In a small cemetery in Aurora, Texas, a sign informs visitors about the unique history of the graves found within. Among the somber stories of victims of a “spotted fever” epidemic, civil war veterans, and a tragic epitaph in memory of an infant who passed too soon, one curious sentence stands out:
“This site is also well known because of the legend that a spaceship crashed nearby in 1897 and the pilot, killed in the crash, was buried here.”
In April 1897, the Dallas Morning News published the unusual tale. An airship, shaped like a cigar, sailed over the public square and smashed into the windmill of Judge James Proctor. The resulting explosion destroyed the spaceship, the windmill, and the judge’s flower garden. (Proctor’s Find a Grave memorial, while sparse on personal details, has more on the story and the resulting History Channel production about the incident.)
The airship’s pilot—said to be the only person on board—was killed in the accident. The article describes the body pulled from the wreckage as “not an inhabitant of this world” and, according to the local signal service officer, “a native of the planet Mars.” Papers recovered from the wreck were written in “some unknown hieroglyphics” and were undecipherable.
The town gave the mysterious pilot a Christian burial in Aurora Cemetery. But the legend only grew.
The incident was one of hundreds reported across the United States during the late 1890s. Common theories for what these objects could be stayed close to home—usually (human) technology and secret projects were believed to be the culprits. Some decided they were hoaxes—and firmly terrestrial ones at that.
It wasn’t until the “UFO wave” of the 1940s that more fantastical possibilities took center stage. In May 1947, Brian Byers Savage claimed a shiny, silvery colored machine flew over his house in Oklahoma City. Just over a month later, pilot Kenneth Arnold watched disc-shaped objects soar past Mt. Rainier, Washington (articles reporting on his story gave us the term “flying saucer”). And that July, PIO Walter Haut’s initial press release about the now-famous Roswell Incident drew public fascination that lingers decades later. While skepticism certainly prevailed, theories about alien visitations flourished.
Back in Aurora, the whole airship mystery had been mostly explained away by a very down-to-earth theory: S. E. Haydon, writer of the original 1897 article, invented the whole thing to boost interest in a dying town. Even so, the airship pilot’s grave had become a local attraction. By then, he was known as “Little Traveler,” or simply “Ned.”
At some point, a tombstone etched with a crude spaceship drawing was placed where his grave was thought to be. When that tombstone later disappeared, it was replaced with a boulder where visitors left gifts in his memory—or in appreciation of Haydon’s creative bit of storytelling.
If you visit Ned today, you’ll find all markers and mementos have been moved to discourage tourism on holy ground. Ned’s unmarked grave—if it was ever truly there—lies undisturbed, and no other evidence remains to prove the tale of the crashed airship true or false. Only that single, unexpected sentence on Aurora Cemetery’s historical sign marks this as a place where worlds once collided.
Whatever happened that April day in 1897, it seems fitting that Ned’s story lives on in a town named after a marvel of the sky.
“Little Traveler” isn’t the only grave with out-of-this-world connections. Visit this virtual cemetery to see more memorials for those whose lives were impacted by alien sightings, stories, or straight-up skepticism.
Have you found other interesting gravestones relating to UFOs or extraterrestrial life? Let us know in the comments!