Seeing a UFO ruined Dale Spaur’s life
How do we decide what to believe?
All the articles about UFOs over the last month got me thinking about a dramatic flying saucer sighting that happened near where I grew up.
“If I could change all that I have done in my life, I would change just one thing. And that would be the night we chased that damn thing. That saucer.”
That’s what Dale Spaur told a reporter in the autumn of 1966, six months after he saw a large, metal aircraft hovering over his police cruiser on the side of a highway. It was 5 a.m. and dark out, but there was no mistaking it. The thing was 40 feet across, shaped like a saucer and only about 150 feet above them, creeping over the treetops and bathing the street below in bright, white light. His partner, Wilbur Neff, saw it, too. So did dozens of other people, including law enforcement officers in four counties. Police radios across Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania were abuzz that night with talk of a flying saucer.
Feeling a bit spooked, Spaur called the radio operator at the Portage County Sheriff’s Office. “It’s perfectly still,” he said, “and it just makes a humming noise.”
The dispatcher ordered him to keep an eye on it. So he did. Spaur threw the car in gear, and they took off after it east down U.S. Route 224. They hit…
