Conway, a small borough about 20 miles north of Pittsburgh was visited by a mysterious half-football shaped metal object beaming down an intense cone of light. It was about the size of a three-bedroom ranch style house. The chase ended here on the morning of April 17, 1966, but started hours earlier and about 86 miles away from a town near Akron, Ohio and changed the lives of four police officers who pursude it. This story they would tell is probably what inspired the nighttime chase seen in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
The story goes like this. In the early morning of April 17, 1966, near Ravenna, Ohio, four policemen took part in an hour long chase after a brightly lit object "as big as a house." The first policemen involved were Deputy Sheriff Dale Spaur and his assistant, Wilbur Neff, who just before daybreak saw the object coming toward them low over woods. The UFO was so bright they were forced to look down. They both took cover in the police car, until the UFO moved off. Spaur called police headquarters to report the incident. They told him to pursue the object. This began the chase towards Pennsylvania. For forty miles the chased the object until they met Officer Wayne Huston who was viewing the object when it pass over his car and he joined in the pursuit.
The two cars raced on for another forty-six miles when they saw another police car parked by the road on Route 65 Ohio River Boulevard. This when they met Officer Frank Panzanella, who was standing by his car, watching the UFO in utter amazement. He told them he was there about tens minutes observing the object before they showed up. He continue to say that the object was very bright and about twenty-five to thirty feet in diameter. The object was about 100 feet off the ground and then went straight up real fast to about 3,500 feet . All four watched as it went up further until it got almost out of view. It then just vanished into thin air.
The sworn statements by the four officers matched in all details.They all said just before the UFO disappeared, each saw a plane from the Pittsburgh International Airport pass below it.
The U.S. Air Force, after a lengthy investigation dismissed the sighting as "misinterpretations of conventional objects and natural phenomenon."
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