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Date: | June 6, 1884 | ||||||
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Time: | 01:00 p.m. | ||||||
Location: | Benkelman, Holdredge, Lamar, Nebraska | ||||||
Narratives: |
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Sources: |
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Notes: | |||||||
Explanation: |
Forgotten afterwards, the story is rediscovered by accident in 1964. However, various investigations do not manage to find, among the region's oldest inhabitants, someone who remembers what happened or had simply heard about it when he was young. Therefore, we will probably never know if this story has an element of truth.
It seems that former FATE editor and author Jerome Clark, FATE author W. Ritchie Benedict consider the case to be a hoax. Theit tip-off appears to be the reference to "gear wheels," which is a typical example of the Victorian fascination with machinery.
As for this reason that the story is hoaxed, I do not fully agree: either UFO observations are made with the vocabulary and the conceptual and cultural limitations of the witnesses, in this case, it is normal that they describe "wheels" and "machinery", they are indeed unable to use words such as "electronic device" or "antenna", or we have a reason to give credit to modern era UFO encounters reports: in the recent cases, there is no or few witnesses who describe UFOS as having some normal characteristics. We seldom read reports with descriptions of "antennas", "jet engines", "rocket" etc. Therefore, I do not see a reason to reject the case because and only because of this mention of "gear" and "machinery".
In viewing any article from 19th century newspapers we must be aware of the abundance of hoax journalism during that period. Newspapers didn't just report news, but also provided entertainment. Much of this was in the form of books that were serialized of a number of issues. Some of it was in another form that is little regarded now: the hoax news story. Both of the above are probably examples of this almost forgotten tradition.
I see another good reason to regard it as a hoax: the very accommodating "dissolving" of the parts of the machine, the failure of those who tried to find witnesses.
However, I also find some interesting aspects with this case: the precision of the journalistic account, the witnesses are named, the obvious and unusual physical effects on one of the witnesses, the traces on the ground, the material debris. The fact that it is not the witnesses or the Nebraska Nugget who put forth an assumption on the extraterrestrial nature of the object, but another newspaper makes me think that if there is hoax, its logic is unfinished.
In any case I do not see reasons to completely close this case as hoax for now. It would require at least to:
There is no established certainty concerning the nature of this affair:
it is probably a hoax, but it is not a certainty. It could indeed be an
account of a crash of a flying machine, then inevitably extraterrestrial
due to the event's date. In absence of evidence, however, it should count
as a hoax.
Type of report: | Second hand from local newspaper. |
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Number of witnesses: | |
Number of named witnesses: | 0. |
Witnesses occupations: | Not indicated. |
Type of location: | Not indicated. |
Coordinates: | Lat. 33.58 Lon. -96.18 |
Coordinates precision: | 10 kilometers. |
Description of "UFO": | . |
Description of "manoeuvers": | . |
Reactions: | . |
Occupants: | None. |
Occupants keywords: | N/A |
Communication: | N/A |
Language: | N/A |
Content: | N/A |
Daylight/nocturnal: | |
Weather: | Not indicated. |
Observation devices: | None. |
Strangeness: | Insufficient information. |
Reliability: | None. |
Explanation(s) at the time: | . |