1949: Norwood, Ohio Searchlight UFO Incident – Aticle

An additional photo was found in the possession of RAY STANFORD, who states: “This is several generations down from the original16 mm movie film, but it seems to rather clearly show that while the beam was projecting several degrees away from the object, when it got within a certain event horizon of the object, it was simply bent or ‘pulled’ the beam directly into the object, seemingly bending it about 26.5 degrees, as measured in the photo plane! This frame has always amazed me since I first saw it in the mid-’50s. Several persons, back then, who had seen the actual movie said that at one time the object seems, indeed, to ‘suck’ the beam squarely into it!”I have included two versions with special filtration. The second (middle) image makes the dramatic bend of the light beam especially clear and easy to measure (on the top of the beam). The second (last) version seems to show what might be interpreted to be a focus effect of the light within the beam. Note the dark diamond shape (bright in the original) between the object and the place where the beam bends.”

PHOTOS COURTESY OF RAY STANFORD

NORWOOD AND PROJECT GRUDGE Could someone help explain if any reference to the 1949 Norwood Searchlight/UFO incident does or does not appear in Project Grudge files?

The Norwood case involves 10 visual sightings by multiple civilian, clergy, police, scientist and military witnesses over a 7-month duration, facilitated by the use of a powerful searchlight ran by Army Sgt. Donald R. Berger. The first sighting took place during “The Jitney Carnival” of 1949 and witnessed by hundreds The following morning, three local newspapers- The Cincinnati Post, The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Cincinnati Times Star- all had articles regarding ‘strange lights’ and ‘comets seen over the city’ from the previous evening.

There was an explanation for the occurrence, according to one local newspaper. The Albee Theater in nearby Cincinnati, accompanied by the Ss. Peter & Paul Church in Norwood, were operating searchlights. It was said that the hundreds of persons calling newspapers and weather bureau officials were simply observing these searchlight beams ‘bouncing off of clouds.’

Despite this, the sightings began in earnest after 11:00 p.m. (Berger logs indicate that he observed the UFO from 8:15 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.) and continued to flummox Cincinnati residents until 6:30 a.m. the following morning. It seems unlikely searchlights would be operating all night long until daylight, and further still, one weather bureau official recounted his early-morning observation of two objects that looked like “two weather ceiling balloons” that weren’t moving despite a wind speed of 25 to 32-miles per hour.

Even the Berger logs indicate the possible presence of a second searchlight from that evening, whether Berger knew there was another searchlight at work or not. “When I moved the searchlight away, the object continued to glow,” Berger wrote in his 1949 logs that were later kept in the possession of Rev. Gregory Miller until 1954, when he imparted them to UFO investigator Leonard Stringfield.

Meanwhile, during the festival in Norwood, Robert Linn, the managing editor of the Cincinnati Post, along with church pastor Rev. Gregory Miller, were certain that Berger’s searchlight had found and been bouncing off of “some definite object.” They entered into agreement and reported the situation to intelligence officials at Wright Field in nearby Dayton, Ohio.

The August 19th episode is a mass-witness case, reported in all three local newspapers of Cincinnati, Ohio, a city not far south of Dayton, home of the airbase. A possible explanation is publicly toyed with: the deception caused by two searchlight beams strolling the dark skies. It seems as if Grudge folks would have likely been aware of the events at Norwood on August 19, 1949 – either from all the reportage or from the direct report to the airbase itself, by Robert Linn and Rev. Miller. Why does the Norwood Case not factor in to their investigation when, in fact, far ‘lesser’ cases may have been prominently addressed? If Project Grudge had sought to dismiss UFO sightings as psychological phenomena, they had a good case with the Norwood searchlight events at this stage of the situation.

Thanks

Kenny Young

sources: Kenny Young; E-mail: ufo@fuse.net; http://www.nicap.org/norwooddir.htm