by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Many people who have more than a passing interest in the UFO subject might be aware that the scene in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where several UFOs go speeding by the main character’s stalled car, followed by police cars in hot pursuit, was based on a real case. This was the 1966 incident where police officers Dale Spaur and Wilbur “Barney” Neff reportedly chased a single UFO at high speed across the state of Ohio into Pennsylvania, with other officers joining them in the chase. However, another scene in the movie, where a house occupied by a mother and son is flooded with light from a UFO, was also inspired by a real case, but this one is not nearly so well known.
The front-page headline of the November 1963 APRO Bulletin is “Family Beseiged [sic] by Discs.” According to the article, on October 21, 1963, at his ranch near Tranca, Argentina, Antonio de Moreno was woken up by a fifteen-year-old employee who told him there seemed to have been an accident at the railway tracks about a half mile away from the house, as, in the reporter’s words, “there was a lot of light and people moving around at that location.” Read more