Palmyra, New York, USA — 21 September 1823
Golden apparition
In this next episode, Joseph Smith was shocked to see a light appear in his room, and a human figure within the light: “Indeed the first sight was as though the house was filled with consuming fire. The appearance produced a shock that affected the whole body. In a moment a personage stood before me surrounded with a glory yet greater than that by which I was already surrounded…” The figure, whose feet did not touch the floor, revealed itself as “angel Moroni” and gave Smith specific instructions. The scene repeated itself three times during the night. After the third time Smith was surprised to hear the cock crow and to find that daylight was approaching, “so that our interviews must have occupied the whole of that night.” The next day Smith found himself so exhausted that he couldn’t work in any useful way in his normal chores. His father thought he was sick and told him to go home. On the way he fell to the ground when trying to cross a fence, and remained unconscious. The angel appeared to him once more and told him to reveal his instructions. Smith went on to found the Mormon religion. By placing the case in this section on Myths, we do not mean to state that the story was invented or that no such event took place. Millions of people today do take the report at face value. Ufologists, on the other hand, might claim that it represents a typical “bedroom visitation” type of alien contact. We do believe that it is unrelated to the events we seek to study in our Chronology of unexplained aerial phenomena.
Source: Francis Kirkham, Concerning the Origin of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake, 1937), and Smith’s own account in publications of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Epilogue This section gives only a tiny sample of the hundreds of items we have extracted from the literature, for which we found evidence of natural explanations or strong indications of a mischievous or deluded author. A complete listing of such cases is impossible to contemplate, since it would have to include every comet, every meteor shower, every atmospheric illusion and every tornado ever mentioned in books or broadsheets down through the centuries. At the time, many of these phenomena were taken as omens of disaster or as manifestations of the divine realm, affect to disbelieve it, and the effrontery to avow their disbelief.” In passing, one must note that in spite of such fanciful interpretations the reliability and accuracy of the observations was good enough for us, in the 21st century, to reconstruct the nature of phenomena that are known to today’s science, but were a complete, often terrifying enigma to ancient witnesses. Most importantly, this compilation of mythical or legendary material demonstrates the powerful impact of this imagery, not only in folklore (including contemporary folklore) but in spiritual beliefs and mainstream history. Religious tradition in every part of the world is replete with allusions to celestial phenomena that inspired chroniclers to invoke moral principles and warnings to humanity in writing that has survived through the ages. This work also shows that the dominant narratives in today’s literature on “extraterrestrial” encounters - complete with saucer crashes, strange writing and abduction by non-human entities - were already present in widely-reported stories that predate the industrial revolution. PART III Sources and Methods Anyone attempting to review the historical and social impact of unexplained aerial phenomena immediately faces two difficult challenges: (1) where to find reliable information that can be further investigated and verified? And (2) how to select suitable material for presentation without biasing the reader towards pre-established conclusions? A fact-driven study It is natural to begin with available sources in literature and on the Internet. Until now, mainstream believers in extraterrestrial visitors have actively discouraged such research, because it seemed obvious to them that the phenomenon was of recent vintage. Thus Budd Hopkins, a contemporary authority on alien abductions, has sharply criticized one such compilation as “an odd confluence of UFO case studies, free-wheeling speculation, and folklore of obviously uncertain authenticity (our emphasis).” Indeed, most UFO books begin with the blunt affirmation that the “flying saucer era” started on 24 June 1947 when Kenneth Arnold spotted several objects apparently flying in formation over Mount Rainier, Washington, implying that any cases before that date are irrelevant. Many specialists, such as Jerome Clark, see no indication that the phenomenon existed before the mid- 19 century. This attitude is driven by ideology rather than data: If the UFO phenomenon did start in the summer of 1947 with Arnold and (shortly thereafter) the infamous Roswell crash, then one is justified to claim that it originates with visitors from space who have spotted our atomic explosions and decided to come to Earth to investigate - and perhaps save us from ourselves: A seductive view, but one that is contradicted by the mass of previous cases. While it is true that the amount of available data went through a sharp rise about 200 years ago, we have seen that this was due more to progress in the publishing and dissemination of news around the world than to a dramatic increase in the actual frequency of incidents. At the other end of the spectrum are the devotees of the Ancient Astronaut theory, who claim that contact with extraterrestrials was established very early in the history of the human race, or even, as the Raelian cult argues, that we are the product of E.T. experimentation or inter-breeding. As we have noted, they find support for their view in many religious traditions and, indeed, in ancient writing and the Bible itself, which alludes to sexual intercourse between the Nephilim (gods from Heaven) and the daughters of men. When we began this project we took a different approach: one that is strictly factdriven, rather than belief-driven. Leaving ideologies aside, we were striving to compile a list of documented sightings, with as little reference as possible to a particular theory although naturally the beliefs of the witnesses and those around them had to be noted as a factor in the way the story was transmitted to us. One of us (JV) had long collected items from the literature and from folklore in an effort to find out whether the phenomenon of unidentified aerial objects had an identifiable “start date” in history or followed recognizable patterns in time. Beginning in the mid-sixties, he compiled and published computer catalogs of reports culled from books and newspapers around the world. th In a similar vein, Chris Aubeck began to re-examine the totality of the available literature, taking advantage of the new search capabilities of the Internet to leverage the information available in books. As an online collaboration group, the Magoniax Project he initiated in 2003 with fellow researcher Rod Brock was thus able to track down journals and obscure sources in several languages to assemble the largest collection of such stories in the world today. The two authors began collaborating through web-based software to merge their files and catalogs of that period. As a result, we were often able to go back to original sources rather than citing popular trade books or contemporary compilations. Classical Sources Contrary to common opinion, we are not dealing here with “folklore of obviously uncertain authenticity,” as abductionist Budd Hopkins once asserted. Early sources are plentiful, sometimes officially certified and verified, detailed and quite distinguished, even in the remote classical era. An early researcher, Raymond W. Drake, remarked (in Flying Saucers No. 39, December, 1964): “The Romans worshipped the Gods for a thousand years; their augurs prophesied the future from signs in the skies. Julius Obsequens recorded 63 celestial phenomena, Livy Case: W524