The Haworth Police "Airship" Sighting

Haworth lies in the Worth Valley, in what was then the West Riding of Yorkshire. Police-Sergeant John Johnson was stationed there in December 1901. On Friday 27 December, the Todmorden & District News printed his account under a plain headline. "REMARKABLE PHENOMENON AT HAWORTH."

"Early on Thursday morning week, some policemen on duty at Haworth and further down the valley saw something unusual." Johnson was in Marsh Lane with Police-Constable Clarke "when we saw a very bright light in the sky." It was a quarter past one exactly. "It came somewhere overhead, and on looking up we saw a very large body of some kind travelling along at about the same height as an ordinary mill chimney."

It was "as big as the largest ship I ever saw". It was "rather pointed towards each end, resembling very much the 'billet' that lads use in playing tip-cat", the short wooden peg tapered at both ends from a children's game. Its light was "bluish, and reddish and whitish as well." So bright that "we could see every little crevice in the snow on the roadway." Johnson put it simply. "Electric light was nothing to it."

Then the silence. "We listened attentively but could hear no noise, but the thing in travelling threw out sparks." The two men timed it. It moved from about east to west and was fully visible for 14 minutes. One detail Johnson stressed above all. "All I have seen before dropped, or seemed to do so, sooner or later, but this went on rising." The last he saw of it, it "went out in the neighbourhood of the Seven Stars". The Pleiades.

The case resurfaced in a Keighley News piece of 2 December 1994, credited to a Mr Midgley. That article became the source for PRUFOS, and its version differs from the 1901 text. It describes a green light, a cigar pointed at both ends, 15 minutes rather than 14, and a height of 100 to 150 feet before the object gradually gained height. It adds two members of the public who reported similar objects in Keighley and Shipley. It dates the event to 21 December 1901 at 0045 hours. The 1901 wording, "Thursday morning week" in a Friday paper, points instead to Thursday 19 December. The date is still unsettled.

In December 2021 the case reached Metabunk. Contributors offered ordinary answers. One proposed a kite carrying fireworks, or an unusual hot-air fire balloon. Another suggested a bolide with some exaggeration, and asked whether "14 minutes" was a misprint for "14 seconds". Mick West compared it with the 1896 Sacramento mystery airship flap and suggested a tall tale, perhaps sparked by a bolide or a hillside bonfire.

Johnson's own words cut against one of those readings. The things he had seen before dropped. This one climbed. No official inquiry was ever recorded, and no explanation has settled the matter.

PRUFOS, the Police Reporting UFO Sightings database compiled by Gary Heseltine, lists Haworth first. It is classed as a close encounter of the first kind, an on-duty sighting by 2 officers. The database has since grown to about 550 cases and about 1,100 officers. Haworth remains where it begins. In 1909, two uniformed officers in Peterborough would report a cigar-shaped object of their own.