“Homegrown UFO – Part Three”

c. 2007 Rod Ice
All rights reserved
(8-07)





Doing research about the Geauga County alien landing from 1957 was an incredible experience. It proved that even a place like ours can be touched by the surreal elements of other worlds.
I learned that the story of our homegrown UFO is one that has been analyzed by investigators from around the world. George Hunt Williamson spoke of the happening in his ‘Road In The Sky’ series. As part of a chapter called ‘The Visitants’ he mentioned personal knowledge of Olden Moore and his strange encounter:

G. H. WILLIAMSON REPORT

“On November 15, 1957, I was lecturing in Cleveland, Ohio, when a report reached me that a UFO had landed on November 6th a few miles north-east of Cleveland. On that date, Olden Moore was driving home from Painesville, Ohio, to Montville, when he saw a blue-green flaming object fly over the highway at midnight. In describing the experience, Mr. Moore said:
In seconds the object loomed up in front of me. It was as large as a house. Then it seemed to split apart. One section disappeared into the sky and the other section settled down in a field near the road. When I first observed the object approaching me, I pulled off the road and turned off the ignition. I watched the craft in the field for about fifteen minutes, then I got out of my car and walked towards it. I heard a ticking sound like that of an electric meter. I stopped before I reached the object and returned to my car and drove home to get my wife so she might be a witness to the landing. When we returned together the object was gone. It was about fifty feet in diameter and shaped like a 'saucer' with an inverted 'saucer' on top of it, There was a cone-shaped dome that came to a point on top. The dome glowed brilliantly.
In the same area on the same day that Olden Moore was having his encounter with the strange craft, a great cigar-shaped object was sighted by many people and also a car windshield was covered with pock marks and found to be radioactive.
On November 8th Olden Moore was interrogated by Lake County Civil Defense Director Kenneth Locke, Geauga County Sheriff Louis A. Robusky, United States Army officials and many newsmen.
However, on November 7th, Mr. Locke covered the field (where Moore had seen the UFO land) with a Geiger counter and discovered that 'the counter registered 150 milliroentgens in the center of an area So feet in diameter in the field. The reading dropped to 20-30 milliroentgens near the perimeter of that area.
Robert Seitz, a graduate student at the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, said that the normal background count was about 20 milliroentgens. Does this mean that the UFO was radioactive ?
Several small, but very deep, round holes were found in the field where the craft had landed. These were arranged in a strange circular pattern. The prints looked as though they had been made by something with `spikes' on it. The first report said that these were `footprints'; however, they were actually holes made by a protruding pole or something similar. The holes were very deep, and much force had been used to reach such a depth in the ground. Scientists from the Case Institute took soil samples a few days later but the counter registered a normal count and the ground apparently didn't suffer from the effects of the radiation.
The Geiger counter reading in this case is important, but not because it measured radioactivity. If the element causing the counter to react as it did was radioactive, then its half-life was shorter than that of elements made artificially in atomic accelerators. In other words, we can assume that the reading was due to some other stimulus than radioactivity. Free electrons will actuate a Geiger counter and it is quite possible that the object observed by Olden Moore possessed such a strong magnetic field that it ionized the air and the Geiger count was due to the free electrons.”

In the course of gathering evidence about Mr. Moore, I realized that the story was larger than I had imagined. Our point on the map had been visited again since that day, fifty years ago. In fact, we seem to have attracted extra terrestrial attention on many occasions. Something eerie was at work. What could possibly direct those from the intergalactic neighborhood to a spot on the Earth like ours?
I began to compile reports that specifically mentioned a Geauga community. In only a short while, I had collected dozens of such incidents:

NATIONAL UFO REPORTING CENTER SIGHTING REPORTS

 Occurred : 2/20/2001 23:00
Location: Chardon, OH
Shape: Sphere
Duration:3-4 minutes
Blue orb hovering over trees, then crosses field.
I was burning brush in our back yard. My house is rather secluded, so other than the light from the fire, it was very dark. I walked away from the fire, and walked deeper into the yard. On either side of the field is forest. I happen to look to the north and noticed a blue ball of light through the trees. It appeared to be roughly 50 ft. above the treetops. It slowly hovered to the south, crossing the field. There was no sound, only the blue light. It continued south in a straight line, until it vanished over the south tree line.
 Occurred : 10/20/2005 20:00
Location: Montville, OH
Shape: Cone
Duration:40min.
Six coned like objects, with bright white lights floating in the Montville sky.
Bright Floating object hanging in the sky from the northeast. Bobbing in the air up and down and then it took off towards the west.
It was followed by five others, doing the same thing. They traveled about a half a mile from one another. They all appeared the same.
 Occurred : 1/25/2006 02:30
Location: Aurora, OH
Shape: Other
Duration:20 minutes
Aurora, Ohio, string of lights deep in the woods at 2 in the morning hovering above the ground, revolved and whistled. 20 minutes.
The object sighted was 8 yellow spheres aligned and slightly bowed down towards the ground, it appeared as though they were all linked together, this object was about 15 feet long and hovering above the ground 10 feet. The other witness and I were deep in the woods camping, we were away from the fire gathering wood when we heard a high pitch noise such as a tea pot going off, we looked over and there it was hovering and slightly revolving, and of course it was night time so it appeared to be glowing, when we came upon it, it started to revolve faster and faster and get louder and louder, then it just appeared to fold into itself, and the light it had given off slowly dissipated. this all took place at about 2 in the morning. the other witness and I sprinted back to the campsite through the woods and told the others, who were skeptical even though we were clearly shaken.

UFO INFO REPORT

Late Saturday night, November 16, 1996, at approximately 11:10 p.m., Carl Draper was driving on Ohio Route 422 in rural Geauga County, heading east toward Auburn Corners (population 70). As he approached the intersection of Route 44, just west of the reservoir, he "saw an object about the size of a manhole cover cross the sky from north to south." The disc-shaped UFO was flying at a high rate of speed, seemingly coming from Lake Erie. Carl described the UFO as "orange in color, and its trail was green...The tail extended across the entire arc of the sky, and it (UFO) covered the distance in less than one second."

These stories were informative and entertaining. But they had me wondering… was there some connection here between UFO visitation, sightings of Bigfoot, the Bulldozer Guy, the Tube Farm, and Agent X?
The question offered a perfect reason to return to my quest for clues!

FROM THE GEAUGA COUNTY MAPLE LEAF, CHARDON, OHIO