by Wendy Ban, MUFON of Ohio

Every UFO researcher has a file of sighting reports which, though tantalizing or worthy in some regard, are almost impossible to investigate because they lack crucial data, like the year, month and day of occurrence, or decades have passed since the events. Such cases typically remain unreported. These two sightings from the 1960s are essentially anecdotal, but I offer them for two reasons. Both took place in the same time frame, separated by at most two years, and in the same geographic area. The witness in the first report (Darlene B.) is a co-worker of mine with a penchant for detail. A high-school student at the time of her sighting, she had a very close view of the UFO and was able to provide me with a sketch based on notes she had recorded at the time. The witness in the second report (Kay B.) now retired, was a career science teacher at Sheridan High School and took an exceptionally analytical approach to the matter of her experience. The witness in the first case brought the second case to my attention.

Just before dusk on Halloween in 1963, 1964, or 1965 (most likely 1965), Darlene saw a large noiseless cigar shaped object over the Thorneville, Ohio cemetery. She was standing in the front yard across from the cemetery, and when she first spotted the object, it was moving south-to-north from the direction of Lancaster to Newark at a very slow rate of speed and at low altitude. At its closest approach, it just cleared the tops of trees and the neighbor's house. At that point, Darlene could fairly reliably estimate the object's size at approximately 200 feet long by 60 feet wide, and she had a clear close view of both its bottom and side for a couple of minutes.

The bottom was textured in appearance, with "indentations" in a crosshatched design. There were two large, dark circular structures that appeared to be slatted or bladed, in a manner somewhat resembling fans. It was not clear whether the bladed structures were rotating. From the side, the object was patterned with numerous rectangular shapes resembling windows, but the "windows" toward the center glowed noticeably brighter than those at the extremities. The object's motion was steady, that is, it did not appear to drift with the wind. (Darlene did not note the wind conditions in her recollections.)

As the object moved away, Darlene ran down the driveway to keep it in view. At that point the object suddenly began moving at a very high rate of speed and almost instantly appeared to vanish. The witness remembers the evening as clear (not rainy or foggy), and she is quite sure that the object accelerated and then vanished and did not simply become obscure to vision.

The sighting greatly impressed her, but she was reluctant to discuss it with anybody. She was also greatly impressed and a little frightened when her high-school science teacher described a sighting she had in the same time frame over Glenford, Ohio, approximately four miles due east of Thorneville. Kay B. supplied me with the details of her sighting in a telephone interview.

Kay pinpoints the date of her sighting as the evening the first episode of the television show F-Troop aired. She, her husband, their elementary school aged son and a teenaged boy were on the front porch of her house in Glenford. Father and son went into the house because the son was eager to tune in the show, and shortly the boy started to follow them. As Kay turned to do the same, a fluorescent orange object at the top of the hills about one mile distant attracted her attention.

The object resembled a dinner plate and was slowly gliding over the hills with a peculiar motion resembling a manta ray maneuvering through water. It closely followed the contours of the land, skimming the tops of the ridges, and occasionally flickering out of view. She called for the others to come and look, but as the teenager responded and stepped out on the porch, the object disappeared behind a ridge. She hesitated to estimate the object's size because she feels the glow may have mislead her perception, but it was large, perhaps 30 feet in diameter.