The UFO and the Minotaur

The UFO and the Minotaur – an Infernal Encounter at Alexandria, Ohio

N.Reiter

27 September, 2012

In 2005, an astonishing story was related to me by a woman from Newark, Ohio, concerning a most unusual (and terrifying) UFO encounter involving her and a group of friends, from the late autumn of 1985.  Some weeks after my talk with “Rhonda”, I also had the opportunity to interview another member of the group from that long ago night, “Dwight”.  Despite the passage of twenty years, I found that both of their accounts matched closely, and their memories of the night were poignant and clear.

Rhonda and a small group of friends, all in their late 30s, had made a frequent ritual of travelling certain county roads late at night, in the rural areas west of Newark, for the purpose of UFO sky-watching.  Rhonda’s son, “Mark” a young teen at the time, accompanied them on most occasions.  During the great UFO flap of 1975, central Ohio had been a hot-spot of UFO activity, and while the decade that followed seemed to be much more subdued in most areas of the country, in that region, the reputation of sky-lights and strangeness had lived on.

One county road, between the villages of Alexandria and Pataskala, Watkins Road, became a favorite destination.  It seemed as if on most late nights there, the clear open skies overhead yielded many unusual non-airplane lights, sometimes performing bizarre maneuvers.  It was on Watkins Road that the strange became bizarre, one evening at about midnight.

Rhonda and Mark, along with Dwight and at least two other friends, had parked along Watkins Road, and were searching the skies for lights.  Three unnaturally white bright lights appeared to be playing a hide and seek game among the stars.  Another of the group, a young woman named Char, had the idea of using a spotlight in the car, to try signaling the lights.  Char flashed the spotlight off and on several times in the direction of one of the white distant orbs.

Rhonda and Dwight remembered that the sky light Char had signaled rapidly responded, by zig-zagging in from the east, growing larger and brighter.  The light resolved itself into an oblong or oval shape.  The group began to feel a deep dread, wondering if they had stepped too far…

The large white oval glided in silently, dodging to the north, and finally coming to a rest on the road behind the group’s car.  The craft dimmed to a dull orange outline, and appeared to be about a quarter mile away.  Dwight recalls that he saw what he took to be legs or a tripod feature under the dimly lit form.

Rhonda, Dwight, and Char began to walk up the road toward the light.  Mark and the others stayed behind at the car.

After a short distance, both Rhonda and Dwight recounted that an intense smell began to fill the air, as if travelling down the road or across the field, like a wave.  It was nauseating – an intense perfume or incense aroma, but also sharply chemical and pungent.  A sweet “ether” smell to make one gag.

Suddenly, all hell broke loose.  A tall bobbing shadow figure appeared to be striding or lurching up the road toward the trio.  When the figure approached to within perhaps a hundred feet, no force on earth could hold the terrified adventurers from shrieking and running at top speed back the way they came.

Rhonda remembered the form of the creature most vividly.  It was very tall, maybe twelve feet high.  Black, with red eyes.  But most bizarrely, the figure was horned like a bull, and strode on oversized backward bending hoofed legs.  As Rhonda put it, “It was like something out of Greek mythology – a minotaur!”

The next twenty minutes or so were a blur.  The trio reached the car, all dove in, and Dwight tore off south at full speed.  Nobody was certain where the creature striding up the road had stopped, or if it had simply vanished.  They were alive, and that was all that mattered.  In Dwight’s words, during my talk with him, “it was huge and evil, like nothing you could imagine!”

The group congratulated themselves on their escape as they tore through the night back to Newark, however their relief was short-lived.  As they approached the area on the fringes of the town where Rhonda lived, Char observed that a white light in the sky appeared to have followed the car.  Upon reaching Rhonda’s house, the group all dodged inside and locked the doors.  They huddled in the living room, not anticipating any hope of sleep until dawn had come.

What happened next was remembered by Rhonda, but not by Dwight.  After being indoors for about a half hour, Dwight suddenly lurched to his feet, went to the front door, and exited.  He did not appear to be responsive to the pleas or grasps of the rest.  With horror, those inside watched as Dwight went to the middle of the yard, looked up, and froze.

According to Dwight, the others had told him in the morning that he had stood frozen, looking up, mouth agape for some fifteen or twenty minutes.  He then appeared to be “cut loose” and collapsed in a heap.  The group inside was still too afraid to go out to help him.  For some unknown time, maybe an hour, Dwight lay in the yard, before rousing, and crawling back to the door.  At that time, Rhonda and her son hurriedly opened the door and dragged him in.  Rhonda felt Dwight’s skin, and found it to be burning hot.  He reeked of the cloying incense smell.  Eventually, Dwight awoke, made his way to a bed, and collapsed again until later in the morning.  For several days, he sported a large red rash around his neck and back of the head.

Dwight indicated to me that he remembered nothing from the moments before he got up to go outside, until he woke up in the late morning.  And he added that to this day, he didn’t want to.

According to Rhonda, “we decided that day, then and there, to never go sky watching again!”  The group also swore to not speak of it, either to others or to each other.  This oath held up for twenty years.  Rhonda was the party to break the silence, but Dwight held no grudge against her for it, and seemed eager to add his story to hers.

In this era, we have been conditioned to associate UFOs with grey aliens or reptilian humanoids.  I have long believed that this is a cloak, a sham.  The occupants of the UFOs share the form they wish to share.  Or do they?  In all my years of research, this account remains singular.  I have never come across another “Minotaur”.  Was this also a cloaking image?  Or was it perhaps instead a resonant symbol or archetypal form?  If so, the mystique behind the resonance was of an utterly diabolical nature.

And what of Dwight, during his “freeze” in the yard?  I do not think we will ever know about that either.  All in all, this is the sort of case that speaks loudest through the events that took place, rather than interpretation after the fact.

Rhonda, Dwight, and the others went on to live their lives in a reasonably undisturbed fashion.  At least for Rhonda and Dwight’s sake, neither of them ever experienced anything as horrifying and strange ever again, for which they were quite grateful.

I have visited Watkins Road, but it was on a chilly November morning, with a bright sun overhead, and birds singing and darting among dry cornstalks of the nearby fields.  While it now has been twenty seven years since the Minotaur came charging up the road, I myself have no wish to be there at night, under even the brightest of stars.

 

Watkins Road, at the location where Rhonda’s group had parked in 1985.  The view is to the north, looking toward the direction from which the “Minotaur” had come charging.