History's First UFO Abduction in 1572? The Strange and Mysterious Tale of Hans Buchmann

 November 15, 1572.  

The weather in Kriesbuhl, a small picturesque farming village in the foothills of the Swiss Alps is cold, even for that time of year, but clear.

On that day, a Saturday, Hans Buchmann, an impoverished peasant farmer, has a debt to pay.  He owes sixteen florins, roughly the equivalent of $600 in today’s money, to a creditor in the nearby market town of Sempach.  Hans has been borrowing heavily against his small plot of land to make ends meet and provide for his family.

But no matter how much Hans borrows, the money seems to always disappear and his family remains impoverished.

Lucky for him this fall’s crop has been quite lucrative and he’s saved up the money to pay off his creditor.  Now in the crisp early morning sunlight Hans is preparing to walk the four miles to Sempach to pay off his debts.  Unfortunately, for Hans, the road from Kriesbuhl to Sempach is mostly uphill and through wooded terrain, but in November of 1572, though the temperatures have been falling steadily over the last several days, no snow has yet fallen on the foothills of the Swiss Alps.  

It is a journey that should take just under two hours each way, but Hans Buchman won’t return home for nearly three months.

Hans bundles up against the cold, putting on his woolen overcoat hat and mittens before grabbing his walking stick and departing.  Perhaps out of a sense of shame over the debts that he’s incurred, or perhaps because he has other intentions entirely, Hans leaves his house without telling either his wife, or two teenage sons, exactly where he’s going…

Two weeks later, Hans Buchman, dirty and disheveled, and suffering from a splitting headache, awakes to find himself curled up against a stone wall in an alleyway in a strange and unknown city.

His hat, mittens, overcoat and walking stick are nowhere to be seen and he is clothed in nothing more than a ragged shirt and loose fitting pants.  Clothes that seem to have once belonged to someone else.

He has no idea where he is.  He runs out into the street inquiring of everyone who passes by in German, “Where am I?  What city is this?”

But no one responds.  Everyone simply walks by this dirty, unkempt madman, supposing Buchmann to be nothing more than some drunken foreign beggar, the kind that is very commonplace in this cosmopolitan early modern city.

It is St. Andrew’s Day, some two weeks after November 15, 1572 and hundreds of men, women and children are out in the streets, as church bells ring and call the faithful to mass.

Hans sees a man dressed in a soldier’s uniform, not unlike those Hans has seen worn by soldiers in his native Sempach.  This soldier seems to be a man of authority, one of the many uniformed, heavily armed men that appear to dwell in this strange and overcrowded city.

“Sir,” Hans shouts in German as he runs up to the soldier, “my name is Hans Buchmann.  I was traveling to my native city of Sempach but seemed to have lost my way.  What city is this?”

  The soldier responds in perfect German, “This is Milan and you are a long way from Sempach.”

1500's Milan

Hans Buchmann, somehow, has ended up over 150 miles from home.  He had set out, two weeks ago, on a two hour’s journey from his native village of Kriesbuhl, a simple walk of four miles he had undertaken perhaps hundreds of times before, and ended up on the other side of the Alps in Italy, over a five days journey from his native village.

He has no idea how he got there.

The soldier who answered Hans’ desperate question, is as it turned out, Swiss and he is one of the many thousands of foreign mercenaries who regularly come to Milan to prop up that city’s defenses during the ongoing and interminable wars between the independent Italian city-states.

This soldier, along with other Swiss soldiers of fortune, helps Hans return home.  For Hans the journey home in winter, over high snow covered mountain passes is long and arduous.  It takes weeks for Hans Buchmann to reach Kriesbuhl.  By the time he reaches the doorstep of his farmhouse it is already the first week of February 1573.

In the interim, Hans’ two sons had set out along the same overland trail as Hans on the way to Sempach in search of their missing father.  They found Hans’ coat, hat, mittens and walking stick lying by the roadside at the edge of a forest outside of town, but upon reaching Sempach and inquiring of as many locals as they could find as to the possible whereabouts of their father, no one reported having seen him in at least two weeks.

Some residents of Sempach did report that they had seen Hans enter the town on the afternoon of November 15, 1572 and that he had stopped at a local tavern to have a drink, but after that the trail had gone cold.

During the sixteenth century it was common for towns and cities in central Europe to have a local chronicler, who would record events for posterity in a town chronicle, that would be kept in city record offices.  It appears that when Hans Buchmann, did eventually return home, and told his fantastical tale of having ended up, by means unknown over 150 miles away in Milan, Italy that he was questioned by both a chronicler and a magistrate from the nearby German city of Rothenburg.

Original Chronicle from 1573

Hans' tale is so improbable that, suspecting some form of foul play or subterfuge on the part of the debtor, the magistrate demands a full investigation into the matter and requests that Hans Buchmann present himself at the Rothenburg police station at once.

Under intense questioning by the magistrate, as recorded in the Rothenburg city chronicle for the year 1573, Hans Buchmann admitted that he had first set out on his journey to Sempach carrying sixteen florins because he owed the money to a man named Hans Schiirmann the proprietor of the Romerswill Inn in Sempach.

Sempach Romerswill Inn

Though the historical record is unclear as to whether or not Hans Buchmann ever explicitly stated what he exactly owed the money for, it would appear that the sixteen florins may have been some sort of drinking debt that he owed, like a bar tab gone out of control, since a 16th century inn was more akin to a modern tavern or dive bar rather than a sort of hotel.

Hans Buchmann said that he stopped at Schiirman’s home but that Schiirman was not there, and that unable to pay his debts at that moment, he then went to another local inn to have a drink.

It is at this point that Hans Buchmann’s story begins to get a little sketchy to say the least.  Buchmann admitted to drinking on the day of his disappearance, but he claimed he couldn’t remember exactly how much though he stated to the magistrate that, “it was just a little.”

He claimed that he left the unnamed tavern a few hours later, just before sunset and decided to set off on his way home figuring that he would pay his debt back to Schiirman on another, later date, when the proprietor of the Romerswill Inn was at home.

Hans Bruchmann told the magistrate and chronicler of Rothenburg that the last thing he could remember while walking along a wooded trail on the outskirts of Sempach was hearing a loud and insistent buzzing sound.  He said that he could recall looking up into the sky and seeing a bright light while being completely enveloped by a buzzing sound like a swarm of bees and lifted up into the night sky towards the light. 

The next thing that Hans said he could remember was waking up in an alleyway in Milan with a pounding headache two weeks later and over one-hundred and fifty miles away.

In her book on European folklore surrounding the holiday season entitled The Old Magic of Christmas (Llewellyn Publications 2013) author, historian and folklorist Linda Raedisch states of Hans Buchmann, “(W)hen he was first set upon, he thought he was under attack by a swarm of bees, but the buzzing then revealed itself into a terrible scraping of bows on fiddle strings.  We don’t know what really happened to Hans...but it is interesting that he should have mentioned how the buzzing of bees preceded his being lifted up and carried above the treetops.” (Raedisch 12)

Buzzing, noise and lights would indicate, perhaps the existence of some sort of craft, or motor, something that would have been completely unknown to a peasant farmer from the Swiss Alps in the year 1572.

It is also interesting to note that the night sky was extremely active with intriguing celestial phenomena at the time of Hans Buchmann’s supposed disappearance.  In fact, only four days prior on November 11, 1572, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe had become the first person in history to witness a supernova.  Brahe, using crude astronomical instruments, had observed and recorded an enormous explosion in the night sky, what he incorrectly deemed the “birth” of a new star in the constellation Cassiopeia.  In reality, what Brahe had seen, pretty much with his naked eye alone, was the death of a star, an explosion so enormous that it could easily be seen from billions of lightyears away.  The type of celestial event that would have been  readily visible to any extraterrestrial civilization anywhere in our galaxy.

Tycho Brahe's sketch of a Supernova

So, with all this talk of bright lights, buzzing and stars exploding in outer space was Hans Bruchmann the unsuspecting victim of history’s first ever verifiably recorded alien abduction?

Maybe, but maybe not.

In her book historian and folklorist Raedisch readily admits, “We don’t really know what happened to Hans...just before his disappearance he had borrowed some money without asking, so he had plenty of reason to fabricate the tale.” (Raedisch 12)

If his debt, was in fact a drinking debt, or if he never had the money to even pay back the debt in the first place, maybe he just conveniently decided to make himself disappear and then return once he supposed enough time had elapsed to allow him to think up a fanciful cover story and protect him from debtor’s prison.

Perhaps, Hans Buchmann simply went on a two week long drinking binge and wandered into Milan, or maybe, just maybe he ended up so far away from home via otherworldly means.

Hans Buchmann may have been history’s first documented victim of alien abduction, or he may simply have been a man filled with shame, who attempted to hide the truth about his debts and his addiction from his family.  History will never know for sure...