The Aurora Incident

April 17, 1897 - Early on this morning, residents in the small Texas town of Aurora watched a UFO glide over the square and collide with a windmill. The mysterious craft crashed to the ground and broke into many pieces.

The local newspaper described the discovery of an alien body inside the wreckage:

The pilot of the ship is supposed to be the only one on board, and while his remains are badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.

According to the article, a crowd of sightseers had gathered at the scene and many were gathering "specimens of the strange metal from the debris." A funeral for the deceased alien was held a couple of days later at the local cemetery. 

The odd story faded from the news until 75 years later when the incident was mentioned inside a UPI article about UFO researchers who tried unsuccessfully to exhume the alien's body. Soon an 85-year-old man named Charlie Stevens was found who remembered seeing the UFO sail over the town seconds before it crashed. He heard an explosion and saw a plume of smoke, but his father wouldn't let him visit the crash site because he had chores to complete. The next day his father returned from town with tales of the wreckage he had seen.

Legend has it that most of the wreckage was thrown down an old well on the property where the UFO crashed, but the well was paved over in the 50s when the current owner believed it to be contaminated with radiation.

Many investigations have been carried out over the years, but none have found conclusive evidence to confirm or refute this extraordinary story. An historical marker is posted at the cemetery which mentions the alien burial along with other notable graves in the area.