Ohio UFO Chase , Portage County April 17, 1966

Portage County UFO Chase

One of the most dramatic encounters by police officers with an apparently structured, low-level UFO occurred in the early morning of April 17, 1966. Officers of the Portage County, Ohio, Sheriff's Department first saw the object rise up from near ground level, bathing them in light, near Ravenna, Ohio, about 5:00 A.M.

Ordered by the sergeant to pursue the object, they chased it for eighty-five miles across the border into Pennsylvania, as it seemed to play a cat-and-mouse game with them. Along the route, police officers from other jurisdictions saw the object and joined in the chase.

Deputy Sheriff Dale Spaur and Mounted Deputy Wilbur 'Barney’ Neff had left their scout car to investigate an apparently abandoned automobile on Route 224. Spaur described the sighting in these words:

“I always look behind me so no one can come up behind me. And when I looked in this wooded area behind us, I saw this thing. At this time it was coming up . . . to about tree top level. I'd say about one hundred feet. it started moving toward us...

As it came over the trees, I looked at Barney and he was still watching the car . . . and he didn't say nothing and the thing kept getting brighter and the area started to get light. . . I told him to look over his shoulder, and he did.

"He just stood there with his mouth open for a minute, as bright as it was, and he looked down. And I started looking down and I looked at my hands and my clothes weren't burning or anything, when it stopped right over on top of us. The only thing, the only sound in the whole area was a hum . . . like a transformer being loaded or an overloaded transformer when it changes. . .

"I was petrified, and, uh, so I moved my right foot, and everything seemed to work all right. And evidently he made the same decision I did, to get something between me and it, or us and it, or whatever you would say. So we both went for the car, we got in the car and we sat there..."

As they watched, the UFO moved toward the east, and then stopped again. Spaur picked up the microphone and reported to the dispatcher. At this time, the object was about 250 feet away, brilliantly lighting up the area ("It was very bright; it'd make your eyes water," Spaur said.) Sergeant Schoenfelt, off duty at the station, told them to follow it and keep it under observation while they tried to get a photo unit to the scene.

Spear and Neff turned south on Route 183, then back east on Route 224, which placed the object to their right, and out the left window. “At this time,” said Spaur. "it came straight south, just one motion, buddy, just a smooth glide . . ."and began moving east with them pacing it, just to their right at an estimated altitude of 300-500 feet, illuminating the ground beneath it. Once more the UFO darted to the north, now left of the car, and they sped up to over 100 mph to keep pace with it.

As the sky became brighter with predawn light, Spaur and Neff saw the UFO in silhouette, with a vertical projection at its rear. The object began to take on a metallic appearance as the chase continued.

Spaur kept up a running conversation with other police cars that were trying to catch up with them. Once when they made a wrong turn at an intersection, the object stopped, then turned and came back to their position.

Police Officer Wayne Huston of East Palestine, Ohio, situated near the Pennsylvania border, had been monitoring the radio broadcasts and was parked at an intersection he knew the Portage County officers would he passing soon. Shortly afterward he saw the UFO pass by with the sheriff's cruiser in hot pursuit.

He swung out and joined the chase. At Conway, Pennsylvania, Spaur spotted another parked police car and stopped to enlist his aid, since their Cruiser was almost out of gas. The Pennsylvania officer called his dispatcher.

According to Spaur, as the four officers stood and watched the UFO, which had stopped and was hovering, there was traffic on the radio about jets being scrambled to chase the UFO, and ". . . we could see these planes coming in.... When they started talking about fighter planes, it was just as if that thing head every word that was said; it went PSSSSSHHEW, straight up; and I mean when it went up, friend, it didn't play no games; it went straight up” (Transcript of taped interview with Dale Spaur).

The Air Force "identified" the UFO as a satellite, seen part of the time, and confused with the planet Venus. Under pressure from Ohio officials, Major Hector Quintanilla, chief of PROJECT BLUE BOOK, had an acrimonious confrontation with witnesses and refused to change the identification, although it was pointed out to him that they had seen the UFO in addition to Venus and the moon at the conclusion of the observation. Major Quintanilla also denied that any jets had been scrambled.

William B. Weitzel conducted an exhaustive investigation on behalf of the NATIONAL INVESTIGATIONS COMMITTEE ON AERIAL PHENOMENA (NICAP), obtaining taped interviews, signed statements, sketches, and all pertinent data which was assembled into a massive report that was made available to congressional investigators.

When the UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO UFO PROJECT was initiated in 1966, a copy of Weitzel’s report was hand-delivered to the director, Dr. Edward U. CONDON, for his consideration. The CONDON REPORT, published two years later, does not mention the case.

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The investigation by Major Quintanilla actually consisted in a two minutes and a half phone call to the sole Dale Spaur, starting with this question: "tell me about this mirage you saw." Then a second one minute and a half phone was passed again only to Dale Spaur. According to a written and signed testimony by Spaur, Quintanilla wanted him to sign a text specifying that the sighting lasted only a few minutes. When Spaur protested that it was at least a 60 miles car chase covering two states, Quintanilla put an end to the conversation. It required Congressional pressures to have Quintanilla make his way to Ravenna to meet and interview Spaur and Neff. This time, Weitzel was there because Spaur asked him to tape his interview with Quintanilla. A partial transcription of the tape reproduced in Dr. J. Allen Hynek's first book "The UFO Experience," is very telling of the ways and manner of Quintanilla when he interrogated UFO witnesses.

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Police chief Gerald Buchert was on duty in Mantua when he heard over his radio that strange lights were headed east in his direction. He raced home for his camera, and with his wife at his side, took a single photograph of the object glowing in the sky. Buchert quickly developed his film and contacted the FBI, who referred him to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Major Hector Quintanilla, head of the UFO debunking Project Blue Book, asked Buchert to send the negatives to him. Later, Quintanilla issued a press release stating that his film was “severely fogged” and claimed that the UFO was a processing defect. He went on to say that the officers involved had chased the planet Venus.

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Police Chief Gerald Buchert of Mantua photographed the object from in front of his home. The Air Force told him not to release the photo, but The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the photo showed an object that was like two saucers put together, with a light upper saucer upside down over a dark lower saucer. The picture was only seen by a reporter and Mr. Weitzel, NICAP investigator, who was not convinced, but it was never available for analysis.

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The sheriff’s office codenamed the UFO Floyd, Spaur’s middle name, to not tip off civilians listening to police bands. In June, while driving down I-80, Spaur saw it again. “Floyd’s here with me,” he radioed. He waited 10 to 15 minutes in the car, his head down, not wanting to see. When he finally looked up, Floyd was gone.

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The men who were involved in this incident suffered for it. They were hounded by the media and ridiculed by others. Buchert and Neff stopped talking about the incident to anyone. Panzenella received so many phone calls about the incident that he finally had his phone disconnected. Huston quit the police department and moved to Seattle, Washington, where he became a bus driver, changing his preferred name from Wayne to Harold. Spaur's life was ruined. He was hounded even worse than the others. He began to have personal problems that culminated in his arrest for the assault and battery of his wife. He turned in his badge and made a meager living as a painter. His wife divorced him.

Spaur said:

"If I could change all that I have done in my life, I would change just one thing. And that would be the night we chased that damn thing. That saucer."

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After covering the history of UFOs from 1947 onward, McDonald speaks about one of the cases that he felt literally dragged him into the whole controversy; Portage County, Ravenna Ohio, April 17th, 1966, (Spaur-Neff case).

This case of April 17th, 1966 is a beautiful illustration of how the percentage of unidentified shall be reduced to a minimum.

This one was explained in the 1st instance, in the 2nd instance and at present, by Project Blue Book as Echo Satellite and Venus, in the following (manner) sequence.

Air Force Explanation

The officers saw a satellite go overhead, transferred their attention to Venus which was rising in the East, and followed Venus.

McDonald: These men wore out their tires, got two other police officers involved in the chase; at times the object was only 200 ft. above them and they estimated it to be about 40-50 ft. in diameter. One of the officers, Wayne Huston, a police officer in East Palistine, heard the transmissions of the first car. They were coming down Route 14. He realized they weren’t far away. He went out and parked. Sure enough, down the highway came a high-speed car. It had two officers in it. Above it was an unidentified flying object. It was a luminous object that looked vaguely like an ice-cream cone upside down, and this officer sped up, caught up with them, and now there were _two_ patrol cars going down (the highway) and they passed out of Ohio into Pennsylvania.

And this is (explained as) the Echo Satellite and Venus.

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Location. Cincinnati Ohio

Date: October 2 1966

Time: 2020

Mrs Everett Steward was talking on the telephone when she smelled a foul odor in the room. She went to her bedroom, where she had a feeling of being watched. Looking out the window, she saw an oval shaped object with portholes & red, green, & white lights revolving around it. It was 75 ft in diameter & 100 ft up. She woke her husband, who also saw it, and called her married daughter, Mrs Janet Emery, a mile away; the Emerys also saw it, and a neighbor with binoculars could see that it had square windows glowing yellow. Janet went outdoors & saw the UFO eject a red ball, which maneuvered while the first UFO took off southward. The red ball flew 75-100 ft over Jane's head; it was oval, and its underside was shiny like aluminum foil; it was "bigger than my cottage and yard combined." She also smelled the garbage like odor. Mrs Steward went to bed, the odor still in the house. After some time, the room was filled for an instant with brilliant white light; then this vanished, and a globe of light about 21" in diameter appeared at the foot of her bed. Inside this globe were 5 "non-human, hairless heads" with oval, sunken eyes. "Instead of noses, there were slits, and they had no mouths." Telepathically, they repeated several times "We have made contact." Mrs Steward screamed, and the globe disappeared. She was so disquieted by the experience that she was under psychiatric care for the next 2 years.

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1966 - At the same time as the New York reports a man waiting in a parked car on the Ohio University campus in Mansfield, Ohio saw a round UFO with two lights land nearby. A door in the craft opened and he could see a "very thin" child-sized standing in the doorway. The object rose, moved toward him, rose again, then disappeared.

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