St. Petersburg vedomosti for May 24, 1723, old style
The history of ufology usually begins in 1947: American pilot Kenneth Arnold saw nine mysterious flat objects over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State and laid the foundation for … what?
As it turned out, only the hype around UFOs, but not the sightings themselves! A large-scale project to study UFO sightings before 1947 showed that they appeared in no smaller numbers and were described in the same way. Clippings from pre-war newspapers and the handwritten notes of eyewitnesses made in those years are more valuable than today's testimonies: people, not knowing the word "UFO", described what they saw without any bias or desire to become famous.
The Magonia Exchange project was initiated in April 2003 by ufologists Chris Obeck from Spain and Rod Brock from the USA. The goal of the project was to collect and analyze UFO reports prior to June 24, 1947, ranging from Sumerian writing on clay tablets and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Soon 70 ufologists from 24 countries joined the project, including people who know Latin and exotic medieval languages. Only two people from the former Soviet Union take part in the project: Mikhail Gershtein from Russia and Vladimir Rubtsov from Ukraine. Currently, the number of collected evidence is approaching 15 thousand. Finally, in September 2011, the project, which was being carried out without much fuss, became more open to the general public, as a paradox - thanks to this publication - the first about it in the CIS for almost ten years of its existence!
Number of messages detected in 2004-2011
People who are interested in UFOs know that Magonia was the name of a magical land from where, according to medieval peasants, "air ships" flew. For the first time this name is found in the manuscript of Bishop Agobard of Lyons "Liber contra insulam vulgi opinionem de grande et tonituris" ("A book against the opinion among the common people about where hail and thunder come from"), written in the 9th century. Then Agobard persuaded the peasants to release the four tied people, who were accused of having arrived by plane. “Repeatedly we have seen and heard from those who are deceived by such a deception and committed to such stupidity, as if they believe in stories that, they say, there is a country called Magonia and from there ships sail in the clouds through the air, on which they bring fruits helping to stop the hail and end the storm. And the air sailors give them as payment to the spellcasters, receiving in exchange grain and other fruits …"
This word became widely known after the publication in 1969 of Jacques Vallee's book "Visa to Magonia" (in Russian it was translated as "Chronicles of the appearance of aliens"), where the author tried to compare ancient legends with modern observations. His book contains many observations up to 1947. It is not surprising that Jacques Vallee became one of the most active participants in the project.
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In addition to reports of UFOs, the project collects everything that may somehow be connected with them - stories about flights and falling meteorites, poltergeists, strange animals such as a sea serpent or Bigfoot, ghosts, anomalies in nature, etc. Currently, work is underway on the creation of a computer database, which will allow not only to present a spatio-temporal picture of various phenomena, but also to reveal their possible correlation with each other.
Here are just a few examples from the huge Magonia Exchange archive. The chronicler Rolandino of Padova wrote in his chronicle "Liber Chronicorum" for 1252: “This year, in the morning hours, we saw one star the size of a comet, although it was not a comet because it had no tail; what was strange about her was that this star was almost equal in magnitude to the moon, but moved much faster than the last; still, however, it did not move as quickly as the shooting star. She was visible for several hours; she disappeared little by little."
“From Bern to Switzerland on 29 January,” reads a note in the St. Petersburg Gazette dated March 4, 1721. - On the 25th of this month, between 11 o'clock and midnight, we saw here a fiery globe (that is, a ball - MG), which rolled through the city, and then fell a mile away. On the 26th about the same hour we saw a similar globe; on the night of the 27th to the 28th, they saw a pillar of fire on the neighboring mountains to West, which, as it approached, little by little scattered, both without making a great noise, and then they saw that three fire globes came out, which took every different path, hedgehog gave matter for speculators to judge everyone in their own way."
The Boston Herald, July 26, 1908, described the appearance of a UFO over the United States: “Early yesterday morning, what looked like a balloon or an airship flew over the city of Springfield. However, there were no reports of any aircraft taking off or landing that could fly over the city. The Hand Manufacturing Company night watchman saw a balloon or whatever at about three in the morning. He hovered over the city for almost an hour, as if his passengers were about to land, but then flew higher and flew south-east. The ship was surrounded by a chain of lights, but the watchman could not make out the outline of the gas-filled shell above it. He is sure it was not a cluster of stars or light bulbs."
Objects were seen not only flying through the air, but also flying out of the water. In 1911, many newspapers described how, in front of the passengers on the America Maru, a luminous object flew out from under the water, made a circle in the sky, and dived again. Less than half an hour later, the UFO flew out of the sea, but this time it did not rise above 20 degrees; drew an arc and dived into the water again.
Among the archives of the Magonia Exchange there are reports of UFO landings, humanoids and even abductions - in short, everything that is considered to be signs of modern times. While the computer database did not work, Chris Aubek and Jacques Vallee decided to summarize the observations until 1880, when there were no planes, rockets or airships in the sky. The result of the joint work was the book "Wonders in the Sky" ("Miracles in the sky", 2009), where 500 unusual cases are presented and analyzed. In the afterword, Vallee writes: “Eyewitnesses mainly describe luminous phenomena, from 'fireballs' and 'luminous figures' to vertical pillars and towers that at times emit flashes, rays or other objects. However, in many cases, non-luminous disc-shaped or spherical objects are also mentioned, which can quickly move in the atmosphere, change course,rush or descend in a zigzag path. In some well-documented cases, they emitted intense heat, destroyed plants or dumped metallic sediments … Note that experienced astronomers often reported observations of black bodies crossing the disk of the Sun or Moon.
You can take part in the Magonia Exchange project without giving it all your free time, as many ufologists do. If in some source before 1947 in any language (newspaper, magazine, archival paper …) you accidentally come across a story about something extraordinary in the sky, sea or on land, do not be lazy to make a photocopy or a verbatim extract indicating the original sources and send at [email protected]. We will definitely tell you about the most interesting messages in the ufollet!
Author: Mikhail Gershtein
