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   PID: Synchronet 3.19b-Win32 master/a2a9dc027 Jan  2 2022 MSC 1928   
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   SUBJECT: FORMER TEACHER BACKS "BELIVERS" IN UFOs             FILE: UFO1163   
      
      
   ARIZONA REPUBLIC, Phoenix, AZ-Sept. 4, 1990   
      
   OBJECT LESSONS   
   FORMER TEACHER BACKS 'BELIEVERS' IN UFOS   
   By Arizona Republic   
      
        The skies were moody and heavy with clouds about   
   midnight on June 20, 1960, as Americo Candusso drove his red   
   1957 Plymouth toward Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.   
        Candusso, then a science teacher who was enchanted with   
   the stars and the mystery of UFOs, looked up into the thick   
   blanket of clouds and saw that night what he considers the   
   "most impressive" of his dozen or so "major sightings" of   
   unidentified flying objects.   
        "To me, it was exciting because there were five of   
   them," says Candusso, 68, retired and living in Fountain   
   Hills.   
        Candusso, who taught a course in "ufology" at the   
   University of Akron in Ohio from 1974 to 1977, says he was   
   attracted that night first by a silent "bulb of light"   
   ambling at about 35 mph along the bottoms of the clouds.   
        As the light dipped beneath the clouds, Candusso said he   
   saw a "configuration of lights, bronze on the right and blue   
   on the left."   
        "Beneath that were two bands of red, white and green   
   lights," he continued.  "Those (bands of lights) were   
   sparklers.  They looked like diamonds.  Scintillating."   
        Using his knowledge of angles and landmarks, Candusso   
   calculated that the lights overhead outlined a 200-foot-long   
   oblong about 4,100 yards away.   
        Over the next 35 minutes, Candusso said, he saw five of   
   the unexplained objects meander out of the clouds, hover   
   overhead and disappear.   
        Excited, Candusso left his post for five minutes to race   
   to a phone to call friends and find out whether they had seen   
   the lights.   
        They hadn't.   
        When he returned, he said, he followed the last object   
   for a few hundred yards before it faded away.   
        "Between the trees, I saw a round object," he recalls.   
   "It might not have anything to do with what I had seen   
   before."   
        Candusso, who said "I can still remember it like it was   
   yesterday," is convinced that the brilliantly lighted shapes   
   he saw that night were unlike any aircraft he had ever seen.   
        An astronomy enthusiast, weather observer and   
   cryptologist for the Army Air Forces in North Africa during   
   World War II, Candusso said it is unlikely that he mistook   
   the shapes of airplanes or heavenly bodies for UFOs.   
        "I am used to what is out there," he said.  "I know how   
   to look at the sky."   
        A field investigator for an international UFO group, he   
   moved in May to a sunny home in Fountain Hills from Medina,   
   Ohio, where he taught at an elementary school.  He was   
   attracted to Fountain Hills, northeast of Phoenix, by the   
   desert and the promise of good golfing.   
        But he said the skies over Fountain Hills, illuminated   
   by surrounding city lights and commercial aircraft, are "the   
   worst place in the world to see UFOs.  It's all lit up like   
   Christmas trees."   
        Although he hasn't had a sighting for several years,   
   Candusso is clearly convinced that UFOs exist.   
        He is in respectable company.   
        In the 1960s, Gen.  Douglas MacArthur warned of the   
   dangers of "interplanetary war."   
       The late Dr. James E. McDonald, senior physicist at the   
   University of Arizona, and astronomer Carl Sagan told a House   
   panel on July 29, 1968, that they believed the existence of   
   UFOs should not be discounted.   
        Although McDonald said his two years of study did not   
   provide "Irrefutable proof," he added that he believed "UFOs   
   are probably extraterrestrial devices engaged in something   
   that might be very tentatively termed surveillance."   
      
   SOME ARE SKEPTICAL   
      
        There also have been respectable skeptics over the   
   years.   
        A two-year study commissioned by the Air Force at the   
   University of Colorado and published in 1969 concluded that   
   there "is no evidence to justify a belief that   
   extraterrestrial visitors have penetrated our skies and not   
   enough evidence to warrant any further scientific   
   investigation."   
        More recently, UFO enthusiasts have been intrigued by   
   reports of hundreds of sightings during the past few months   
   in Belgium.   
        In a sighting reported in July, Belgian F-16 jet   
   fighting used their radar screens to track an object that,   
   according to a military official, "exceeded the limits of   
   conventional aviation."   
        Belgian Air Force Col. Wilfried de Brouwer said at the   
   time that the UFO dived from about 10,000 to 4,000 feet in   
   two seconds.  At the same time, it increased its speed from   
   600 to 1,100 mph, according to news accounts.   
        Although Candusso is sure of the existence of UFOs, he   
   does not talk about them with the fervor of an evangelist   
   seeking converts.   
        Instead, he speaks in the careful tones of a scientist,   
   pointing to tables and bookshelves in his airy study laden   
   with hundreds of reports and newspaper clippings detailing   
   sightings.  And he has tape recordings of law-enforcement   
   officials, motorists and others who believe they saw UFOs.   
      
   INVESTIGATING 'FRAUDS'   
      
        Candusso acknowledges that reports of sightings have   
   diminished since the 1960s and that some of the accounts "are   
   frauds."   
        As a field investigator for the Texas-based national   
   Mutual UFO Network, Candusso has probed hundreds of reported   
   UFO sightings.  He is convinced that at least 10 percent of   
   them were actually vehicles from outer space.   
        He was one of the investigators who taped an interview   
   with Deputies Dale Spaur and W.L. Neff of Portage County,   
   Ohio.  On the tape, the pair recount with a certain sense of   
   wonder a 100-mph chase of a brilliantly lighted, dome-shaped   
   object at dawn on April 17, 1966.   
        They raced 86 miles from Randolph to Conway, Ohio, in   
   pursuit of the object, which eventually "rose straight up   
   until it was lost in the sunny morning sky," according to a   
   1977 story in the Sunday magazine of the Akron Beacon   
   Journal.   
        Attempts by The Arizona Republic to reach Spaur and Neff   
   were unsuccessful.   
      
   SIGHTINGS FROM AGE 10   
      
        Candusso said he saw what he now believes was his first   
   UFO during recess at Liberty School in Alliance, Ohio, when   
   he was 10.   
        "It was a white ball of light, very brilliant, like a   
   star," he said.  "It was moving."   
        Skeptical, his teacher ordered him inside.   
        One of his early encounters as an adult occurred April   
   6, 1959, at 10:45 p.m., when he saw what looked like a   
   fluorescent tube headed northwest near Twinsburg, Ohio.   
        "It looked like a ball point pen with the bigger part   
   going south," he said.  "It looked like the fuselage of a B-   
   19, all light, no openings."   
      The object disappeared 10 or 15 minutes later, he said.   
      Despite diminished reports of sightings today, Candusso   
   continues his studies, talking with others in meetings held   
   the third Wednesday of each month at 7 p.m. at the Valley   
   National Bank in Fountain Hills.   
        He is buoyed by the enthusiasm of others and his own   
   belief.   
        "There is no doubt UFOs exist," he said.   
      
                    
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