The Akron Church Light

At about half past one in the morning two Akron police officers saw what they first took for a harvest moon behind the trees above a church in East Akron. By their account it was nothing of the kind. The object was a brilliant orange-gold mass with a waffle-like grid across its surface, as big as the church or bigger. When the officers moved closer it drew off to the east and banked to the north-east. Then it rose with tremendous acceleration and turned brilliant white, taking on a double-saucer shape. It vanished near Mogadore, came back briefly and was gone. The telling puts the whole episode at a minute to a minute and a half.

The witnesses were serving police officers, and that is the reason the case is remembered. Published accounts add that a third officer saw the object separately.

What is on the record

The two claimants are Gary Yost and John Bickett, named in the archive's single video telling. Beyond that video there is one source. The Hatch catalogue carries the sighting and cites the APRO Bulletin, but its entry does not name the officers. Hatch also dates it to 7 November 1966. That is the same overnight as the archive's date of 6 November, since the sighting fell at about 1.30 a.m. The telling spells the nearby town Mogador. It is Mogadore.

No Project Blue Book unknown has been found for the night. The record holds no standard explanation either. The only ordinary reading on file is the officers' own first impression of a harvest moon, and the telling has them set it aside once the object moved.

Why it sits where it does

Two officers in one telling from one channel are enough for L3, the grade for more than one independent witness to a connected event. Behind them sits a single catalogue line drawn from a period bulletin. Police witnesses carry weight but they do not make a document. What the Akron officers watched is not resolved here.