UFOs: A Fixture In Ohio's Skies

Tales of unknown abound in area

It's a dark clear night. The stars are laid out in a pattern across the sky, sparkling like jewels against the blackness of space.

If it's a clear and dark enough night - preferably during a new moon or before Earth's sister planet rises into the sky - you might even see some of those stars move, tiny lights flashing, as they make their way across the planetarium of the night.

Many are airplanes, taking passengers on their way across the country or the world to distant destinations.

But many believe these tiny lights might also be travelers from a more distant realm, maybe even from other planets. Exactly what is a UFO?

That question has fascinated and frightened Americans for many years, with such stories as aliens crashing in Roswell, N.M., alien abductions and close encounters of any kind. Movies have played on those fears, with Martians invading in "War of the Worlds," aliens demanding Earth's surrender in "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers," creatures using human hosts to bear their children in "Aliens" and monstrous goo from a meteor eating everyone in its path in "The Blob."

Of course, there are the more cerebral offerings of outer space beings, such as Michael Rennie's compassionate Klatu in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" accompanied by the fearsome robot policeman, Gort. The movie was an undisguised protest of the misuse of nuclear weapons and what the consequences might be.

Even "Star Trek," Gene Rodenberry's vision of a utopian future for mankind in space, still has its Klingons, Romulans and the hideous half-human, half-machine Borg.

"Men in Black" even went so far as acknowledging aliens on earth, but the organization worked to prevent the world from knowing the truth because of the panic that would ensue.

That's just a tip of the iceberg of human imagination when it comes to outer space.

What are people seeing when they make a report of a UFO?

In recent months, the National UFO Reporting Center, on the Internet at nuforc.ufoarchive.com, has listed a number of sightings in Ohio, with one of the most recent coming from Conneaut on Sept. 19. Witnesses reported a bright light changing course as it moved across the sky at great speed.

Another sighting in mid-July had multiple red lights traveling north near Route 11 at great speed. Witnesses said they followed the lights for 40 miles between East Liverpool and Ashtabula. Statements said the sightings were reported to the "Ashtabula County State Highway Patrol" office, but officials at the Ohio Highway Patrol office in Saybrook as well as the county sheriff's department deny any knowledge of the report.

Still another area sighting took place July 15 in Madison, when a cigar-shaped object was reported to have streaked across the sky at a high rate of speed.

There also are a number of historic reports that have been related in these pages from the past few decades. One of the best known of the incidents was the Great Meteor of 1966 that appeared in the night sky in September of that year. A huge fireball was seen across much of the eastern United States and Canada. It was bright enough to "turn night into day" for a few minutes. Pieces of the object reportedly fell into a field near Marion, Ind., and in Huntsville, Ontario, 120 miles north of Toronto. The image was so vivid that some callers told the U.S. Coast Guard station in Ashtabula that a lake freighter was on fire.

While this object had a reasonable explanation, other area sightings do not. An object was reported to have buzzed the Geneva area in May 1964, prompting a frantic call from a driver to the OHP. The driver said the object was hidden in the bushes on the south side of Interstate 90 and was described as big as a tractor-trailer and bright orange. The object hovered about eight feet of the ground before zooming skyward to a height of 300 to 400 feet.

Yet, many of these sightings are officially denied, or at least ignored by most officials. The Air Force's policy over the years has been to deny the existence of extraterrestrial vehicles, giving such explanations as swamp gas, weather balloons, hoaxes or mistaken conventional craft.

However, a recent edition of Popular Mechanics reported uncovering government documents about a nuclear-powered vehicle that might be another explanation. The saucer-shaped craft would be launched into space and carry nuclear weapons to attack the Soviet Union should war become a reality. Artists renditions of the craft lend credence to many of the "saucer" sightings in recent years. Extraterrestrial or military weapons?

Who knows for sure?

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Ashtabula Star Beacon / OH | By John A. Childress - November 6 2000