Portage County/Ravenna UFO chase 1966

Magical Realist:

I now have some idea about how the Portage County thing might be explained. I'll get to that below. But first I'll address your comments above.

What it means is that there was a kind of mass hysteria about UFOs going on at the time in the area, making people more liable to make false assumptions about what they saw.

So, you'll agree that the humming may have a mundane explanation. Therefore we can safely discount the humming as anything out of the ordinary. We are, therefore, dealing with a UFO that made no discernable sound. Indeed, during the chase, the police officers say it made no sound - that's in their statements. The humming was only heard when they were parked on the road near the power lines, and Spaur admits that the humming could have been the power lines.

So, forget the humming and move on...

See the question mark there? That means I was asking you a question. A question is not a threat, silly.

Yeah, it makes me feel all superior. Whatever you say, Magical Realist. Let's see if we can get past the childish insults, OK? Try to focus on the actual discussion instead of playing the man.

You typically skim over what I write, ignoring most questions I ask you and reading in things that are not there. I'm beginning to doubt your ability to properly take information in.

It is clear from your replies and your repeated failure to get the point that I can only get through to you by breaking things down into tiny, bite-size pieces for you, and taking things step by step. If I present several ideas of pieces of information to you at once you get overwhelmed. You ignore half of what I write and make unwarranted assumptions about the other half.

The other problem, of course, is that you repeat points that I have already addressed, and you repeat claims that you cannot support. You seem to have the idea that you can get yourself out of trouble by laughing at what I write. We see that in the nervous LOLs you add whenever I put a point to you that you have no real answer for. You try to laugh it off, but it doesn't work. And at some level you know that's not working for you.

What you call obsessive hairsplitting is just careful analysis of the available evidence. I realise that this kind of process is completely alien to you. The Portage County case is a complex one, and it may not have a simple explanation. There's enough evidence available that we can sift through it to see what we can come up with, but we must be careful about how we do that. We must avoid making assumptions. Unfortunately, you start with the biggest assumption of all - the conclusion - and then everything else from you follows from that prejudice. I'm showing you how things should be done.

"Just enough" for the Portage County case means sifting through a lot of evidence carefully.

I'm coming around to the idea that it probably wasn't a helicopter hovering close by. The biggest problem with that idea is the lack of sound. Also, if it had been a helicopter, I think that probably would have come out in the investigations that were conducted at the time. So, I think you're right. Probably not a helicopter, although it can't absolutely be ruled out.

The police officers reported a light, so yes, we are dealing with some kind of light. As for the 300 feet, I don't think that's at all established, for reasons I have already given in previous posts. I don't think they had any way of telling how far away the object was or how big it was. But more on that later.

This is a good example of how you have to be cautious in looking at the evidence.

See how it says there "It was as big as a house"?

That isn't a quote from Spaur's witness statement - at least I don't think it is. That "big as a house" thing was inserted there by whoever wrote that paragraph you quoted. In other words, this isn't telling us that Spaur or Neff said it was "big as a house". It's only telling us that whoever wrote the paragraph got the idea from somewhere that it was as big as a house.

Now, it turns out the woman who lived 100 miles away actually reported seeing something as "big as a house" - that's a quote from her, not from Spaur or Neff.

So, what you're telling me, if you think it was as big as a house, is that you think that the woman saw the same thing as Spaur and Neff. Is that what you think?

As I can see, we have no statement from Spaur or Neff that this thing was as big as a house.

I'm not convinced it was ever right above them.

You're repeating yourself. It is impossible to judge the size of an unknown object in the sky if you don't know its distance from you, and no way to judge the distance unless you know its size.

You keep trying to bring in other cases.

Are you admitting that the evidence in the Portage County case is insufficient on its own to establish aliens/woo as an explanation of the UFO?

 

(continued...)

Interesting you mention the powering down effect. None of the police cars in the Portage chase were powered down, or in the least bit affected by the UFO. All chased along at up to 100 mph.

So, if you were trying to draw some kind of analogy between the cases you mention, you'd need to explain why Portage was different from Levelland Texas. But I don't want this thing blowing out into examining some other unrelated case, so I'm happy to ignore this problem you have raised, in this thread.

You do. We've already been through this several times. For "alien spaceship" read "whatever woo you believe UFOs are". Try to keep up.

Look: if you want me to refer to the Portage County UFO as something other than an alien spaceship, tell me what you think it was and I'll use that term instead.

But don't come back at me with "I have no idea what it was. I'm just going to call it a UFO." We both agree that it was an unidentified object in the sky. But you want it to be much more than that. You claim it must be explainable by "no known cause or phenenoma". Which makes it woo of some kind. If you want to specify your preferred brand of woo, do so by all means. But don't pretend that you don't believe its woo.

Clearly the point was completely lost on you. Well, I tried - twice.

You missed the point. Eyewitnesses must be taken at face value unless trickery can be proved, you say. You can't just assume trickery, you say. So, a magician does real magic unless it can be proven that he does tricks, according to you.

Aren't the thousands of eyewitness accounts of Elvis sightings enough for you? If not, why not? Shouldn't we take the eyewitness accounts at face value? Are you saying all those eyewitnesses to Elvis are wrong or lying?

Oh FFS, Magical Realist! Read what I wrote there and quit trying to misrepresent what I said. It's getting old.

I wrote "In the Portage County case, collusion on a hoax story would be more likely, in my opinion, than an elaborate illusion. But a hoax may not be the correct explanation, either way."

Did I write that the Portage County case is a hoax? No.
Did I write that I think it's a hoax? No.
Did I explicitly write that I thought that a hoax might not be the correct explanation? Oh yes, I did.

And you take from that that I said it was a hoax. How? Dishonesty, or mere stupidity, or just reading in what you'd like to see rather than what I wrote?

Don't set up straw men, Magical Realist.

Er... yes they do. Much more often than you realise. People are very suggestible, it turns out.

And everyone knows what a UFO is and what they do, eh? We can just assume, then, can we? Never mind the evidence.

All in good time.

LOL. Of course you haven't considered every possible explanation. What a silly person you are, Magical Realist. And so arrogant you're apparently willing to make yourself look like a fool on a public forum, thinking you can bluff your way through.

Look, I'm going to tell you this just one more time, OK?

I have made no assumptions about this case, let alone the assumption that anybody told lies or made stuff up. Nor have I ever assumed that "UFOs don't exist", as you assert in the same post - again.

If you assert once again that I have made any such assumption, with me having told you outright in many posts that I am making no such assumption, I will have little option but to regard you as a lying troll.

I'm not interested in examining other cases until we're done with this one. I'm not taking that bait.

One more inconvenient thing that you can't dismiss with a "LOL", try as you might. It makes you nervous, doesn't it?

No, I can't. And neither can you, as you are well aware.

Thank you. You acknowledge my point, then. Without a pre-estimate of size, it is impossible to tell how high something is in the sky, just by looking at it.

No, because they didn't know its horizontal distance from them. They could tell it was above the trees, but not knowing how far away it was, they couldn't tell how big it was.

What's a nearby object when you're looking at something flying at 3000 feet up, or 30000 feet?

Just as soon as you admit that there's insufficient evidence in the Portage County case to conclude that the UFO was anything out of the ordinary.

It's interesting how you expect me to do all your thinking for you, isn't it?

Er... no. False dichotomy. There are three options here, not two.

1. It has a mundane explanation.
2. It is the woo.
3. We can't tell what it is.

If I fail to prove (1), that doesn't mean (2) is the only possible conclusion. (3) is also possible. You can only establish (2) by proving it and ruling out (1).

You're assuming a glowing metallic object as big as a house, but we don't know that the police officers saw any such thing, in fact. And there are also problems with that "smoothly gliding along" business, too, as it turns out.

So, a hoaxer, if there was one, wouldn't necessarily need to hoax a gliding metallic object as big as a house.

But I don't think this was a hoax, anyway.

 

(continued...)

We don't know it was as big as a house.
We don't know that it hovered over the trees. We only know that it was seen above the trees.
We don't know that it was as bright as the Sun.
I'm willing to accept the fact that it was noiseless and elliptical in appearance.

I agree we can rule it out, especially given the weather conditions at the time, which were apparently clear.

If it took off down the highway. We don't know it did that.

Many non-alien-spaceships are also silent, it turns out.

No, but there was a kind of mass hysteria about ... UFOs in the area at the time (prior to this incident)!

No, we don't. Not based on the accounts alone. We need to dig deeper than that. Overall, there might just be enough evidence.

But we must realise that people are fallible. They are imperfect observers. Their memories are imperfect. They are suggestible. They make mistakes.

You're correct that I haven't gathered any primary evidence myself. However, I have looked at primary evidence in the case, and the work of various experts who have looked at the case.

And you? What have you done to reach the conclusion you have reached, in terms of examining and gathering evidence?

Are you not creating a pretense of looking at the evidence for your own agenda-laden credulousness of UFO nonsense, just as all UFO believers do who have nothing to support a UFO sighting with?

You have established nothing. Am I supposed to admire you?

Do you think people who believe in alien spacecraft are stupid and gullible?

You missed the point again. Deliberate, or stupidity?

That was a generic example, not a reference to this specific case.

But, in fact, I am coming round to the view that Venus is a very likely partial explanation in the Portage County case. More on that later.

Err... no. Part of the problem with this case is that it wasn't very competently investigated in the first instance. It is precisely for that reason that the available evidence is so full of holes.

Lots of UFO nuts. You'll find a ton of them all over the internet if you go look.

Yeah, they could be angels.

That's not how this works. If you say it's the woo, the onus is on you to prove the woo. It's not up to me to prove you wrong. Understand? You're the one making the extraordinary claim.

How Rumsfeldian of you.

Yes. Just like that.

Your definition says UFOs "cannot be explained by any known cause or phenomena". That assumes you've ruled out all known possible natural causes. Unfortunately for you, you never quite manage to do that, so there are actually no UFOs that fit your definition.

So far.

You don't need my help for you to fail miserably. You do a quite splendid job of that all on your own.

Well, there was a bit more to find, as it turned out. More on that below.

An excellent illustration of your method, once again. It goes like this:

1. Start by assuming that any UFO is the woo.
2. Try not to consider any alternatives.
3. If you are forced to consider alternatives, try to minimise them or ignore them as best as you can.
4. If evidence is insufficient to decide one way or the other, assume the UFO is the woo.
5. Unless somebody can prove categorically that the UFO is not the woo, assume the UFO is the woo.
6. If somebody does make a strong case that the UFO is not the woo, quickly switch to a new, unrelated case. Go to step 1.

It rules out a nearby conventional aircraft. Often you see planes high in the sky that make no sound. You must have had this experience yourself at one time or other.

No. When it comes down to it, 100 weak UFO cases are not a lot more convincing than one. In fact, the very weakness of the cases tends to support the conclusion that there probably nothing extraordinary about the whole UFO business.

 

Magical Realist:

How nice of you to ask, and in such a polite way too! Ok, let's get to it.

First, remember that post you mostly ignored above? Let me reply to what you did say about that, and suggest a possible explanation to you.

The rising sun - or more properly the about-to-rise sun - most likely accounts to the whole area being lit up around the car. It was getting lighter every minute while the great UFO chase was happening.

First let us consider how close this object was to the police officers. You say it was just above the trees when it was first seen. And yet, there's that report from the woman 100 miles away who described a starlike obbject travelling rapidly west to northeast across the sky. She couldn't possibly have seen something that was just above the tree height at a distance of 100 miles - not from her house.

So, here's a suggestion: the object the woman saw was a bright meteor. In fact, the same meteor was seen by many people over a wide region. Obviously, the meteor wasn't just above the treeline, but much higher up. However, seeing as it is impossible for the officers to judge the height accurately, it is quite possible that they too saw the meteor cross from west to east, apparently over their car. This meteor, as reported by many people, was bright enough to light up the surrounding area as it passed.

We haven't accounted for the chase yet, but we have what may be the initial sighting by the officers.

What time is this that you are you talking about? Was this before they started chasing it, or later on? Actually, I see from what you've quoted that this was much later on, during the chase and closer to sunrise. We'll get to that later on.

Notice that, by now, the two policemen are back in their car. And now they are looking eastward, seeing a bright object which they identify as the UFO that just passed over them.

Of course, they can't judge the 250 feet thing - that's just a guess, because there's no point of reference to judge size or distance.

Look at the road map and where they were. Now get out your favorite astronomy program and do a little checking. You will find that at that time of the morning, the planet Venus was, in fact, rising slightly south-east of them, near the Sun (as it always is). The Sun itself was not yet visible and Venus was a very bright object in the sky.

So, I suggest that the officers were at this point looking at Venus.

Notice already that the case is complicated. Whereas up to this point you have assumed that the police officers were only ever seeing one object, I think they most likely saw at least two different objects - first the meteor that passed over the car and was lost from view, then the planet Venus, which was brightly shining in the eastern sky.

Spaur's statement tends to confirm that at this stage they were watching Venus. He described the UFO as hovering in the east. Of course, he misjudged the distance, but this is a common error.

To compare, remember how I told you about Hynek and the other police who were seeing UFOs? Well, turns out that many of them mistook the bright star Arcturus for a UFO. So, it looks like some police in the Portage County area were not averse to misidentifying stars or planets as alien spaceships. Probably, Spaur and Neff, primed as they were on UFO stories, made the same error as their colleagues. In fact, this is supported by the fact that Spurr's first thought when he saw the object initially was along the lines of "That must be the flying saucer everybody is talking about".

Another telling detail is that, looking east out of the windshield of the car, Spaur and Neff should have been able to see both the flying saucer and the planet Venus in the eastern sky. However, they only reported one object in the sky. Venus was unmissable. The Sun was about to rise and few stars were visible, but Venus is very bright and can often be seen clearly just before sunrise, and indeed was very prominent on this particular day. So, the officers at this point were most likely watching the planet Venus, and not a flying saucer at all.

I don't understand this. How could the object be on the right and out the left window at the same time? That's a contradiction.

Now the pacing thing.

Have you ever been in a car at night and watched something like the moon or a star or planet out of the side window?

Did you notice how the moon or star or whatever seems to keep pace with the car? This effect is due to the moon and stars being very far away, of course. But you have no way to judge their true distance accurately just by looking at them, so you think they are closer than they are.

Well, Spaur and Neff were in the same situation watching Venus. Spaur estimated the altitude at 300-500 feet, like it says here, but he was wildly wrong about that. Having no point of reference for size or distance, he assumed Venus was much closer than it was. And it seemed to effortlessly keep pace with the car, no matter how fast he drove.

Got any questions so far? Are you following this?

 

Magical Realist:

Well, I sure hope you've got the evidence to show how it's bullshit, Magical Realist. Because I'm guessing you haven't really looked at the evidence very closely. But we'll see. So...

Who said it was hovering over the trees?
As for the 300 feet, I have already explained why that can't be relied upon, many times.
As for what "they" thought about "their" clothes catching on fire, it's only Spaur who mentioned anything like that, isn't it? And he just said "And I started looking down and I looked at my hands and my clothes weren't burning or anything..." And then, almost immediately after this, Spaur said "I was petrified, and, uh, I moved my right foot, and everything seemed to work all right. ... So we both went for the car, we got in the car and we sat there..."

All this, by the way, is second-hand from them missing Weitzel NICAP report.

You mean, they lost sight of it while they scrambled into the car, and when they got in they saw a bright object in the sky in front of the car, to the east, which seems most likely to have been the planet Venus. If there had been a UFO and Venus, they would have reported seeing both - at the initial sighting scene and also later during the chase. But neither of them did.

Well, no. They started driving the car east/southeast, and the object stayed in front of them, apparently pacing the car, just as the planet Venus would appear to do.

Right. This is what makes this case complicated. Initially, they likely saw the meteor. Then, as they got into the car they lost track of the meteor (which, as you say, quickly became invisible). Then they noticed Venus and automatically assumed they were looking at the same object as before.

Bear in mind that they had been told specifically on the police radio to go and investigate a UFO report just before all this. They were primed to see a UFO.

Ah yes. The chase.

Look at the chase track on any of the maps (or on google maps if you prefer). Do you notice anything?

What I notice is that the chase track follows a more-or-less constant compass bearing for the entire chase, at least insofar as a constant bearing was available on the roads in the area. Their average direction of travel was 117 degrees from north, keeping the UFO in sight the whole time. Now, do you want to guess where Venus was in the sky over the period of the chase? It was at a bearing of 115 degrees! Coincidence? I think not!

Their chase route follows exactly the route you'd expect if they were chasing Venus, trying to keep it in front of the car.

Oh, but wait, you say. The UFO changed directions during the chase, and maybe even crossed the road! Venus wouldn't move like that!

Well, Venus doesn't move around much, but the roads sure do. And guess what? If you match up the twists and turns of the road to what the officers describe as the UFO's movements during the chase, the mysterious UFO changes its apparent position relative to the direction the car is facing in pretty much the way you'd expect Venus to do.

Another small nugget: At one stage they drove in a virtual straight line for 20 miles, almost due east. Did they report seeing the planet Venus at all during that stretch? No. Strangely, neither officer saw Venus, the brightest thing in the sky at the time (discounting any stray alien spacecraft, of course). For police officers, they seem to have been remarkably non-observant. And, during this part of the chase, officer Neff reported that the UFO maintained the same position relative to the car, on a bearing a little south of east (as described by Neff). And guess where Venus was in the sky right then? Yes, you guessed right. Well done, Magical Realist!

Which particular additional police officer's statement would you like me to examine next? I think we can deal with those, too.

Ah! Good point. Venus isn't very metallic, is it? But this was much later in the chase - just before sunrise at around 5:50 EST. One question you might ask yourself is: did Spaur and Neff ever lose sight of the UFO again after starting the chase, or did they have eyes on the same object all the time? Mind, you can't just assume. You'll need evidence either way. Because if they lost sight of it at any point, there's a possibility of them sighting a third object that they then identified as the UFO. But we can get to that later, if it becomes an issue.

Are you starting to see what careful analysis can do for a case like this, Magical Realist?

Nice try, but no.

I have officially provided a plausible mundane explanation for what they saw that night - one that you have failed to refute at this point.

Well, no, I'm afraid they can't. Looks like we're going to have to agree to disagree on this point. You ought to try it yourself some time, if you get a chance.

Oh, stop whining. If you've got nothing to offer, you can always admit that there's no good reason to suppose that this was anything other than an explainable event, and we can move on.

This is one of the all-time greats, is it? What a pity your belief system is so poorly grounded.

 

Magical Realist:

You're wilfully blind to seeing, as I expected you would be.

And don't think I haven't noticed that you have ignored the vast majority of the specifics of what I wrote above. I assume this is because you have no answer to it. So we're left to listen to you whine, as usual.

And you keep assuming stuff without checking on the accuracy of the evidence available to you. Why is that? Wait, I know. It's because you just want to believe it was aliens, regardless of what's presented to you.

I didn't say they mistook the Sun for a UFO. Meteor, yes. Venus, yes. Sun, no. Please read more carefully and stop constructing straw men.

Sounds to me like you're never seen it, if you think you saw it high in the sky.

Even Hynek, who is quite a famous astronomer turned UFO flag waver, talked about police officers in Ohio in 1966 mistaking the star Arcturus for a flying saucer. And Acturus is not as bright as Venus.

As for the predawn light and silouettes, we haven't got to examining the end of the chase yet.

First thing to note: you've provided a photograph, which is not necessarily the same thing that the human eye or brain perceives.

But another thing to note, that backs up what I said: see how prominent Venus is in that Sydney photo? If you were driving towards it for 20 miles in a straight line, I think you'd notice it, wouldn't you? And yet, neither Spaur nor Neff reported seeing the planet Venus at any time during the chase - not until right at the end, just before the UFO disappeared. (And we can discuss that separately if you like.)

I recommend the series of links I posted above as probably the most complete available documentation. A third-hand youtube video is good to get somebody's overview (in this case a rather credulous True Believer perspective), but that's about it.

There are problems with all of these "other" accounts, and with Spaur's account, in particular.

Spaur got his directions completely mixed up in his various witness statements. To take just one example, he said that he and Neff drove east from the site of the initial traffic accident, in order to investigate the UFO report. But from the known sites of the accident and Spaur and Neff's original sighting of the UFO, Spaur and Neff must have travelled west. So, Spaur was 180 degrees out on that. Later on in his statements there are similar demonstrable errors of direction. We can conclude from this that Spaur's identification of the UFO being at particular times at all points of the compass should not be relied upon.

Ah yes. Huston.

Huston was near the Ohio/Pennsylvania border when he heard about the UFO on police radio. Spaur told him to look for the UFO as he and Neff approached from the northwest.

Huston's statement says he saw the UFO come from the northwest. He claims he first saw it when Spaur and Neff were about five miles away from him. He told Weitzel that the UFO passed over him in a matter of seconds, so he didn't have a chance to get a good look at it. Huston also stated that later officer Panzanella came from northwest of his (Huston's) position.

But we know from Panzanella's account where Panzanella came from, and he was southeast of Huston's position. So, again, we seem to have a 180 degree error in the recorded statement from Huston. Clearly, if Huston was correct, he couldn't have seen Venus approaching from the northwest, because Venus was in the east/southeast sky. But Huston's account can't be trusted in this respect.

Another problem is seen when we consider that the UFO was described by Spaur and Neff as pacing their car. Huston says he spotted their car 5 miles away from him. At the speed they were doing (80-85 mph at this time), Huston would have had over 3 minutes to observe the UFO approach him and then go past. But he says he only saw it for a few seconds.

---

I hope by now you are starting to appreciate what more attention to detail can reveal in a case like this one, Magical Realist.

Of course, you'll bluff and bluster. You'll ignore everything I've posted. And I'll know it is because you have no answers. I'll know it's because your faith is in danger.

 

A delusion is a belief held in spite of the existence of evidence to the contrary.

I have suggested that a number of witnesses to the Portage County incident, such as officer Spaur, for example, suffered from the delusion that they were seeing a flying saucer, when it seems more likely that they were seeing the planet Venus (part of the time), for example.

There is evidence of a number of "illusions", too, if you want to call them that, such as the many mistakes about size and distance and speed that are evident in the various witness statements.

I don't think there's much evidence of hallucination, although that's always a possibility.

In terms of the specific appearance of Venus "speeding across the sky", obviously that's an illusion. Anybody thinking that Venus is an alien craft also has a delusion.

I don't really like to apply the term "delusion" in this kind of situation, though, because of its psychological overtones. I'd say the Portage County witnesses made honest and understandable mistakes given the circumstances, and I'm in no way suggesting that any of them suffered from a mental illness.