The Aurora Airship Grave

S. E. Haydon, the Aurora correspondent for the Dallas Morning News, filed a dispatch that ran on April 19, 1897. He wrote that two mornings earlier an airship had come in low over the town square, struck Judge J. S. Proctor's windmill, and exploded. The pilot was recovered in pieces. Quoting a Signal Service officer named T. J. Weems, Haydon reported that the body was "not an inhabitant of this world," and that the town had given it a Christian burial in the cemetery that afternoon.

This was the tail end of the 1897 airship wave, when mystery craft were being reported across the United States months before anybody had flown one.

Why the story probably exists

Aurora was dying when Haydon wrote. The railroad had passed it by, a cotton crop had failed, and an outbreak of spotted fever had put the town under quarantine. A newspaper stringer with a shrinking town and a national story running in every other paper had an obvious motive, and Haydon's neighbors said afterward that he had made it up. Most researchers who have worked the case agree with them.

The Texas Historical Commission's marker at the cemetery gate, number 240, still records the legend in its official text, which is a strange thing for a state marker to carry.

What has happened to the grave since

Aviation writer Bill Case revived the case in 1973 and got metal-detector readings over one plot. The Aurora Cemetery Association refused to allow an exhumation, on the grounds that only next of kin can authorize one and this particular occupant has none. The small headstone that had marked the spot was stolen that year, replaced, and stolen again. A Dallas attorney offered a $1,000 reward for its return in 2018.

Visitors in late 2024 reported that even the flat stone people had been using as a substitute is gone now. There is nothing above the ground.

Open during daylight hours, free, with no facilities and no formal parking. Access is by a rural road and the shoulder is the parking. The historical marker stands at the entrance and is the thing most people photograph, since the plot itself carries nothing.

The grave is usually pointed out near the southern entrance beside a large tree, though nobody agrees on the exact spot and there is no marker to settle it.

This is an active burial ground with more than 800 graves and families still visiting them, so quiet conduct matters more here than at a derelict site. Aurora sits about 30 minutes northwest of Fort Worth.