Contact USA

History

Contact USA published from northeast Ohio in 1970, compiling sighting reports and contact experiences from the Akron, Canton, Massillon, and surrounding communities. The collection includes issues 2 through 6 and issue 11, plus an earlier "WCG Research Bulletin" (Volume 1, Number 1, April 1956) from the Waukegan Contact Group, indicating the editor had been involved in contact research for at least fourteen years before launching this publication.

The newsletter operated as a real-time sighting coordination centre. Each issue opened with reports phoned in to the editor and compiled chronologically: dates, times, locations, descriptions, witness counts. Reports came from Kenmore, Munroe Falls, Peninsula Valley, Northampton, Barberton, West Hill, the Lodi-Ashland corridor, and dozens of other communities across Summit and Stark counties. Radio station WHBC in Canton served as an additional intake point, with callers reporting lights and objects that the editor then cross-referenced against Contact USA's own network.

The editorial stance was distinctive. Where most UFO newsletters of 1970 stuck to sighting compilations, Contact USA actively sought out and published contact and abduction experiences. The editor noted that "in the past ten years we have been researching the para-normal results of UFO" and concluded that "UFO encounters bring out the REAL YOU, whatever you are." Readers were assured their names would not be used without permission but were urged to share experiences "no matter how far out your day may have seemed to you."

Sighting reports were granular and numerous. A single issue might contain twenty or thirty reports from a two-week period, with precise locations (Yellow Creek Road, Chart Road and Steeles Corners Road, Route 8 at Clarkins, the Ohio Edison Power Plant on West Hill) and details that place the reader in the geography of 1970 suburban Ohio.