UFO witnesses come forward decades later

MANSFIELD — North central Ohio loves chatting about UFOs.

Calls began to the News Journal just hours after a story was published Sunday in the print edition and on the News Journal’s digital platforms. It was about a well-known UFO incident in the Mansfield area on Oct. 18, 1973. An investigator is seeking witnesses to what happened that evening.

Several current and past area residents contacted the newspaper and a handful called Mutual UFO Network investigator Terry Hamilton.

No one can say for sure just what was in the sky that fall day more than 40 years ago. But many who saw it say it was strange enough they can remember it as vividly as if it happened yesterday.

Brian Stevens describes what looked like an orange ball fixed in the sky and reflecting the light of the setting sun.

“I couldn’t take my eyes off it,” said Stevens, who was 13 at the time. “The next day, when it was on the front page of the paper, I felt privileged to have seen it.”

Stevens said when he saw the object, he was walking on Ohio 39 in the Roseland neighborhood and looking toward Westbrook Country Club, which was where the object appeared to be hovering.

Later that night, Glenn Stout was on break from his job at Mansfield Tire and was standing on the back dock with some coworkers when he saw what he describes as “a crazy looking light” moving toward and nearly colliding with a helicopter in the area of Westbrook Country Club.

When he saw the news that a UFO had interfered with the flight path of an an Army Reserve helicopter over Mansfield, he was sure he had witnessed the same incident.

The same month, he said, he received a $4 electric bill for his Walker Lake Road home. He always wondered whether the surprisingly low bill had anything to do with the object.

Earlier in the day, Judith Hamm was outside a home near Pavonia when she saw what looked from afar like a plane flying at an alarming speed toward another plane. The object then veered away and disappeared.

“I almost screamed because I thought they were going to hit,” she said. “It actually was headed right toward the plane like it was deliberate.”

Hamm said she thought the object may have been a military craft, but it moved more quickly than any plane she has seen before or since, and oddly, it seemed to move just as easily backwards as forwards.

Les Kiser has no doubts about he saw that day— a UFO.

“I’m a big believer in UFOs now because I know what I saw, and it wasn’t anything military,” Kiser said.

He was 13 years old at the time and was working in the back yard of his Burger Avenue home with his 30-year-old sister when he saw an oval-shaped craft with two red lights. The red lights disappeared, and then a green light appeared and lit up a nearby helicopter.

Kiser estimates the craft appeared to be about the size of a semi-trailer. He recalls worrying the craft would make the helicopter crash.

“My sister said, ‘That’s an Army helicopter, so it’s probably the military. Don’t say anything to anyone about it.’ So I didn’t,” Kiser said. “It was so strong for me that I never lost it in my mind even though I haven’t talked about it in 40 years.”

ceday@gannett.com

419-521-7220

Twitter: @courtneydaynj