On April 17, 1897, six years before the first plane was flown by the Wright brothers, an "airship" visited Aurora, Texas. After having been spotted sporadically in the Midwest, the illuminated, cigar-shaped craft was next seen in North Texas--first in Denton, and then in Weatherford, Corsicana, and Stephenville. The editor of the Stephenville newspaper claimed that the airship hovered so close to the town that he was able to yell out a request for an interview, which the extraterrestrial pilot denied.

Moving on to Aurora, the airship reportedly circled the town square, crashed into a windmill, and exploded, leaving behind the pilot's charred body and a note written in indecipherable hieroglyphics. According to an article published in the Dallas Morning News two days later, the pilot was thought to be "a native of the planet Mars."

Rumors about the airship persisted, and in 1973, a team of UFO buffs and television crews descended on Aurora to see if they could substantiate the story. Some Aurora elders claimed to remember the close encounter, while most of the town's 300 residents emphatically insisted that it was an old hoax designed to revive Aurora's declining fortunes. The incident may always remain a mystery, however, since a district court blocked an effort to exhume an Aurora grave that some believed held the pilot's body. According to local legend, the grave was marked only by a headstone bearing a cryptic insignia: several small circles drawn inside the Greek letter delta. The stone has since disappeared.