MUFON Investigation Team: Dave Miller
Investigation Date: August 7, 1989
THE SIGHTING: A family that used to own and operate the drive-in theater on Germantown Pike just outside of Moraine had an incredible UFO encounter. This family was a prominent Moraine family, very credible, very professional. It was a muggy night in August 1966 in southwest Dayton. The 44 year old mother who we will call Kathy (names changed upon request) was returning home from her job as manager of the drive-in theater with her 18 year old daughter who we will refer to as Betty.
They left the drive-in at 3:20am after finishing their closing duties. Betty was driving and Kathy was in the front passenger seat. They turned off Germantown Pike/Route 4 and drove southwest on West Carrollton-Soldiers Home Road near where the Channel 22 television station is located. Kathy told her daughter to pull over as she thought she saw a shooting star. Betty pulled over and turned off the headlights. It was a clear night and there were several tall television and radio station towers in the area with lights blinking. The car windows were already down since it was hot and muggy. Both women leaned out the windows to watch the sky.
“It – the shooting star – was the size of a normal star when we first saw it,” stated Kathy, “as I always wanted to see the entire cycle of a shooting star. The star gradually became bigger and descended toward us.” It quickly became apparent the object was not a star, shooting or otherwise. Kathy estimated at its closest distance the object to be ¼ of a mile away from the woman’s car beyond some power lines that crossed the highway. “The UFO was round, a silver-gray aluminum color everywhere but the lights and windows. The lights stayed on constantly, they were all different colors and beautiful. The object was solid, not whirling. It seemed slightly bigger than a hot air balloon,” stated Kathy.
After a short period of time a bright, white spotlight shined straight down. A row of oblong shaped lights was on constantly. The lights had every color of the rainbow. As the women watched, a car came down the road behind the woman’s car with its headlights on. “The saucer immediately went abruptly left, down behind some trees in a field next to where the television station is at, stated Kathy. The object was not seen again. After a minute passed, Betty started the car and the women continued home.
When asked if any sound was heard from the object, Kathy repeated that it was hot and the windows were down the entire time but no sounds were heard. “There were very few houses on the road or anything else that would have made a distracting noise at 3:30am in the morning,” said Kathy. If the UFO had made a noise, we would have heard it”. The total duration of the sighting was three minutes. “I often wondered,” Kathy said, “if that other car hadn’t come down the road if we might have been abducted or something else would have happened”. Photo #1 is a drawing of the UFO that I drew based upon what Kathy was telling me. Photo #2 is a drawing made by Kathy’s nephew also based on her description showing the UFO more oblong than round.
I did not find any other witnesses to collaborate the sighting but it is intriguing that the alleged sighting took place near electric wires and large transmission antennas. Photo #3 shows where Betty parked the car on Soldiers Home Road with power lines and four tower/antennas in the background. Photo #4 show the woods just off the road by the Channel 22 station where the UFO dropped down out of sight. This UFO Investigation was printed in the Fall 1989 Ohio UFO Notebook publication.
