The Saucer Files

by Rick Hilberg

A Northern Ohio UFO Casebook

UFO photographed in Orville, Ohio, in 1963

In the following multi-part series, we're going to look at some of the many fascinating cases that have come out of Ohio's northern sector. Many of the cases were called into the UFO telephone hotline that I operated for some years. Those cases were indeed investigated by me personally.

Many of the reports I'm going to use here were published in my Northern Ohio UFO Casebook that was released in 1997 and then reprinted in 2018.

1938

The following report was given to me at my request by my late grandmother Mrs. Marie Friedel in 1968.

"On a Sunday evening in August of that year, we decided to take a ride out Lorain Road. Near Elyria, west of Cleveland. We spotted about thirty cars stopping along the road on both sides. My sister and her husband, who were in the car with us, discovered two objects coming from the northwestern sky. They appeared to be faint, round, grayish-blue objects. They were not airplanes or anything else anyone had seen before.

"I shall never forget the sight of it, or the feeling that came over me when the strange objects continued overhead and faded out in the distance in eerie silence."

1955

One of the finest early UFO sightings in the Cleveland area occurred in November of that year to the Reverend and Mrs. Kenneth R. Hoffman of the Grace Lutheran Church while they were driving to Cleveland's airport from the eastern part of the city.

Their attention was attracted to a row of bright lights in the sky directly ahead and over the street. Shortly after, they could discern that the lights were coming from a huge oval-shaped object, similar in appearance to two saucers, the uppermost inverted upon the lower one. Around the portion of its perimeter visible to them were eight large ports or windows from which shown an intense white light.

The strange object appeared to be hovering almost directly over an intersection at an estimated five hundred feet. Its diameter must have been close to one hundred feet.

Mrs. Hoffman remarked that the craft was a pearly aluminum color. They believed the windows were at least eight feet by ten feet in size. An intense white light shown steadily downward from each window. The light rays were so bright that they could see the dust particles in them.

The couple sat and watched the UFO for about ten minutes, then started the car and drove south on Lee Road hoping to get under it, but the object began to slip westward over the treetops. The thing moved slowly and noiselessly and did not appear to rotate.

1957

At 11:00 p.m. on the night of November 6th, Olden Moore, a Huntsburg plasterer, witnessed a strange object land in a farmer's field. The landing was made near the intersection of Ohio Rt. 86 and Hart Road in Montville Township.

"It landed a stone's throw from the highway," Moore said.

Moore had been driving home from Painesville when he first noticed what appeared to be a bright star coming toward him. He observed the light through the windshield of his automobile.

"In a matter of seconds it looked as big as a house in front of me," Moore said. "Then it seemed to split apart. One section disappeared; the other settled down in a field by the road."

Moore pulled his car off the road and turned off the ignition. He sat watching the object in the field for about fifteen minutes. Then he got out of the car and walked toward it. He could hear a ticking sound like that of an electric clock or water meter.

Rather than approaching the object, Moore returned to his car and drove home to get his wife. When they arrived back at the field, the strange object was gone. Twelve hours later, Mrs. Moore phoned the report to the Geauga County sheriff. She later turned over a picture her husband had drawn of the object.

According to Moore, the UFO was about fifty feet in diameter, saucer-shaped with an inverted "saucer" on top, and a central dome shaped like a cone. Its surface was brightly glowing, “like mirrored sunglasses,” and surrounded by a blue-green haze or fog. A light pulsated slowly, alternating between bright and dim.

Police, sheriff's deputies and members of Ohio's Civil Defense went to investigate. Plaster casts were made of alleged landing markings. Supposedly higher than normal radioactivity was recorded at the site.

Other witnesses in Orwell, Ashtabula, and Geauga counties also reported strange objects in the sky that night and in the days following.

On Sunday, November 10th, Sheriff Robusky, a deputy, and an Air Force officer escorted Moore for questioning in Youngstown. Moore later alleged he was asked to travel to Washington, D.C. for further interviews.

1963

At 8:05 p.m. on February 8th, Euclid school teacher Thomas Doyle stepped out of his car at his home on East 238th Street and heard what he thought was a jet aircraft. Looking up, he instead saw a blue-white light, very bright and about the size of a pea held at arm's length.

Trailing about 12 diameters behind the UFO was a military bomber, seemingly in pursuit. Both were heading ENE to WSW, but the UFO was clearly pulling away. The bomber broke off and turned south, while the UFO continued on its original course until lost to sight in a thick haze on the southern horizon.