The night the UFOs flew over Hicksville

Jack Palmer
January 31, 2008

Dennis Kucinich's aborted 2008 presidential campaign will be remembered in infamy for one wacky moment.

Last fall, during a debate in Philadelphia, Kucinich was asked if he had seen a UFO.

"I did," responded Kucinich, referring to an incident he witnessed while visiting Washington state several years ago.

"It's unidentified. I saw something," he explained. "Also, you have to keep in mind that more people in this country have seen UFOs than, I think, approve of George Bush's presidency."

Kucinich's comments may have been good for a laugh, but not for his long-shot candidacy. But they did create new national publicity for unidentified flying objects.

The UFO issue reappeared in the news three weeks ago, when about 30 rural Texas residents reported they saw a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. They insisted the object's lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane.

Last week, however, the U.S. military reported that 10 F-16 fighter jets were training in the same area the same night.

So much for aliens in Texas dairy country. Well, maybe.

"I find it curious that it took the government two weeks to 'fess up.' I think they're feeling the heat from the publicity," said Ken Cherry, Texas director of the Mutual UFO network.

Fourteen percent of Americans polled last year by Associated Press and Ipsos say they have seen a UFO. About 200 UFO sightings are reported each month, mostly in California, Colorado and Texas, according to the Mutual UFO Network.

I'm not ready to purchase UFO abduction insurance, but I'm also not ready to laugh off every one of these sightings.

The people of the Hicksville area were certainly not laughing on the evening of Oct. 21, 1973.

That's the night several residents -- including village firefighters answering a fire call just across the Ohio-Indiana border -- saw a bevy of lights in the sky acting in an "erratic" manner.

The good news was that nobody was taken aboard a fish-like space ship by creatures with wrinkled skin and crab-claw hands.

"There were 20 or 30 lights up in the sky, I suppose," said one firefighter. "Some you could hear engines on, and some of them you couldn't hear anything. They might have been planes, but if they were, there were a hell of a lot of planes up in that sky!"

Rumors of UFOs spread as the firemen talked among each other over radios and the bantering was picked up by area residents. Calls from the frightened, the skeptical, and the curious were received by the Hicksville Police Department and the Defiance City Fire Department.

The Defiance post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol received 28 calls on the matter, while a frustrated night desk-man for the city police and county sheriff's department reported about 100 calls concerning the incident.

One Hicksville man, who asked not to be identified "because of people laughing it off," described the aerial light show in detail. He had heard the town's fire department broadcasts over a home monitor, and drove to the area just south of Ohio 18 and west of the Ohio-Indiana line "to see what was going on."

"There were a lot of lights up there in the sky, I'd say at least 30. Some were whirling around and around, and would fly across the sky really fast -- too fast for an airplane."

His wife, also riding in the car at the time, called the lights shapeless, and ranging in color "from the shade of red in street flashers to green and blue. You couldn't tell how far away they were, or how fast they were going. But it was really something, I'll tell you."

Asked if she believed in UFOs, the woman replied, "Sure, and I'd like to be taken aboard one sometime and have some proof... so I'll know for sure."

Today, 35 years after this remarkable sighting, I don't share the Hicksville woman's zest for knowledge.

In this case, it might be better to stay ignorant.