At least some reports at the time were of heavenly armies and other fantastic things. So at the time the phenomenon was not described (at least universally) as aurora.

The article - written much later - assumes that it was in fact an aurora. The comment I replied to proposed "tl;dr: IMO they were probably high on wacky loaf." Which is an alternate explanation that doesn't really match the fact that this was seen all over the country on the same night, and not other nights.