Heidi Altvater

THERE APPEARED THE STRANGEST THING

She was fifteen in 1891 when she saw a strange object “moveing (sic) about in

the heavens” of northwestern Colorado. Awstruck, she found a bit of paper and a pencil

and wrote in her schoolgirl hand about what she had seen:
On Thursday the 14th of May, 1891, just about sunset
there appeared the strangest thing I ever saw. It had
been raining and the sky was covered with thick, black
clouds when we discovered that a large body was moveing
about in the heavens. We had no telescope to look at it
with but we could see that it was a large round body
surrounded by light. I thought it was a silvery light, but the
rest said it looked like fire. It was travelling a great deal
faster than the sun in a slightly northeasterly direction.
During the time we watched, it travelled a great distance.
We could see it revolve. It left a trail of light behind it
and we could see plainly long after it should have been
dark. While it was in sight everything looked as if it were
surrounded by a yellow light. It was very strange and we have no
one else that saw it and have never found out what it was.
 (Signed) May A. King

Toponas P.O.

Egeria Park

Routt Co.

Colo

May was my grandmother. Of course, I didn’t know her when she was capable

of such wonderment. By the time I came along, she had become a taciturn, elderly

woman who frowned on frivolity, brooked no nonsense, and never shared with her

grandchildren her amazing encounter with what today we’d call an “unidentified flying

object.”

She did, however, keep the account of her sighting; We found the faded and

frayed page tucked in among her keepsakes after her death. She was an avid reader in

her youth, and I wondered if she could have been influenced by something she read. I

did a little investigating and found that H.G. Wells had not yet begun to write his

imaginative stories.

Grandmother never mentioned reading Jules Verne, and it would seem improbable that

his works would have reached the remote rocky mountain settlement in which she lived.

She did speak of reading the entire works of Scott and Dickens in her parents’ libraby,

but could not have encountered in the writings of those gentlemen tales of heavenly

bodies “travellikng a great deal faster than the sun.”

I was curious to learn if others had seen strange and amazing sights over the

skies of Colorado that night. Perhaps there was a record of comets or meteors visible

around that time. I wrote to the Colorado Historical Society to find out. They discovered

no record, but were interested enough to contact university astronomy departments and
planetariums in Colorado. They turned up two old newspaper articles about strange

phenomena in

the heavens, but both miss the date of Grandmother’s encounter by a few years, and

neither sounds like her “large round body surrounded by light.”

The Rocky Mountain News reprinted an article from a Georgetown, Colorado

paper of September 20, 1882, containing an article about “a comet which was visible

from town from about 11 o’clock in the morning, when it was discovered, until about 4 in

the afternoon when the sky became cloudy and it was hidden from view. It was looked

for at night but owing to the clouded sky, it could not be seen. A great deal of interest

was taken in it during the afternoon and the Denver papers were scoured yesterday

morning to ascerrtain if it had been seen in Denver, and no mention being made of it,

Georgetown people flatter themselves with the opinion that they alone viewed the

comet.”

Regrettably, it was not Grandmother’s strange object, but it was a most

interesting bit of 19th century jounralism.

The other report was from the Fairplay Flume of December 10, 1887, and sounds

more like Grandmother’s “yellow light,” except that it was too small and too

ephemeral.

This article also made me long for a time when reporters provided a bit more than just

the facts.

“A most brilliant meteor fell in the northern sky Monday

evening at a few minutes after six. It was quite dark at that

time, and as lamps had not been lighted, many a room was

suddenly, and for but an instant, illuminated as if by an

electric light just outside. Those who saw it distinctly say

that it appeared like a ball of fire nearly two feet in diameter.

Just before it would have disappeared behind Mt. Silverheels,

 it burst into many fragments, with beautiful colors.”

Of course, it is possible that what Grandmother saw was one of a series of

meteors

or comets visible in the thin air of her sparsly settled world high up in the Rockies, but

neither meteors, nor comets, travel at great speed, revolving as they go.

So, just what was Grandmother’s “large round body surrounded by light?”