The Great UFO Wave:
October, 1973

UFO Sightings Come Fast And Furious

October 16, 1973
The Cincinnati Enquirer, page 1

By Ira Brock of The Enquirer Staff

UFOs were out in a radiancy of lights, frights and bright sights Monday night.

UFOs (called Unidentified Flying Objects) were reported dancing, flashing and hovering in most aerial areas visible from Cincinnati and environs near and not so near.

The reports were fast. They were serious.

Somebody said one of the derned UFOs landed on Main Street in Trenton, in Butler County, Ohio. Trenton police said it did not.

That negative determination by inexperienced UFO trackers failed to bother Charles Wilhelm, 2004 Meadowlawn Way, Fairfield.

Wilhelm's director of the Ohio UFO Investigation League and at 10:36 p.m. Monday, quite some time after Trenton police pooh-poohed the reported Main Street landing, announced:

"I have several investigators on the scene right now in Trenton, Ohio, where a UFO landed on Main Street."

As usually happens during UFO sightings, none were reported Monday until after dark. From what viewers said they saw, apparently waiting for darkness was worth it.

Keith Merril, 5500 Crescent Square Cir., Springdale, said he saw a beauty of a UFO smack dab from an exterior standing point in the Tri-County Shopping Center.

Merill, a commercial pilot with more than 500 hours of flying time, described his UFO thusly:

"It hung in the sky to the east and to the naked eye it appeared to be a bright light. Through binoculars it seemed to have a hazy blue light around its middle."

Merrill said he and four other persons watcfhed the thing for 25 minutes and occasionally it would fade and then reappear.

Warren Smith, 11, 7973 Krikland Dr., Finneytown, and his buddy Jeff Fossett, 13, 7974 Kirkland, said the UFO they saw from their street at 9:35 p.m. was a bright ivory light.

"It had lots of reflection," Warren said, "Like waves coming from the center of the object. It was like a five-pointed star."

Other persons, some in Mt. Lookout, Delhi Township and assorted sections of Cincinnati and Indiana, described their UFOs as everything from 'starlike' to "it was scary."

Bryan Werring, 17, saw his UFO from his yard in Milford as red, white and blue, headed east, flying parallel to the moon.

At Ashland, Ky., a radio station said it had received about 25 calls from persons claiming to have seen a UFO along Kentucky 207 in the Flat woods area of Boyd County.

One of the better reports was at Martinsville, Ind., where Morgan County Sheriff's Deputy Rober Williams said he saw a UFO take off from the ground.

"It looked like a clear, bright light," Morgan said, "and it looked like it took off from the ground toward the east and got so far off the ground and disappeared."

And into the night with the UFO sightings. If Wilhelm knows what he talks about, such viewing will go on and on. He says such periods usually last about two years.