in heat as it went, and by the time it reached the house it immediately fired the shingles from end to end of the building, so that in ten minutes the whole dwelling was wrapped in flames. The tall column of traveling caloric then continued its course over a wheat field that had been recently cradled, setting fire to all the stacks that happened to be in its course. Passing from the field, its path lay over a stretch of woods, which reached the river. The green leaves on the trees were crisped to a cinder for a breadth of 20 yards, in a straight line to the Cumberland.  When the “pillar of fire” reached the water, it suddenly changed its route down the river, raising a column of steam which went up to the clouds for about half-a-mile, when it finally died out.  Not less than 200 people witnessed this strangest of strange phenomena, and all of them tell substantially the same story about it.
Source: Symon’s Monthly Meteorological Magazine, 1869

Date: June 1869
Location. Young New South Wales, Australia
Time: night
Summary: Three men working on splitting posts and rails for fencing were startled to see a small white object of no particular form, on the ground nearby. The object suddenly grew into a white eight-foot tall humanoid figure. One of the men struck it with a stick and it sounded hollow. The figure then chased the men. The men encountered this same figure on another occasion and also saw a strange animal resembling a dog with a chain attached to it.
Source: Mark Moravec, Psiufo Phenomena

Date: August 1, 1869
Location: Los Nietos, California
Time:  UnKnown
Summary: On August 1, 1869, flesh and blood rained down for three minutes covering 2 acres of Mr. J. Hudson’s farm near Los Nietos, California. It was a clear day with no wind. The flesh fell in fine particles and in 1-6 inch strips.
Source: Mysteries of the Unexplained, Reader’s Digest

Date: August 7, 1869
Location: Adamstown, Pennsylvania
Time:  noon
Summary: At noon a luminous object was seen to descend from the sky to a dry, swampless area 200 yards north of the village, which is situated in Lancaster County. “It was square and became a column about 3 or 4 feet in height and about 2 feet in thickness.” The object reflected sunlight “like a column of burnished silver” but after 10 minutes it disappeared. Several people gathered at the spot where it had rested but there were no landing traces.
Source: Reading Eagle (Pennsylvania), 14 August 1869.

Date: August 7, 1869
Location: Ottumwa, Iowa
Time:  UnKnown
Summary: Two objects were observed by four male witnesses, three of them an experienced observers, at an observatory (Zentmayer).
Source: Contact U.K..

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Blue Fire and Black Discs: The Bracken County Entity Cluster and the Global Anomalous Record, 1866–1869

The 1866–1869 archive is anchored by three cases that together constitute the most concentrated entity encounter sequence in the post-Civil War American record. The February 13, 1866 Bracken County monster is the most morphologically elaborate entity description in the American 19th-century archive: horned, shaggy, horse-legged, cloven-hoofed, dart-tailed, coal-eyed, blue-fire breathing, sulfurous, nearly as tall as a cabin, capable of enveloping itself in a spiral column of flame that reached the tops of locust trees and then extinguishing instantly. Two witnesses — an old woman and a boy — were driven to permanent insanity by the encounter, which was witnessed by the plantation owner’s entire household. The source is Jerome Clark citing Nathaniel G. Squires. The October 10, 1868 Willow Creek figure — sword, torch, horse legs, cloven hoofs, flame tail, pendulum-breath fire — generated a civilian investigation in which some members of the party could see it and others could not, simultaneously, at the same location. The December 1868 Independent Hill entity produced a hot thrown stone that Siger could not hold — the most elementary physical trace evidence in the cluster — and a brimstone atmospheric contamination that rendered Siger’s wife unconscious on the walk home.

What makes the Bracken County cluster analytically significant beyond its individual cases is the geographic and temporal concentration. Three separate entities of distinct morphology in the same county within approximately 24 months, all documented by named civilian witnesses in named newspaper sources. The concentration suggests either a genuine localized phenomenon operating in the Bracken County area during this period, or a regional cultural reporting tradition that amplified unusual experiences into consistent entity narratives. The archive cannot distinguish between these possibilities from the available data — but notes that the physical effects (insanity of two witnesses, hot thrown stone, atmospheric brimstone contamination) extend beyond what a purely cultural narrative would produce. Outside Kentucky the 1866–1869 record is equally substantive: the Chatham disc formation letter to the editor of a named local newspaper is one of the most detailed Victorian multi-object aerial reports in the British record; the Fort Wayne pre-dawn display is contemporary newspaper-documented; the Young, New South Wales hollow humanoid is documented by Australian researcher Mark Moravec. The four years between 1866 and 1869 are not a gap in the archive. They are one of its densest and strangest windows.

“Its nostrils and mouth were emitting sheets of blue colored flame, with a hissing sound, like the hissing of a serpent only a thousand fold louder… Two of them, an old woman and a lad were actually driven to insanity by their fears and have not recovered their reason up to this writing.”

Jerome Clark citing Nathaniel G. Squires on the February 13, 1866 Bracken County, Kentucky entity encounter

Date:    
Location:  
Time/Duration: 
Features:  
Summary:  
Source: