Submitter: Paranormal Pymatuning
Subject: Unidentified Flying Object & History’s Mysteries
Location: Linesville Spillway
Paranormal Pymatuning’s submission:
This is a found article from the Record-Argus dating January 31, 1959.
Area Man’s Encounter With Unidentified Flying Object Called Weirdest Experience
A Linesville man employed by a local building contractor looks to the skies over Pymatuning Lake with a slight feeling of trepidation as he drives to work in Greenville these early morning hours.
“I always thought those fellows who saw flying saucers were nuts,” according to Robert Collins, a carpenter who works for V. J. Mazzopi Company. But that was before Collins himself had what he considers the weirdest experience of his life.
Driving his half-ton pickup truck about 7 a.m. Jan. 13, Collins was traveling toward Greenville on the spillway road over Pymatuning Lake when he sighted what he thought to be the lights of a low-flying airliner attempting a forced landing on the ice-covered lake.
He slowed the speed of the truck so that he could make a closer observation of what at first appeared to [be] a pair of extremely bright headlights illuminating the earth.
The lights approached the road diagonally from the east. As they grew closer, Collins said he began to see them only as one light, which was as blinding bright as an arc light.
It came over the road at the exact spot where his truck was traveling. But instead of passing by, the light remained stationary over the vehicle for three or four minutes, Collins estimates.
At that point, the truck’s whole electrical system failed, as though some super force had turned off all the switches at one time. Not only did the engine cut out, but the headlights went out and the radio stopped playing in the same instant.
Although the light’s approach seemed gradual, it departed at extremely high speed and disappeared in the west within 30 seconds, Collins said.
He’s not ashamed to admit that he was frightened while “the thing” hovered overhead. He estimates that the light originated from a source perhaps 200 feet above the truck and illuminated an area some 100 yards in front of the stalled vehicle.
“No, sir, I didn’t open the window to look out. I just sat where I was until it left,” Collins said.
The sky that morning was extremely dark and heavy clouds hung low. If the day had been clear, he feels he would have been able to see whatever may have been above or behind the light.
As soon as the light shot zipped off, the truck lights and radio came back on. He thinks his hand must have been “frozen” to the ignition key, which also controls the starter, because the engine, too, began to run.
Collins believes he traveled for a few feet without lights.
It wasn’t until then that he noticed that his truck had been parked in the middle of the deserted highway. As he traveled on to Greenville, he went about three miles before seeing another vehicle on the road.Kept Experience to Himself
For a time, wishing to avoid ridicule, the Linesville man kept the experience to himself.
“I didn’t even tell my wife till three days later,” he said.
Collins believes whatever caused his truck engine to suddenly quit must have been some terrific magnetic force. He also wishes he had been able to have his truck checked for radioactivity. The truck has run perfectly since the Jan. 13th experience, he said.Other Sightings Reported
Several other Linesville area residents have been witnesses to a mysteriously lighted object during recent months, Collins said.
Since his own experience, he has learned that Mr. and Mrs. J. F. McDonald, also of Linesville, both saw the strange light, although from a greater distance, in the same area about two months previously.
Collins, at first somewhat reluctant to discuss the mystery, said he has not reported the incident to the government’s Unidentified Flying Objects bureau.
*This experience was found and researched by paranormalpymatuning.com. The submission above has not been edited and has been posted as it was found by paranormalpymatuning.com.*