UFO Sightings, 8th Century to 18th Century
Recorded accounts from this lengthy period easily number into the thousands, and would require a chronology-style book if most were to be noted. As well, there is an inevitable sameness to reports; the incidents noted below are especially novel.
As witness accounts approach the 17th and 18th centuries, visions based in Christian theology, such as flying men with swords, become more common.
After about 1765, ground observers across Western Europe reported crewed and crewless hot-air balloons—novelties that encouraged sky-gazing. 742–814: During the rule of Charlemagne (King of France, King of Italy, and emperor of Western Europe), selected people were temporarily removed from Earth by spacecraft so that they could experience other worlds. Upon the travelers’ return, however, many who greet them view them as sorcerers. Note: Reported in the Comte de Gabalis’s Discourses. 776: In a battle of Franks and pagan Saxons at Castle Sigiburg, France, the latter panic and flee when “the likeness of two shields, red with flame” circle a church.
Note: Reported in the Royal Frankish Annals. 839: Over the course of a few nights, “fiery stars” buzz various cities in Israel. 979: Saxons observing a night sky see “a bloody cloud in the likeness of fire.” Note: Reported in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles. c. 1055: A so-called “pearl” hovers above a wooded Chinese lake, illuminating the landscape and casting a shaft of bright light.
October 27, 1180: A flying “earthenware vessel” appears near a mountain summit in Kii province, Japan. Note: Some UFOlogists interpret “earthenware vessel” as “flying saucer,” though the object could just have reasonably resembled a bowl, pitcher, cup, or vase. 1188: Witnesses report that “the heavens opened” over Dunstable, England, to reveal a cross bearing the figure of Christ. 1217: Three flying crosses traverse the skies above Nice, France. 1270: At Bristol, England, locals stone and burn a man who alighted from a flying ship. Note: Reported in Book I of Gervase of Tilbury’s Otto Imperialia.
September 12, 1271: The execution of a Japanese priest at Tatsunokuchi, Nomi District, is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a bright, shiny disc or sphere.
November 4, 1322: Uxbridge, England, is overflown by a “pillar of fire” showing colors of varying intensity. Moments before speeding away, the object emits “fervent” red flames that look like “beams of light.” November–December 1387: Fiery revolving wheels, or perhaps barrels, are seen above Northamptonshire and Leicester, England.
January 5, 1433: At Ciudad Rodrigo, Spain, the assembled court of King Juan II witnesses “a great flame of yellow fire” move across the sky, showing a dark- colored center and emitting an ear-splitting roar that panics horses. The noise is emitted from the object’s “end.” Note: The account, attributed mainly to King Juan’s physician, is controversial because the physician’s presence at court has been difficult to discern. Further, some historians, UFOlogists, and literati suspect the physician’s written account is a 17th-century forgery.
November 1, 1461: A fiery iron rod as large as a half-Moon is seen above Arras, France.
Emidius, in 1486. In all of his work, Crivelli concerned himself exclusively with Christian themes. The winged figure in the left foreground, for instance, is the Archangel Gabriel, who walks with St. Emidius.
Mary (right foreground) is being informed that she will carry the Son of God. Contrary to the belief of some overeager UFOlogists, the saucer-shaped object at the upper left, which “connects” itself to Mary, is not a literal representation of what we now understand to be a UFO, but a metaphoric rendering of God’s power and will.
1543: As a comet roars over a German village, the body’s tail removes all the water from a brook before consuming a field of grain. Note: Recorded by Conrad Lycosthenes.
February 1, 1554: Hundreds of witnesses watch a fiery-red cylinder fly an erratic course above Salon de Provence, France. Note: Chronicled by Nostradamus.
April 14, 1561: A substantial crowd sees various dark-colored flying balls emerge from flying cylinders above Nuremberg, Germany. The variously colored spheres appear to “fight” one another. Note: German artist Hans Glaser commemorated the incident in a 1566 woodcut.
May 1, 1606: A “flaming wheel” revolves in the sky above Nijo castle, Kyoto, Japan, for a quarter hour.
August 5, 1608: Three luminous, spinning objects descend from the skies above Nice, France, land neatly atop the waves of the Mediterranean, and disgorge a pair of humanoids with oversized heads. The craft rest on the sea for about an hour, turning the water “red” with emanations of heat.
January 18, 1644: In a diary entry, Boston governor John Winthrop says that according to a trio of fishermen, twin lights rose from the city’s harbor and hovered in the sky for a quarter hour.
Late January, 1644: About a week after John Winthrop’s January 18 diary entry (above), he describes a brilliant light that rose in the sky amidst a sparkling burst of light and flame.
August 15, 1663: An enormous flaming sphere at least 125 feet in diameter hovers over a lake in the Vologda region of Russia.
April 1639: A political funeral in Shansi province, China, is interrupted by a multicolored star that flies over the mourners before leaving to circle a nearby village. 1692: A triangular object in the sky above Harlech, Gwynedd, Wales, sets fire to “ricks of hay, corn, and barns.” circa 1700: Chippewa Indians in present-day Wisconsin encounter a “shining” man who says, “I dropped from the above.” A few days later, the stranger enters a star that has descended to the ground, and returns with it back into the sky.
August 1700: An elderly man vanishes from Sahalahti, Finland, not long after a flying disc hovers above the village. Note: While searching nearby woods later, the victim’s adult son encountered a creature that resembled a bear, and that verbally reassured him that his father had been taken to a better place, to live among “higher” beings.
December 18, 1707: An enormous cylinder moving lengthwise not far above the horizon at Northamptonshire, England, bursts into “flames of a pale-coloured fire.” May 11, 1710: A comet-like object above London travels just in front of “the likeness of a man in a Cloud of Fire, with a Sword in his Hand.”
April 2, 1716: Over the Baltic Sea near Revel (present-day Tallinn, Estonia), rapidly moving dark clouds part to reveal, in turn, an “enormous shining comet” and a bright pillar of light. When one bank of clouds moves into the pillar, the sky is rent with arrow-like objects that quickly ascend even higher above the horizon.
January 15, 1721: An enormous pillar of fire hovers over the mountains west of Bern, Switzerland, and then moves toward the city. Three balls of light emerge from the cylinder and fly in different directions. Note: Some accounts describe four cylinders.
August 5, 1748: An unidentified craft flies toward about a dozen people in Aberdeen, Scotland. The craft’s occupants are seen.
August 1783: A large ball of fire rises from the North Sea and travels above Ostend, Belgium. Briefly traveling north, the object reverses course and heads south, spitting “particles of fire of a bluish color.” November 2, 1730: In the night sky above Salmanica, Spain, two luminous columns that bracket “an amazing Globe of fire” display dramatic color shifts of red and green for five hours. Note: The display may have been the aurora borealis.
December 8, 1733: A male resident of Fleet, England, observes a silvery disc flying above the tree line. 1752: A man taken into a flying craft by a stranger garbed in white is removed from Earth and then returned, near Kazan, Russia.
May 10, 1760: Witnesses near Bridgewater, Massachusetts, report a morning sighting of a “sphere of fire,” which casts a light so bright that the shadow overwhelms shadows cast by the sun. Note: Some UFOlogists cite this event as the world’s first documented UFO report. Two centuries later, Bridgewater came to be identified as the center point of the “Bridgewater Triangle,” a two- hundred-square-mile area that has produced an unusually high number of ghost sightings, accounts of grotesque animals, and UFOs.
September 8, 1767: A large, luminous pyramid rises from a loch near Perthshire, Scotland, and rolls along land and water, upending a man and a large cart, and destroying a house and a new bridge.
February 5, 1780: A flaming “dragon” hovers for fifteen minutes in the night sky above Bussieres, France. Local people and objects below are clearly illuminated.
October 12, 1796: Fifteen flying “ships” led through the sky by a flying man appear above the Bay of Fundy near New Minas, Nova Scotia. The ships pass close enough so that people on the ground can see portholes.