On the eve of Halloween in 1938, Orson Welles mystified six million American listeners with his radio spoof of “War of The Worlds,” based upon H.G. Wells’ novel by the same name and published 40 years earlier. Vanity Fair magazine in 2015 called the broadcast “the world’s first viral fake-news media event.”

Ever since that broadcast, claims of UFOs in the skies—and of aliens abducting humans before returning them like an unwanted birthday gift—are commonplace. The federal government is currently re-investigating claims of sightings, from the 1950s to today. That stated, consider this tale told 127 years ago by a Civil War veteran and journalist.

Some 42 years before Welles aired his “War of the Worlds,” and two years before Wells published his original story in 1898, another H.G.—H.G. Shaw—claimed he and a friend came face to face with a trio of extraterrestrials near the San Joaquin County community of Lodi.

Henry Glenville Shaw served as a 1^stLt. with the 125^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War; after which he embarked upon a long career as a newspaperman in Stockton and San Francisco. He wrote of his close encounter with three of a very different kind in the November 27, 1896, edition of the Stockton Evening Mail.

Guiding a horse-drawn buggy along a canal near Lodi one evening, Shaw and friend, Camille Spooner, came upon three unusual beings in a field.

“We were jogging along quietly when the horse stopped suddenly and gave a snort of terror,” Shaw wrote. “Looking up we beheld three strange beings. They resembled humans in many respects, but still they were not like anything I had ever seen. They were nearly or quite seven feet high and very slender. We were both somewhat startled, as you may readily imagine, and the first impulse was to drive on. The horse, however, refused to budge; and when we saw that we were being regarded more with an air of curiosity than anything else, we concluded to get out and investigate.”

When he spoke to these visitors, they “warbled” to each other as each party sized up the other. Shaw described them as wearing no form of clothing. Their skin was velvety, their heads and faces hairless, they had small ears, big eyes and noses with “the appearance of polished ivory.”

“I noticed, further, that their hands were quite small and delicate, and that their fingers were without nails,” Shaw wrote. “Their feet, however, were nearly twice as long as those of an ordinary man, though they were narrow, and the toes were also long and slender. I noticed, too, that they were able to use their feet and toes much the same as a monkey; in fact, they appeared to have much better use of their feet than their hands.”

They also were virtually weightless.

“As one of them came close to me I reached out to touch him, and placing my hand under his elbow pressed gently upward, and lo and behold I lifted him from the ground with scarcely an effort. I should judge that the specific gravity of the creature was less than an ounce. It was then that I observed him try to grasp the earth with his toes to prevent my lifting him. They were graceful to a degree, and more divinely beautiful than anything I ever beheld.”

He marveled at the egg-sized object each creature held in hand.

“Upon holding them up and partly opening the hand, these substances emitted the most remarkable, intense and penetrating light one can imagine,” Shaw wrote. “Notwithstanding its intensity, it had no unpleasant effect upon our eyes, and we found we could gaze directly at it. It seemed to me to be some sort of luminous mineral, though they had complete control of it.”

(Think of the illuminated tip of the critter’s index finger in “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” movie.”)

What they couldn’t handle was Shaw himself.

“One of them, at a signal from one who appeared to be the leader, attempted to lift me, probably with the intention of carrying me away,” Shaw wrote. “Although I made not the slightest resistance he could not move me, and finally the three of them tried it without the slightest success. They appeared to have no muscular power outside of being able to move their own limbs.”

They gave up trying to pilfer him and turned back toward the Woodbridge Canal. Shaw and his friend saw a huge spaceship hovering about 20 feet above the water.

“It was 150 feet in length at least, though probably not over twenty feet in diameter at the widest part,” Shaw wrote. “It was pointed at both ends, and outside of a large rudder there was no visible machinery.”

The visitors headed toward it, “… not as you or I walk, but with a swaying motion, their feet only touching the ground at intervals of about fifteen feet,” Shaw wrote. “We followed them as rapidly as possible, and reached the bridge as they were about to embark. With a little spring they rose to the machine, opened a door in the side, and disappeared within. I do not know of what the affair was built, but just before it started I struck it with a rock and it gave no sound. It went through the air very rapidly and expanded and contracted with a muscular motion, and was soon out of sight.”

One last thing: Shaw theorized that visitors were from the Red Planet.

“Those we beheld were inhabitants of Mars who have been sent to the earth for the purpose of securing one of its inhabitants.”

An original thought? Hardly. Earthlings began writing fiction about Mars and Martians in the mid-1700s. But for modern times at least, H.G. Shaw predated H.G. Wells and Orson Welles.

The difference between Shaw’s story and theirs? That was his story, and he took it with him to his grave in 1907.

Happy Halloween!