Portage County police chase
Ohio deputies chased a bright glowing object for well over 60 miles, from near Ravenna into Pennsylvania, before dawn.
1966 CE · 41.16, -81.24 · status: disputed
The account
Around 5 a.m. on 17 April 1966 deputy Dale Spaur and auxiliary Wilbur 'Barney' Neff stopped near Ravenna, saw a bright object rise from the woods and followed it at high speed; officers from other towns joined in and a Conway, Pennsylvania officer also saw it.
The sceptical view
Blue Book chief Hector Quintanilla concluded the officers saw a satellite and then chased the planet Venus. Hynek and James McDonald rejected this, and congressional pressure forced Blue Book to re-interview witnesses.
The researched reading
A famous police chase across two states, most plausibly of Venus rising at dawn. The officers’ close description of the start keeps a modest doubt.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Something known, misidentified | 50% | At 5 a.m. on 17 April 1966 Venus was brilliant in the east, in the direction the officers drove; a pursuer who keeps a planet ahead of him sees it "pace" his car for any distance. Blue Book added the Echo satellite for the first part. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 15% | Spaur described a large object with a beam lighting the ground before the chase; Hynek and McDonald rejected the Venus answer, and the officers said they saw Venus separately. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 10% | An exhausting 85-mile high-speed chase, with radio chatter feeding each officer, encourages misjudged size and distance. |
| Undetermined | 10% | The share a generic explanation had beyond what has been shown for this case: it fits many cases like this one, but has not been demonstrated for this one. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 6% | Refraction near the horizon at dawn can enlarge and distort a planet. |
| Secret human technology | 4% | No aircraft has been identified, though military traffic was possible. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 3% | No luminous atmospheric phenomenon is known to last over an hour. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 2% | Several officers in different towns reported independently. |
Official position: Blue Book chief Hector Quintanilla concluded the officers saw a satellite and then Venus.