It was between 4:00 and 4:30 A.M. on a Sunday. Leslie Neal, a 21-year-old student at Ohio University, had stayed out late watching TV with friends and she was hurrying home to get a few hours sleep before the new busy day would begin. She
was driving east bound on state Route 37 east of Lancaster, Ohio in Rush Creek Township and was approaching the intersection with Route 564 less than a mile north of Bremen. The weather was a bit foggy; it had rained earlier in the evening,
as she remembers. She had just passed Thomas Road which enters Route 37 from the north when she noticed a light in the dark field to her left. She glanced over and what she saw frightened her.
A large circular disc as big as a house hovered over the field about two hundred yards to her left. It was lighted by small circular lights around its middle and an- other diffuse light that was coming from its bottom. The color of these lights was
white, with a touch of yellow, much like an incandescent bulb. The disc was clearly hovering over the field; it had not touched down. Something that looked like a "ramp" was on the bottom right of the object, although Leslie could see no entry way into
the object that would signify that this was truly a door of some sort. This ramp seemed to be rotating clockwise around the bottom of the disc. The lights around the object’s center did not move. She glanced away for a moment to look at the road and
when she looked back the ramp was on the left side of the object.
At that moment Leslie crossed a single line railroad track that is situated on a north/south axis between Thomas Road and Route 664. At this moment the car radio, which had been playing, went dead. She was well past the object, still driving to the
east. Leslie, now becoming more concerned, continued east on Route 37 and up a hill. At the top of this hill, which rose perhaps 70 or 80 feet in elevation above the field, intersection and railroad track, was a grave yard on the south side of the
road. At this point Leslie turned and glanced back. She could still see the object, now apparently rising up into the sky. At this point her radio came back on. She was approximately eight tenths of a mile from the object at this moment. At no time was her
automobile’s engine or headlights affected. She turned her attention back to the road and hurried home to call her boy friend to tell him of the event. She did not look back again. She estimates she had the disc in view for between 30 and 45
seconds.
Leslie says she slept well that night. She had no unusual dreams. She was scared when the sighting occurred, but was not frightened the next morning when she told her mother about the event. When specifically asked, she stated that she did not
experience any missing time. She had no unusual experiences in her life before this event and has had none in the two years since.
Several days after Leslie’s sighting, her father drove by the site where the event occurred and saw that the area of the field over which the object hovered was dark in color. The next year, the plants in that area appeared to be somewhat greener. No
test samples were taken from this area, unfortunately, and it appears to be back to normal this year. Attempts will be made to confirm this observation. So far, attempts to contact people living in the immediate area have been unsuccessful.
