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Hi I am new to the forum, though I very much enjoy listening to the show. I am hoping to finish my dissertation next year. It is about American-German relations around 1900.
The reason I am writing is that I remember listening to several shows in which the "Airship Craze of 1897" was being discussed. I wanted to weigh in on this since it is one of the few areas of paranormal research I am able to talk about in a somewhat informed manner. I did some preliminary research because I was thinking about writing a dissertation on it. I didn't because (if I may be frank) if I am going to invest 5 years of my life to writing the project, I want to be able to get a job afterwards. I've got a family I need to support. Maybe I can do it in a later book if I'm lucky enough to get tenure, but it absolutely couldn't be my first. I am not sure what I could really write about it other than a discursive analysis or something like that. All I could say is that these people claimed to have seen it.
Using random newspaper clippings from the 1890s as one's main primary sourcebase wouldn't really be useful historical data, and are probably doubtful. Let me tell you why I think any historical account about this would be very difficult to do and probably unconvincing.
1. The late nineteenth century was a very wierd time. If anyone reads local American newspapers during the time (to a lesser extent in the German press, but still there) it becomes immediately apparent that journalists commonly reported as fact things that I think is safe to say were patently false. It was very common practice to go to the local town idiots, get them to say something ridiculous, and report it. It was entertainment -- terrible entertainment revealing that society didn't understand mental illness -- but entertainment nonetheless. You did it so the local town people could laugh and say, "did you see what Old Man Joe said..." Especially in smaller towns were people knew one another. If you go to small town press, you will constantly find reports about people seeing sea monsters in small mill ponds. There was an airship craze, but in the nineteenth century there was also similar craze in which people claimed to have invented perpetual motion machines. I would tend to see the airship craze in this context rather than necessarily seeing it as an objective truth.
2. I've already motioned toward this, but mental illness was simply not understood at the time. No one would have been able to diagnose someone with schizophrenia, much less treat it with thearpy/medicine/etc. They didn't have the basic language to deal with mental illness, let alone treat it. There might have been two or three "psychologists" in a state and they either worked at a university or were in charge of an asylum. By the time crazy people got to them they were already off the deep end (very much so). This was doubly the case in rural areas where even the most basic medicine was often unavailable. Mental illnesses went untreated (presumably getting worse) until the sufferer killed himself, killed someone else or died. Even for people in the 1890s who had no biological presuposition to illness could have it foisted upon them by a number of toxins that were simply a part of daily life in rural America. Lead, Mercury, Arsenic were commonplace. I am not meaning to call every one of these people crazy, but it is an undeniable fact that most of these sightings occurred in rural areas.
3. The way in which the craze geographically progressed, it seems like a case of mass hysteria. The craze started in Texas and slowly spread north from there through Kansas and eventually reaching Wisconsin/Illinois/Iowa. Why did the 1897 craze dissappear? After the Spanish American War dominated the headlines the events quit being reported. Perhaps the Alien visitors feared their ships would be shot down by stray bullets from McKinnley's skirmishes in Cuba, but I doubt it.
4. So what if a few people said they saw these things. I guarantee you that more people claimed to have seen women use witchcraft to damage fields in the 16th c. There probably weren't witches flying broomsticks at night, there probably weren't Jews poisoning wells, and there probably weren't airships.
5. On a practical level, I am just not sure a comprehensive account would be possible. You might be able to do a case-study of a certain sighting, but reaching a fuller understanding of these people would be possible I suppose, but you would have to write indepth biographies about the people who saw these. Unfortunately there probably isn't a lot of surviving archival material about these people. At most you will probably get some geneological material, tax records, and maybe some employment records. Also even if there were it would cost a fortune to go between the local archives of dozens of states that these sightings occurred in. YOu would have to spend a minimum of a week or two at each town (per person you were researching). No way you will ever get a grant to visit 20 or 30 different archives unless you are one of the preeminent names in the field.
The 1897 craze is probably similar to other "historical waves" but of course it is outside my area of expertise so I can't really speak to that.
Ultimately I think that the hosts should quit making reference to this one year event to show that (aha!!) there have always been airship sightings. It seems to me that the current appearence of UFOs are not a one year flash in the pan, but rather a sixty year occurrence. We no longer have to rely on the words of isolated farmers and villagers, but rather a phenomomon that has been photoraphed and videotaped. This evidence can be tested unlike scattered newspaper clippings from 1897.
As a historian, I know the shortcomings of my discipline. We can say that, for example, the Battle of Gettysburg because there are thousands of accounts from the same time that coorelate basically the same thing; quartermaster reports; orders from participating generals and their memoirs; archaeological data shows a battle happened there; etc. For these historical UFO reports only scattered reports by individuals that curiously started one place spread from there and then quit when the Spanish American War started.
We can do some pretty neat things, but no responsible historian can use this "craze" as anything close to substantiating a long tradition of actual UFO visitations.
Curious for your responses. What do you think can be gained by studying these reports?
The reason I am writing is that I remember listening to several shows in which the "Airship Craze of 1897" was being discussed. I wanted to weigh in on this since it is one of the few areas of paranormal research I am able to talk about in a somewhat informed manner. I did some preliminary research because I was thinking about writing a dissertation on it. I didn't because (if I may be frank) if I am going to invest 5 years of my life to writing the project, I want to be able to get a job afterwards. I've got a family I need to support. Maybe I can do it in a later book if I'm lucky enough to get tenure, but it absolutely couldn't be my first. I am not sure what I could really write about it other than a discursive analysis or something like that. All I could say is that these people claimed to have seen it.
Using random newspaper clippings from the 1890s as one's main primary sourcebase wouldn't really be useful historical data, and are probably doubtful. Let me tell you why I think any historical account about this would be very difficult to do and probably unconvincing.
1. The late nineteenth century was a very wierd time. If anyone reads local American newspapers during the time (to a lesser extent in the German press, but still there) it becomes immediately apparent that journalists commonly reported as fact things that I think is safe to say were patently false. It was very common practice to go to the local town idiots, get them to say something ridiculous, and report it. It was entertainment -- terrible entertainment revealing that society didn't understand mental illness -- but entertainment nonetheless. You did it so the local town people could laugh and say, "did you see what Old Man Joe said..." Especially in smaller towns were people knew one another. If you go to small town press, you will constantly find reports about people seeing sea monsters in small mill ponds. There was an airship craze, but in the nineteenth century there was also similar craze in which people claimed to have invented perpetual motion machines. I would tend to see the airship craze in this context rather than necessarily seeing it as an objective truth.
2. I've already motioned toward this, but mental illness was simply not understood at the time. No one would have been able to diagnose someone with schizophrenia, much less treat it with thearpy/medicine/etc. They didn't have the basic language to deal with mental illness, let alone treat it. There might have been two or three "psychologists" in a state and they either worked at a university or were in charge of an asylum. By the time crazy people got to them they were already off the deep end (very much so). This was doubly the case in rural areas where even the most basic medicine was often unavailable. Mental illnesses went untreated (presumably getting worse) until the sufferer killed himself, killed someone else or died. Even for people in the 1890s who had no biological presuposition to illness could have it foisted upon them by a number of toxins that were simply a part of daily life in rural America. Lead, Mercury, Arsenic were commonplace. I am not meaning to call every one of these people crazy, but it is an undeniable fact that most of these sightings occurred in rural areas.
3. The way in which the craze geographically progressed, it seems like a case of mass hysteria. The craze started in Texas and slowly spread north from there through Kansas and eventually reaching Wisconsin/Illinois/Iowa. Why did the 1897 craze dissappear? After the Spanish American War dominated the headlines the events quit being reported. Perhaps the Alien visitors feared their ships would be shot down by stray bullets from McKinnley's skirmishes in Cuba, but I doubt it.
4. So what if a few people said they saw these things. I guarantee you that more people claimed to have seen women use witchcraft to damage fields in the 16th c. There probably weren't witches flying broomsticks at night, there probably weren't Jews poisoning wells, and there probably weren't airships.
5. On a practical level, I am just not sure a comprehensive account would be possible. You might be able to do a case-study of a certain sighting, but reaching a fuller understanding of these people would be possible I suppose, but you would have to write indepth biographies about the people who saw these. Unfortunately there probably isn't a lot of surviving archival material about these people. At most you will probably get some geneological material, tax records, and maybe some employment records. Also even if there were it would cost a fortune to go between the local archives of dozens of states that these sightings occurred in. YOu would have to spend a minimum of a week or two at each town (per person you were researching). No way you will ever get a grant to visit 20 or 30 different archives unless you are one of the preeminent names in the field.
The 1897 craze is probably similar to other "historical waves" but of course it is outside my area of expertise so I can't really speak to that.
Ultimately I think that the hosts should quit making reference to this one year event to show that (aha!!) there have always been airship sightings. It seems to me that the current appearence of UFOs are not a one year flash in the pan, but rather a sixty year occurrence. We no longer have to rely on the words of isolated farmers and villagers, but rather a phenomomon that has been photoraphed and videotaped. This evidence can be tested unlike scattered newspaper clippings from 1897.
As a historian, I know the shortcomings of my discipline. We can say that, for example, the Battle of Gettysburg because there are thousands of accounts from the same time that coorelate basically the same thing; quartermaster reports; orders from participating generals and their memoirs; archaeological data shows a battle happened there; etc. For these historical UFO reports only scattered reports by individuals that curiously started one place spread from there and then quit when the Spanish American War started.
We can do some pretty neat things, but no responsible historian can use this "craze" as anything close to substantiating a long tradition of actual UFO visitations.
Curious for your responses. What do you think can be gained by studying these reports?
) My great-great grandfather was a very bright man who built an entire room onto the side of his little house on the prairie for his book collection. I also recall a great aunt in her 80's suddenly blurting out questions of whether any of us had ever seen a ufo or had an out of body experience. She said she had. Despite its remoteness, I suspect there was (and is) more than enough esoteric imagination to go around in that area.
