HAV E MAR TIAN S VISI TED US?

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British Observe r Argues in the Affir-m ative and· Seeks News
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Of. Future Manifes tations
To t71e Editor of T~e Neto Yor-1' Tfmt!,1: think where I'd be put if I should, peared over the city ot Worcester,
In a few weeks an old discussion appear tn a lunar city e.nd try to tell 1\Ia.ss., "sweeping the hea vene with a.
will be renewed. The planet Mars the wise men that I had come from searchlight of tremendous power." It
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will~be in opposition, and the subject had come from the southeast, hover~
this earth. ·
of communlcatlon r,etween worlds I can think of more reasons, and ing a while over the......_clty and then
will occupy much space, which, if it one o:f -them ls that !or ages Mart;lans' di.sappearlng In the direction of Marl-
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could be traversed instead of read, may have been in communication with boro. Two hours later ft returned.
might enable some of us to ask the this earth and ba.ve, In some o~cult "Thousands thronged the streets.
Martians what they mean by those way, been in control of its tnh"abi- watching the mysterious visitor."
strange lights of theirs, and what , tan ts: or have, In some way that may Again it hovered, then moved away,
their Intentions are. eventually be found out, been exploit- heading first to the sou_th and then
Inasmuch as-according to data that ing them, and, though of course no to the east.
I shall take up when I can get to especial precautions would be neces- If anybody, to test how accurate I
I them-Martians have probably often sary, have not disclosed themselves may be, should look up this subject
I visited this earth, it ls incredible that except in openly patrolling the sky. in the newspapers of the time he
; llghts upon their planet have been That leads the way to answering would !ind the account contused by
attempts to communicate with terres- the other question, the easy one. I! statements ot a resident of Worcester
trians: more likely is it that astrono- beings from other physlcal worlds '
. "secret airship" that
that It was his
mers of this earth have seen signals have patrolled the sktes, openly and had been seen. This hoaxer need not
meant for. I exploring Martians, out conspicuously, even showing brilllant be considered, because an in,·estiga-
somew~ere far from home. lights, why does not this whole earth tor would find that later. v.-hen the
If e~plorers from other worlds, know about It? Perhaps hecause one
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light appeared, he was knowr;. to be
. whether Mars or Venus or ~omewhere of the best ways to keep a secret is in his home.
· else, have often sailed ta this earth, to proclaim it. Almost every great
. and have traveled back and forth in discovery has been final perception of At 6 o'clock on the evening after the
' the sky, hours at a time, day after the obvious. If lt is not· the conven- appearance at Worcester a brUllantly
day, two questions arise. AB to one . tlooal or respectable thing upon this lighted object was seen in the sky at
of them there is no ~ifficulty in earth to belleve in visitors from other ! Boston. "As It flew away to the north,
answering. worlds, most of us could watch them I queries began to pour into the ne'IYS-
The more perplexing of the prob- 1 paper offices and -the police stations
a -v1·eek and declare that t?ley were
lems 18 that if visitors from other · something else, and likely enough [ regarding the remarkable visitation."
• worlds can sall to a region only a make things disagreeable for anybody · An hour later the object w~ reported
mile or so from _this earth's surface, who thought otherwise. ·" from WJIIlmantlc, Conn., where, ft
pr~sun_iably they could land here. Ot many accounts of mov1ng lights was said, dark outlines aa well a.a a
. Then why have they not Janded, say in the sky, ot such duratiCfil and repe- light were visible. From Lynn, Mass.,
in Central Par,k, and had a big time tition that anything of a meteoric na- came a description of & "long blaclc
or It-monstrous parade down. Broad- . ture ls excluded, and localized so tbat object" that ha.d moved Jn. the direc-
1 way, h\ptoric turn-out, eruptions of comets cannot be thought or, I pick . tion of Salem and had then returned
confetti from the skyscrapers? They out one succession, because it occurred at high velocity, It was said that at
may be austere, highly advanced crea- in our own time and at a time when Marlboro, ?.lass., .the object, or the
tures, with a dlsllke !or sensational- i terrestrial aircraft were of small de- light, had been seen nine times since
: Ism. Hpwever, that is not the only velopment. Dec. 14.
reason that I can think of. I! I According to dispatches published in I point out that In December, 1900.
should sall to the · moon and land the New York newspapers on Dec. 21. somebody won a. prize tor sailing from
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there, and find myself a.mong beings 1909. Inspector Hoe of Boston re- the Eiffel Tower to St. Cyr, several
• like myself, and when asked where ported a. bright light that had passed miles from Paris. and back. There
! I came from should point down, or over Boston Harbor and had con- was no dirigible airship of this earth
• up, to this earth, what kind of a re- cluded that be had seen an airship or that had a greater range than that.
i ception would I have? The Martians some kind. Two days later came news and it was not until May, 1910, that
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may have thought that out. I can of a. "mysterious atrshtp" that had ap- Curtiss flew fn an airplane from
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Albany to New York City, making
one stop, however, in the 150 miles.
Nevertheless, when I note also that
an airship was reR_orted trom place ■
so far south of New England that i!'
it were the same object it could not
have been an airship of this earth, I
think of records of "collective hallu•
clnations" and consider that people in
other places, having probably heard
or the appearances 1n Ne,v England,
may have done some supposing. In
the New York newspaper::; of Jan. 13
and 14, 1010, it ,vas saiu that at 9
o'clock on the morning of'. Jan. 12
thousands of persons in Chattanooga,
, Tenn., had seen. an airship. l<'rom
' Huntsville, Ala .• came a dispatch that
· the object had been seen there. lJpon
two other occasions som~thing in the
sky that was supposed to be an air-
ship ·v.·as reported from Chattanooga,
On the night of Dec_ 24, '1.·hatever it
may have been that was in the sk~·.
It was not seen in New England. But
there is record of something that was
seen somewhere else. It It were the
same object, it could have been no
airship of this earth, and ft was re-
ported by some one who, presumably,
had not heard of the otber reported
appearances. . In The English Me•
chanic, Vol. 104, P. 71, a correspon-
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dent, who signs himself "Rigel,''

I tells of something that he saw at
I Limericlc, Ireland. He ls James Fer-
. gusen of Rossbrlen, Limerick, a well-
known writer who stlll contributes to
The English ?.Iechanic. At 8:30 o'clock
· on the night of Dec. 24 Mr. Fergusen
saw a luminous object appear on the
• northeastern horizon. The light moved
: slowly southward for about twenty
; minutes. Jtfturned and retraced, dis-
• appearing whence it had come at 9: O'J
o'clock.
I don't know of anything else to
think about it. Orte night in Massa-
. chusetts, and the next night a siml•
· lar thing tra veUng 1n the sky of Ire-
, land. It looks like different observa-
tions upon a vessel of velocity high
enough to traverse distances between
\Planets.
It may be that next Octobe·r there
will be a similar series of appearances
in the sky. One trouble ls that there
are more humorists in a.ny one sizable
part of the United States than in a.ll
the rest of the world put together.
Hosts of ordinarily serious cttlzens
might start sending up kites with
lanterns tied to them. Nevertheless,
in some of the other instances I have
been able to weed out the hoaxera, and
if anybody should see anything or
hear of anything that seems to be
worth investigating, I should be glad
lf he will let me know.
CHARLES FORT.
London, England, 4'-ug. 20, 1926.

Published: September 5, 1926

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