- On the morning of April 17th, 1966, police officers encountered
a structured, low-level UFO, and gave chase. Officers of the Portage County,
Ohio, Sheriff's Department first saw the object rise up from near ground
level, bathing them in light, near Ravenna, Ohio, about 5:00 A.M. Ordered
by the sergeant to pursue the object, they chased it for eighty-five miles
across the border into Pennsylvania, as it seemed to play a cat-and-mouse
game with them. Along the route, police officers from other jurisdictions
saw the object and joined in the chase.
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- Deputy Sheriff Dale Spaur and Mounted Deputy Wilbur "Barney"
Neff had left their car to investigate an apparently abandoned automobile
on Route 224. Spaur stated:
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- "I always look behind me so no one can come up behind
me. And when I looked in this wooded area behind us, I saw this thing.
At this time it was coming up...to about tree top level. I'd say about
one hundred feet. it started moving toward us.... As it came over the trees,
I looked at Barney and he was still watching the car...and he didn't say
nothing and the thing kept getting brighter and the area started to get
light...I told him to look over his shoulder, and he did.
-
- He just stood there with his mouth open for a minute,
as bright as it was, and he looked down. And I started looking down and
I looked at my hands and my clothes weren't burning or anything, when it
stopped right over on top of us. The only thing, the only sound in the
whole area was a hum...like a transformer being loaded or an overloaded
transformer when it changes....
-
- I was petrified, and, uh, so I moved my right foot, and
everything seemed to work all right. And evidently he made the same decision
I did, to get something between me and it, or us and it, or whatever you
would say. So we both went for the car, we got in the car and we sat there...."
-
- As they watched, the UFO moved toward the east, and then
stopped again. Spaur reported the movement to the dispatcher. The UFO was
now about 250 feet away, and was brilliantly lighting up the area ("It
was very bright; it'd make your eyes water," Spaur said.) Sergeant
Schoenfelt, off duty at the station, told them to follow it and keep it
under observation while they tried to get a photo unit to the scene.
-
- Spear and Neff turned south on Route 183, then back east
on Route 224, which placed the object to their right. "At this time,"
said Spaur. "it came straight south, just one motion, buddy, just
a smooth glide..." and began moving east with them pacing it, just
to their right at an estimated altitude of 300-500 feet, illuminating the
ground beneath it. Once more the UFO darted to the north, now left of the
car, when they had to speed up to over 100 mph to keep pace with it.
-
- As the sky became brighter with predawn light, Spaur
and Neff saw the UFO in silhouette, with a vertical projection at its rear.
The object began to take on a metallic appearance as the chase continued.
Spaur kept up a running conversation with other police cars that were trying
to catch up with them. Once when they made a wrong turn at an intersection,
the object stopped, then turned and came back to their position.
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- Police Officer Wayne Huston of East Palestine, Ohio,
situated near the Pennsylvania border, had been monitoring the radio broadcasts
and was parked at an intersection he knew the Portage County officers would
be passing soon. Shortly afterward he saw the UFO pass by with the sheriff's
cruiser in hot pursuit. He swung out and joined the chase. At Conway, Pennsylvania,
Spaur spotted another parked police car and stopped to enlist his aid,
since their Cruiser was almost out of gas. The Pennsylvania officer called
his dispatcher.
-
- According to Spaur, as the four officers stood and watched
the UFO, which had stopped and was hovering, there was traffic on the radio
about jets being scrambled to chase the UFO, and "...we could see
these planes coming in...When they started talking about fighter planes,
it was just as if that thing heard every word that was said; it went PSSSSSHHEW,
straight up; and I mean when it went up, friend, it didn't play no games;
it went straight up."
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- The Air Force "identified" the UFO as a satellite,
seen part of the time, and confused with the planet Venus. Under pressure
from Ohio officials, Major Hector Quintanilla, chief of Project Blue Book,
had an intense confrontations with witnesses and refused to change the
identification, although it was pointed out to him that they had seen the
UFO in addition to Venus and the moon at the conclusion of the observation.
Major Quintanilla also denied that any jets had been scrambled.
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- William B. Weitzel conducted an exhaustive investigation
on behalf of the NAtional Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena
(NICAP), obtaining taped interviews, signed statements, sketches, and all
pertinent data which was assembled into a massive report that was made
available to congressional investigators. When the University Of Colorado
Ufo Project was initiated in 1966, a copy of Weitzels report was hand-delivered
to the director, Dr. Edward U. Condon, for his consideration. The Condon
Report, published two years later, does not mention the case.
-
- This case was actually what inspired the UFO chase scene
in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".
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- http://www.aliensthetruth.com/sighting_ohiochase.html
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