In Ohio: a Vision West of Town

One summer night Rita Ratchen was driving down Ohio Route 12 when an image of Jesus hove into view on the side of a soybean-oil storage tank. She thought someone had painted it, but as she drew closer the figure disappeared. "My hands come off the wheel," she recalls. "I just crossed my arms over my heart, and I said, 'Oh, my Lord, my God.' " It was a lucky thing she had just bought a new Ford Taurus, she thinks now, because its alignment held her on the road those treacherous few seconds it took to compose herself. This was on a Wednesday night, at 10:15. Rita had been out installing drapes; she has her own concern. She went on home to Fostoria, one of those clean, pretty Ohio villages with high-hipped houses on fresh-clipped lots. For four days Rita did not mention her vision to another soul, largely because "I didn't want to be put away." It was hard withholding the news because she "wanted to share it so badly with someone." Finally, on Sunday night, Dorothy Droll, Rita Ratchen's best friend for 35 years, came to visit, and Rita said, "Dorothy, I want to show you something." They drove out of town about two miles and parked on the shoulder of the road by the Fostoria Country Club. Rita pointed to the tank across the highway, and Dorothy "saw it immediately. So I said, 'Oh boy, two kooks now!' "

The next night Rita took another friend, "and she went bananas. She's Spanish, and they can really get excited." Over the next week the word spread through Fostoria like prairie fire. One night there were twelve cars out there next to the golf course; another night 20. Soon there were 150. One witness reported it took an hour and a half to drive from Putt 'N' Pond Park to the soybean tank, a distance of two miles. Rita called a photographer named Andy Duran at the paper, the Review Times, and asked for a picture, but Andy said he was busy. Privately, he thought the Jesus affair was nonsense. "Andy did what I would have done and dismissed it," says Managing Editor Carl Hunnel.

"But then we started getting more calls, and some of our own people started seeing it." On Aug. 19, after considerable level-headed cogitation -- "I'm a skeptic, O.K.?" Carl says. "I'm not a very religious person, but you can't let that affect your coverage" -- the editor decided to go with the story. His front-page banner headline: IMAGE OF CHRIST REPORTED WEST OF TOWN. "What many people have said appears to be an image of Christ can be seen just west of Fostoria . . . Those who have contacted or have been contacted by the Review Times say the image can be seen when it's dark, around 9:30 p.m. or later, from the area between the Hi-Lo Oil gas station up to the grain bin itself and can only be seen coming toward Fostoria. The bin is the one farthest west." In later editions the paper corrected itself and identified the canvas, if you will, as a soybean-oil storage tank.

The news agency Reuters picked up the piece and moved it on the wire. All of a sudden Carl Hunnel's phone began to ring ceaselessly as the press at home and abroad smelled a newsworthy aberration, always the cause of a stampede, especially in August, when Presidents are on holiday. Fostoria, a town of 17,000 that until Rita Ratchen's sighting was best known for the Fostoria Shade & Lamp Co., a fine glassworks that burned in 1895, went under the glare of world attention. "Yes," the Review Times wrote on Aug. 21, "Fostoria is on the map."