by Jim Spangler
Secondary investigators: Dr. Irena Scott and William E. Jones
Selma, Ohio is located in Madison County, 2 miles southwest of South Charleston just off Route 42 on Selma Pike and 4 miles directly east of Yellow Springs. Springfield is 4 1/2 miles to the northwest. The area is primarily agricultural, with a minimal population density. The geography around Selma is mostly rolling fields which allows for a line of sight to almost any point within several miles. Woods dot the area. On occasion, a flight path into Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton lies directly over the community. The people in this area know what airplanes look and sound like.
Our witness to this sighting, who we shall name Phil, has experienced several other UFO sightings in his life, all associated with just lights in the sky at a distance of between one and five miles. These other sightings didn't excite him; he realized that they likely had a prosaic explanation. This sighting was different.
Phil and his wife and children live in a house on the Selma Pike just outside of Selma across Route 42 which forms the northwest boundary of the community. There are a few houses along Route 42 between his house and Selma and there is also a house directly across the street from him. As he and his family face that house from his front porch, they are looking to the southeast. To the right is a large open field that extends approximately 3/4 of a mile to Chillicothe Pike which parallels Selma Pike. It is from this field that something arose which caught the attention of Phil and his wife.
It was March 2, 1995 at about 10:20 p.m. in the evening. Phil was in the living room reading. He happened to glance out the window and noticed lights which he assumed was from a truck being driven through the field across the road. Phil recounts the experience.
"I pointed out this truck to my wife who started watching it from the side window where I work on my computer. She then went outside [to the front porch] to get a better view because we do not see too many people driving in the fields around here. After she had been outside for a few minutes she called to me to come outside quick! By the time I got outside, the truck had turned off the two headlights which made it look like a vehicle and was [it] was rising up out of the field. It slowly rose to about 200 feet high and then proceeded to cross the road and on to slowly circle our house.
"We watched in amazement as this thing very slowly circled our house no more than 200 feet away from us. It made a very low hum type noise, had white, red and green flashing lights. We were very close to this thing and yet we could not see any craft details. From the position of the lights from front to back it was at least 100 feet long.
"As this thing was going around our house the phone started to ring. I thought it was my neighbor calling to say that they were seeing something strange in the sky. Needless to say we did not go into answer the phone, thinking the answering machine would take the message.
"When the sighting was over I checked the answering machine to see who called. There was no message, so I called my neighbor to see if he had called and if he had seen it. They told me that they did not call, but his wife told us that she had seen the same thing happen with a friend of hers in October 1994. Same [appearing] craft, same pattern of lights, [and it also circled] our house."
The craft, or whatever it was, took several minutes to circle the house and those nearby, before it finally disappeared in the night sky to the southeast. During part of the sighting Phil and his wife viewed the object from the side yard of their home. When asked how much angular distance the craft took up while it was moving to the north of the house, Phil raised up his hands and spread them apart about 2 and 1/2 feet. The angular distance above the ground at this point was about 40 degrees.
Phil thought that the object may have left a mark far out into the field, but this could not be confirmed in September 1995 when our interview took place. Chances are that the object did not make a landing, at least when Phil first saw the object, because the field drops down into a shallow valley not far from the road. The appearance that the craft - then thought to be a truck - was on the ground was an illusion. At that location it would have been several feet off the ground when it was viewed from their living room.
No shape or form could be seen behind the lights, which formed a straight line in the sky. Given the odd humming noise and the flight path of the craft, it is unlikely that this was a conventional airplane or helicopter. Phil and his wife have never seen anything like this in the years they have lived near Selma. They often see aircraft flying into WPAFB, so they have some familiarity with the type of aircraft that frequent the area. It remains classified as unidentified.
Follow up on this case is planned. Several attempts to interview Phil's neighbor have failed, but we will try again. A neighborhood survey was undertaken on a sunny October Saturday afternoon in the area to the southeast and north to see if anyone had seen anything the same evening. Interestingly, after talking to people in over thirty households, no one reported seeing anything that could be a UFO or flying saucer anytime in their lives, and most of them had lived in the area for years. The one exception was a man who, when he was a young boy, reported having seen a dark quiet shape in the sky when he and a childhood friend were camping out in his parents' back yard.
