Somewhere in the Skies - She Woke Up to UFOs Outside Her Window w/ Zelia Edgar

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

In October 1973, a woman living near Cincinnati, Ohio, awoke in the middle of the night to a brilliant light shining through her bedroom window. Looking outside, she witnessed several glowing UFOs hovering silently above her front lawn. Then, standing beyond the mysterious craft, she saw something even more unsettling. It was a tall humanoid figure watching from the darkness. One of Ohio's most chilling UFO encounters, this little-known case continues to raise questions more than 50 years later. Subscribe to Just Another Tin Foil Hat on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JustAnotherTinFoilHat Join us at ANOMACON on September 12th: http://www.anomacon.com Send us a voicemail: https://www.speakpipe.com/SomewhereSkiesPod Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ Substack: https://ryansprague.substack.com/ All socials and books: https://linktr.ee/somewhereskiespod Email: [e-mail] Opening theme song by Septembryo Closing song by Per Kiilstofte Copyright © 2026 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. #Cincinnati #Ohio #UFOs #UFO #Aliens #CloseEncounters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trade ice skating at Nathan Phillips Square for ice cubes in your umbrella drink. Let Porter Airlines fly you from Toronto Pearson nonstop to 10 top sun destinations in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Costa Rica. Enjoy award-winning Porter service Toronto has loved for 20 years and start your vacation as soon as you're on the plane. Book your sunny getaway today at flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. The woman was mesmerized by the display of blue and white twinkling lights that made an arc in the air above her yard. When suddenly her attention was attracted to a different sight, a strange, luminous object that she described as looking like a bell jar,

with a figure standing in front of it. Welcome to just another tinfoil hat with your host, Zilia Edgar. Join Zilia as she walks us through some of the most bizarre UFO cases and incidents of high strangeness. Well, good evening to all of my fellow tinfoil hats. I am just another tinfoil hat. Welcome to my show. Today, we will be discussing the fascinating case

of the bell jar beastie. But before we begin, I have to announce a very special guest appearance by my glasses. I am blind as a bat without glasses or in the case of filming contacts, and I need fresh contacts. So, for today only,

It's the return of the glasses. This case occurred in Covedale, Ohio, a suburb city of Cincinnati, Ohio, and involved a woman by the name of Mrs. R. Heitfeld. Now, Mrs. Heitfeld was a single mother of three boys. Two of them had moved out by the time of this incident, with the youngest, 13-year-old Carl, the only one left with her in her home ended Covedale. Mrs. Heitfeld was 48 years old at the time of this incident in October of 1973. Now, the month leading up to this particular case, Ohio was in the middle of a veritable UFO flap. Headlines like Ohio countryside swarms with UFOs and 80 reports in Ohio of UFO sightings filled the local papers. Although many of these were in the Cleveland area, by mid-October of 1973, it seems that the flap had kind of moved north, with many sightings up in the area of Dayton, New Lebanon, and Zinia, which is about an hour north-northeast,

of the Cincinnati and Covedale area. Three Lebanon patrol officers even tailed a UFO for six miles on Sunday, October 14th. Now, some of these reports detailed kind of amber orbs of light, whereas others described vague, large objects encircled with twinkling lights of different colors. One highway patrol officer upon hearing of a sighting of a thing in the sky with flashing red, white, and blue lights, quipped, well, I guess that must be one of ours. However, by Tuesday, October 16th, even the Cincinnati police claimed that they had a bunch of calls regarding UFO sightings, actually, quote, a mess of them. And around 2.30 in the morning of October 21st, 1973, Mrs. Heitfeld would join the growing number of witnesses to this activity in the greater Cincinnati area, spotting something very strange just outside of her Covedale, Ohio home.

Now, Mrs. Heitfeld and her son, Carl, both lived in a trailer park. in the Covedale area. And it was right in the middle of the witching hour, around 2.30 in the morning, that Mrs. Heitfield woke up to get a glass of water. However, as she got up and out of bed, her attention was suddenly grabbed by a bright light streaming in through a crack in her curtains. She opened the curtains and was startled by this arc of bright lights, twinkling about two yards away from her window. Mrs. Heitfeld described this site as being comprised of about six lights, each about as large, quote, as a hand with the fingers spread out. These lights were hovering about four feet off the ground, alternating a bright blue and a bright silver.

She said that they were like stars as beautiful as Christmas lights. Mrs. Heitfeld was very clear that the lights were self-luminous. She referred to them as lit up inside, but casting no light on the nearby surroundings. And the lights stayed where they were completely still. There was no attendant noise, no bizarre smells. however, her attention was soon attracted by something else. Far past the blue and silver Christmas lights, about 35 feet away, Mrs. Heitfeld saw another light. However, she didn't really pay that much attention to it as the more immediate and pressing concern

was the creature that she saw standing in front of this light. Now, apparently there was a car parked about 10 feet away from Mrs. Heitfeld's home, and this creature was standing at the rear of the car and appeared to be fiddling with it. Now, Mrs. Heitfeld described this creature as being this totally gray, featureless figure, in the rough shape of an ape-like creature with no neck and, again, no facial features, except for a snout-like protuberance. Now, Mrs. Heitfeld was so terrified that she didn't even turn the lights on. She said she was afraid that the creature would notice her and try and come into her home.

Now, after watching this thing for about three minutes, she ran to her son, Carl's bedroom, yelling, my God, Carl, get up, get up, and look at that thing out there. By the time Mrs. Heitfeld got back to the window, the creature was further away and appeared to be inside of this other light. So again, about 35 feet away from the house. Now, at first, she compared the shape of this light or object to a bubble umbrella, you know, those kind of clear umbrellas that come down over the head. However, when speaking to investigator Leonard Stringfield, she actually held up a bell jar

and said that this was how the object looked. It looked like a shield of glass that was filled with light. She said that it was about as large as six men holding hands and with her arms outstretched, standing in a circle, which is very specific, or about 15 feet in diameter. Now, again, she said that it looked like a glass shield with a round top and light inside of it. However, she explained that the object just seemed to contain light.

again, like the initial Christmas lights that she described, it didn't emit light onto the areas around it. Now, Mrs. Heitfeld saw no features on the thing inside of the bell jar, though explained that the creature appeared to be moving an invisible lever. She said that it was moving its arms up and down stiffly, almost robotic, without bending its elbows. Finally, her son Carl woke up and looked out of his window, half asleep and kind of confused as to where she was looking. However, he did eventually see the strange light, though not. the creature inside of it. Now, Mrs. Heitfeld left to phone the police. She was answered with a blunt, Lady, we've already been there. More on that in just a minute. Meanwhile, as Mrs. Heitfeld was trying to contact the police about this terrifying sighting, at the window, Carl watched as another car

rode up, and two people got out of it and began to try and jumpstart the car that was already parked there. Now, the initial parked car belonged to a young man by the name of Cliff Fulmer, whose vehicle was notorious for having problems. He and his girlfriend, Tina Maria Rico, who lived in the trailer park neighborhood with her mother, had just returned from a drive-in movie sometime after 2.30 but not past 3 a.m., at which point they jumped started the car.

Now, it made a loud banging noise at one point, which startled Mrs. Heitfeld. She thought that it was related to the creature and the object. Going back to the window to check on things, she saw that the object, the lights, and the creature had all just vanished. So she told the officer that she was on the phone with. She called back after being kind of written off by saying, you know, lady, we've already been there. She told the officer that she was on the phone with, never mind, it's gone and hung out.

Now, the reason that the initial officer that Mrs. Heitfield had called had been so brusque with her was because they had already received an alert that the fire alarm at a nearby warehouse had been triggered at exactly 2.27 in the morning. Now, interestingly enough, the alarm was tripped by an unknown cause. Fire Marshal Robert Miller stated, Something caused the electrical surge to trip the alarm. I could not find the cause. The day after this sighting, Mrs. Heitfeld searched the area where the being had been,

just in the sheer effort to figure out what she had spotted, and grabbed up absolutely every piece of debris she could find, including a man-made plastic disc, a broken tile, and a sample of a strange powdery substance, which appeared near where the beautiful Christmas light display had been. She said that this powder or ash was kind of in a swirl, almost like it had been deposited by a strong wind. Again, this really calls to mind. I've said this in many other cases, specifically of flying saucer nests or even so-called Sasquatch nests, this really calls to mind so many traditions of denizens of the other world traveling in,

whirlwinds. Investigator Leonard Stringfield did ask the fire department if any of their machines could account for either the twinkling lights or the big lighted object or if someone in an asbestos suit could have accounted for the creature. However, the reply was in the negative, as no one had actually been out and about suited up to go into a fire after seeing it was a false alarm, and that the fire department's vehicles all used exclusively red lights. Two, the timeline of the young couple, returning to the vehicle at the end of Mrs. Heitfeld's encounter, discounts that she could have mistaken one of them for the creature. So this is truly a weird case that I've had on my radar for quite a while now.

And there are several aspects of it which, of course, are very familiar in the kind of grand scheme of paranormal encounters. The first being the prevalence of light anomalies in this case, and light acting as kind of an escalating, catalyzing, or initiating force. Mrs. Heitfeld's attention was first attracted by the light coming in through her window. So again, we have light being the very first aspect of this case, as in countless other cases of people seeing something unexplained. And as in many other cases, light was kind of a secondary catalyst. It was upon seeing the second light that she also saw the creature. And as in many other cases, this creature is faceless, it's featureless.

Now, it's interesting here that the silhouette of the thing is very ape-like. We could almost say it's like a big foot-like creature in the midst of this light anomaly report. It's going kind of back to the lights, too. A very common aspect that we see is people describing anomalous lights as having a self-contained light, not actually emitting light onto the surroundings, not like sending off any luminosity. It's just contained to the thing itself. Two, there is this weird and kind of hard to pin down trace evidence. of a possible electromagnetic disturbance. While the car was known to break down, so this is kind of

a null and void point that we can sort of discount, the fat remains that the fire alarm for the nearby warehouse went off to some sort of unexplained electrical surge, right at the same time that a woman was observing a light anomaly right near this warehouse. Now, to quote Mulder once again, if coincidences are coincidences, why do they feel so contrived? Now, it's also interesting to me, and we've seen this many, many times before, that you have one primary witness in this case, one person who sees the most of the show. We can't really say the whole show,

because of course we haven't yet identified the thing behind the curtain, but again, sees the most of the show, the most detail, as the longest experience. Then you have other people, in this case, the sun, who can verify part of it, however, usually in far less detail. It's also really interesting in this case because the reaction, the witness, the primary witness, Mrs. Heitfield, is kind of two-part, you know, first she's entranced by these beautiful Christmas lights, then terrified by a strange, featureless

creature. Now, the most interesting part of this case to me, and the thing that really attracted my attention to it, was the luminous shield or bell jar, which the creature went into. This stood out to me because it's reminiscent of an intriguing account from Evans-Wenz, the fairy faith in Celtic countries, in which two people walking at night saw across a brook, this circle of light, they described it as a circle of supernatural light in which tiny beings were moving. This vision was interrupted when one of the friends struck a wall with their walking stick and the light and all the beings inside it simply disappeared. Although the figure in this case appeared first outside of the light, it too vanished at a loud noise, the backfiring

of the vehicle. For as many priming or catalyzing aspects of the anomalous that we often see in these cases, I also wonder if we can kind of identify the opposite, a sort of inhibitor, you know, a thing or aspect which effectively breaks the spell that the witness seems to be under. It often seems that loud noises or mundane lights kind of act in this way. Now, in referring to an encounter as a spell, this is not to discount the reality of the experience, just that it seems to exist somewhere between the objective and the subjective. In this case, the main reporting witness, as we discussed earlier, Mrs. Heitfeld, saw something, and not just something, multiple somethings. First, the Christmas lights, then the further light, then the creature, then the creature in the light.

Although she alone saw all of these aspects, all of these details, her son did confirm seeing the further lighted shield. However, none of the other things which she described, not the Christmas lights, not the creature. And then you have all of these other people in the area at the time who didn't see anything. You know, the fire department or the teen couple did not see a single aspect of the encounter. Now, interestingly enough to kind of continue on this concept, we just discussed a case recently,

the high-contact case of the Lund family of the Missoula UFO flap, which detailed this aspect also seen here. In this case, it seemed to be the arrival of the two teenagers to jump the car that was when the creature and lights vanished. In the case of the Luns, they had been watching this strange object in the sky that had almost become familiar to them.

They had seen it so often near their home when suddenly an airplane came near the area. Now, as the airplane approached the object, the lights on the object appeared to go out, coming on right as the mundane craft had passed. You know, is this evidence that paranormal experiences, paranormal occurrences, are capable of singling out witnesses? and if so, as with every aspect of the paranormal, so many questions remain, but the question then is why? Well, if you enjoyed this episode on the bell jar, Beastie, please like, and if you're new to this feel of crop circles, go ahead and subscribe to see what weirdness the

future may have in store. Till then, you can keep up with me on my free blog at patreon.com slash just another tinfoil hat. That is where you'll find the work cited for this and all of my other episodes. And please tune in to the fantastic podcast somewhere in the skies, not only for the very best in anomalous listening, but also you can catch my episodes on there as well. So for today, I am Zilia Edgar, signing off. This has been just another tinfoil hat with Zelia Edgar. Be sure to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. For full video versions of these episodes, be sure to subscribe to Just Another Tinfoil hat on YouTube. Thank you for listening. Now, the original Skylook article for this case is fantastic.

I have to admit, this is one of the most intriguing occupants, if you can call it an occupant. Actually, it's more occupant-ish than others. It occupies the actual, you know, if we can call it a craft or object or whatever you want to say, far more than most other occupants. But I admit, every time I look at this guy, all I can think of is Yogi Bear. I mean, literally, add a hat and a little tie onto this thing, and it is going to be hunting down picnic baskets. I can guarantee you that.