Before UAPs And UFOs, Cincinnatians Trembled In Fear Of Flying Snakes

They don’t call them UFOs anymore. Those mysterious things zipping around up there are now known as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, no longer Unidentified Flying Objects. That’s okay. Back in the 1940s and early 1950s, before we settled on UFO as the official acronym, we called them flying saucers, even though many sightings involved shapes not commonly found in the china closet.The really big year for flying saucers was 1947. The Enquirer printed a banner headline – “Flying Saucers Over Cincinnati” – on 7 July 1947 to report the observations of a Terrace Park housewife. For the next two decades it was “Katie Bar the Door” as dozens of Cincinnati UFO sightings found their way into the files of Project Blue Book, headquartered just up the road at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton.Those first flying saucer incidents were viewed with some amusement by Frank Y. Grayson from his perch at the old Cincinnati Times-Star. Good old Frank Grayson. He had a long career at several…