(I don’t believe in UFOs, but found the following account fascinating)
Gazetteer and Business Directory of Allegany County, N.Y. for 1875 compiled and published by Hamilton Child, Syracuse, N.Y.
Gazetteer of Towns
Town of Willing pages 132-F and 132-G
Mr. Ebenezer C. Stephens also relates the following for the truthfulness of which he vouches: One after noon in the summer of 1836, he started earlier than usual after his cows, which were in the woods near the river. Having reached the river road, which was used only for sleds, he stopped and called his cows which were a few rods below the road. He looked down the road to his left and saw coming toward him a singular object, which he describes as being about the width of the sled track and two feet above the road bed. It appeared to be constructed of iron bars about one-half inch square and set in a frame so as to form two inch squares. It was about three feet long and two and one-half feet wide. The squares which were of different colors and unusual brightness, presented various shades of every color, the brilliancy of which dazzled his eyes. As it approached he stepped back to let it pass without going over his feet, which he thought would be a bad omen. When it reached a point about five rods beyond him it seemed to rise and then descend and disappear in the earth. Of the significance of this; or whether it is to be attributed to an optical illusion or is referable to a class of oft recurring psychologic phenomena we can only conjecture without a knowledge of the temperament of the narrator. We leave the reader to draw his own conclusion.
Calling something a UFO only means that it is moving in the sky and nobody has identified it yet. You probably mean that you don’t believe we’ve been visited by extraterrestrials.
Here is an entire book on the subject. There were lots of mysterious airships seen, and some people reported conversations with the pilot, and inventor from New England who was going to go public soon. The similarities to our modern UFOs are quite remarkable, and as you read the book you are almost convinced it must be real - but of course no such airship was ever made.
Charles Fort reported on a lot of these, but I haven’t reviewed my copies of his books to see if they were reports of the airship - I think some were.
I believe there was some speculation that under the earth there was another world, in fact the famous Jules Verne novel was published only the year before this report.
I find it interesting that this object descended, which would fit into the then fashionable pseudo-science idea, instead of ascending, which is the current populist ‘science like’ idea of what UFO is supposed to do.
People don’t seem to change much, rural location, only witness, isolated and fitting in with the ideas of the day.There is little reason to think that folk of years past were any less odd in their reports and given some of the crazy beliefs in the past, it only comes as a surprise that there are not more such reports.
… or that in 1836 they were any less likely to find drugs any less attractive - plenty of herbal remedies with pyschotropic effects and of course, the ever present laudanum.