Ohio UFOs are in the unknowncountry.com news lately, but this is nothing new: thirty years ago, on Oct. 18, 1973, a Army Reserve helicopter almost collided with a UFO near Cleveland.

Russ Kent writes in the News-Journal that Arrigo “Rick” Jezzi was flying a Huey helicopter that night from Columbus to Cleveland. “Capt. Larry Coyne was the pilot,” Jezzi says. “I was in the left seat, actually flying the Huey at the time. We were near Mansfield flying at 2,500 to 3,000 feet.” John Healey and Robert Yanacsek were in the back, near a cargo door with a Plexiglas window. “One of the guys in the back reported a red light. He said it looked like an aircraft light on the right horizon,” Jezzi says. “I couldn’t see it. “Then I heard ‘I think its coming toward us,'” Jezzi says. “The next thing I knew Larry took control of the throttle. We went into a maneuver, a controlled free fall. We dropped about 2,000 feet.” If Coyne hadn?t done that, Jezzi thinks they would have collided with the UFO. “It took just a couple of seconds,” he says. “I remember looking up through the ceiling and I saw a white light moving over top of us. I followed it to the left horizon where it disappeared.” It seemed to be traveling twice as fast as the Huey. “Red navigational lights aren’t located in the front of an aircraft,” he says. “That’s what was moving toward us. I don’t know what it was.”

Two of the other crew members, when questioned about the incident, sketched drawings of a cigar-shaped craft. Jezzi says, “They both came up with similar drawings.” The magnetic compass in the Huey never worked right after that and had to be replaced. In the original story in the November 4, 1973, edition of the Mansfield News Journal, Coyne tells about seeing the UFO when his helicopter was cruising at 2,500 feet. A red light appeared on the eastern horizon, and was first spotted by the crew chief, Sgt. Robert Yanacsek. “The light was traveling in excess of 600 knots,” Coyne says. “It came from the horizon to our aircraft in about 10 seconds. We were on a collision course.” He put the helicopter into a dive. “At 1,700 feet I braced myself for the impact with the other craft,” he says. “It was coming from our right side. I was scared. There had been so little time to respond. The thing was terrifically fast. We looked up and saw it stopped right over us. It had a big, gray metallic-looking hull about 60 feet long. It was shaped like an airfoil or a streamlined fat cigar. There was a red light on the front. The leading edge glowed red a short distance back from the nose. There was a center dome. A green light at the rear reflected on the hull.” Coyne says the green light swiveled like a spotlight and bathed the helicopter in green light.

On the ground, Rene Boucher and her brother Brad saw a bright light in the sky. Rene says, “I was in high school. My brother was in junior high. There had been a lot of sightings in the days and weeks before that. Even the governor reported seeing something. We thought we’d give it a try.” She and her brother walked out in the soybean field behind their home and started watching the sky. “We saw a bunch of stuff that looked like it was maybe 30,000 feet in the air,” she says. “But it wasn’t anything spectacular. Then I think we both put our heads down for some reason. That’s when we saw this brilliant white light. It was as bright as the sun. I don’t know what it was but it scared us. We ran for two blocks until we got home.” Interestingly, a crop circle was recently discovered in an Ohio soybean field.

Thirty years later, Jezzi says, “It caused a lot of hullabaloo. The first thing I thought was those Commie bastards?what are they up to?”

Rene says, “We really saw something that night. I don’t know what it was.”

When NASA engineer Paul Hill saw something strange in the sky, he didn’t know what it was either?but he DID know it was not from this world.

NOTE: This news story, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.

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