MUFON Investigation Team: Dave Miller
Investigation Date: October 15, 1990
The sighting was made by Ted and Alice Collins (names changed by request) a couple in their fifties. It was November 1984 because Mrs. Collins had already obtained her pilots license. It was an overcast night about 8pm when Ted drove through Germantown Reserve and through the City of Farmersville. “We frequently drive this as it is peaceful and pretty”, stated Ted. “We were driving on Manning Road heading to Boomshire Road down to Twin Creek Valley”.
The land was a hilly valley, normal rolling, rural Ohio countryside. The trees were bare but the temperature was not yet real cold. When the Collin’s first saw the light they thought someone was in trouble like a plane like a plane going down to crash. “We pulled off to the side of the road, got out of the car and turned off the car lights and engine,” recalled Ted. “The light approached noiselessly. There was no sound except the sound of wind over a sailplane (airfoil). As the light continued on, it passed directly over Alice and me. The night was too dark plus the lights did not illuminate enough to permit us to see the outline of the superstructure although it must have been big because I estimated that it traveled 20 to 30mph and it took some time passing over us.”
Ted told me he estimated the object passed over them at a height of 40 to 70 feet above where they were standing. The nearby sycamore trees were about 50 to 60 feet high and the object cleared them. “As we looked at it as it approached,” continued Ted, “we could see a white non-blinking landing light shining down. When the object was overhead we could see four white- amber colored lights (Photo #1) which were brighter than the rear turn signals on a car. We were close enough that the lights revealed what looked like lensed-like cups on the bottom of the object – it reminded me of riveted plates. There were 8 to 10 feet of space between the lights. Only a small area was illuminated. There was also a small front light on the object.”
The object continued past Mr. & Mrs. Collins and eventually they lost sight of it as it traveled from southwest to northeast. Total sighting time was about two minutes. “Both my wife and I are very familiar with aircraft and whatever that was, it was no airplane, no helicopter, no glider and no balloon,” Collins told me.
I checked with Germantown Police and they had no records of any UFO sightings called in by the public in November 1984. The fact that this report was given by a pilot and people familiar with aircraft adds some credibility to their sighting. This UFO investigation was featured in the 2001 Ohio UFO Notebook publication.
