Alternate Perceptions Magazine, November 2025
The Saucer Files
A Northern Ohio UFO Casebook II
by Rick Hilberg
1963
The following report was made by my friend and colleague the late Allan Manak. Al was not only a UFO investigator and writer, but also a serious dedicated amateur astronomer.
"October 24th was a beautiful warm night and I went outside in my backyard in Brook Park, Ohio. Took my favorite chair with my binoculars around my neck and sat just looking at the sky. I do this most frequently.
"I was sitting facing west. The moon was at half phase and about 25 degrees above the southwestern horizon. There were three small cirrus clouds near the moon. The sky was exceptionally clear. The temperature was 69 degrees.
"At 9:40 p.m. about 40 degrees due west, a string of objects, blue-white and very dull, (could not have seen if I wasn't looking right at it) in a formation of a large 'J' in the sky about two inches at arm's length was noticed.
"They were heading directly overhead and easterly when I put the binoculars on them. They looked as if they were attached to something. “The whole sighting lasted about four to six seconds. As the string of lights passed stars, it seemed as if there was a body to one object, because the stars would disappear. The binoculars did not reveal anything different than the unaided eye."
1964
On Friday, May 15, a UFO was seen to take off from the side of I-90 near Ashtabula. The Ohio Highway Patrol reported that a man from California called from a pay telephone a short distance from the take off point to report on the object. The witness said it was as big as a tractor truck. He also said that the object changed color, turning to a bright orange, hovered about eight feet off the ground and then took off and soared to about 300 to 400 feet.
At this point the flame color became a blur and the object zoomed into the sky. This all happened at about 11:30 p.m. The motorist said that the driver of a semi-trailer truck also saw the UFO and stopped his rig to have a look. A source that I considered reliable told me that after the sighting several Air Force cars were seen near the reported landing area with their lights on as if looking for something. At about 5:30 a.m. on August 27th, a young man named Dan Boras reported sighting a cigar-shaped object with lighted windows on it cross the face of the moon slowly and then pick up speed and vanish to the east.
Boras was the night watchman for the Neill Greenhouses on SOM Center Road in Gates Mills. Said Boras, "When it started to pick up speed after it had gone across the face of the moon, a light glowed all around it and it trailed smoke for about five seconds. I would judge it was 50 to 80 feet long," he said.
1965
On the evening of July 12th, Mrs. William Kehres of Chagrin Falls along with her young son spotted a brilliant and hovering UFO along Shaker Boulevard near Lander Road in the city of Pepper Pike. "I stopped the car so we could watch," she said. "It was oblong and very shiny - sort of metallic - and appeared to be hovering at about 3000 feet."
In a moment the object disappeared, she reported. As her car started the object reappeared. It then began accelerating at a rapid rate and disappeared in the distance.
At 8:50 p.m. on October 9th, Miss Pat Gresiwald of Cloud Avenue on the near west side of Cleveland called the UFO report center run by Allan Manak for a local UFO organization. She reported sighting a large disk-shaped object with white lights all around its center. The object's body was silverish in appearance and had a dome or a ball-like superstructure on top. This was witnessed by a total of six people at 8:45 p.m.
Five minutes later a call came in from Wade Avenue. The caller told Manak that twelve people saw a very large round object with lights all around it. The object itself was spinning or the lights were, the caller stated. Both objects seemed to be on a northerly course. Manak checked with local media as well as Cleveland Hopkins Airport. Only the Cleveland Press newspaper reported receiving four similar calls to the city desk.
After Manak finished those calls, his phone immediately rang. This call told of three people seeing a very large and elongated object with lights that seemed to be flashing in a sequential order. The object also seemed to be spinning and seemed as large as a pencil held at arm's length. A really huge thing, indeed. The call was from Vega Avenue near West 25th Street.
At this point Manak was able to call me about what was happening, and I immediately went into my backyard on West 119th Street just south of Lorain Avenue. I immediately saw whatever it was to my north, and it looked to be disk-shaped with sequential lights on its edge, and was very slowly heading westward.
Manak tried to get outside to see if he could observe the thing from his home in Brook Park, but the phone rang again. This time the call was from a party of three men telling of a large, low flying object with a larger underside than its top. The thing had amber lights circling its entire structure. It seemed to be spinning and looked to be about four inches in diameter at arm's length. This call was from West 61st Street just south of Lorain Avenue, not far from my location.
The next call came from Schott Avenue. Four men said they saw a large whitish-silver object with lights in a single row around it. When one light would go off, another one in turn would go on. One of the four said that the base of the thing seemed to be V-shaped. Another said it seemed like a mushroom shape to him.
They first observed the object in the northern sky. It then proceeded to move to the south, then with quick movements went to the west and then disappeared toward the north. They reported it in view some eight minutes. Then came the report of a woman driving with her husband and headed eastward toward the city of Euclid. They were passing West 14th Street and Clark Avenue when they noticed six to eight square lights following one another. The lights seemed to be floating or were attached and could have been one object.
Then another report was phoned in from the vicinity of West 95th Street and Madison Avenue reporting a high-pitched sound that seemed to be rising and falling, lasting for about ten seconds.
Manak reported that the last reports came in at about 10:15 p.m. All in all, he received 92 calls that evening.
It must be noted that during the time of the caller being reported there was a light drizzle happening with the cloud ceiling being at 2200 feet. Therefore, whatever the object was, it had to be below that altitude to have been seen clearly by the many witnesses.
1966
On April 1st two Berea policeman said they saw "an orange glow as big as a house" floating above some trees early that morning. "It must have been one of those unidentified flying objects seen in Michigan," said Patrolman Clarence Janowick. (There was indeed a large wave of UFO sightings being reported from all over the Midwest at that time.)
Janowick and his partner Patrolman John Galik, Jr. said they saw the same object or a similar one on the morning of the 29th of March also. The object the 29th was over Baldwin Lake in the southern part of Berea, and was visible to them for about 45 seconds.
The object on April first was sighted six blocks from Baldwin Lake over the Ohio Turnpike Administration building just adjacent to the busy turnpike roadway.
