Portage County/Ravenna UFO chase 1966

It is either a UFO or it is not.

If it is a UFO than it could be anything, including something like a helicopter. If you are arguing that it is not a helicopter, then you have identified it as being something else, which means it cannot be a UFO by the very definition you provided.

The definition you provided means you cannot dismiss anything it could be, because it has not been identified.

Which is what everyone keeps saying to you. That by being an unidentified flying object, it can be anything and it means that if you are going to ascribe a definition or label to it, it is no longer a UFO but something that has been identified.

So why do you dismiss what it could be, while demanding it is a UFO? You don't know what it is, it is a UFO, remember? So why do you then demand that it is not a UFO by dismissing what people say it could very well be? Again, if it is a UFO, it can be anything. People suggesting it can be anything are correctly treating it like a UFO. You are demanding what it cannot be, while calling it a UFO. That makes absolutely no sense.

I am going by the definition of UFO you provided. So my "claims" are not erroneous. I am simply treating it like a UFO and suggesting it can be anything but has clearly not been identified as anything. You are demanding it is a UFO while ascribing a definition to it as though you have identified it, while dismissing people treating it like it is an unidentified flying object. Why do you do that?

 

You can randomly pick cruddy youtube videos all day long from the web and post them, but that won't make that requirement of reasonable evidence go away.

What happened? Somebody saw a light in the sky and they didn't know what it was? Somebody told a tall tale? Ho hum.

You're trying to re-define the term to suit yourself. UFO = Unidentified Flying Object. Nothing more. That is, it's an object that appears to fly, and we don't know for sure what it is. That's all.

If you want to talk about alien spacecraft or something, you ought to use that term instead. In that case, you're saying you've identified the object, like Bells said above. An unidentified flying object could just as well be the planet Venus or a helicopter, provided the person who saw it didn't identify it as such.

Is it a helicopter? Could be.

How many kinds of living energy are currently known? None. So, is there reason to think any such thing exists? No.

Could it be magical pixies from the Magic Faraway Tree? We don't know. Could be. (Agree?)

An unidentified light in the sky could fit any of those descriptions.

If somebody sees a helicopter's lights and doesn't realise they are helicopter lights, that's a UFO. There's a flying object, and they haven't identified it.

That's because breathless fantasies about aliens sell better than reports of run-of-the-mill everyday sightings of helicopters.

There's a whole string of Star Wars movies, but not too many about making atmospheric measurements with weather balloons. Not in the popular cinema, at least.

Studying? Is that what you call it? As far as I can see, there's not much study involved in mindlessly absorbing episode after episode of TV shows like Unexplained Mysteries or similar youtube productions.

You have no interest in studying any of these things, as you continually show here. As soon as somebody starts looking at any of your cases in detail, you're up an running away to the next thing as fast as your little legs can carry you.

The problem is that the woo community can't agree among themselves about what all these UFOs are. It's up to the individual fanatasist involved. Some like aliens. Some like time travels. Some like interdimensional beings. Some no doubt like Pixies from Mars. But they'd much rather argue as a block with skeptics rather than squabble among themselves. So, they gloss over their differences, and let "UFO" be whatever each proponent of the woo wants it to be.

Now that you mention it, one question I have about the police sighting you mentioned above is: how did they measure the altitude of the "UFO"? How did they measure its size? There are reports of both of those things, but my feeling is that they are just guesses, made without any reliable means of knowing if they were wrong or right.

How do you know if a helicopter is at 300 ft or 3000 ft, especially at night?

Obviously this isn't the case. It doesn't take much imagination to realise that a helicopter may be very hard to identify as such at night, or against certain backgrounds, or high in the sky, for starters. And if the angle of view is different from what you expect, that might make it hard, too.

Now that this has been mentioned, I'd say that the UFO they saw was quite like a helicopter. That's a definite possibility.

Where are those official records of flight plans from that night etc? Do you have them yet?

Who measured its size? How do you know it was as large as a house?

"Elliptical shaped" fits the description of many light sources seen from a distance, like the planet Venus, or the light on a plane or helicopter.

How did they hear the humming over the car engine noise?

 

Magical Realist:

I'm mocking you for calling that "remarkable evidence". After all your time on this forum, it would be astounding if you turned out to be as stupid as you pretend to be. I don't think you are that stupid. I think you know this kind of stuff is worthless rubbish. But you're angry that people don't automatically want to share your fantasy world.

Whose story? We don't even know if there were real people involved, or if this is just fiction.

I don't think you were either. If anything actually even happened.

Which three geologists? Can we contact them to ask them whether they have an agenda to push? No. Why not? Oh yes, names have been withheld. Or they don't exist. One of the two.

UFO photos and videos are typically cruddy. You know this.

I agree it was a UFO. It is unidentified. Could have been Venus, maybe, or a helicopter, or pixies from Mars. No way to tell which it was, given the information presented so far.

We only have the words of a few people to back up any of that. Nothing more.

Helicopter can't be ruled out yet.

I agree that lights in the sky usually have sources. The planet Venus and lights on helicopters are two sources, for example.

How did somebody determine that this thing was as big as a house?
How did they hear the gentle humming over the car engine noise?

Until it's identified as a helicopter, it's a UFO. Unidentified Flying Object. See?

I agree. Unidentified flying object. Not alien spaceship, for example. Not interdimensional beings. Those would be identified, like you say.

I was querying your notion of what "study" involves, that's all. But now that you mention it, there is a whole lot of faked UFO footage out there. Isn't there?

Right. And you haven't made a good case for any single case you've presented being aliens or interdimensional beings, or indeed anything out of the ordinary, yet.

I've raised some sensible questions that you never bothered asking yourself. I've tried to teach you how to think rationally about these things rather than with the empty-minded credulity you typically display. Not that the message has had any impact, apparently. But maybe some other readers have had there eyes opened.

That's a fair point.

Explain to me how you typically determine the height of an airplane flying overhead. Explain how you do it during the day, and at night time when it is dark.

Also: to what accuracy can you determine the altitude of an aircraft merely by looking at it flying overhead? 1000 feet? 100 feet? 10 feet?

Also: tell me how you judge the size of the aircraft, and to what accuracy you are able to do that as it flies overhead.

A step-by-step explanation of your method would be useful.

I assume I must be an idiot in this regard, and I hope you can teach me how to do it just like you can.

How? Please outline how that method would work.

Maybe the helicopter swung its searchlight around so it was shining on the policemen.

I've seen two eyewitness drawings. One looks a bit like a helicopter with attached bright light. The other looks just like the blur of a light. So, possibly a helicopter, but uncertain.

Not anything like one, eh?

I asked for the flight plans previously because the policemen reported seeing manmade aircraft as well as the UFO. I am wondering what the people in those manmade aircraft saw.

Also it would help to eliminate manmade craft definitively by examining the flight plans of the manmade aircraft that were in the area that night. Don't you think? Or are you not interested in gaining actual reliable data on that?

How did the eyewitnesses measure the size and height of the object? Did they use your method, or did they do it some other way?

Obviously, atmospheric effects can sometimes make circular sources appear elliptical.

What was the weather like that night?

They chased the UFO in the car. There may have been times when there was no car running. Have you checked the conditions under which the "gentle humming" was heard?

 

Magical Realist:

This is from the same witness statements you linked earlier, isn't it?

So, as far as height goes, all we know from this is that something was seen above the tree-top level. Anything from there up to Venus is possible.

How many witnesses reported the hum? Just one, or more?

The distance to the object presumably wasn't measured. That 250 feet is at best an estimate from the light it was supposedly casting on the ground, I assume. Would that be correct?

Did they get a photo unit to the scene?

I'm having trouble picturing this. Them going south puts the object on their right. Then they turn east, and now the object is to their left. Are they driving away from the object at this point? Or did it move and cross the road? Or what?

So now they're driving east, with the object initially on their left, as described above. And it's "pacing them". But it's now pacing them on the right. How does that work?

And then it moves north (i.e. to their left), and now they describe it as on the left. Did it cross the road? If so, why didn't they mention that?

Yes, and one of those guys drew the sketch, right?

There's no mention of hovering. The witness says it rose up, presumably from behind some trees. Actually it's not clear if the thing was above all the trees when they saw it, or whether there were trees in the "background" so that it was below the tree-top level. It would be useful to sort that out.

Oh wait... it says it "came over the trees". So, it was above the tree-tops, then. Would be interesting to know if they ever saw it with trees or other terrain behind the "object", or whether they only saw it against the sky.

So, it judged to be house-sized object, in comparison to the heights of distant trees? Is that what you're saying?

Which witness said it was house-sized, by the way?

Not really. It's difficult to judge by eye the height of an object seen from directly below - especially one whose absolute size is unknown.

By the way, you forgot to tell me your method for judging the heights and sizes of conventional aircraft in the sky.

So, not an unidentified object then? An electrical object, you claim.

Interesting. This is new. As usual, it's pretty cruddy.

Who took this photo?
Where were they when it was taken?
Is that a police car at the bottom of the photo?
What time was this taken? Is that the sun on the left?
What's that darker triangle below the ellipse? Why is is darker than the background?

Now, looking at this photo, the first thing I notice is that it doesn't match the sketch that was done by the police officer, or the description given. Not very well, at least. Where's the ice-cream cone shape? Where's the irregularity on top? Where's the bit that sticks up on top in the sketch?

And has anybody examined the negatives of this photo and checked for authenticity?

Is there only one photo? If so, why?

I can't verify the sources of this particular UFO report, and neither can you, presumably. Provisionally, I am willing to accept that these were real policemen and the witness statements are real, but a proper investigation would investigate that, of course.

I was referring to your outback UFO sighting by the fictional geologists, not the police one. That anecdote in no way constitutes "remarkable" evidence. Remarkable that it's so shoddy, perhaps.

Yeah. Me. I'll look at whatever you've got on the police car sighting. Got anything else? Not third-hand youtube re-hashes of the same primary evidence, you understand. I mean any other evidence collected at the time in the form of documents, photos, statements, reports, that kind of thing.

I accept that some people see things in the sky that they can't identify. So, UFOs are real in that sense.

As for strange "phenomena" or "haunting the skies", that's just fantasy added on.

Got any evidence of alien spaceships or time travellers from the future, or pixies from Mars?

 

Comparison:

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Quite different, aren't they?

 

Earlier, you linked me to a collection that contained the witness statements etc. But now you've posted a photo, and I can't even tell whether it is related to the same case. None of the questions I asked about it are unreasonable. And what do you think about the side-by-side comparison with the witness's sketch?

Moving on to the next one. How unusual for you. As soon as somebody starts to examine any of these things in detail, you trun around and run away. Are you worried I'll turn up some evidence of fakery, perhaps? Or is the mere fact that I ask reasonable questions too thought-provoking for you to handle?

Also, don't think I didn't notice that you ignored most of my detailed post in your last response. I assume that's because you have no adequate answers, and/or don't want to put in any effort.

 

I'll get to this bait-and-switch later, if I feel like it.

So, I take it you're done with the police UFO chase? That's all you have on that?

 

The information provided is so sketchy and incomplete that it's impossible for me to investigate it properly. Same goes for you, too, but you're not interesting in investigating it, are you? You just want to believe.

I don't even know if the photo is from the same incident, yet. Have barely begun to consider whether it might be faked. And, if it's not from the same incident then it's irrelevant.

As for the documentation, there's only witness statements and not much else. Have you found the extensive report that is referenced in the material you linked to? I'd like to read that.

You claim to have compelling evidence. Why don't you produce any of it? I'm waiting for you to come up with the goods you claim to have.

Nothing I have asked in my analysis above is irrelevant. I have only asked reasonable questions to test the evidence that you have presented.

The fact that you can't or won't answer any of my questions is quite telling about the strength of your evidence, wouldn't you agree? If it was really as strong and "compelling" as you claim, you'd have no trouble clearing up any doubts I might have about it.

Happy to admit that. Have done so several times, even in this thread.

Pity there's no evidence of any alien or paranormal activity anywhere.

One hundred unconvincing anecdotes are no better than one.

Why don't you just post one actually-convincing one, and save yourself a lot of useless effort? If you have one, that is. Mind you, if you're going to do that it would be good if you could undertake in advance to follow through the discussion to its conclusion, rather than jumping off onto something else the minute your case starts collapsing, as you usually do.

 

No. Most of the cases you've posted have consisted of nothing but a single youtube video. Without more, there's simply no way to investigate the cases properly. You ought to realise that, but you don't, and in fact are not interested in investigating things. You just want to believe.

Asking sensible questions is not "bitching", although to somebody as credulous as you want us to believe you are, it's not a surprise that you feel attacked when somebody asks inconvenient questions that threaten to undermine your faith.

Show me the documentation!

You can start with the police chase case we started talking about above.

While you're at it, please answer the reasonable questions I've raised regarding that case.