Nnw / Lancaster, OH being encounter — April 1897

An anonymous traveller's elaborate airship story appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer on 25 April 1897, under a Lancaster dispatch dated the 24th. He said that a few evenings earlier, between Baltimore and Lancaster, Ohio, his horse became frightened as a lighted object descended into a field. He tethered the horse out of sight and approached two men beside the machine. One man spoke English and described their craft as an experimental invention called an Aeribarque. The other spoke a language the witness did not understand. The visitor gave them a newspaper and said he inspected a small open rectangular car beneath an elongated balloon, enclosed by tubular metal framing. The account specifies guard rails, baggage, a control box, electrical lights, a rudder and a fanlike propeller. Its operator allegedly demonstrated that the whole apparatus could become almost weightless before it rose and departed toward Newark. The narrative belongs to the 1897 airship press wave and provides no named witness, authenticated machine or independently verified demonstration. Its explanation involving birds' hollow bones overcoming gravity is not established physics. The imported hoax designation should remain a historical assessment, rather than an invented confession. The plate illustrates the anonymous newspaper story with human operators and its unusually detailed small airship.