The Portage County UFO Chase

by Charles Lear

In 1966, there was a UFO case that involved a chase and sightings by multiple police witnesses. In addition to their testimonies, there was a reported radar confirmation and a possible pilot witness. Faced with all this evidence, the initial Air Force investigation consisted of two phone calls to a single witness. Based on interviews lasting a total of around four minutes, the conclusion was that the officers had seen a satellite and chased the planet Venus. The case was re-evaluated after a more thorough investigation, thanks to the efforts of an outraged congressman, and the conclusion was . . .  that the officers had seen a satellite and chased the planet Venus.

On the morning of April 17, 1966, two sheriff deputies, Dale Spaur and Wilbur “Barney” Neff, chased a UFO from Portage County, Ohio, for 86 miles all the way into Pennsylvania. They chased the object at speeds ranging from 80 mph to 105 mph and, according to them, there were times when the object actually stopped and waited for them to catch up to it. Other law enforcement officers witnessed the object after being alerted by radio communications between the deputies and their dispatcher.

The strangeness began at 4:30 a.m. A call came over the radio informing the deputies that a woman in Summit County had reported seeing a bright object that flew low over her property. She said it was moving towards Portage County. Spaur and Neff laughed it off and went on with their schedule of spot-checks.

At around 5:00 a.m., they saw an abandoned vehicle on Route 224 near Ravenna, and got out of their car to investigate. According to Spaur, he was in the habit of looking behind him to make sure no one was sneaking up on him.  He turned around and saw a light over the trees of a nearby hill. He alerted Neff, and as they watched, it moved over the police car and hovered. They could now see it was an object 35 to 40 feet wide, with a bright, white glow that lit up the area around the car. It hummed “like a loaded transformer.” Read more