by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
We often write about UFO cases that end up being neglected as other more dramatic cases grab the attention of investigators and the press. A case that was doomed to just this sort of treatment involved reports on October 22, 1973, out of Indiana. This was just after the October 12th Pascagoula Incident and the October 18th Coyne Helicopter Incident, and while all three cases share the front page of the September-October 1973 APRO Bulletin, the Indiana case faded into obscurity as the other two became classics.
We first came across this case in the 1975 Center for UFO Studies publication, Physical Traces Associated with UFO Sightings: A Preliminary Catalogue, compiled by Ted Phillips and edited by Mimi Hynek. The case shows up on page 95, and it’s included in the catalogue because there were traces found in a field the day after the sightings. The source for the report is given as the afore-mentioned issue of the APRO Bulletin.
The Indiana case actually got the big headline, “Occupants in Indiana,” above “UFO Chases Helicopter” in the first column and “The Pascagoula Affair” in the second. According to the article starting in the third column, at 9:45 p.m. on October 22, Mr. and Mrs. De Wayne Donathan were driving home from Mrs. Donathan’s mother’s house in Hartford City, Indiana. Along the way, they saw two small creatures in the road ahead of them. Thet reported what they saw and were interviewed by Connersville-based APRO Field Investigator Donald Worley. Mrs. Donathan is quoted describing the scene:
“We were coming home from visiting my mother and I was driving. De Wayne, my husband, held the baby and we were just a block from home. I rounded a slight curve and a small hill and there in the road we seen what I thought might be a reflection from a farm tractor in the road. I slowed down and could see what looked like two kids about four feet tall moving in the road. I stopped the car (about 30 feet distant) and with headlights shining on them I decided it couldn’t be kids this time of night in the road with me coming at them in the car.”
“They looked confused. They would hop up in the air, their feet would come up slowly, one at a time, and their arms would flop funny. They moved slower than humans do and their feet and their arms would go up funny. Their feet came off the ground easily. They were bright silver.”
Mrs. Donathan reportedly said she was a bad artist and refused to make a drawing of the creatures.
According to the article, Mrs. Donathan said the creatures were slightly built, and in the reporter’s words, “straight in form to the ground.” She didn’t remember their heads or other features, but was able to describe their feet. She said they had boxes on them a little larger than shoes. She didn’t recall any sort of sound (it is explained that their tape player was playing loudly and their engine was running) or any odor. She also said that their clothing or their surface was, in the reporter’s words, “tight-fitting.”
Mrs. Donathan, extremely frightened by the sight, yelled, “Oh, my God!” and stepped down on the accelerator. As she swerved around the creatures, they seemed to be having difficulty as they moved away from the center of the road. They are described as moving “in a slow, clumsy manner with their feet apart and their arms flopping.”
Panicked, Mrs. Donathan drove several blocks and then turned south and continued until her husband was able to convince her to pull over and stop by an old church. He believed that what they saw might have been children (he reportedly didn’t get a good look) and persuaded his wife to drive back to the area so he could, in the reporter’s words, “scold them.”
When they got to the area, the creatures were gone, but they did see some unidentified lights in the sky to the north at 45 degrees elevation.
They went back to Mrs. Donathan’s mother’s house, and Mrs. Donathan was so upset that they considered calling a doctor, but she eventually calmed down. The only thing Mr. Donathan had to add was that after they had passed the creatures, they seemed to be on the other side of a fence in a cornfield.
Another person who reported seeing the creatures was Gary Flatter, a Hartford City gas station owner who drove his own wrecker. According to the article, he was with his friend, Deputy Sheriff Ed Townsend, and a state policeman who wished to remain anonymous, when the call came in about the Donathan sighting. He went to the site in Townsend’s car (the state policeman presumably went in his own car) saw nothing, but did hear a high-pitched sound at a certain spot in the road. The three men then went back to town.
Flatter and the state policeman returned, Flatter in his wrecker and the policeman in his patrol car, and as Flatter drove around the area, the policeman went east. As Flatter was thinking it was time to go home, he came to a spot just south of the Donathans’ sighting and was surprised by a large group of animals moving across the road from north to south. He stopped to avoid hitting them and counted an opossum, some cats, and 6 or 7 rabbits. He then heard the same high-pitched sound he’d heard before.
Looking around carefully, Flatter eventually spotted two creatures to the south about four feet tall that were standing in what looked to be a plowed field. He said they seemed to be wearing tight-fitting silver suits and that the glare as they reflected his headlights was “about halfway between galvanized sheet metal and a mirror.”
Flatter said they appeared to be looking south and he thought that they could be better observed “in the edge of my headlights.” He continued to observe them from a position 75 feet to the west of them and could still hear the high-pitched sound above the noise of his engine. He put his spotlight on them, and they turned around, giving him the impression that they didn’t like the light. The reflection hurt his eyes, so he turned the spotlight off.
Flatter said the creatures had egg-shaped heads and what seemed to be gas masks with hoses the diameter of a garden hose going down to their chests. He couldn’t see any facial features and said their arms just ended without any hands. He noted that their movement was slow and said their feet were “square with a heel a little over the back.” He estimated the size of their feet to be 3” by 6” and 2” thick.
He said they moved and jumped as if they were “skipping rope” seemingly without the effort of muscles. Their power to move seemed to be in their feet. He said, “They would move up about three feet off the ground, then go back down, all this in slow motion . . . they might move an arm, but not much.” He said when they went up the fourth time, they stayed up and “flew like a helicopter in the feet down position.” He added that they flew off into the dark and he couldn’t find them with his spotlight. He said he did see some “red trace-like streaks coming down . . .”
The next day, Flatter, Townsend, and Mr. Donathan returned to the area and found impressions in a cornfield next to where the Donathans had encountered the creatures. According to the report, there were 7 of them, all ¾ of an inch deep, 3” across, and rounded as if made by a typical heel. They were in alternate rows as if made by walking, and the strides were estimated by Donathan as 12” and Flatter as 18”. It is noted that the ground had been dry for several weeks and that the three men, each weighing about 200 pounds, “did not leave an imprint.”