Ghost airships with human-like creatures on board were observed in the 1800s

In the period from 1896 to 1897, a wave of mysterious observations of "unusual airships" took place in the USA.

At the end of the 1890s, strange airships began to appear in the sky over the country. Although lighter-than-air airships have existed since the 1850s, their capabilities were much more limited, and they were not as large as those observed. Witnesses described a ship or ships 150 to 200 feet long moving at a speed of about 135-150 miles per hour. Airships at that time were usually smaller and moved at a speed of 5-7 miles per hour.

The first observation occurred in November 1896 in Sacramento, California, when hundreds of eyewitnesses observed a steady light floating in the sky overhead, attached to some large vessel. Some said they heard voices singing from the ship. One of the eyewitnesses, R.L. Lowry, said that he heard a man giving orders: "Throw it higher, it will touch the spire!". According to Lowery, the airship had a cigar-shaped body with wheels on the sides and seemed to be driven by two men sitting on a frame similar to a bicycle.

Over the next six months, sightings moved eastward across the country, reports were received as far as Chicago. In total, about 150 cases of surveillance were recorded in 20 states. Then, in April 1897, as suddenly as it began, the observations abruptly stopped. Although many reports can be attributed to hoaxes, mass hysteria, or even to the incorrect identification of astral phenomena such as comets and meteors, several reports were reliable enough to rule out mass hysteria or fiction.

In most cases, witnesses describe the inhabitants of airships not as people, but as humanoid creatures. The first possible proof of the existence of little green men appeared just a few days after the observation in Sacramento, 50 miles to the north, in a city called Stockton. 

Colonel W.G. Shaw was riding his motorcycle through the countryside when he came across a landed spaceship. According to Shaw, the ship was approximately 25 feet in diameter and 150 feet long. It had a metallic outer surface, and, apart from what appeared to be a steering wheel, it was completely devoid of any additional external features. He noticed three strange, slender creatures that moved around the aircraft and made a "strange howling sound." The creatures approached him and tried to drag him on board by force, but the colonel, obviously being a strong, brave man and not embellishing his story at all, quickly overpowered them and disappeared.

Another case, a little out of this world, was described in the Dallas Morning News the following year, in April 1897, after it was noticed that an airship crashed into a windmill. The mangled wreckage was described as a mixture of aluminum and silver, and bizarre hieroglyphic drawings were scattered among the wreckage. 

The deceased pilot was "not a resident of this world." In 1973, a group of UFO researchers discovered the crash site, where, apparently, there was a grave of the pilot, marked with a tombstone. Their metal detectors picked up traces of foreign materials under the surface, which forced them to request permission to dig. The request was refused. When they revisited the site a few years later, the tombstone and all the subsurface metals had disappeared.