| INVESTIGATOR'S REPORT Fran Ridge CASE: OBJECT OVER VORTAC, OCT. 18, 1973; MT. VERNON, IN State Road 62 runs east and west through Mt. Vernon, Indiana. And if you are heading east to Evansville, about halfway there or about eight miles out you'll come to Marrs School on the left. The north/south road there that crosses SR 62 is Ford Road. If you would turn right and head south toward the Ohio River about a half mile out you would see a cone-shaped structure on the right. This is the Pocket City VOR. VOR stands for VHF Omnidirectional Ranging. These VORTACs are all over the aeronautical charts to help aircraft figure out where they are and where they are going. If you had turned left, instead of right, on SR62, (and start north) you would be right where the next sighting took place. This was yet another call to the UFO Filter Center hotline that fall in 1973. The massive wave of 1973 had started weeks before and was now manifesting itself in southwestern Indiana. The incident had occurred on October 18th, at around 10:30 p.m. The lady had gone to bed on this Thursday evening but was disturbed by a loud noise. She described it as sounding like a barge on the Ohio River. It was so unusual that after 2-3 minutes she decided to go outside and check it out. Her home is in the line of traffic from Evansville Dress-Regional Airport about 15 miles to the NE and she sees a lot of aircraft, especially choppers. She saw an object over her garage and to the east. It was merely an outline produced by as many as 50 lights, not exactly evenly-spaced. It didn't appear to have any body to it and it had a red flashing light on the rear. It was long and narrow, about 3 times as long as it was wide and moving very slowly, to the west. She observed the long side view about 3 minutes, and right in front of her house it turned south toward the river and she saw the end view. It was described as not round but sort of rectangular...like a squared-off cigar. At this time it was really low and she said she should have seen metal as it went past a tree. It got lower than the trees at least during one point during the observation, meaning a nearby treeline. She watched it for about another two minutes. There were dogs present but surprisingly they showed no response to the huge strange object or the sound it was producing. Since the sighting had just occurred I told the lady I would get back to her and I called the the control tower at Evansville. One of the ARTC's I had been working with lately was on duty and he advised me that there had been nothing on their radar and no known aircraft in the area as such. The description I had given to the FAA also drew a blank. When the "cigar" had turned south it was heading right over the VORTAC. Ohio is one hour ahead of us here. Twenty five minutes before this incident, at 9:05 p.m. our time and 10:05 p.m. Ohio time, the famous Mansfield, Ohio/Captain Coyne helicopter case involving E-M effects on the aircraft's compass case occurred. * Also on the 18th, at Rosewood, Ohio, at 7:30 p.m. American Airlines Flight 21, a Boeing 747 at 33,000' encountered apparently the same UFO witnessed by Capt. Coyne and his crew over Mansfield, OH. [See intelligence summary on case directory, same day.] Sixteen years later, on Jan. 22, 1989, a similar object was reported over Green's Fork, Indiana. (See Exhibit 2L) Finally, if you look at this Map of the area and the southeast corner you'll see the word "Marrs Center" which is where the Ford Road incident took place. If you look just 2-3 miles to the NW of it you'll see the word "Caborn". Two days later, on October 20, a UFO stopped a train there. The complete report with signed forms was submitted to MUFON at the time. Later, in 1986 when many cases were submitted and older ones updated, a new copy was produced with an investigation sequence guide and other materials and re-submitted to MUFON HQ, with zerox copies sent to DDI Dan Wright, CUFOS, ENDREP |
