FT271


Accounts of flesh and blood raining down from the heavens have been recorded since the days of antiquity and witnessed by people from all over the world. Today, meteorologists and aerobiologists can explain the cause of many of these red rains as dust particles or bacteria. But what about reports of flesh falls? Pieces of flesh and gore have been known to fall from the sky, even in the days before powered flight. Some of the best examples of these events occurred in California in the 19th century, where eyewitnesses not only saw flesh and blood falling, but in some cases were even pelted by bits of meat.

The earliest flesh fall documented in California occurred in the summer of 1850 at a military outpost in Benicia, a bustl­ing town strategically located on the north shore of Carquinez Strait. The United States Army established a military install­ation here in 1849, which eventually came to be known as Benicia Barracks. Thanks to the military activity and the influx of people passing through to seek their fortunes in the California gold fields, Benicia was a hive of activity.

On 20 July 1851, pieces of flesh fell from a clear sky upon the military post at Benicia. Some of the soldiers were struck by the falling meat – including Major Robert Allen of the 2nd Infantry Regiment, the Assistant Quartermaster in charge of the Division Depot. The strange shower, which lasted nearly three minutes, scattered pieces of meat of various shapes and sizes over an area of ground 900ft long by 400ft wide (275 x 120m), or approximately five acres (2ha). The only weather of note was a strong westerly breeze, but no whirlwinds.

Word of this episode travelled fast. Four days after the unusual fall, a brief article appeared in the San Francisco Daily Herald describing the event: “The pieces were from the size of a pigeon’s egg up to that of an orange – the heaviest weighing three ounces [85g]. No birds were visible in the air at the time. Specimens of the meat, which is apparently beef, were preserved by Major Allen and the Surgeon of the Post. A piece that was examined three hours after it fell showed a portion of a small blood vessel, some of the sheath of a muscle and muscle fibre. It was slightly tainted.”[1]

Although one of the surgeons on duty at Benicia was solicited to write an account of this fall, he apparently never did so, or if he did compile such a report, it has long since been lost. Thus, the Benicia flesh fall escaped the scientific scrutiny that earl­ier flesh falls garnered, such as one that occurred near Lebanon, Tennessee, in 1841, which was studied in minute detail by scientists across the country.

A dozen years later, during the dark days of the American Civil War, a shower of flesh fell from a clear sky upon Sacramento, California’s state capital. On Wednesday, 25 March 1863, pieces of meat descended upon the home of a man identified as Mr Kiernan, who lived in the western part of the city on a small farm that occupied the block bordered by 18th, 19th, E and F Streets. Kiernan was outside with a friend, John Dean, when the shower occurred. They first noticed something unusual was going on when they spied Kiernan’s large flock of chickens eating something, which the two men discovered to be a fleshy substance they saw falling from the sky. Much to the chickens’ delight, the shower lasted a few moments. Before his chickens could consume all of the meat, Keirnan collected some of it for further study.

“This material fell in different-sized pieces or slices, the largest of which were three or four inches [8–10cm] in length, two inches [5cm] in width, and weighing nearly a quarter of a pound [113g],” wrote a corre­spondent for the Sacramento Daily Union. “In texture and substance, the material resembled that of liver, partially masticated or granulated. The grain was less distinct that that of beef. The sky at the time of this occurrence was extremely clear and free from clouds or mist.”[2]

Nine years after the Sacra­mento Flesh Fall, a similar incident took place nearly 100 miles (160km) away, near the head of San Francisco Bay at San José. This was the most thoroughly documented of the 19th-century falls of flesh in the area, thanks in no small part to the work of Dr Albert Kellogg and the California Academy of Sciences. Originally known as the California Academy of Natural Sciences, this San Francisco organisation was formed in 1853, where the group operated a very popular natural hist­ory museum. Among the association’s founders was Dr Kellogg, a man of many interests who was not only a physic­ian but also one of the foremost botanists of his time. He filled several leadership positions at the academy during his lifetime, and it was while serving as the group’s librarian in 1869 that he received details concerning a shower of flesh in San José.

This fall occurred in February 1869. The San Francisco Chron­icle mentions it in their 20 February 1869 edition, but does not specify its exact date. On the day in question, at 3pm local time, flesh fell from a clear sky, covering several acres. Several people witnessed the fall, with some being struck by meat as it rained down. Witnesses noted a variety of materials which, in addition to meat, included bone and a substance identified as “nerves”.[3] “The ground to the extent of about five acres [2ha] was covered with meat, which fell from a clear sky. One gentleman who was standing in the field was pelted with little chunks, and another made quite a collection of the fragments for the editor.”[4]

Samples of the materials were gathered together, along with accounts of the incident, by a Mr Houck, who sent them to San Francisco to be studied by the learned men of the Academy. At their regular meeting held on 1 March 1869, Dr Kellogg presented the materials to his colleagues, and a lively discussion followed amongst the 15 members present. Several theories were bandied about in an effort to explain the fall. Whirlwinds were suggested, but some felt there were pieces of bone too big to have been picked up and carried very far by this method. And there were no whirlwinds reported in San José at the time. There were also suggestions that regurgitating vultures were to blame, but eyewitnesses observed no birds overhead.[5]

In their final report, the scientists gave a detailed account of the event. “This meat was alleged to have fallen about 3 o’clock pm, when the sky was clear, and to have struck persons upon the shoulder. Reports were read from persons in San José, in which it was stated that flesh, brains, blood and bones were scattered over an area of 20 acres [8ha]. The samples of flesh introduced had a fishy smell.”[6]

Sadly, although the samples of meat and flesh from the 1869 San José Meat Shower were added to the museum’s world-renowned collections, scientists today are unable to study these unusual specimens, as they are believed to have been destroyed, along with most of the academy’s collections and archives, by the fire that ravaged San Francisco following the Great Earthquake of 1906.

Six months after the San Jose fall, another rain of flesh fell upon California, this one nearly 350 miles (560km) away in Los Nietos Township, just to the southwest of Los Angeles. Today, Los Nietos is part of suburban LA, but at the time of the incident this was a rural area made up of farms, ranches and fruit orchards. The fall of flesh occurred at noon on 1 August 1869 at the farm of Mr J Hudson, where people were gathering for a child’s funeral. The mourners were stunned when meat and blood fell from a perfectly clear sky, covering approximately two acres [0.8ha]of ground on the farm, including Mr Hudson’s nearby cornfield. The largest piece of meat measured 10 inches [25cm] in length.[7]

“The blood that lodged upon the corn blades and grass was mixed with a short, fine hair, resembling the outer coating of furred animals,” wrote a corre­spondent for the Los Angeles News. “The meat, which was found over the entire two acres [0.8ha], was in pieces ranging from fine particles to strips of six or eight [15–20cm] inches in length, and had the appearance of being freshly torn from some animal or animals. Mr Parker exhibited to us several pieces of the meat, varying from one to six inches [2.5–15cm] in length, one of which appeared to be the lights of some animal; another, picked up by a gentleman present, was the lower part of a heart, in perfect shape, and about one and a-half inches [3.8cm] long.”[8]

Word spread that samples of the meat from the strange fall were located in the offices of the Los Angeles News, and people swamped the place hoping to catch a glimpse of the mysterious material that had fallen from the sky. But members of the newspaper’s staff told a disappointed crowd that they had not kept any of the samples, merely examined those brought by the office by Mr Parker. The aforementioned correspondent for the paper summed up their view of the entire episode: “That the meat fell we cannot doubt. Even the persons of the neighbourhood are willing to vouch for that. Whence it came, we dare not say.”[9]

Just over a year after flesh fell on Los Nietos, another gory shower fell upon California. This incident took place on 15 September 1870 at the home of John Baldwin, who lived near Juapa in Riverside County. This time there were no huge chunks of meat and bone, just large clumps of what appeared to be coagulated blood. As with the earlier incidents, there were no storm clouds or birds flying overhead, just a clear sky.

An account from the local newspaper, the Guardian, gives some interesting details:“On the 15th instant, a shower of blood fell at the dwelling of Mr B. spattering the doorstep and the surrounding grounds. There had been only an instant before a perfect calm, without a cloud in the horizon, when suddenly a whirlwind arose, scattering everything in all directions, and leaving as the result, large clots of blood in the immediate vicinity of the house. The blood is yet to be seen, almost indelible, upon the planks, roof and vicinity of the house.”[10]

The final episode in this series of California flesh and blood showers took place in August of 1871 in the San Gabriel Valley, 13 miles (21km) east of Los Angeles at El Monte, a thriving community whose main claim to fame was being the western terminus of the Santa Fe Trail. In the 1870s, it was a rural area with many farms and ranches. But El Monte attracted international attention when word spread that a shower of flesh had fallen from the sky there.

Details of the event are sketchy, and there are no known scientific reports describing the nature of what fell. But word of the event spread around the world, and was even mentioned briefly in the New York Times. Remarkably, the best description of the incident was preserved in a newspaper published in New Zealand. “A report was current at Los Angles on the 4th ult. that a heavy shower of meat had fallen from the clouds, upon the corn fields of El Monte. About this time last year, a similar shower fell in Los Nietos, with these differences, then it was raw, now it is said to be ‘boiled’; then the blades of the standing corn were ‘drenched with blood’, now they are moistened with a kind of homeopathic soup.”[11] We hope further details of this incident will emerge in the future, and a more thorough description can be found of this intriguing “homeopathic soup”.

These showers of flesh, meat and blood were not the first such incidents recorded in the United States, nor were they the last. Flesh falls along the West Coast of the United States are less well-known than similar episodes in states east of the Mississippi, and accounts such as these from California are valuable, as they help shed light on one of the most unus­ual natural phenomena, which to this day continues to defy explanation.


Notes
1 San Francisco Daily Herald, 24 July 1851.
2 Sacramento Daily Union, 27 March 1863; see also Sydney Morning Herald, 2 June 1863.
3 Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, Volume IV, 1868–1872, pp46–47, hereinafter cited as Proceedings.
4 Atlanta Constitution, 30 March 1869.
5 Proceedings, p47.
6 Ibid.
7 San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Aug 1869.
8 Los Angeles News, quoted in California Teacher, Sept 1869.
9 Los Angeles News, quoted in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, 9 Aug 1869.
10 Guardian (San Bernardino) 30 July 1870; see also the Wellington Independent, 29 Sept 1870.
11 Grey River Argus (Greymouth, New Zealand), 6 Oct 1871; see also the New York Times, 22 Aug 1871.