Something Quick

Someone just sent me the following case, and it is interesting. Hope you think so too. The incident, if other resources have not contradicted it, could possibly be one of those rarest of UFOlogical birds: the pre-20th century UFO phenomenon in action. Well, here it is:

The Summer of 1851, the Hohen Tauren mountains in the Tyrolian Alps. On his normal summer vacation, high school history and geography "professor", Karl Schneider, was going to indulge in one of his great pleasures: a climb of a major alpine mountain. He began his climb at 4:30am and by 3pm had reached one of the little climbers' huts which were there as mountaineering shelters. He sat down on a stone to rest. The Sun was brilliantly shining without a cloud in the sky.

"Suddenly I heard a noise like a faint chord played on a distant organ. It grew in intensity until it became a loud humming. I looked up--- and there it was in the sky--- the object that I shall call a 'heavenly body' for want of a better word.

"It looked to me like a potter's wheel at first, flying through space, and it moved across the sky with unbelievable speed. It made a full circle, remaining in my view all that time, that is for the better part of a minute. It was silvery, but not made of silver, but a strange unknown metal that glittered in the sunlight and dazzled my eyes.

"It was round in shape, but slightly narrowing at one point, and from this narrowing point came a thick fog that sometimes looked like ordinary smoke, sometimes turned milky-white, and sometimes scintillated yellowish in the Sun."

When the thing had completed its circle for him, it "twisted" in the air and shot straight upwards and away. At that time Schneider noticed a sort of muzzle like the nose of a swordfish on the leading edge. On ascent, the rear area burst forth blue and red flames. Schneider admitted that he could not guess the thing's size, but said that if he had to guess, he'd say 100 meters in diameter or larger.

It was not until he returned down the mountain and discussed the sighting with friends and family, that the idea grew on him that he must have seen some machine from distant space. It became in his mind a "Sternenschiff", a Ship from the Stars.

Of course no one believed him, even his wife [although he had no reputation whatever for making things up, nor general tomfoolery, earlier]. Even Christian Churches railed against his idea of an outer space intelligence. Their narrowness was not ready to think about multiple "humans" all needing Christ-like visitations and redemptions. To his credit, Schneider never went back on his tale, even under extreme heat to do so. He returned many times to that little schutzhut to keep a lonely vigil in hopes of seeing the Starship again.

Well, if no one knows more: I like it.