Alternate Perceptions Magazine, January 2025
The Saucer Files
1980 Was Active in Northern Ohio - Part II
by: Rick Hilberg
1980 Was Active in Northern Ohio - Part II
September 9, 1980 - At approximately 1:00 p.m. that afternoon, three male employees of an airfreight company located on Brookpark Road near Cleveland Hopkins Airport were in the parking lot finishing their lunch hour and enjoying the beautiful late summer day.
Suddenly, one of the men saw four roundish, disk-shaped, off-white colored objects in the western sky about 30 degrees above the horizon, moving swiftly towards the east. He shouted to alert his two co-workers and quickly pointed out to them the four objects.
Said the initial witness of his experience: "When I first saw them, they were in a perfect square. I watched them proceed (to) almost over the airport, and (they) then moved in such a fashion that I thought if it's planes, I was going to watch a multiple crash.
"I then alerted ( the other men) in the parking lot. The objects returned by then to a perfect square. By the time they were overhead they appeared to be more of a triangle formation.
"The amazing thing was at one point, one disk shot back of the other three quite far almost instantly, and just as fast closed the distance and became part of the last disk in the formation - just blended right into it, then it was apparent that ( those) two disks stayed exactly on course while the other two would bank sharply and very fast - over, under, behind, in front slightly of the two staying on course. One would bank to the right and the other would to the same to (the) left - very much movement by the two outside ones."
The witnesses reported hearing no sound and estimated that the objects were in sight for some 40 seconds before being lost in the distance 40 degrees above the eastern horizon.
October 3, 1980 - At about 8:55 p.m., a Lorain man was outside his home putting winter insulating material on his windows, when his attention was attracted by a large moving object about 40 degrees above the western horizon. He yelled for the other three adults in the house to come outside and have a look at the clearly visible disk. They all reported that the UFO was at an extremely low altitude, and that the silent object had a pinkish light on the top of its dome-like upper part, while a bank of from eight to ten white lights blinked off and on in a counterclockwise pattern on the bottom of the disk portion of the thing.
Said the witness in his report: “The) object was first seen at a distance in the west. It came at high speed to about 1 1/2 blocks away and then came to a stop. It moved in different positions for a few minutes
"It then moved toward the north, being hidden by trees for a few seconds, and then came back ( and) stopped for a short time and wavered in front of me, then moved south until out of sight, first slow, then very fast.
"I called the police to see if anyone else had seen it...it was so close at times I thought it might land, but it did not."
The witnesses reported that the object itself was made of a silver- metallic substance and thought that it was flying at treetop level. It was estimated to be about 25 feet in diameter.
November 19, 1980 - At about 7:30 p.m. that evening, a Lakewood couple was returning to their Marlowe Avenue residence after a shopping trip and were in the process of removing several grocery bags and preparing to put their car in the garage. While walking in the driveway the wife happened to look up into the clear northwestern sky and became aware of a number of round, "dull- colored" lights in a flattened V-formation heading toward the southeast.
The witness was quite startled by it all for a few seconds, and then began to shout at her husband, who was some distance away from her at the time, but by the time he reached her position the lights had disappeared over some nearby houses. However, the witness had the lights in sight for an estimated 30 to 35 seconds and reported that they made no noise.
The group of lights had a large apparent size, she said, and estimated that a baseball at arm's length would cover them up completely. She also estimated that the lights were traveling much faster than the jet airliners seen in her neighborhood in the approach pattern of Cleveland Hopkins Airport.
She also stated that at no time did the lights move in relation to one another, and the lack of this "jockeying" maneuver seems to rule out the possibility that she could have been observing migrating birds, as we first suspected.
November 26, 1980 - At 8:45 a.m. that morning, a man in his early 20s was casually looking out the window of his bedroom at the Parmatown Towers on Ames Drive in Parma.
He reported that he suddenly saw something heading from the southwest sky towards the northeast at a high rate of speed. Within seconds, he was able to discern two extremely bright points of light that had a small, red-colored object "orbiting" them in a counterclockwise path.
Although he had them in view only about five seconds before they were lost to view after passing over the apartment building, the witness was quite certain that what he saw was not any sort of aircraft, as the morning was very clear and he would have easily been able to identify it as such had that been the case.
All of the cases in this two-part series were called into our then operating 24-hour UFO hotline, and were personally investigated myself. These cases were also to be found in our 1997 Northern Ohio UFO Casebook.
