Seven steps to hell: The Spaur/Neff UFO chase

From TinWiki.org

Spaur's drawing of craft

On April 17, 1966, two Portage County, Ohio sheriff deputies, Dale Spaur and Wilbur Neff, stopped to investigate an abandoned car on the side of a rural road. The interior of the car was filled with radio equipment, and on the side of the car was an emblem of a stepped pyramid with a lightning bolt through it and the words Seven Steps to Hell. Before they could investigate further, they were distracted by an electrical humming behind them. Turning, they were amazed to see a dome-shaped craft, 50 feet in diameter and 10 to 20 feet high, rise above the trees with an intense light bathing the ground beneath it.

1 The encounter
2 The chase
3 The photograph
4 Seven steps to hell
5 Floyd returns
6 The saucer from hell
7 External links

[edit]

The encounter

At a distance of about 100 feet and treetop level in elevation, the object moved towards them, the light becoming brighter and brighter and lighting up the entire area. It stopped when it was directly over them. Spaur described the situation:

"The only thing, the only sound in the whole area was a hum...like a transformer being loaded or an overloaded transformer when it changes. I was petrified...so I moved my right foot, and everything seemed to work all right. And evidently he [Neff] made the same decision I did, to get something between me and it, or us and it, or whatever you would say. So we both went for the car, we got in the car and we sat there."

Ravenna, Ohio Record-Courier, 4/18/66

[edit]

The chase

The craft began to depart, heading east, and again stopped at a distance of 250 feet. Even at that distance, Spaur said, "It was very bright; it'd make your eyes water." Spaur radioed the station, and Sergeant Schoenfelt told them to keep the object under observation. As the craft moved off, Spaur and Neff gave chase, sometimes reaching 100 mph. Near the Pennsylvania border, Officer Wayne Huston of the East Palestine police department also began chasing the craft. Spaur and Neff’s 86-mile chase ended in Pittsburgh when they ran out of gas. At a Conway, Pennsylvania gas station, Spaur, Neff and Huston joined Officer Frank Panzanella, who had stopped for coffee, and the four of them watched the craft continue on without them. On their radio they picked up transmissions from fighter pilots approaching the UFO. Suddenly, the craft accelerated straight up and out of sight.

[edit]

The photograph

Police chief Gerald Buchert was on duty in Mantua when he heard over his radio that strange lights were headed east in his direction. He raced home for his camera, and with his wife at his side, took a single photograph of the object glowing in the sky. Buchert quickly developed his film and contacted the FBI, who referred him to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Major Hector Quintanilla, head of the UFO debunking Project Blue Book, asked Buchert to send the negatives to him. Later, Quintanilla issued a press release stating that his film was “severely fogged” and claimed that the UFO was a processing defect. He went on to say that the officers involved had chased the planet Venus.

[edit]

Seven steps to hell

Unofficial insignia of the 7th Army

For decades, the patrolmen’s description of the car they were investigating when they first encountered the UFO was a mystery. Only recently has this part of their account been corroborated. The mysterious emblem they saw on the car was the insignia of the Seventh United States Army. The addition of the lightning bolt indicated that it was an intelligence unit. The car was never seen again, nor was its presence in the immediate proximity of the UFO ever explained.

[edit]

Floyd returns

The sheriff’s office codenamed the UFO Floyd, Spaur’s middle name, to not tip off civilians listening to police bands. In June, while driving down I-80, Spaur saw it again. “Floyd’s here with me,” he radioed. He waited 10 to 15 minutes in the car, his head down, not wanting to see. When he finally looked up, Floyd was gone.

[edit]

The saucer from hell

The Portage County UFO incident had negative ramifications for all the major witnesses:

After making the initial reports to authorities, Officer Frank Panzanella refused further interviews.

Officer Wayne Huston left his job, moved out west, and changed to using his middle name.

Chief Gerald Buchert nearly resigned but was talked out of it by his parents. He remained chief of police until 1986, when he suffered a brain aneurysm. When the Plain Dealer contacted him six months after the sighting he said, “It’s something that should be forgotten.”

Officer Neff was made fun of, refused to talk about it with anyone, declined further interviews and moved to Florida. His wife said he told her, “If that thing landed in my back yard, I wouldn’t tell a soul.”

Deputy Dale Spaur fared the worst. He was hounded by reporters, laughed at, and treated derisively by his peers. Soon after his second sighting, his wife divorced him, he resigned from the force, and moved out of state to an undisclosed location. Said Spaur, “If I could change all that I have done in my life, I would change just one thing. And that would be the night we chased that damn thing. That saucer.”

[edit]