Portage County/Ravenna UFO chase 1966

Magical Realist:

You mean, what about all the stuff I just covered in my previous post? Didn't you read that post? Who's wilfully blind, again?

At what stage of the chase were these observations made?

You need to be careful with the timing, Magical Realist, because I will assert that Spaur and Neff saw no fewer than three different objects at different points during their "encounter".

No. I'm not saying that. In fact, I believe the drawing was based on what they saw a few minutes before sunrise, right at the end of the chase.

But I won't keep you in suspense any longer. At the end of the chase, just before the UFO disappeared from view, what they probably saw was a weather balloon reflecting the sunlight.

Yup. Already covered that.

Attention to detail is sorely lacking from you, Magical Realist.

I'm afraid you can't bluff and bluster your way out of this. You'll need to do much much better if you want to make a case for the woo here.

Call me pedantic if you like. That's what investigators are: pedantic. That's how they get results. Attention paid to small details and clues. Attention paid to discrepancies and errors.

I don't care which aliens or which planet. Already told you that.

Can't be attributed to a streaking meteor, eh? Or bright sunlight reflected off a metallic weather balloon.

Yeah, ok. Whatever you say, Magical Realist. You're not making a very persuasive case here.

Beside the point.

And yet, it turns out that quite a significant number of UFO sightings are explainable as sightings of ordinary astronomical objects, with Venus being among the most commonly mistaken objects.

It is in fact disingenuous to insist that nobody can possibly make this mistake, because there are tons of records of people making exactly this mistake.

So you think that Hynek, standing next to these guys who were telling him "Look at the UFO, Professor!", was mistaken about it being Arcturus?

I know you can't cope with massive information overload. You skip over so much of what I post anyway that I know I need to deliver it in bite-size pieces and keep checking up on it to stop you from simply ignoring it. And I'm not even that successful at that, due to your very limited attention span.

Now, at the end of the chase, the police officers on the scene all most likely transferred their attention from Venus to a weather balloon. The Sun was right on the point of rising at that time and the brightness of the sky was rapidly making Venus difficult to see. But a metallic weather balloon reflecting the rays of the not-quite-risen sun looks like an almost blindingly bright light in the sky, even if some details can be made out.

There's no problem with a balloon being seen in silhouette, of course.

Or they were just looking at Venus and thre was no big shining elliptical object at that point in the chase. LOL.

(You're all nervous again, aren't you? The "LOL" is a dead give-away with you.)

Did you look at the Project Blue Book records of the statements Spaur and the others filled in? They had detailed questionaires about where things were in the sky, what exactly they saw and so on. And yet, none of them mentioned seeing Venus until right at the end of the chase.

If you want to know the facts with some True Believer spin, the video does indeed give some kind of overview. It won't help you solve the case, but it's not completely useless, I guess.

If Spaur's sense of direction was so well-honed as you say it was, tell me why Spaur reported driving east from the traffic accident to the site of his first viewing of the UFO. We know he drove west, but he said he drove east.

You seem confused about whose statement you're looking at: Spaur's or Huston's. Try not to mix them up. Go back and read what I wrote about Huston. I've already dealt with the UFO flying over Spaur.

Huston makes no mention of obscuring trees in his statement. Does he?

Are you making shit up, Magical Realist?

Well, yeah, you can be. And that's made more likely by the fact that he was wrong about other stuff.

Let's put it this way: I think I'm doing a far better job than you on analysing this case. Readers can judge for themselves, of course.

You tell me, Magical Realist. You're so desperate for this to be the woo that you'll insist that no witness can ever make a mistake, and that witnesses have almost supernatural abilities.

Even when I point out to you obvious inconsistencies, such as Spaur's 180 degree incorrect direction in his statement, you still insist that Spaur has a perfect sense of direction.

Yeah. You're great at these faith-based beliefs of yours. You just know. It reminds me of a similar discussion I've been having with Jan Ardena on another topic, in which he also claimed to just magically know stuff.

 

Magical Realist:

No.

The meteor was what Spaur and Neff saw at the initial sighting.

Then they got into their car and transferred their attention to the planet Venus. They "chased" Venus along the roads.
Near Rochester, Pennsylvania, after crossing the state line, Spaur and Neff lost sight of the object. The sun had just risen and Venus was fading into the background.

Then Spaur and Neff picked up on a third object - probably a weather balloon - that another officer, Panzanella, had been watching for a while by this time.

The chase passed though Freedom PA and entered Conway. At this point, Spaur and Neff, with Huston following behind, spotted Panzanella parked at a petrol station. All four then watched the latest object - the weather balloon, together.

Obviously, the weather balloon was not involved in the car "chase" - that was Venus, apparently pacing the car in the way I described above.

I can't take all the credit for it. Lots of people have looked at this case before me. But it is interesting what you can find when you take a good look at the information that's available, isn't it?

I don't think they're particularly interested in closing the file. They haven't even bothered posting their own records online. It's almost as if they don't want people to read their report.

Correct. Not beyond necessity. And yes, you have failed. Again.

This is from officer Panzanella's statement. We can get into more detail about that if you like.

But first, help me sort out just one point about Panzanella.

Panzanella's statement reports that he was observing the UFO, and that he saw it in the sky east of Conway, Pennslyvania. And you see from the quote above that when the other officers arrived on the scene he claimed he had already been watching it for 10 minutes.

But the other three policemen came from the west of Panzanella's position. If Spaur, Neff and Huston's stories are to be believed, they were chasing a UFO that was only a couple of hundred feet in front of their cars, keeping pace with the cars for the entire chase.

This means that Panzanella should have seen the UFO to the west of his position as the others chased it. But he tells us he was looking at something in the eastern sky.

What are we to conclude? I say we can conclude that Panzanella was not (initially) watching the same thing that Spaur, Neff and Huston were watching. It seems likely that Panzanella (and later the others, once they stopped driving) was watching a weather balloon, while the others were hot on the tail of the elusive planet Venus.

Right. They don't.

And guess what?

None of the three officers - Spaur, Huston and Panzanella, who were interviewed immediately after the incident (Neff didn't give a statement until later), reported seeing the UFO disappearing into the sky. And, if you look at the original forms Spaur and Neff filled out (around page 650 of Project Blue Book, linked previously), you'll see that both men answered "No" to the question on the form "Did the object disappear while you were watching it?"

I don't know what time Venus rose. What I do know is that from the initial sighting at 5:07 until 5:45, just before sunrise proper, Venus rose from an elevation of 12 degrees to 19 degrees above the horizon. I would not call this "high in the sky".

 

There's nothing about "hovering" there.

No, I didn't lie. You just don't accept what I've told you. That's not the same thing.

I quoted exactly what he said.

The fact is this UFO did not burn anybody's clothes, regardless of what Spaur may have thought, being primed by reports of UFOs and the like, as he was at the time of the first sighting

Obviously they would have lost sight of it while they got into the car. They also couldn't have been watching it continuously while they made calls on the police radio etc.

Spaur's description (which you can see in the Blue Book files) was that the object seen through the windshield was blue-white in colour, shining and beautiful ... rather like the planet Venus actually.

Actually, Schoenfelt told Spaur to "take a shot at it", and he later said that he said that because he thought the object might be a weather balloon and a shot might bring it down. Spaur declined because he was a afraid of making it angry, so he was then told to keep it in sight until a car with a camera could be dispatched to photograph it, as described here.

This is exactly what you'd expect Venus to do. As the car turns south, Venus is on the left. Then, as the car turns east, Venus appears to glide southwards. And the pacing thing I've already dealt with. Venus, being a very distant object, will seem to pace a car, no matter what speed it is doing.

Note the that the 300-500 feet is "estimated", which means somebody guessed it. As for the ground illumination, the sky was brightening rapidly in the lead-up to sunrise, which wasn't far away.

Spaur was actually quite interested in racing cars and fancied himself a bit of a racer. Actually, no matter how fast Spaur drove (and the speed verified at different times of the chase), Venus always stayed ahead of the car at the same apparent distance. Spaur doesn't mention "darting" this way and that, I don't think. Somebody else must have added that in there.

They were specifically asked what stars they could see in the statements they filled out. No mention of Venus. See the Project Blue Book files if you want to check.

Whose words are these? Spaur's words, or something that the person writing the description of the case added in?

You need to be careful, Magical Realist. You can't just take third-hand accounts written by somebody who wasn't there to be accurate descriptions of what happened. You have to look at the primary evidence.

Right. Just enough time for Spaur and Neff to see it, panic, and jump back in their car.

Who said that? Be careful, Magical Realist. You need to work out when they were in the car and when they were not.

No, it's Venus at that point, in all probability.

All the facts point to its being Venus.

 

Magical Realist:

I'm sorry, Magical Realist, but name-calling won't help you here.

Oh, I'm confident that my analysis is quite credible, thankyou.

So credible, in fact, that you're practically seething with rage about it. Every response you post is angry and upset. You're desperate to try to fault what I've said, but you're doing a really lousy job of that. And you know it.

The problem with this later statement by Spaur that it directly contradicts his statement given immediately after the incident.

Initially - and this was published in a newspaper report in the Cleveland Plain Dealer (18 April 1966) - Spaur said that all four officers watched the object at Conway for about 20 minutes. He said it was still visible when he and the others went inside to make a phone call. And he said when they came out they were unable to see it any more. He said nothing about it shooting up into the sky in his initial statement.

Huston backs up this story, saying that when they all went inside "the object was still hovering".

And Panzanella backs it up, too. He said all four of them watched the object until it was "barely visible" after it had risen higher in the sky. By the way, when a weather balloon is warmed by the rays of the just-risen sun, it tends to become more bouyant and it floats upwards, so Panzanella's statement is consistent with it being a weather balloon.

So, it seems that Spaur changed his story later on.

It is interesting that here, right at the end of the chase, is the only time that anybody mentions seeing Venus, even though Panzanella didn't know what it was and thought it was a bright star. And here, we have the only description of both Venus and the "UFO" being seen at the same time. But this is not hard to explain, since at this point they were all most likely watching a weather balloon. Whereas, during the car chase, Spaur and Neff were chasing Venus, thinking all the time it was a UFO.

 

Go back to the original sighting. Sapur said he saw a bright object in the sky coming from behind some trees to the west. He called out to Neff, who also saw the object. It appeared to be coming towards them, then it passed overhead. On seeing his, Spaur reported only being "mildly surprised" (in his statement to Weitzel). But when the object appeared to come towards him, both police officers panicked and jumped back into their car. Then they saw the brightly-glowing blue-white object in the east, through the windshield, apparently stationary ahead of them. It remained stationary until they started driving the car, after which it "paced" the car.

They thought they could, but they obviously couldn't. Hence mistaking Venus for something much closer.

Who said it was warm? Nobody. Perhaps you're just making this shit up, eh? Why are you doing that, Magical Realist?

They couldn't see anything right overhead from inside the car.

Read what I wrote. They lost sight of the meteor during the time they got into the car, and picked up the planet Venus once they were in the car.

He's talking specifically about his description of the UFO. It's right there in the file. If you don't believe me, go look for yourself. Spaur describes the colour of the UFO as blue-white - i.e. the colour of Venus.

Trained police officers they were, but not trained astronomers by any stretch of the imagination.

And Spaur's directions in his various reports were all over the place anyway. There are several demonstrable errors, including the 180 initial error I pointed out previously.

Not until Venus was higher in the sky and the Sun was on the point of rising.

Then you didn't read the material properly. LOL! (I love your nervous little LOLs, Magical Realist. They are like a poker player's "tell". Don't ever stop with them.)

Where?

Or they thought that Venus was a big bright elliptical object hovering in front of them. LOL!

From where?

Spaur told different people different stories at different times. That's somewhat problematic, isn't it? I think his earliest statements are the most likely to be authentic, rather than influenced by "investigators" or media or other people.

I'm sorry, Magical Realist, but you'll have to do a lot better than accuse me of insanity without reason.

Try again. See if you can refute my hypothesis instead of handing out insults. After all, I'm not calling you insane just because you believe in a lot of baseless woo, am I? I'm afraid you'll have to accept that I'm quite sane, but skeptical. My not sharing your faith-based beliefs does not make me insane.

They react it to. They get into the car. They radio in - from inside the car. From initial sighting to getting into the car could certainly take a matter of a few seconds - less than 30 seconds, certainly.

No. They get in the car. They look out the front windshield and they see it there. There's no mention of seeing it move from above to in front of the car, even though that is what they assumed happened. In fact, they transferred their attention from one object to a different object at this time, without realising it.

Were there two radio calls? Or one?

Correct. The meteor was long gone by the time they started driving.

I've given a completely plausible account of what they saw.

You just don't like it. Tough luck, Magical Realist.

 

Something new for you to work on, Magical Realist:

Spaur reports passing "between a tractor and a trailer" (i.e. two large trucks) at one stage during the chase. However, neither of the drivers of those vehicles ever came forward to report on the giant house-sized UFO that must have passed right over their heads as it was being chased by the police.

Spaur and Neff also reported "occasional traffic" between Canfield and Columbiana, which they had to dodge around at high speed. But, once again, none of the drivers of these vehicles ever reported seeing anything unusual. Certainly no house-sized bright-as-the-sun flying objects hovering just above the road and racing along in front of a police car.

How do you explain that, Magical Realist? Nobody else saw the obvious house-sized brilliant-bright UFO on the very road that Spaur and Neff were chasing it along. Why not?

 

Browsing through the Project Blue Book files, I found something else that's interesting.

Remember that "digitally enhanced" photo that was posted above?

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Well, check out this photo recorded in the Blue Book files:

http://bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=MISC-PBB2-671

What do you notice?

Here's what I think. I think somebody took the top photo from the Blue Book page linked here, and "enhanced" it by flipping the top section of it upside-down and enlarging it. Possibly, they also added in a police-car like shadow at the bottom of the photo, but I can't be sure about that.

This is supposedly Buchert's photo of the UFO.

Now make up your own mind as to whether the photo shows a genuine UFO, or whether it's a more-or-less useless photo of nothing.

One other thing to notice: if this is a UFO, then somebody needs to explain why there are two of them in the original "unenhanced" photo, because none of the witnesses in this case (including Buchert) reported seeing more than one UFO.

Analysis of Buchert's photo at the time is also available:

http://bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=MISC-PBB2-617

(Incidentally, this page is the start of the Project Blue Book records concerning this case.)

Points made:

 

Here is an article about how and why lots of people mistake Venus for a UFO. It specifically discusses the Portage County/Ravenna case.

http://www.astronomyufo.com/UFO/Venusufo.htm

Interesting extra bit from Weitzel's report about the "pacing" of the police car:

At Canfield, or just outside the city, the UFO turned south. It seemed to "wait" for Spaur and Neff to catch up. It had done this, I forgot to mention, at Deerfield. It did again near Columbiana, where I65 intersects 14-46, and may have at Berlin Center (intersection of 534 and 14). (Wietzel)​

Also, a little more on what I said about other people on the roads, above:

According to Wietzel, the officers passed through a traffic light in Rochester, PA, where there was a volkswagon and some trucks. None of these individuals reported seeing a UFO pass through the intersection or nearby. One would also expect that some other cars on the road at the time would have noticed some huge bright object speeding past them or near their position. Again, there is a lack of any such reports. It appears the only people who reported the object speeding over the road were officers Neff, Spaur and Huston, who were pursuing it.
​

Also instructive is to compare a series of similar "encounters" in Georgia in 1967, which are also covered on the page linked above. These are in the Condon report.

Here we had a pilot with 4000 flying hours under his belt, flying around in circles and trying to chase a UFO, while policemen on the ground radioed directions to him about the location of the UFO. The policemen on the ground saw the pilot fly under the UFO several times, apparently ignoring it; they could all see it clearly, but the pilot in the sky was having trouble finding it.

The descriptions of the UFO in these incidents are interesting, too, and include "football shaped light", "big as the moon", "a sphere shaped object approximately 25 feet in diameter" and many others - once again proving my point that you can't tell the size of something in the sky from the ground without a point of reference.

Some police also tried chasing the UFO. According to the report:

It was a good distance in front of us, pulling away, so we turned around to come back to town. The object turned on us and followed. It gained on us and was going about 75 mph. After the object caught up with us, it pulled into the sky, emitting a beam of bluish light that illuminated the roadway. (Condon 373)​

And Hynek's conclusion about this series of sightings and police chases?

It is a fantastic example of how persuasive the planet Venus can be as a nonscreened UFO. Police officers in 11 counties were "taken in" by this planet. It is a case of particular value to psychologists and, one is tempted to say, to those responsible for hiring policemen.​

 

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

There are two lights in the sky in this photo: one is an aircraft with landing lights on; the other is Venus. Which is which?

Spoiler

The brighter, blue one is Venus.