In 1973, near Mansfield, Ohio, a boy and his friends are picking black raspberries, when they suddenly realize that they are being chased by a bizarre entity after observing a silver orb in the field.
The following account was recently posted on the MUFON CMS:
"It started out as a nice day in 1973. Mom was paying 50 cents for a small quart size bucket of black raspberries so I had recruited two of the other kids in the neighborhood, Dwight Vanover and Tim Mitchel to help pick. We had been picking in a field about three hundred yards in back of the house for probably a couple of hours. The field we were picking in might have been a cleared field at one time but now it hosted huge berry bushes and a ton of small brush like trees could be found sticking up about ten or fifteen feet. These were all small trees though with the larger older trees along an old fallen over fence row that bordered the field.
We were actually out beyond my folk’s back yard off to the side of another mowed yard. To get out there we had walked about halfway down the neighbor’s back yard then cut over the fence and gone a couple of hundred feet out into the field to get to the best bushes. We had already each filled our buckets at least once and were trying desperately to fill them once more before sunset. As far as mom knew I wanted the money to go buy a pop at the Lawson’s store downtown but I was really planning on going to the liquor store and buy a pack of cigarettes. I knew they’d let me buy them because I had done it for my dad in the past. They didn’t even bother to take the note that dad had given me to give to them, so I still had it and planned to use it again.
The sky had darkened quite a bit but we were determined to get that last bucket done. I was farthest out in the field toward the center when I saw something strange in front of me. It was a silver ball, but I have no idea how big it was. It could have been hundreds of feet or inches across, or it could have been the size of a basketball. I really didn’t know.
If it hadn’t been moving, I might not even have seen it there in amongst the weeds, but it began moving in a very strange pattern. From where I was standing it looked exactly like it was bouncing along the top of the berry bushes from left to right. I remember thinking at the time and still remembering it that way today as being like the little bouncing ball that used to appear on the television, when there were words for a song shown and it was going in time with the music.
I didn’t know what it was, but I had thought maybe it was a ball that had been thrown or perhaps a frisbee on its side glancing off objects. But we were out in the field away from anyone else and in that direction there was nothing, but more berry bushes, trees and fields. Although there are buildings in that direction now, at that time there wasn’t.
I called the rest of the guys over and told them about what I had seen. Tim was skeptical and made a few wisecracks about me wearing glasses but Dwight made me go over every detail. He wanted to know what it was and even started to go that way even though the bush was very thick and he literally had to make a path. I would have already gone that way further to get berries, but the way was blocked. Dwight was a tough one and began pushing his way through.
It was really getting dark by now and a beautiful red sunset began to spread out among the clouds. Dwight was still pressing into the bushes, but hadn’t gone very far when we began to hear a sound. There was the sound of something coming through the weeds at us. It sounded heavy and quiet. There was just the sound of berry branches being crushed and occasionally a popping, or snapping as a small tree would go over.
The bushes around us were tall, taller than us and we couldn’t really see what was going on, or what direction it was coming from. But one thing we knew for sure, it was getting a lot louder. It had increased in volume so much so quickly that I yelled to everyone to run and we all ran as fast as we could to the tree line that marked the edge of the field.
I remember we all burst out of the weeds at about the same time. It was a relief to be standing on mowed grass even though we were still so far from the house. Then we heard it again. It was still coming our way and by that time we were very scared. Everyone took off running again, with me being in the back. We only had to go about fifty feet to get to the edge of my folks back yard but it was getting darker by the second.
Tim was still in front of me but I think Dwight veered off to go around the other side of the house to make a sprint for his house across the street, while Tim and I tried going for the front door of my house. Tim and I were still carrying the buckets we had been collecting berries in but as I reached the corner of our backyard Tim stopped and turned back toward me. I know I felt good about that, I can recall, because he could have kept going but he didn’t. When he caught sight of me, I caught his eye, but then the woodpile next to me started making sounds. Mostly these were branches that had been thrown there over a long period of time. Some were small others were a couple of inches in diameter. In all, the pile was about chest high to me and had settled becoming denser over time.
As soon as the noise started, Tim dropped his bucket and took off running, but I hesitated. This was my yard, surely it wouldn’t come into my yard. Then the wood pile made some loud cracking noises and that’s when I saw it. I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. I have seen things that remind me of it though and every time, I’m thrown back even now the gulf of fifty years to look once again at it. If it had hair it was in coils atop its head and being in the glare of the sunset with the sun going down behind it the thing looked for all the world to have an exposed brain. The convolutes of its head were all highlighted in red while most everything else was shadowed to black.
Its eyes were strange and seemed lidless and overlarge with something like goggles over them. Those I could only see highlights of as most of it was totally hidden in shadow.
Of its mouth and that area, I couldn’t see anything. But lower down I could see an extremely thin neck. It looked segmented like flexible conduit pipe and tinted the ruddy red of the setting sun. Once it came up above the woodpile I got one solid look, but it was fast. It had stuck its head up so fast, it was there at least a second before I dropped my bucket and took off running after Tim.
So great was my fright at that point that I caught up and almost passed Tim as we came up to the side of the house. Mom was in the kitchen as we came bursting through the door, but didn’t scold us when she saw the fright on our faces.
Right away she called the Vanovers to see that Dwight had made it safely home. After we all calmed down Tim insisted he was okay to ride his blue stingray down the street to his house, if mom and I would come out and watch him ride home. Our road did have streetlights so we could see him a he pedaled home as fast as he could, then later we talked on the phone for a while.
The next day my dad called me back to the woodpile. There was my berry bucket where I had dropped it, but it was the woodpile he wanted to show me. The pile was almost broken in two with both sides looking as though they had been grasped and ripped apart. My dad gave me one of those weird looks and asked if I was sure I didn’t do that, but at the look on my face he just left it be. My dog was also in the back yard at the time. I don’t remember hearing her bark the whole time we were out there, although she wasn’t one of those “barking” dogs. Needless to say I was careful to feed the dog in the daytime for quite a while.
What happened to me sent me down a path. One thing to consider. When we were out in the field it was light enough to see to pick berries. However, at a dead run, for young boys, after about maybe 300 or 400 feet from where we were picking to the corner of the back yard it became the last vestiges of sunset. It wasn't until years later that I considered it and actually sat outside and waited between the two. I came up with a twenty minute lapse of time. So there is also a missing time element there too.
I didn't write this up until many years later, but it haunts my dreams. A while later Mansfield, Ohio was hit with a huge UFO flap.
Something else was in the description of the...thing. It was the speed of it popping up in the wood pile. Once, many years later, I was watching Star Wars when they were trapped in the garbage thing and the head of that worm-like thing popped up. Although the head was different I had an immediate flashback. The head was overlarge for the neck and the sunset was behind it causing it to have red light all around it. Because I only looked long enough to register what it was I only caught a glimpse of a head that had corrugations on top. Something like the convolutes of the brain or perhaps dreadlocks with the red light shining down on it.
For a very young boy it has been the thing of nightmares for around fifty years. I just felt it was time to tell this." MUFON
NOTE: there were a lot of strange encounters & sightings in Ohio and Pennsylvania during the 1973 UFO flap, including unexplained creature and entity incidents. Lon
*****
If you wish to comment on this Phantoms & Monsters post, please go to Phantoms & Monsters Post Comments
*****
Please Consider a Donation to 'Phantoms & Monsters'
Your financial support of Phantoms & Monsters and our other pursuits is much appreciated. This all depends on you, the readers and followers.
Please use the PayPal donation buttons on the blog site and newsletter. You can also go directly to Phantoms & Monsters donation. Thanks again for your loyalty and continued support. Lon
