Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety seven Cattle Mutilation by Charles Lear. The
cattle mutilation mystery and its association with UFO activity didn't
get the attention of researcher investigators until the nineteen seventies.
There is an article on page two of the March
nineteen seventy five APRO Bulletin headlined More on Mutilations, discussing
the findings of APRO field investigators Bill pitt Lee Spiegel,
and Kevin Randall. It was the opinion of APRO at
the time that no satisfactory evidence has emerged which links
UFOs to mutilated animals. The first mutilation to get the
public's attention was that of a horse named Snippy, found
by its owners in the San Luis Valley of Colorado
on September eighth, nineth eighteen sixty seven. Shortly after that,
in his article in the July August nineteen sixty eight
Flying Saucer Review headlined West Virginia's Enigmatic Bird, John Keel
mentions that cow and horse mutilations are now common in
the midst of sightings of mothman and UFOs in the
area around Point Pleasant. However, there is a report far
earlier than this that, by most accounts, appeared in the
April twenty third, eighteen ninety seven Yates Center Farmer's Advocate.
This involves a mystery airship caught in the act of
abducting a cow right in front of prominent Woodson County,
Kansas citizen Alexander Hamilton, not the one on the twenty
dollar bill. While the Advocate article remains elusive, credit user
Ramsey two nine o seven found an article in what
appears to be The Globe Democrat that includes the details
of and references the Advocate article. According to the Democrat,
article dated April twenty sixth and headlined the airship Steeles. Hamilton,
a farmer who lived near Yates Center, said that last Monday,
at ten thirty o'clock April nineteenth, he and his family
stood mute in wonder and fright as an airship appeared
and proceeded to, in the reporter's words, swooped down upon
the cow lot and steal a two year old heifer.
Backing up Hamilton's story is an affid David signed by
eleven prominent citizens, including a sheriff and a Justice of
the Peace, stating that they believe Hamilton's story to be
true and correct. The details of the story are presented
in Hamilton's words. According to him, we were awakened by
a noise among the cattle. He got out of bed,
went to the door, thinking that his bulldog was performing
some of his pranks, and was astonished to see an
airship coming down over his cow lot, almost forty row
from the house. He called his son Wall and his
tenant gid Heslip, and after grabbing some axes, they ran
to the corral. When they were about fifty yards from
the ship. It was no more than thirty feet above
the ground. Hamilton describes it as cigar shaped, about three
hundred feet long, with a carriage underneath made of panels
of glass or other transparent substance, alternating with a narrow
strip of some material. The rest of the craft was
dark red. It was brilliantly lit from within and had
three external lights, an immense searchlight and two smaller lights,
one red and one green. The search light was pointed
directly on Hamilton and the others, and then a great
turbine wheel about fifty feet in diameter, which was slowly
revolving below the craft, now began to buzz. The craft
rose up, and when it was about three hundred feet high,
it appeared to be hovering over a two year old
heifer that seemed to be stuck to a fence. They
went over to her and saw there was a half
inch red cable tied in a slip knot around her
neck that went up to the ship. They tried to
free the cow, but were unable to, and they watched
as the ship rose up and carried the cowway towards
the southwest. According to Hamilton Link Thomas of Coffee County,
about four miles west of Leroy, Kansas, found the hide
of the cow, along with its head and legs in
his field on Tuesday. Hamilton was able to identify it
by his brand on the hide. This story got widespread
public exposure thanks to Frank Edward's best selling nineteen sixty
six book Flying Saucers Serious Business, and Jacques Vlllet included
it in his nineteen sixty five book Anatomy of a
Phenomenon in his nineteen sixty nine book Passport to Magonia.
It seems, however, that the story was a hoax, and
how this was discovered is told in detail by Jerome
Clark in his article headlined the Great Airship Hoax, published
in the February nineteen seventy seven issue of Fate magazine.
According to Clark, the truth about the affair came out
in an article published in the January twenty eighth, nineteen
forty three Kansas newspaper The Buffalo Enterprise. A week before,
the paper had recounted Hamilton's original tale, and this prompted
ed F. Hudson, who had been the editor of The
Farmer's Advocate in eighteen ninety seven, to write a letter
to the Enterprise. According to Hudson, he had just installed
a small gasoline engine to replace hand power on his
old country Campbell press and invited friends, including Hamilton, to
watch it operate. Hudson explains the origin of the story.
Hamilton exclaimed, now they can fly, hence the airship story
that we made up, Clark says. The Enterprise article was
discovered in nineteen seventy six by an American correspondent of
Fourteen Times editor J. M. Ricard. Recard sent Clark a copy,
and Clark got a letter seeking confirmation, published in the
September sixteenth Yates Center News. This got a reply from
Donna Steebe of Wichita, Kansas, who said that her ninety
three year old mother, Ethel L. Shaw, had heard the
story from Hamilton himself. Shaw provided Clark with a statement.
According to Shaw, when she was about fourteen years old,
she was at the Hamilton house with Missus Hamilton and
their daughter Nell, when mister Hamilton came in and said, ma,
I've fixed up quite a story and told the boys
in town, and it will come out in the Advocate
this weekend. Missus Hamilton was rather shocked by the story,
but the girls weren't bothered, as we felt it was
just a fabricated story. Shaw goes on to say that
it seems there were a few men around who had
formed the club, which they called Anonius Liar's Club. To
her knowledge, the club broke up not long after the
story was published. She adds that the men who signed
the affid David knew it to be a falsehood, but
simply went along with it for fun. According to Clark,
Lucius Ferish had an article about the case published in
the April nineteen sixty six issue of Fate, in which
he proclaimed this case is one of the most astounding
to be found on record. The editor's note at the
end of Clark's article states, Lucius Ferish has asked us
to convey his apologies to Fate readers for his unwinning
role in publicizing this fallacious incident. Charles Lear is the
author of The Flying Saucer Investigators, available in its second
edition at Amazon dot com.