Other, Albanian

Mihal Grameno

1871–1931Other, Albanian

Albanian nationalist, guerrilla, journalist and independence delegate whose memoir passage is cited as the earliest UFO account in Albania.

Mihal Grameno (1871–1931) was an Albanian nationalist, writer, journalist and politician from Korçë, in what is now southeastern Albania. He is known in Albanian history for his role in the struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire. He is also cited in UFO chronologies for a single passage in his memoirs that describes an unexplained object seen by his comrades in 1907. The UFO claim is a small footnote to a substantial public life, and it rests on secondary reporting rather than on any independent record.

Life and public career

Grameno was one of the four initial delegates from Korçë to the Albanian National Congress at Vlorë, which proclaimed independence on 28 November 1912. He and his colleagues were delayed by an Ottoman telegram blockade and reached Vlorë five days later, according to his Wikipedia biography. In 1907 he had joined the kachak guerrilla band of Çerçiz Topulli, which fought Ottoman troops in the region.

He founded the Orthodox League in Korçë in 1909 and edited its periodical, and he was arrested in 1910 over his work for Bashkimi i Kombit. After independence he edited the weekly Koha, which appeared in Korçë and, while he lived there from 1915 to 1919, in Jamestown, New York. He represented Albania at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and returned home in 1920. He continued writing through the 1920s and retired because of ill health.

His literary output includes the poem Vdekja (1903), the comedy Mallkimi i gjuhës shqipe (1905), the historical tragedy Vdekja e Piros (1906), the short-story collection Oxhaku and related stories (1909), the poetry volume Plagët (1912), and the memoir Kryengritja shqiptare (1925), which recounts his guerrilla years against Turkish and Greek forces.

The 1907 sighting

The UFO claim comes from a diary or memoir passage quoted in secondary chronologies. It describes a night when Topulli's fighters were posted on a high mountain. A shiny object flew in front of them, hung in the air for several minutes, and then disappeared. Wikipedia's list of reported UFO sightings records it as a 1907 Albanian entry under the name "Mihal Grameno UFO". Albanian-language coverage, such as a Telegrafi report, presents it as the first UFO report in Albania.

The sources disagree on where the passage appears and when it was written. Some place it in the 1925 memoir, others in a diary, and the dates range from 1907 to 1908. The English Wikipedia biography, which draws on academic histories of the Albanian national awakening, does not mention any UFO at all. The claim therefore has one textual source, no corroborating witness, and no independent record from the other fighters in the band.

Assessment

The biography is well documented. Grameno's political career, his newspaper work and his publications are attested in historical scholarship. The UFO passage is a different matter: it is a single, undated memoir line that later UFO writers have repeated. Nothing in the surviving record shows what the fighters saw, and an observation by night guerrillas on a mountain could have had many ordinary causes. A fair reading is that the passage is a historical curiosity in the literature of ufology, rather than evidence of anything.

The case is also a reminder that early UFO chronologies draw on material that was never written for that purpose. Entries such as this one were gathered from memoirs, newspapers and archives long after the events, and their inclusion says more about the compilers than about the original observers.

Legacy

Grameno is remembered in Albania chiefly as a patriot and writer, and his place in the independence story is secure. His UFO mention has circulated in Albanian-language media and in English-language lists of world UFO cases. Readers who want the biography should start with the sources below, and should treat the UFO passage as an unverified report that has been repeated rather than tested.

Sources

Notable claims

A shiny object hung in the air for several minutes above Topulli's fighters on a high mountain, around 1907–1908, according to a memoir passage cited in UFO chronologies.
The claim is the earliest UFO account attributed to Albania in these lists.