2012-02-09 - Hartville, OH - Triangle

Large triangular craft (size of com. jet), flat black, bright white lights on points, hovered/rotated 180 degrees & moved away slowly.

My daughter, a new driver, and I saw an object while driving north on route 43, just outside of Hartville, Ohio. It was just after 10:00 PM, on Thursday, February 9th, when we were just coming out of town, and I first saw three bright white lights which were pointing down, and a single flashing red light. From a distance of about a half mile, it looked like a hovering and rotating helicopter, which was at about 300 feet off the ground. I asked my daughter if she was seeing the lights and she was seeing them too. I asked her what she thought it was and at first it seemed to look like a helicopter, as I said before, but neither of us could really distinguish what we were seeing. As we got closer, we realized it was not a helicopter, because it was way too large. It was as big as a commercial jet.

As it rotated, I thought it might be a very low commercial jet liner, and the bright lights were the lights you see on jets during low visibility, but there were no clouds at all. The moon was very bright, since the night before was the full moon.

As we got closer, we realized it definitely was not a commercial jet either. Yes, it was as large as one, but at last, we could see it clearly. It was a large (isosceles) triangular craft, muted or flat black, with the bright white lights on each point, and the fact that it rotated flat, while hovering in the same place, quickly ruled out a commercial jet.

When we first saw it, it seemed to be pointing east and slowly it rotated 180 degrees and as we got nearly underneath it, the lights turned and pointed outward and it began moving, silently to the west. It was huge, and there were lights underneath, alternating red and white in a row from the tip or front, to the center of the rear, and these lights pulsed in a line from front to back. It began moving slowly, but seemed to gain speed as it moved, but I never saw it accelerate fast. As I said it seemed to gain speed, or momentum, as it moved towards the west.

At this point we entered the first turn (left) in an S turn on route 43, north, and as my daughter continued driving, I watched the triangular craft move towards the west and as we entered the right turn, I lost sight of it because of the trees and the fact that it was moving west as we were moving north. The whole event took about two to three minutes.

I wondered out loud, with my daughter, whether we just saw a new type of blimp, since we were a few miles south east of the Wingfoot Lake Airship Operations Hanger for Goodyear. I truly wondered if that could be what we saw, and I did not want to freak her out, either, if what we saw was not from here. It was truly a UFO, and it was just too weird, no noise and we did not see any windows either. We saw the color, the shape, the size, the unusual flight characteristics and movement, but if we did not see the lights, we probably would not have seen it at all.

Our backgrounds are as follows: I am a college educated IT professional, an entrepreneur, a coach, as well as a city board member and my daughter is a high school sophomore, honors student and a two sport varsity athlete, preparing for a post secondary program and a possible major in the medical field.