Lubbock, Texas UFO Sighting, 1897 — FBI Files
A pre-modern case from Lubbock, Texas. In 1897, newspapers reported sightings of a mysterious cigar-shaped airship with visible lights and occupants.
Background
In 1897, in Lubbock, Texas, U.S. government investigators recorded an unidentified-object incident later released to the public on May 8, 2026 as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). The incident is a pre-modern apparition or aerial-anomaly account predating the formal study of aerial phenomena. The case was filed with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose Knoxville, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, and other field offices routed UFO reports to headquarters under the Bureau’s standing protocols for the protection of vital installations.
What the document records
In 1897, newspapers reported sightings of a mysterious cigar-shaped airship with visible lights and occupants. The rumor was eventually dismissed by Thomas Edison.
The number of witnesses is not specified in the released document.
Type of case
The witnesses described the object as airship-like or cigar-shaped.
Status
All records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) by default. The federal government has not concluded that the events were anomalous, has not concluded that they were conventional, and has not ruled out either possibility. Conventional candidates for sightings of this period include experimental aircraft, weather balloons (especially the Project Mogul series in the late 1940s), atmospheric optical phenomena such as sundogs and lenticular clouds, and astronomical objects including Venus, the Moon, and meteors near the horizon.