UFO. United States

April 17, 1966, 5 a.m. Chief Gerald Buchert is on patrol in Mantua when the Portage County Sheriff's Department radios a message to his deputies to look for lights in the sky last seen heading east.


Buchert rushes home to wake up his wife and grab the camera. Joan Buchert is still not herself, while Gerald leads her out of the house, excitedly muttering something, but not knowing anything about it. She is annoyed by his refusal to explain why she should go outside in a bathrobe before sunrise.


She abruptly stops complaining when he points to the dark cloudless sky. Not far from their yard hovers an object resembling two tea saucers joined together. Light comes from him, but he makes no sound. Then he slowly and deliberately moves to the east, tilting along the way. Gerald takes a picture before the object disappears from view.


Around the same time, near Ravenna, Portage County sheriffs Dale Spohr and Wilbur "Barney" Neff investigate a car abandoned on the side of a rural road. The car seems to be filled with radio equipment. A triangle with a drawn lightning bolt and the inscription "Seven steps to hell" is drawn on the side.


From behind, they hear a strange electric humming sound. They turn around and watch in amazement as a saucer—shaped vessel — perhaps 50 feet long and about 20 feet high - slowly rises out of the trees and hovers in the air. Bright light shines from below, washing the earth. Squinting, the officers saw what looked like a dome from above and a protrusion similar to a thick antenna.


Spaur remembers his radio and reports what he sees. After a confusing exchange of opinions, the dispatcher advises the officers to shoot him down so that they can prove their version. Hesitantly, Spaur pulls out a pistol and aims at the ship.


At the Ravenna Police Station, Sergeant Henry Schoenfelt suddenly wonders if Spore and Neff have noticed a government weather balloon. He connects himself to the radio and cancels the order to shoot. Wait there, he says, until someone is sent with a camera.


But then the ship suddenly begins to fly to the east. Spaur and Neff scramble back to their car and give chase.


Half an hour later, Spaur and Neff are out of their jurisdiction and racing along dark rural roads at over 100 miles per hour. At the Pennsylvania border, Eastern Palestine Police Officer Wayne Houston joins the chase, which continues outside the state. Even when the impending dawn pales in the sky, the lights of the strange ship remain distinct.


Back in Ravenna, the dispatcher calls the air traffic control tower in Pittsburgh. While they are talking on the phone, Spaur reports on the radio that fighters are already flying in the sky, flying to the ship. Another Portage County representative also sees three planes heading to intercept.


At about 6:15 a.m., Spore and Neff's car pulls up to a service station in Conway, Pennsylvania, where Officer Frank Panzanella is standing and drinking coffee, watching an object float by.


Moments later, Spore, Neff, Houston, and Panzanella listen as their radios pick up the chatter between the pilots chasing the ship. When they notice it underneath them, the plate accelerates rapidly, this time heading straight up, and disappears.


As a result, when the sheriff developed the film and published the photo in a local newspaper, the FBI intervened, which took the original film from the sheriff and informed the media that the police had seen the "planet Venus".


The press abruptly stopped talking and suddenly stopped writing about UFOs, but the cops were furious. They were hardworking people, dedicated and respected in their cities, and the United States government had just told the world that they were stupid enough to chase the planet from Ravenna to the outskirts of Pittsburgh.


The police tried to prove that they were not the idiots that the FBI had exposed them to, but the state machine turned out to be stronger.