Additional landing cases were reported in Lexisburg, Indiana, Mansfield, Ohio, and Vicksburg, Michigan on March 30 and 31. In two cases, an unidentified object followed or flew past an automobile; the other involved a sighting of a short humanoid inside a landed craft. On April 1 near Tangier, Oklahoma, a man who was driving at night reached a hilltop and saw a green object flying north rapidly, giving off a high-pitched noise and intense heat. His car engine died. Two close-range sightings of UFO craft by civilians in New York State occurred on April 5, and another one that night took place in Tennessee.93
THE PORTAGE COUNTY SIGHTINGS
On April 17, an amazing UFO sighting, high-speed police chase, and possible air force jet interception took place in Portage County, Ohio, and across the Pennsylvania border. The case involved at least eight police officers and several civilians, incredible air force stonewalling and investigative incompetence, and several ruined careers.
At 5 A.M. on the seventeenth, four miles east of Randolph, Ohio, and shortly after returning from an accident scene, Portage County Deputy Sheriff Dale F. Spaur, traveling with Wilbur Neff (an auxiliary deputy whose main occupation was airport mechanic), saw a rusty car parked on the highway’s shoulder. Spaur got out to inspect the vehicle, while Neff stood by in front of the patrol car. As Spaur glanced over his right shoulder, he saw a moving light through the trees at the top of a hill to the west, headed in his direction. Spaur was intrigued, since only fifteen minutes earlier, he and Neff had overheard radio traffic between Portage and Summit counties about a report of a large, bright object. It had gotten some laughs, but now Spaur realized that he was looking at the probable source of the report. At 5 A.M., it was still dark, but Spaur and Neff both described this object as extremely bright, enough to cause Spaur’s eyes to water. It passed over the road, then hovered fifty to one hundred feet in the air. Spaur and Neff raced back to their car, and Spaur contacted the sheriff’s office, which told him to wait there until a car with a camera arrived.
Spaur did not wait very long: the object ascended vertically to three hundred or four hundred feet, getting brighter all the while, and emitted a humming noise. It then hovered some more. Spaur drove toward it, and he and Neff could now see it was perhaps forty feet in diameter and about twenty feet thick, a perfect oval shape. Soon, the object began to ascend and move away. Spaur followed it down Route 224 and was urged over the radio to shoot at the object, which he refused to do. Very quickly, he was driving at 100 mph. The object was so bright that Spaur hardly needed his headlights to drive. As the object reached Mahoning County, the pursuit was being broadcast over police radios in three counties. At this point the police car with the camera misunderstood the directions and got lost.
At Canfield, Ohio, Spaur and Neff continued to chase the object. They noticed the object become more clearly visible as the sun continued to rise, or perhaps they were just becoming accustomed to the object. Either way, they now discerned a metallic appearance, domelike top, and a long antenna protruding from the rear-center of the object. The object seemed to slow down for them when they had to slow down. As the officers neared East Palestine, Ohio, Patrolman H. Wayne Huston, who had been following the chase on his radio, also saw the object. Huston watched it go overhead and said “it was brighter than the sun when it came up.” He followed Spaur and Neff, at times reaching 100 mph.
Just before 5:30 A.M.—nearly thirty minutes into the chase—in Salem, Ohio, two police officers near the border with Pennsylvania, who had been listening to the chase on the radio, saw the object. They described it as “a bright ball,” much larger than a jet, of unvarying brightness in the distance. They also saw three jets following it. Columbiana County Sheriff’s Deputy Dave Brothers followed the commotion on the radio and also saw three airplanes. An AP report later stated that Air Force Reserve pilots out of Youngstown attempted to follow the object, but that its speed, “estimated at one hundred miles an hour,” was too slow for them.
