Nigel Watson, in time, began reporting on his research into a March–May 1909 panic involving the belief that German airships were spying on Britain. Phantom airship flaps would eventually be catalogued from a diverse set of places like New Zealand in 1909, Russia & Poland in 1892, Canada in 1896, Washington state in 1908, Denmark in 1908, South Africa in 1914, and Norway in 1914-16. These flaps generally involved cigar-shaped craft more reminiscent of Zeppelins than extraterrestrial spacecraft and were attended by rumors of foreign spies and spy networks. They often had their own forms of physical evidences, multiple witnesses to crafts with improbable details, and surreal close encounters. The rumors all had idiosyncratic aspects which pointed to a need to interpret them in terms of the contemporary societal backdrop – often tensions about impending war, sometimes political conflicts within the society.