Alternate Perceptions Magazine, June 2026
A Northern Ohio UFO Casebook - Part VII
By: Rick Hilberg
1980
At approximately 1:00 p.m. on September 9th, three male employees of an airfreight company located on Brookpark Road near Cleveland Hopkins Airport were out 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 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 were 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 do the same to the left - very much movement by the two outside ones.
"They do exist!"
The witnesses reported hearing no sound and estimate that the objects were in sight for some 40 seconds before being lost in the distance 40 degrees above the eastern horizon.
At about 8:55 p.m. on October 3rd, 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 three other 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, and 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 they thought it was flying at tree-top level. It had to be upwards of 25 feet in diameter.
At about 7:30 p.m. on November 19th, 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 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 behind some nearby houses. However, the witness had the lights in sight for an estimated 30 to 35 seconds and reported that the lights didn't appear to be attached to anything and that they made no noise.
The group of lights had a large apparent size, she said, and estimated that a baseball held at arm's length would cover them completely. She also estimated that the lights were traveling much faster than the airliners seen in her neighborhood in the approach pattern to 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.
At 8: 45 a.m. on November 26th a man in his early twenties 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 toward 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.
1982
At 7:50 a.m. on November 17th. John Forte, Maintenance Supervisor for the Canton Local Schools, was on his way to the school bus garage when he spotted an unusual object near the southern horizon that was headed towards him.
" I thought at first it was a balloon and wondered why it would be up there that early" he stated.
After parking his truck in the lot at the bus garage, he was joined by Leo Borland, the chief bus mechanic, and at this time both witnesses were able to discern that the object was oval-shaped rather than round like a balloon, and that it was on a course that would take it straight above them. They were also shortly joined by three more employees who also noticed the unusual aerial sight.
The witnesses all agreed on the basic facts of the UFO sighting, such as it kept the almost due south to north course the five minutes or so that it was in sight to them, and that it was a silver or aluminum color, and that it had red and white lights around its middle at the outer edge that showed that the object was revolving. They also stated that it seemed to be travelling at about the same speed as a small plane would appear to them.
However, it was reported that the pastor of a local church said a "space pet" balloon that he received after a demonstration of the night before by a local florist at a garden club party "escaped" from him at about 8:00 a.m. and was last seen heading north toward the Cleveland area. So maybe here we have an explanation for what the witnesses at the bus garage saw, but their description of lights on a revolving oval object leaves quite a few doubts as to the errant "space pet" answer.
