Unidentified Buried Object

While this blog was created with the intention of highlighting graves of the famous, I often encounter strange or unusual markers in my travels.  Every so often, I'll take a break from Hollywood and profile some of these lesser known, but certainly odd graves as well.

In 2014, I was visiting the Dallas, Texas area, when I read a story too bizarre to be true.  It begins on April 17, 1897, when residents claimed that a spaceship crashed into a windmill, destroying both the craft and it's sole occupant, an extra-terrestrial.  Although he wasn't one of their own, the good people of Aurora felt that he deserved a decent Christian burial.

Intrigued, I knew that I had to see this grave, and fortunately, it wasn't too far from Dallas.  I made my way to Aurora Cemetery, where I found this historical marker.  Although mostly dedicated to documented Confederate history, the marker does denote the town's most famous visitor.

".....This site is also well-known because of the legend that a spaceship crashed nearby in 1897 and the pilot, killed in the crash, was buried here."

The thing that always struck me about this is the fact that the alien didn't receive top billing, as if this were a common, every-day experience.  How many small towns can claim to have an extra-terrestrial buried among their citizenry?

As for the grave itself, the marker, if there ever was one, has long since disappeared.  But legend has it that E.T. was buried under this old tree.

Hoping to kill the mystery, a group of scientists petitioned in 1972 to have the body exhumed in order to conduct an alien autopsy.  But in a hysterical act of bureaucratic red tape, their efforts were blocked by the cemetery association, as exhumations can only be authorized by next of kin.

In 1986, Hollywood came calling, and released a film documenting the incident, appropriately called Aurora Encounter.  Watch the hilariously awful trailer here.

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