Ufology Research

UFO Sighting in Ottawa

2012-02-07T13:19:00.000-08:00

I had an interesting call yesterday from a woman who lives in the south part of Ottawa. She said that around 1:00 am on Sunday, February 5, 2012, her daughter was standing on their deck when she saw an odd object approaching from the distance. It looked simply like a red LED light at first, and moved at a steady pace towards their house, apparently not far above the trees. It was resolved at first into two red LED lights in tandem, but when it passed directly overhead, the object could clearly be distinguished to be circular in shape and "four townhouses wide." The underside of the object was revealed to look like "a circle with an H inside," dividing the object's lower surface into squares; the red lights were two sides of the H. The object did not have any visible wings or other features; simply a dark object hanging in the air. It seemed to hover briefly then moved off slowly to the northeast. Rather than being silent, the object emitted a loud, droning hum, very unlike helicopters that often flew over the area (as it is the National Capital region). The daughter woke up her mother, who did hear the sound but did not see the object, which by that time had moved off out of sight.

Analysis of UFO sightings in 2011 underway

2012-02-04T12:19:00.000-08:00

Well, we're in the process of compiling and crunching the stats for Canadian UFO reports in 2011. Initially, as I had posted some months ago, it didn't look like we were going to have a high year for UFO reports, since we had barely received 500 cases by mid-October or so.

However, as has been the case in several previous years, case reports were delayed in being received and recorded by the various sources from which we obtain case data. So, the result was that although by the end of December we hadn't come close to a record number of cases in a year, by the time we tracked down all the available data, the number is much higher.

In fact, while I don't think we have reached a new record number of UFO reports in a single year, we'll be right up there... likely among the highest number of cases in a single year since the annual studies were begun in 1989. This isn't in any way a validation of the claims that "sightings are way up" that have been tweeted about and heralded to news media by some UFO groups. But if the numbers are up there, it does show that sightings have maintained a high level for several years in a row.

How many of those will be labelled "unknown" this year? How many will be "high quality unknowns" (cases without simple explanations that have been investigated and analyzed in some detail)?

We'll just have to wait and see,

In 2008, the last year for which we had reliable data, there was a record high of 1004 UFO reports in Canada in a single year. We are going back through 2009 and 2010 data so that we can get a good idea of how the past four years compare with one another.

Sounds like Conspiracy Spirit

2012-01-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

A trending topic on many social media sites today is "strange sounds." Supposedly, people all around the world are hearing and recording weird sounds coming from the sky. Some are suggesting it's the Earth "groaning," others say it's aliens and others think it's just a viral ad campaign for an upcoming movie.

One of the primary Youtube videos about these sounds, oddly enough, is from Manitoba: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxSulCgmJJA

Thankfully, Redditors have dug around and found some suspicious similarities between all the videos (a list of which is linked in here), and it looks like it's a hoax or a viral conspiracy theory: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/oixhc/what_the_hell_are_these_noises_being_heard/

One Redditor did some analysis of the videos and posts his comments in the thread, then later in the thread another Redditor posts his check into who's posting the videos.

Conclusion: much ado about nothing. It's not HAARP, or aliens or Gaia. Seems like it's just the conspiracy crowd at it again.

UFOs ring in the New Year across Canada

2012-01-05T09:40:00.000-08:00

As noted in a previous post, I had received a few UFO reports for 2012 early on New Year's Day, suggesting things were getting off to a quick start. Most people who responded to me were of the opinion that fireworks were the likely cause. Unfortunately, the reports don't bear that out. In fact, most witnesses said they had seen the UFOs after the New Year's fireworks displays were over and that the unknown objects were quite different. That's not to say the reports were of alien spaceships. Just that fireworks were likely not the causes.

One thing to note, however, is that the large number of sightings that occurred on January 1 is very unusual. I've looked back in the files, and no other year had more than a handful of reports on January 1.

Here's the list of reports, geographically across Canada by province westward, in the order they may have occurred throughout each time zone as New Year's Day progressed.

12:10 am     St. John's, NF
After the fireworks were over, the witness saw several bright red and yellow lights following one another across the sky in a ragged grouping.

12:25 am    Montreal, PQ
A bright orange/yellow ball of fire headed S across the sky.

12:00 midnight   Barrie, ON
After fireworks, two witnesses saw 3 red lights followed by 2 or 3 more. No strobing or flashing lights were seen.

12:01 am    London, ON
Two people watched a steady red/orange light move swiftly towards the NNE.

12:05 am    Barrie, ON
A triangular formation of 3 orange lights were seen in the sky; they disappeared one by one.

12:05 am    Barrie, ON
After fireworks, as many as 40 people may have seen 6 orange/yellow lights passing over the city from the S.

12:15 am    Guelph, ON
A steady red light moved slowly under thick clouds for 3 minutes before it disappeared.

12:23 am    Cambridge, ON
Glowing ball or orange light moved across sky. As it disappeared near the horizon, 2 or 3 more identical objects flew in the same manner.

12:23 am     Cambridge, ON
A second independent report of an orange ball over the city.

12:25 am    Skootamatta lake, ON
A bright orange light climbed rapidly into the NW sky, then hovered and seemed to be "dangling on a string." It seemed to move closer, then shot away quickly out of sight.

After midnight     ?, ON
A stationary, V-shaped object was seen motionless in the sky. Within a minute, it vanished.

12:05 am    Grande Prairie, AB
3 orange lights in a triangular formation were led by a 4th light towards 3 witnesses, then vanished.

12:25 am    Camrose, AB
2 bright orange objects passed overhead quickly, moving NW-SE. Then another single light passed in the same direction.

12:30 am    Camrose, AB
An orange/red light flew E-W overhead during about 4 minutes.

12:04 am   Surrey, BC
About 30 people outside for a fireworks display watched several orange lights "zoom" across the sky E-W in the S, about five seconds apart.

12:10 am    Duncan, BC
4 orange lights moved slowly W, in 2 pairs.

And finally, an outlier:

9:00 pm    Peribonka, PQ
A witness driving west along Lac Saint-Jean saw "2 white lights moving around with many red steady lights" for a total of about 30 minutes.

Sixteen sightings all in one night from coast to coast is rather unusual. (We've had localized flaps that saw many more, this geographical distribution is remarkable.)

Sources: PSICAN, Brian Vike, MUFON, UFOROM

Certainly, some of the cases were likely sightings of Chinese lanterns, especially the ones in Barrie and Cambridge. Setting some of these aloft at New Years was reportedly common this season. The faster-moving ones may have been bolides. Indeed, on New Year's Eve, a bright fireball was widely seen across the southern USA. And some of the slower-moving lights may have been satellites.

Still, it's odd to have so many cases on January 1 in this manner.

UFOs reported in Canada in 2012 already?

2012-01-01T10:44:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's true. Off to a flying start.

The first case of 2012 was reported to PSICAN from St. John's Newfoundland. It occurred on January 1, 2012 at 12:10 am, following a fireworks display. A single light, like on a plane, was moving high in the sky by itself. Then the witness noticed several others following it, creating a kind of trapezoidal formation. They suddenly stopped, then moved behind clouds and vanished from sight.

The second case occurred only a few minutes later, in Guelph, Ontario. Two witnesses were preparing to go to bed at 12:15 am and through a window noticed a steady red light moving slowly, high in the sky. It went behind some clouds after three minutes. (MUFON)

Happy New Year!

Amazing video of UFO over Ontario! Oh, wait...

2011-12-22T09:18:00.000-08:00

Checking out some UFO websites, I saw that a report from 2009 was just posted on the MUFON site. It had a fairly lengthy description, with an accompanying video.

After watching the video, I must admit I'm amazed. Mostly because IT'S AN AIRCRAFT!

Good lord. You can see the flashing navigation lights and everything.

http://mufoncms.com/cgi-bin/report_handler.pl?req=view_long_desc&id=34244

And the video:

http://www.mufoncms.com/files/34244_submitter_file1__UFO326JANhitsoffbldg.mp4

Some interesting recent Canadian UFO cases

2011-12-06T09:55:00.001-08:00

During the month of November, I have received and gathered a significant number of Canadian UFO reports, although as I've stated often in this blog, the number of reports this year is down from last year. It remains to be seen how much difference there will be.

However, I have sifted through the batch and will summarize some of the more interesting ones here:

November 3, 2011    7:30 pm Scarborough Bluffs, ON
This one is interesting simply because it's so typical of the reports that come in. Low in content and quality, yet it's possible to suggest an explanation anyway. "It's been coming and going all night. East of the Scarborough Bluffs over the water. Due east. Sometime ones. Sometimes two. Sometimes three. They just sit there, then disappear, then reappear." Due east from Scarborough Bluffs is the entire length of Lake Ontario. The atmospheric refraction is intense, so I'd say boats. Or if we're talking slightly elevated, then perhaps stars. (Vike)

November 5, 2011    12:45 pm    Toronto, ON
White, blimp-like object with bands or rings around the centre, which seemed "elevated slightly from the surface." The object was thought to be at about 5,000 ft altitude. Originally, the witness thought it was a Porter Airlines Bombardier aircraft, but decided that the object did not show the correct markings or wings. (MUFON)

November 7, 2011   6:15 pm    Kitchener, ON
Starlike object seen and photographed often through the course of a year. "I thought it was a star but noticed it changes colours." NB: that's what stars do when they twinkle. "It would stay out for two and a half hours." NB: that's what stars do. The witness didn't provide any directions or altitude, so we can't determine which star or planet is the culprit. Nice jiggled trail photo of starlike UFO, though. (MUFON)
http://www.mufoncms.com/files/33252_submitter_file1__ufoa2nov7008.jpg

November 8, 2011   7:32 pm    Sudbury, ON
V-shaped formation of dim amber lights flew overhead in a straight line west to east. Transited in about seven seconds. Estimated altitude 1000 feet and completely silent. (MUFON)
http://www.mufoncms.com/files/33206_submitter_file1__ufo.bmp

November 9, 2011   9:30 pm    Corner Brook, NF
two witnesses watched a red object moving across the sky. No dunning lights or blinking lights were visible, unlike an airplane which was also in the sky at the same time. The UFO was seen for 10 minutes, occasionally "correcting" its flight path before it suddenly vanished. (Vike)

November 11, 2011   7:00 pm   Montreal, PQ
Video of distant lights taken through windshield of car moving on Route 40 heading east towards downtown Montreal. Probable explanation: aircraft over Montreal? (Vike)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQqB652Nc-c

November 17, 2011   7:30 pm   Ottawa, ON
Another V-shaped set of lights. These ones were blinking and moving below cloud cover, estimated to be about 1500 feet in altitude. They were seen for about 10 minutes. When they disappeared, flashes of coloured lights could be seen intermittently in the area. They were thought not to be fireworks, and not in the direction of any casinos. (UFOINFO)

November 20, 2011   11:20 pm    Norman Wells, NT
Red light appeared over treeline, due east. No sound. Vanished below treeline. Thought not to be plane, since no planes usually fly in the area that late at night. (MUFON)

November 20, 2011   8:35 pm   Wawota, SK
A reporter and journalist wrote a very detailed personal account of an odd formation of lights he had seen in the sky. In his opinion, it was not an0 aircraft of any kind. Reported to MUFON, but also posted on the witness' own blog: http://kennethjkerr.wordpress.com/

November 23, 2011   8:30 pm    London, ON
Lengthy description of personal encounter with "distortions in the outside world." Mental effects, sounds, physical effects, "somatic pressure on my body," all while walking in a forest. Several lights and glowing effect witnessed. (MUFON)

October UFOs, and a challenge for readers of this blog

2011-11-03T10:37:00.000-07:00

So far, about 65 UFO reports have been added to the Canadian UFO Survey database for October 2011. A few more will likely trickle in, but that's still not bad. It's not the most we've ever recorded, but it's high.

As a snapshot, it suggests that my prediction of "high, but not highest" will likely prevail for 2011. Report numbers are at a high level, but not "35% higher" than last year or any other year, for that matter, unlike some sensational updates and tweets and posts throughout the Internet.

A lot of the reports this year are "orange orbs" and similar lights. Many witnesses are insisting the objects they are seeing are spherical in shape, even though the distances involved rule out any true definition of shape. Many witnesses report orbs "right above us"... then note the objects are 1,000 or 2,000 or 5,000 (or even two miles!) up in the sky.

A lot of the cases, especially in southern Ontario, are observations of Chinese lanterns. Many witnesses dispute this, even though it can be shown in some instances that a wedding party was being held only a short distance away and such paper balloons were sent up that same night, down to the minute. I tried sending up a few of these myself this summer, just to see what they looked like and how easy it was to launch them. (It is.)

The cases that intrigue me, however, are reports of multiple objects seen at the same time, flying in formation. These are all points of light, obviously very high and far away, and are often described on UFO websites as "Massive UFO fleets" and things like that. More often, witnesses are using their cell phone cameras to shoot video of them and post the results to Youtube. Rather than assuming they are all video toaster fakes, some do look genuine, and while I don't think Muskoka is being invaded, it does suggest something curious is being observed. The videos almost always contain segments where the witness uses the zoom function to distort a perfectly fine image of a point of light at effective infinity into a "banded orb" that is a great example of internal refraction.

Then there's the cases where a point of light moving across the firmament (most often a satellite) makes an abrupt right-angle turn. The simplest explanation for these is that there are actually two objects, one of which passes into Earth's shadow about the same time as one emerges.

Now, do I think all orb or LITS (lights in the sky) are explainable as easily? No, because I know there are a number of factors at work, and many other possibilities. However, in painstakingly sifting through witnesses' narratives of their sightings, plus talking and corresponding with them, plus my many years' experience at investigating and interpreting UFO sighting reports, I've found that my intuition for assessing cases is a good way to filter simple IFOs from raw UFO reports.

The cases that are left, then, are what Geoff and I (and others) call high-quality UFO reports. There are some of these every year. Out of the 65 or so filed for October, six cases so far are labeled as "Unknown." That's not bad for a first pass; when the 2011 survey is finally compiled, these six will be re-evaluated to see if they fall into the "high-quality" category, with decent information, detailed descriptions and some level of actual investigation.

Here's an example of a recent UFO report, from Brian Vike's site (he's a very dedicated guy, and is cooperating with our survey):

http://canadaufo.blogspot.com/2011/11/large-red-orange-ball-of-light-seen.html

What do you think this may have been? I have my suspicions, but what about you, the average blog reader? I'm interested in hearing your ideas.

Canuckian UFO Reports

2011-10-13T14:03:00.000-07:00

So, some of you have been asking what the Canadian UFO Survey database looks like. Well, here it is.

Well, at least a small chunk of it. Pretty much like any other spreadsheet, except that it is coded down from UFO sighting reports. Most of is straightforward; there's data for the date, time, province, city/town, etc. Type is a modified Hynek classification. Duration, colour, number of witnesses, shape. Then the two categories included with a nod to Vallee: strangeness and reliability. Then the source of the report, the evaluation, and a brief, one-line summary of the sighting.

That's really all there is room for in a basic database about UFO reports. The actual detailed case reports are kept on file in paper format. Over 20 years of reports, at about eight inches per year, means there are several file drawers' worth by now. In 30 years, someone like Jan Aldrich or John Greenewald may someday scan them all and make them available online, like Blue Book. Or not.

As of last week, the end of September saw about 600 Canadian UFO reports in the database. If things continued on track, we would expect about 850 cases by the end of the year. That is not a record, but it's certainly high. That is not a "37% increase" or whatever some people are claiming. If anything, we've gone slightly down this year, but I suspect we've simply plateaued. My goal is to input all the 2010 ans 2009 reports that are backlogged, so that we can run stats on what the numbers and demographics of Canadian UFO cases really look like. What's most significant, is that we could have a homogeneous dataset covering almost 25 years that can be used and analysed to get a really good snapshot of the UFO phenomenon.

UFOs are never tracked on radar and visually, right?

2011-09-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, it's claimed that UFOs are never tracked on radar, so they couldn't possibly be physical objects flying in controlled airspace. However, there are many cases on record (a few that I've blogged about here) in which unidentified returns were observed by radar operators. The next issue is, of course, whether anything was seen both visually and tracked on radar, and the number of these cases is far less.

Yet, a few do crop up now and then. In my slow and agonizing (trust me) perusal of the NRC Canadian UFO files, I'm finding some curious reports, and I'll be detailing them periodically in future blog entries.

One case that caught my eye was a report from 1972, involving an object tracked on radar by tower operators at North Bay, Ontario, where NORAD is based. What's interesting is that many other cases on file consist of several pages worth of correspondence and discussion, even when there's an obvious explanation for the object seen. In this case, however, there's no indication that the UFO report was ever investigated or followed up, at least at the low level of classification of which we have access. In fact, that in itself suggests that the case must have been referred to a higher-level investigation.

Anyway, the report notes simply that on September 10, 1972, at 0317Z (10:17 pm ET on September 9, 1972), "Mr. Robert Patterson," an Air Traffic Controller, and "Mr. Stacey (?)," the Radar Operator at North Bay Airport, both observed "one object flashing red and green lights, speed very slow to 300K [knots] at 4000 to 6000 feet estimated."

The report then gives the following description:

Visual sighting correlated with a North Bay terminal radar return at 340 degrees, six miles. Object appeared to turn in tight circles or hover for approx. 15 minutes and then lose altitude steadily with flashing lights becoming dimmer until visual contact lost at 0345Z. Radar contact lost prior to visual contact.

My check with a sky chart program shows that Jupiter was the only planet in the sky at the time, and it was low on the horizon, but in the southwest, not at 340 degrees.

Now, the fact that the report is careful to call the witnesses "Mr." means they were civilian, and not military personnel at NORAD, but working at the civilian airport. Since this doesn't seem to have been a misidentified star or planet, it could have been a military aircraft for which the civilians were not entitled to know about.

Still, we don't know what it really was because there was no follow up at all. And we're left with a UFO seen by reliable observers and tracked simultaneously by radar.

More September UFO Reports

2011-09-18T16:33:00.000-07:00

September 1, 2011 11:00 pm Neepawa, MB
While driving, the witnesses saw two bright orange lights in the southern sky. The lights remained visible for about 15 minutes as they traveled. (PSICAN)

September 7, 2011 11:30 pm Winnipeg, MB
A bright, slow-moving object with an orange light drifted slowly over the city. Photographs revealed the object to be a Chinese lantern. (UFOROM)

September 9, 2011 3:30 pm Toronto, ON
A jogger in Riverdale Park watched a round, silver object moving in the southeast sky. It flew south, stopped, then went west, then turned and went north. (UFOROM)

September 10, 2011 8:20 pm Maple Ridge, BC
Two witnesses observed three "strange orange lights." As they were being watched, the lights formed a triangle in the sky, then slowly faded from view. (Sightings)

September 11, 2011 8:00 pm Windsor, ON
A red, glowing object flew towards witnesses. It had a small white light just behind it. (Sightings)

September 14, 2011 6:00 am London, ON
A family was awakened by a loud screeching noise and accompanying vibration. They then saw two bright, multicoloured objects moving northeast across the sky before they were lost to sight. (Vike)

Starting September off with some UFO reports

2011-09-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

A few cases to start the month:

September 2, 2011 8:30 pm Alliston, ON
Glowing, silent orange light hovering over trees, moved erratically, then dropped onto field and went out. (UFOINFO)

September 3, 2011 9:40 pm Richmond Hill, ON
Orange balls of light in the sky approached from SE, changed direction and moved N. Looked like "balloons of fire." (Sightings)

September 4, 2011 8:50 pm Cambridge, ON
Orange object like plane "engulfed in fire" moving W to E in SW, thought to be 5,000 ft in altitude.Object changed course heading S and ascending. (MUFON)

September 4, 2011 Steenburg Lake, ON
Glowing orange object moved across the sky. (Sightings)

September 4, 2011 10:00 pm Buffalo Point, MB
Stationary light in NE "moved strangely" but effectively remained low to horizon throughout night until 6 am next morning, when it disappeared "in a flash" in the S. [Jupiter?] (PSICAN & UFORUM)

New cases, old cases

2011-09-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

A few recent cases:

On August 26, 2011, at about 8:30 pm ("in the afternoon"?) some UBC students were driving in Vancouver when they saw a glowing orange/red object over Burrard Inlet. They didn't think it was a plane, but it "floated" up and out of sight over Grouse Mountain. they saw two other similar lights as they watched the sky for several minutes at the first one disappeared. (UFO Clearinghouse)

On August 30, 2011, during the evening over Geary, NB, a Canadian Army witness and his wife saw a "bright light travelling across the sky, with no sound or strobing lights like most aircraft."

As for an old case, I found in the National Archives files a report from October 5, 1970. At about 5:10 am local, radar control operators at Shearwater, NS, had been hearing radio reports of UFOs seen in the area. They were surprised to find a "good radar return" of a stationary object southeast of their position. their "precision radar" painted the UFO at 2500 feet and was observed for 10 minutes. Why did the observation end? Because "the controller discontinued surveillance to prepare for an aircraft recovery," and he also "did not take his sighting seriously." Yes, the military radar operator detected an unidentified target but didn't think it was worth bothering about. Only after he heard about "similar sightings" on commercial civilian radio did he file his official report.

Beyond the radar operator's personal view, a note at the bottom of the official report notes: "A barium rocket was fired from a rocket range in W. Virginia on Oct. 5/70 at 09:00Z." Thus, according to the NRC, the radar return was unexplained.

Except that a barium cloud 150 miles up in the atmosphere wouldn't give a "good radar return" of 2500 feet. Visually, sure, that would explain the UFOs, but not the radar observation, unless we assume that a "precision" instrument that routinely vectored military aircraft safely could be so badly miscalibrated or misread.

Canadian UFO Reports

2011-08-31T10:43:00.000-07:00

Finally sorted through the whack o' UFO reports I received this week. More than 100 cases from 2011 (not including the ones I had already received from earlier this year), including 43 from August alone. These have come from Vike, Sightings, UFOINFO, PsiCan, DND, and Ufology Research.

Still, that's a loooong way from a record. We had 128 cases in August 2008. So what you're hearing about "record numbers of UFOs" and "massive UFO fleets" doesn't match what we're actually seeing. I know that MUFON has seen a big jump in online case reports, but it's difficult to say what that's attributable to. In Canada, at least, numbers of UFO reports are high, but not at record levels.

Most recent report:

August 30, 2011 10:00 pm Saint John, NB
Witness wrote: "Noticed a bright debris trail like the tail of a comet was coming down. Object slowed down and then changed direction to parallel to the ground and travelled in view for about 4 minutes. Looked like one red light. It went over the tree line, so I lost sight of it. I have two witnesses of the red light travelling, [but] I am the only person I know of that saw the comet like entry. This was at a very high altitude, even after it changed direction and slowed down it appeared to be very high. Higher than an aircraft landing at the airport about 5 miles from me." (UFOINFO)

Thanks to all contributors.

Ottawa, Please Advise

2011-08-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

Going through the thousands of old Canadian UFO documents now available online (but not suddenly released through any "Disclosure," unlike what you may read on some sensationalist UFO websites), you can find some gems.

Most pages describe simple lights in the sky, and many are obviously stars and planets and meteors. But occasionally, you find some like this:

On July 30, 1968, while driving near Codner, Alberta, 51-year-old Irene Logan reported to the RCMP that at about 11:00 pm, she had seen a light in the sky that she thought was an airplane. Suddenly, the object zoomed up to her car and hovered in front of her car's windshield. It was a brilliant red in colour and looked like "two pie plates together," about four or five feet in diameter and about one to three feet from top to bottom. It also had a "3-4 feet grey rope-like tail."

That's not the weird part.

The object then "circled [the] car 4 or 5 times very quickly and each time passed by windshield, [its] tail touching car made sound like crack of whip."

The object then "went straight up at high rate of speed."

The recording officer then noted: "Logan non-drinker and extremely upset over incident." Which is likely an understatement.

The report was sent to the Commissioner's office of the RCMP by the Red Deer RCMP office, with the note: "Ottawa, Please Advise CANFORCEHED."

Apparently, the RCMP Commissioner's Office did just that, because the teletype online is from "Commissioner RCMP" to "CANFORCEHED OTT."

And that's it. No additional documentation or investigation.

Why that is significant is that other cases in the files contain extensive documentation, often running many pages, but usually only when they have an explanation or are shown to be hoaxes.

But not this one.

Did they just assume that she was crazy?

August 2011 Canadian UFO Reports

2011-08-22T09:17:00.000-07:00

For those who asked, here's a summary of some of the UFOs reported in Canada in 2011.

August 2, 2011 Edmonton, AB
While watching the ISS pass overhead, a dark object streaked W-E underneath it, and flashed a brilliant white light. Witness sees so many UFOs, notes: "They are becoming so commonplace, I am expecting them to drop in for tea." (MUFON)

August 6, 2011 McLean Lake, YK
Campers saw a fast moving lighted object that suddenly made "a figure 8" in the sky. The object seemed to have 3 lights on its underside. (Bretlyn)

August 8, 2011 ON
While starwatching, a witness saw a red light in the sky that soon resolved into a black, spinning disc. It hovered nearby for 10 secs, then flew quickly away. (MUFON)

August 13, 2011 10:21 pm NS
A ball-shaped light with "arcs of light coming horizontally from the center," like "reflections on a silvery surface," flew overhead at high speed. (MUFON)

August 14, 2011 10:15 pm Winnipeg, MB
Bright light like "shooting star" stopped in its path, was stationary for 10 secs, then made 90-degree turn and continued. (UFOROM)

August 16, 2011 9:40 pm Altona, MB
A bright object like a "flickering lantern" flew low across the horizon for a minute before going higher and disappearing. The witness did not think it was a Chinese lantern. (UFOROM)

August 17, 2011 11:00 pm Winnipeg, MB
A very bright spherical light flew over the city eastward. It "wobbled" and "zig-zagged" before turning a reddish colour and disappearing. (UFOROM & MUFON)

August 19, 2011 10:30 pm Lockport, MB
Three lights that seemed to be on a dark, blurry triangular object moved quickly overhead S-N at the speed of a low-flying plane. (PSICAN)

August 19, 2011 9:30 pm Winnipeg, MB
Two orange lights traveled across the sky N-S for about a minute, then vanished. (PSICAN)

August 21, 2011 9:30 pm Gander, NF
A "huge yellow ball" floated over the city E-W, without making any sound. At the same time, ISS was passing W-E overhead as well. (DND)

Thanks to all contributors.

So why the secrecy about UFOs? Official Canadian docs give answers

2011-08-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

One of the big buzzwords in ufology these days is "Disclosure," with a capital "D." It's something that in my opinion, by the current definition, certainly won't happen, but many UFO buffs are persistent in their belief that the "Government" (with a capital "G") will release all of its UFO-related secrets due to public pressure and lobbying by exopolitics types.

Ain't gonna happen, folks.

First, public pressure doesn't matter in this regard. Since we don't know what exactly is being withheld by the US government, they don't need to say anything about it. (Assuming there is something there.)

Second, if there's something really juicy, it'll continue being withheld. We still don't know anything about Black Projects that the US Congress approves every year to the tune of billions of dollars.

Third, we've seen what has been released already by the USA (e.g. Blue Book) and many other countries, most recently in another batch put online by the MoD in Britain. And it's mostly junk. A few cases of note, but nothing really interesting.
We already have thousands of pages of official UFO docs accessible by anyone who wants them, so the amount of material awaiting "Disclosure" is comparatively small.

Case in point: Canada. In my last post, I reported on Isaac Koi's discovery of how to access thousands of Canadian UFO docs in one fell swoop. Several down people have been grabbing them and sifting through them for something - anything - of interest. Since we had access to most of these docs already in paper format through personal visits to the National Archives in Ottawa, we knew what to expect. Lots of correspondence between departments and with members of the public asking for info on UFOs, with the usual standard responses.

I find the docs curious for several reasons. The contents of a consecutively-numbered small batch of files sometimes contains cases and correspondence from non-consecutive years. One from 1952, then 1968, then 1964, etc. Why?

Also, there are examples where we have a memo describing a particular document supposedly attached, but no attachment.

The cases that we do find are fairly unspectacular; many fireballs and "bright lights with tails" crashing to the earth - which are also fireballs. But speaking of crashes, remember the Clan Lake case, where an object was seen to fall into a lake in the NWT in 1960? That generated about ten pages of docs, total. In addition, the RCAF and RCMP made a lacklustre attempt to retrieve the object over the course of a few years, then lost interest. But only two years later, in 1962, two separate well-witnessed crashes of objects into northern BC resulted in major recovery operations involving helicopters, ground searches, witness interrogations and a full-bore investigations with dozens of pages of documentation. A metal "nose cone" from something was even found and taken for analyses.

Among the docs about the 1962 cases was a memo from 11 August 1975 by Dr. Douglas of the Planetary Institute (presumably the Herzberg in Ottawa). He was offering direction on how to handle a request by Canadian ufologist Gregory Kanon who was looking for official UFO docs between 1947 and 1964. Apparently, they didn't want to give him anything, and justified their denial by noting:

All are of historical interest and have been marked accordingly.

Besides reports from the RCMP that require the written permission from that force for access, they contain letters from private individuals who requested confidentiality in making the information available to this department. They are therefore to be considered as containing PRIVILEGED information and not for release until 2000. (emphasis in original)

Not surprisingly, the letter from Kanon requesting the information does not accompany this memo.

Two things of note about this:

1. UFO reports are of historical interest. This could mean that they are of cultural significance and should be documented and preserved. Furthermore, such reports might well be part of our Canadian heritage and might be studied with funds from government sources, like other heritage topics.

2. The reasons UFO reports are not made public is because some are official RCMP documents, which makes sense, and because others are private correspondence from citizens who request anonymity, which also makes sense. Except for one thing: hardly anyone who reported a UFO to the NRC or RCMP actually requested anonymity in their letters or reports. The case files don't contain witnesses' comments to this effect.

Crash Go the UFOs: Falling Skies in Canada

2011-08-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

Diligent researcher Isaac Koi has published on his blog some details about some unusual space debris that was found in northern Saskatchewan in 1968. It was the largest piece ever found to that date, and was definitely considered to have come from space. However, the Canadian military and government could not definitively explain what it was from.

Koi got the docs and photos from a collection of UFO-related material held by the Canadian National Archives and made available online.

I have noted before that this is not "Disclosure" because the Canadian government has been making UFO docs available for decades at the Archives in Ottawa. It's only recently that they scanned several thousand docs and put them online.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread736264/pg1
http://www.ufoupdateslist.com/2011/aug/m16-001.shtml

Anyway, I replied to Koi in Errol Bruce-Knapp's UFO Updates and noted the found space debris was one of a number of known, documented crashes of objects in Canada.
http://www.ufoupdateslist.com/2011/aug/m16-006.shtml

Here's my updated, annotated list:

Known and documented Canadian "UFO crashes" include:

March 15, 1960
A U-2 spy plane made a forced landing on Wapawekka Lake in northern Saskatchewan.
http://www.mysteriesofcanada.com/Saskatchewan/u2_drops_in.htm
Few people know that there was another U-2 incident other than that of Francis Gary Powers. It's a good thing that Flin Flon was more friendly than Russia. As far as we know, no one saw the U-2 make the emergency landing in Saskatchewan, which might have resulted in a UFO report.

June 22, 1960
An object is seen to fall into Clan Lake, Northwest Territories.
http://uforum.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html
The RCMP officer who met the witness recalled in 2010 that he was a reliable and trustworthy individual, not prone to exaggeration and well-liked in the community. If it was a meteorite under the water of significant size, you'd think the scientists would want to recover it.

October 4, 1967
A bright object was seen by several witnesses to fall into Shag Harbour, off the coast of Nova Scotia.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread736264/pg1#pid11980698
Called "Canada's Roswell," it's actually a bit better because we have official docs that something really happened, unlike Roswell.

October 17, 1968
Fragments of a "space vehicle" found near Wollaston Lake in Saskatchewan are received by the NRC.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread736264/pg1
Koi notes that this chunk of metal was the largest such debris found to that date, and yet it still didn't make it into any list of known space debris recoveries.

January 24, 1978
Cosmos 954 crashes into northern Canada, mostly near Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories but also, of course, Saskatchewan.
http://sciradioactive.com/Taylors_Nuke_Site/Operation_Morning_Light.html
This radioactive Russian spacecraft was seen to fragment and fall over a very wide area in the largely uninhabited Canadian north. Still, radioactive debris was painstakingly tracked, located and taken to the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment in Pinawa, Manitoba, for examination. Aboriginal people throughout the area were given medical examinations and tested for radioactive contamination.

The significance of the above events is that each has official documentation and was investigated by authorities. The U-2 was technically not a crash or a UFO incident, but it's interesting it took place in a region where other events are now know to have occurred. Largely uninhabited, what else might have happened in the Canadian north that is yet to be discovered?

BoLs, LITS and other recent UFOs in Canada

2011-08-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

Peter Davenport, PSICAN and YouTube all came up with a new batch of UFO reports recently. These, plus those that came directly to me or Ufology Research, all contribute to a new list of recent Canadian UFOs.

July 1, 2011 11:45 pm Niagara Falls, ON
"I have to stress I'm a normal person! NOT CRAZY!" Witness and his family saw a light make an "S" in the sky, then "take off." (PSICAN)

July 11, 2011 1:00 pm Iqaluit, NU
More than 60 (sixty!) people watched a "blue light rotating around another stationary blue light" that hung in the sky for 3 hours, then "took off" after a flashlight was shone in its direction. (NB: Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were all in the daytime sky that day. Maybe Venus?) (YouTube)

July 16, 2011 11:00 pm Grand Bend, ON
Three orange lights rose from the SSW horizon then separately flew slowly overhead at a constant speed. With binoculars, one appeared disc-shaped with smaller blue lights underneath. (NUFORC)

July 16, 2011 9:00 pm Hamilton, ON
Many people reported seeing slow-moving orange lights over the region. The objects were identified as Chinese lanterns. (UFOROM)

July 16, 2011 4:00 pm Red Deer, AB
A "black, pipelike object" flew across the sky W-E in 15 seconds. Each end had "bump outs." (MUFON)

July 17, 2011 11:00 pm Ignace, ON
Five people saw two bright orange objects flew together, then diverged and vanished into the clouds. (UFOROM)

July 23, 2011 9:41 pm Hamilton, ON
More Chinese lanterns were reported as UFOs.
http://xzonenews.com/hamiltonufosolved.htm

July 27, 2011 12:19 am Fort McMurray, AB
For more than 30 minutes, two people watched a lighted object in the sky move "slowly diagonally," "sit there in the sky a bit" and then move back. When they tried to take photos, "half the time it wouldn't appear" in the picture. (NUFORC)

July 27, 2011 4:40 am Markham, ON
Two members of an airport ground crew watched a blinking white light moving southward. They later saw another blinking light they thought was unusual, and "sent out positive vibes" to it in hope of communicating with it. (MUFON)

July 30, 2011 midnight Hecla, MB
Three people camping in a tent with a screen top watched a "large circle shaped object [that] floated over our tent for over 5 seconds." (PSICAN)

July 30, 2011 Hamilton, ON
Video of UFOs that hovered "above the once great city of Hamilton." (YouTube)

July 30, 2011 11:40 pm Ile-Perrot, PQ
A UFO was seen to follow a satellite across the sky heading NE. (PSICAN)

July 31, 2011 12:10 am Tillsonburg, ON
An orange light moved silently and slowly over the town. During the two minutes it was in sight, it was resolved into four lights surrounding a central light. (NUFORC)

August 1, 2011 Ville Marie, PQ
Four people watched an orange light changing direction as it moved over the town. (UFOROM)

August 6, 2011 10:28 pm Vancouver, BC
A large luminous object was captured on a UFO skycam as it moved along the NE horizon. (UFO Global Reporting Center)

I also heard from Michel Duchamps that a UFO was seen in the Cobden-Ottawa area one night during the first week of August. Phone lines to a radio station were reportedly jammed. However, I have been unable to find any reference to this in any media reports. He's checking...

Thanks to all contributors.

Summer Reading

2011-08-01T19:11:00.000-07:00

While on vacation, I had many opportunities to sit back and get some reading done. There's nothing better than sitting on a deck by the water and reading a book while the sun is setting. And first thing in the morning. And after a nap. And under a tree looking out over a field.

So what do ufologists read for relaxation? Well, a lot of it is about UFOs, not surprisingly, but there's an interesting mixture of things to stimulate the mind, but some stuff just to read for its mush value.

Like Hybrids by Whitley Strieber.
http://www.amazon.com/Hybrids-Whitley-Strieber/dp/0765323761/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312232726&sr=1-2
I didn't get it. Yes it's a thriller, and yes, it's kind of about aliens, although the alien presence is a carryover from previous storylines. They helped a mad scientist create several kinds of superhuman cyborgs that war with one another.

So I went looking for his other book that came out this year, The Key, which actually is an expansion of his writings about an apparent contact experience a decade ago.
http://www.amazon.com/Key-True-Encounter-Whitley-Strieber/dp/1585428698/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312232726&sr=1-1
The book illustrates the fundamental problem with contactee literature: it's literally unbelievable. Strieber feels that an ultraterrestrial visited him in a Montreal hotel room and imparted to him deep and mystical knowledge. This, despite the fact his notes on what the being told him show nothing but vagueness and confabulation. e.g. Strieber asks: "Was there a Eucharist before Christ?" The Key (Being) replies: "I don't want to answer." Strieber asks: "Why are universes created?" The Key replies: "Being serves joy." WTF?

At an SF convention, I picked up The Real UFO Invasion by Ray Palmer (1967), one of the few UFO genre paperbacks I didn't have yet in my collection.
http://www.amazon.com/real-UFO-invasion-Raymond-Palmer/dp/B0007FMB0A/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312243564&sr=1-1

In Wisconsin, I picked up Why We Are Here! by Gloria Lee (1959), or rather, as it notes on the cover: "written by a BEING from JUPITER and instrumented by GLORIA LEE."
http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Are-Here-Instrumentation/dp/B002J00KYA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312243783&sr=1-1
It reads very similar to Strieber's Key. e.g. "We of the solar system wish only to lend our hand so you can proceed into the new vibration of your Golden Age." In fact, the messages are almost identical.

For lighter fare, I picked up two early juvenile lit books: The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest by Captain Wilbur Lawton (1910) and The Radio Boys and the Sending Station by Allen Chapman (1922). These are fun reads, predating series like om Swift and the Hardy Boys, and were their originators of the genre.
http://www.amazon.com/Aviators-Treasure-Quest-Golden-Galleon/dp/B000NPRZ0K/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312249815&sr=1-5
http://www.amazon.com/RADIO-SENDING-STATION-MAKING-WIRELESS/dp/B001Z79OZE/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312249875&sr=1-5

A surprise find was Crop Circles of Wessex, edited by Jane Drake (1997), which I purchased for only a buck. It has articles by Kent Goodman and Pat Delgado, and a foreward by Reg Presley.
http://www.amazon.com/Crop-Circles-of-Wessex/dp/B001VFB9IU/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312250092&sr=1-6

My two favourite books of the summer reads were quite unexpected.
First, Zen and the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury (1992). It's a small paperback that is mostly reprints of earlier works, in which Bradbury describes his philosophy and offers practical ways of honing the craft (art) of writing. He gives some amazing insight, and imparts some serious wisdom. Probably the best book about writing that I've seen.
http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Writing-Releasing-Creative/dp/0553296345/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312250506&sr=1-1

And finally, UFO in Her Eyes by Xiaolu Guo (2010). Okay, so I got it for the title, but I was pleasantly surprised that it really has not much to do with UFOs at all, but is a sad romance set against the political landscape of rural China. Written as a series of letters and reports to government officials, it's a delightful book and may become one of my top 10 favourite reads of all time!
http://www.amazon.com/UFO-Her-Eyes-Xiaolu-Guo/dp/0099526670/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_5

Port Colbourne's UFO: As It Happened

2011-07-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

Sure enough, last night's As It Happens on CBC Radio One mocked witnesses who reported UFOs over Port Colbourne, ON, on Saturday, July 16, 2011. The objects were identified as balloons (or perhaps just one balloon) launched at a wedding party, but the media were positively and unnecessarily scathing, going way over the top to ridicule the story. Link to transcript:
http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/episode/2011/07/19/tuesday-july-19-2011/

The good news about the silly As It Happens segment? The song they played after the segment was "UFO" by the group Texas Audio, and the video that was done for the cut features Igor from the Hilarious House of Frightenstein! Wow! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQO2DrKQvfE

The original news story is here:
http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3217811

Saucertime, and the Livin' Is Easy

2011-07-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

During summertime, it's been common to get UFO reports from people who are out at campgrounds or tourist resorts. Curiously, I'm not receiving many of those in 2011. what I'm getting from various sources are simply nocturnal light cases from people who are out later than they would in the winter, reporting odd lights in the sky.

The exception to this was a photo I received from, of all places, Chile, sent by someone who googled UFOs and came up with me for some reason. (The search algorithm needs a kick, I think.)

The person had discovered a daylight photo of the sky in which the Sun was at the bottom of the photo and a disc-shaped artefact was at the top. Simple geometry and a ruler showed me it was an optics issue, but when I explained it to the sender, the emails dried up abruptly.

Here are some of the recent UFO reports:

July 4, 2011 1:00 pm Cooks Mills, ON
As two witnesses watched hawks flying over the trees, a white, disc-shaped object appeared hanging in the sky. After a few seconds it "moved unnaturally fast" and then vanished. (NUFORC)

July 7, 2011 8:00 pm Winnipeg, MB
Two people watched two "large bright spheres" moving in the western sky. One remained stationary for several minutes before heading west. Their light didn't twinkle, and the witnesses had no idea that the objects may have been. (UFOINFO)

July 7, 2011 Ottawa, ON
A video of a formation of white lights was posted on Youtube.

July 11, 2011 10:05 pm Langley, BC
A triangular formation of lights flew low and directly over a witness, who saw a "flurry" of six multicoloured lights in its center. (MUFON)

July 12, 2011 9:00 om Quebec, PQ
A witness reported two "luminous, white, fuzzy circles" of light darting about in the night sky like "animals that play together." (UFOROM)

July 15, 2011 10:45 pm Winnipeg, MB
A bright orange light seemed to hover for a minute, then moved eastward until it became too dim to see. (PSICAN)

July 17, 2011 11:00 pm Ignace, ON
Two "orbs" were seen hovering, then the moved together,m split up and went away in two different directions. (UFOSNW)

Thanks to a;; witnesses and contributors.

Happy World UFO Disclosure Day!

2011-07-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

According to Steve Bassett and other exopolitics types, today, July 8, 2011, is World UFO Disclosure Day!

I await your gifts. (Preferably tens and twenties.)

More Canadian UFOs

2011-07-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

Poking through files, I found a few more recent cases.

On latest-ufo-sightings.net, there is a daytime UFO video over Montreal from June 5, 2011.

http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/search/label/Canada

It's the strangest daylight object I've seen on video in a long time. If it's not just photoshopped, I am not sure what it could have been. It doesn't look like a bird, balloon or RC toy. The best explanation is that it's a guy in a parasuit, but that doesn't really explain it.

The other video on that site, from June 30, 2011, was said to have been shot over Toronto. That one could be literally anything. The fact that the lights on the object are not flashing does not rule out an aircraft, but it does narrow the explanations.

Finally, I received an email with several shots from a video of another "orb," this time over Winnipeg on July 1, 2011. There were actually four which flew over, but went quickly enough that only one was videoed. The trouble is that the autofocus racked all the way out and the image only shows a light source with optical artefacts.

Oh, and one other thing. The batches of cases I have been posting recently does not prove that "mass sightings" are occurring or that disclosure is imminent. Numbers are still down from previous years. And the fact that some of the cases I posted came from government sources kind of works against the complaints about lack of disclosure, too.

UFO Hilarity

2011-07-05T12:47:00.000-07:00

The headline reads:
"UFO photographed landing in Canada"
http://www.allnewsweb.com/page1199999552.php

The article starts out with the statement:

UFO landings are been witnessed with increasing frequency in various locations throughout the world as a discreet alien presence on this planet becomes more obvious.

It's a remarkable statement, mostly because it's not supported by any actual data. The number of UFO sightings is not increasing rapidly, judging from the numbers of reports filed with UFO websites and organizations. Studies show the numbers remain high, but not with "increasing frequency."

And landings? Well, we really haven't had any cases of UFO landing marks or other evidence in years. They used to be a common aspect of UFO report data (in like, the 70s), but evidence linking a sighting to markings or material on the ground these days? Nada.

Perhaps he simply means observations of UFOs descending to the Earth. But if so, I don't think the real case data bears that out, either.

Well, let's move on.

Cohen says that "Scott Purtill" in Manitoba (Hey! That's where I am!) "suspected some unusual activity in the vicinity of his home... which he suspected might well be UFO- or alien-related." Very suspect, if you ask me.

Purtill investigated, with a camera. He saw a UFO with red and blue lights on the ground among some trees, and another glowing orb nearby. That's it. That all the info available.

This is the obvious alien presence on Earth.

But no Scott Purtill in any listing for Manitoba, BTW. No date of the event. No time. No location that could be examined. Not reported to anyone other than allnewsweb.com

It's enough to drive serious UFO researchers to drink.

Make mine a double.

UFOs Don't Take Vacations

2011-07-04T16:50:00.000-07:00

This past July long weekend spawned several new UFO reports. I came back from the SF convention to a plethora of emails, phone messages and even a fax, all about sightings across the country during the past week or two.

For the ones from the July 1st long weekend, it's tempting just to write them off as fireworks and vacation-related activity, but not all seem to be so easily dismissed.

Let's start with some paranoia. The sighting was on June 23 in Ottawa at about 9:20 pm. The witness wrote: "This email does not contain my real name because I don't want a visit by the men in black." Okay, then, "Not James Kelly," I won't mention who sent me the email. Anyway, he saw a triangular formation of three dim red lights that approached his home and remained stationary nearby for five minutes, then vanished.

The next night, two witnesses were at Falcon Lake, Manitoba, at 1:30 am and watched as a small "orb" about 8 to 10 inches in diameter flew past their window through the gap between two trailers. "It flew from the road into the bush behind the trailer."

But now the long weekend activity:

July 1, 2011 9:50 pm Dunnville, ON
A bright orange ball of light traveled faster than an airplane as it "overrode the brilliant stars" three times throughout the evening as a family watched from around their campfire. (UFOINFO)

July 1, 2011 10:25 pm Hanover, ON
Three witnesses watched a "crazy light," shaped like a teardrop, rise silently straight up to an altitude of "approximately 1800 feet" then moved slowly from east to west, stopping in midair several times. It changed directions 90 degrees and headed north for a few seconds, then "shot straight up at incredible speed and disappeared." (UFOINFO)

Enlargement of main Hanover photo:

July 1, 2011 10:14 pm London, ON
A witness reported seeing an "orange light that moved east to west, slowed quickly, turned 90 north then sped off." (UFOROM)

July 2, 2011 9:00 pm Winnipeg, MB
An "unbelievable" orange light was seen moving very quickly south to north. (UFOROM)

July 2, 2011 8:00 pm Port Dover, ON
A witness watched five orange, triangular objects flying towards the northwest at an estimated altitude of 2,500 feet. The UFOs were flying "in a manner that is not a characteristic of an aircraft" and "were accelerating and decelerating very quickly." The objects did not have any blinking lights. (UFOROM)

July 2, 2011 10:27 pm Brantford, ON
An off-duty Air Traffic Controller observed four objects "of no distinguishable shape, with round orange lights" flying over the city one at a time, then they "joined together" and flew off. The objects made no sound, were not detected on radar and were flying at an estimated altitude of 3,000 feet. (UFOROM)

July 3, 2011 1:00 am Ste. Anne, MB
Two witnesses were driving west and saw two lights "bigger than a TV set" hanging in the sky at an angular altitude of about 60 degrees. The lights were "moving up and down, bouncing around" and danced about the sky overhead and to the west. The witnesses stopped that car and got out and observed the UFOs for about five minutes, enough to see they were not balloons, aircraft, fireflies or satellites. They got back in the car and continued their journey. The lights moved off towards the south and became dimmer. After about half an hour, the witnesses "got tired of watching" and concentrated on driving home. (UFOROM)

At least for one of the above reports, I may have a simple explanation. The "crazy light" seen at Hanover was almost certainly a Chinese lantern. Any of the other UFOs described as orange lights could be lanterns as well, though the flying characteristics may rule that explanation out in some cases.

At the SF Convention

2011-07-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Minneapolis, where I took in ConVergence, a large SF convention.

Here's an overall shot of the main staging area, with consuites along the back.

These guys were on a break from screening some movies:

Scary puppets!

Now I know how Harry Mudd felt! "Harcourt!...."

Batleth battles for the young at heart.

Admittedly, it has been a while since I've attended a large con, although we do go to KeyCon every year, just to see. (And I'm occasionally invited to speak, like this year, when I was on several KeyCon panels about UFOs and astronomy and other gee-whiz stuff, including one with Scott Young of the Manitoba Planetarium, on SETI.)

Cons haven't changed much, although I'm now one of the older fans. (Not quite First Fandom, but close enough, if I measure the looks from the under-20 crowd correctly.) The movie room is still a good place to hang out, and the Anime room was generally busy too. Made it to a few con suites and chatted with a few fans there. The dealer room was smaller than I expected, and filled mostly with Steampunk clothing booths. That genre is really, REALLY in these days: corsets for the women and top hats and pith helmets for the men.

One reason we went is that there were three panels about Fortean phenomena and paranormal stuff. As well, there were several panels and talks about pulps, including one by Anthony Tollin, who is reprinting the Doc Savage pulps (among others). Great guy, and a wealth of knowledge. (I collect the Doc Savage series.)

As for the paranormal panels. The first one we went to was cancelled because the presenter had a death in the family. The second one was weird because the presenter was a no-show, and the audience waited until ten minutes past, when I stood up and said, "So since he's a no-show, I investigate UFO sightings and have written some books. Who wants to hear some of my stories?" everyone did, so I started speaking and regaled the group with the Michalak case and others. They seemed to dig it. I've been asked to submit a proposal to be actually on the speakers' list next year.

The other paranormal panel was by a member of the Ghost Hunters TV show team. Despite the rep that such shows have, Britt Griffith insisted that the show is unbiased and explains most cases without invoking paranormal explanations. The audience spent a lot of time sharing their own experiences with poltergeists and "harmonic vibrations," as well as stories of "packs of ghost dogs" and communication with deceased relatives.

For me, though, the highlight of ConVergence was a screening of My Sucky Teen Romance, a feature vampire film by young filmmaker Emily Hagins. It was partially shot at last year's ConVergence; it was an unabashedly cashing-in-on-the-teen-vampire-thing sendup about a girl who gets bitten by a vampire at an SF convention. (Where vampires can blend it with crowds the best.)

Check out the writeup at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1707821/

It may have been cheesy, but I thought it was amazing for a teenage filmmaker with a passion for the art.

The other thing I should note is that between Winnipeg and Minneapolis, you drive past four Space Aliens Grill and Bar franchises. Best pulled pork dishes anywhere. Just sayin.'

Another selection of recent UFO reports in Canada

2011-06-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

I have received many more UFO reports during the past month, including some from John Hayes, Brian Vike and Sue St. Clair. (Thanks to all for your contribution to UFO research!)

Here are some of the cases:

May 1, 2011 Shelbourne, ON
"We noticed a red dot in the sky that stood there for 20 min. and beamed two lights out of it that were white and red... smaller dots hoovering around the large one... We notified the police in Shelbourne and they blatantly asked us 'how much we drank for the night...'" (Vike)

May 8, 2011 12:37 pm Walpole Island, ON
A glowing white object to the left of the Sun appears in one photo taken during a series of images. (NUFORC)

May 9, 2011 2:10 am Campbell River, BC
In the SW sky a witness saw a large V-shaped formation of lights flying just below the clouds. It was silent and at least "a mile long." (Vike)

May 19, 2011 11:10 pm Dryden, ON
Four or five dim red lights in a "crooked triangle" making a "low" sound glided near the ground past trees very close to two shocked witnesses. The lights were in view only about 5 seconds. (Pararesearchers)

May 21, 2011 1:30 am Toronto, ON
Four stationary lights changing colours, stationary in the night sky, vanished from sight. (UFOSNW)

May 23, 2011 9:55 pm Brantford, ON
Bright orange circle floating across sky for 90 seconds. Ten minutes later, three lights in a triangle followed the same path and disappeared from view. (UFOSNW)

May 25, 2011 St. Catharine's, ON
Three witnesses watched an "orange orb" floating through the sky towards the NW. It was thought to be the size of a basketball and had "reddish stuff dangling from it." Seen for 30 seconds. (Vike)

May 30, 2011 8:32 pm Peterborough, ON
Translucent triangle with 4 dim blue lights flew S-N without a sound. but left a vapour trail. "... it was stealth." (MUFON)

June 1, 2011 8:00 pm Prince George, BC
"A black spot in sky seemed suspended below the clouds." Moved slowly from N-S for 45 mins. Through binoculars, it looked like "two spheres spinning around each other." Vanished when finally was overhead. (Vike)

June 5, 2011 11:00 pm Woodstock, ON
Triangular object with six "auburn-coloured" lights shaped like "petals on the underside" appeared to "come out from behind the tree line." The object "disappeared as suddenly as it appeared." (Vike)

June 5, 2011 9:00 pm Hamilton, ON
Bright orange object "the size of a basketball" moving south, "stopped in mid air and switched direction" to the west. (NUFORC)

June 8, 2011 9:39 pm Moose Jaw, SK
White, cigar-shaped object high in sky, moving east. Photos and video taken. (MUFON)

June 11, 2011 11:30 pm Lee River, MB
Red-orange light low in sky moving parallel to trees in distance W to N. Was not resolvable with binoculars. (UFOROM)

June 11, 2011 9:00 pm Milton, ON
"Round black ball" moving south, seen for 12 seconds. Seemed to be moving against the wind. (UFOINFO)

June 18, 2011 11:21 pm Headingley, MB
"bright orange glowing/luminescent orb/fireball" traveling W, then turned N along treeline. Object then hovered, descended, recovered and continued to the NW out of sight. Duration: 3 minutes. (MUFON)

June 18, 2011 10:55 pm Montreal, PQ
Circular object with middle orange light and many other lights spinning around edge, flew from SE to N at high speed, crossing the horizon in 5 seconds. "I am a believer now." (NUFORC)

June 18, 2011 11:15 pm Oakbank, MB
Large orange light in western sky, hovering. After several minutes, the object seemed to be getting smaller and moving further to the west. (UFOROM)

=========================================

Keep 'em comin,' folks!

UFOs all over the place

2011-06-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

After recently posting a note about how UFO reports were down in number, I received several emails from people who disagreed with me. They pointed to online stories about how "mass sightings" are popping up all around the world, and how this means the aliens are accelerating their plan to make contact and herald a new age of disclosure.

I stand by my statement. UFO report numbers are down.

This has nothing to do, of course, with web news stories to the contrary. A simple search will find many tweets and Youtube posts about odd lights in the sky, but these are not reports.

As an example, one person noted that:

...the skies over [the] Toronto area & particularly the Southwest part of the city [sic] is very busy[:] day, evening [sic] or night on any given date!

It's so much activity that [it] isn't even feasible to photograph the spaceships and orbs each time!

Even the Youtube videos, to which this person refers, show greatly zoomed and pixelated point- and extended sources that could be literally anything, least of all spaceships. There are no exact times or dates given. No directions, direction of movement, elevation, or duration that might give clues as to what the objects might be. It's simply assumed that the night skies over Toronto are filled with spaceships, as if we live inside a Blade Runner universe.

I'll say it again: these are not good UFO reports.

Since many Youtube videos are now being added as reports when the info is available, even if we regard them as UFO reports, they are reports of low quality and content, despite being visual in nature. It used to be that UFO investigators would raise the Reliability value of a UFO report if a photograph was provided. Not so anymore. Without reference objects, accompanying detailed descriptions and sufficient information to allow interpretation and evaluation towards seeking an explanation, grainy videos on Youtube and indiscernible objects in Flickr photos are low-quality UFO reports.

They are also not proof that spaceships are buzzing our cities.

Some recent Canadian UFO reports

2011-05-18T12:36:00.000-07:00

Delving into my backlog of recent Canadian UFO reports, I present the following sampling of gems and dross:

===================================================================================

March 7, 2011 9:05 pm Delaware, ON
Witness pulled out of his driveway and saw a 'monster' red light in the northwest. It disappeared in a few seconds but then saw a second object, rectangular, with blue-white lights "all over" it. (UFO Casebook)

March 18, 2011 Rat Portage First Nation, ON
Witnesses saw a "red light in the bush" that was making a "loud beeping noise." (UFO blog)

March 25, 2011 8:00 pm Chateauguay, PQ
Three witnesses saw a "rocket-like" object, white in colour with a black stripe and "red nose cone," going "straight up." A second object soon followed. (Sightings.com)

March 29, 2011 Halifax, NS
A stationary light was filmed over the city. "Just hovers in one spot and then is gone in the blink of an eye." (Youtube)

March 30, 2011 Fort Frances, ON
Several people across northwestern Ontario saw a UFO low in the night sky for at least a half hour. A photo was taken, showing a trail of light. (Media)

April 1, 2011 10:40 pm Calgary, AB
A witness saw eight dim lights moving high in the sky as if they were on a "boomerang" shaped object. (UFOInfo)

April 2, 2011 11:00 am Campbell River, BC
Two witnesses looked over the ocean and saw "three sets of twinned 'projectiles' shoot out from the ocean into invisibility in the sky." (Sightings.com)

April 2, 2011 6:30 am Markham, ON
Witness saw and photographed two sets of flashing "Christmas" lights arranged vertically. The lights faded in a matter of seconds. [I hope someone in Ontario was contacted and investigated this on site.] (Sightings.com)

April 5, 2011 9:00 pm Winnipeg, MB
Witness saw a large "triangular airplane," without lights, grey in colour and seemingly solid. It moved across the horizon for 1 minute, making no noise. (UFOROM)

April 6, 2011 4:00 am Austin, MB
A farmer was checking his cows when he saw a "train in the sky." There were 2 long "damn bright" white lights hanging in eastern sky that became longer; smaller lights appeared at their front. Went out slowly in 90 secs. (UFOROM)

April 9, 2011 12;00 noon Brantford, ON
Unmarked, black helicopter circled area, then "two metallic orbs" were seen "dancing, swirling" in sky for 90 secs, then helicopter came back and chased them away. (NUFORC)

April 10, 2011 7:30 pm Perth-Andover, NB
Upon examination later, photos of sunset showed am odd object in sky. (UFOSNW)

April 12, 2011 Mississauga, ON
"Skinny silver blimp" briefly seen in morning sky behind traffic helicopter. (PSICAN)

April 14, 2011 11:55 pm Cloverdale, BC
"12 lights side by side" appeared in sky. Within a minute they formed a stationary straight line. Disappeared one by one. (UFOBC)

April 19, 2011 Coquitlam, BC
Three glowing lights like "on fire" in sky, no sound. One hovered, one was simply "turning" and the third flew towards witnesses, then was lost behind trees. (Sightings.com)

April 20, 2011 11:30 pm Winnipeg, MB
"3 massive lights" arranged on triangular obj. that blocked out stars. Silent & stationary, then "took off" to north at high speed. (PSICAN)

April 24, 2011 2:15 am Selkirk, MB
Low-flying ball of light moved slowly over city. No aircraft in area at time. (UFOROM)

April 28, 2011 11:05 pm Fort Nelson, BC
Two lighted objs. in sky flaying together to SE. One vanished, but other continued out of sight. (UFOINFO)

April 30, 2011 12:30 am Oakville, ON
Orange orb appeared and made 90-degree turns, then vanished. Then 2 orbs flew overhead SW at constant speed. (UFOInfo)

May 4, 2011 3:00 pm Manitoulin Island, ON
A fisherman took some photographs, and subsequent examination of the images revealed a dank "rod" on one frame. (MUFON)

May 5, 2011 11:00 pm Campbell River, BC
Pair of blinking red lights moving over ocean, as if on a large object. Flew behind lighthouse which seemed to go dark, then became operational again as lighted object moved to distance. (UFOBC)

May 5, 2011 1:20 pm Toronto, ON
A large number of small white "orbs" in a series of groups was seen in the sky. [Identified later as skywriting.] (Youtube)

May 6, 2011 10:45 pm Sherbrooke, PQ
A "V-shaped triangle formed of lights" was seen low in sky, moving to the north, for about 5 secs. (NUFORC)

May 7, 2011 9:11 pm Toronto, ON
A person listening to shortwave airband overheard a pilot reporting a formation of UFOs to air traffic control. An independent witness reported an observation of what was likely the same objects, at 9:30 pm. (NUFORC) and (UFOInfo)

May 8, 2011 9:00 pm Ste. Anne, MB
A "large black stealth shape" with three orange "lanterns" rose up from tree line and flew together, then the 3 lights separated. Dark object also described as "black vampire cape with glowing lantern by the knees." (UFOInfo)

===================================================================================

Again, this is not all the reports received during the past few months, just a sampling to give an idea of what the UFO case data looks like.

Kudos to all those whose contributions assist in studying the UFO phenomenon.

UFO reports and reporting UFOs

2011-05-17T18:38:00.000-07:00

My best intentions at the beginning of 2011 were to add current UFO reports to our UFO survey database so that at the end of the year, we were stuck adding hundreds of cases during week-long marathons.

Well, I fell behind. Not only that, but Geoff and I divvied up the 2010 cases for adding and I'm way behind on my share too. Hmph. Life.

At least I can share some of the case info here so that you readers can get a sense of what we're receiving.

This is fairly important because there's a rumour that "Anonymous," the anti-Scientology action group, is targeting UFO buffs on May 21, 2011, with a mass Internet UFO hoax. They're supposedly asking everyone to report a UFO with a specific description and flood UFO reporting centres in order to make UFO believers nuts with gullible frenzy.

First of all, it's been done. Years ago, with predictable results.
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/the_great_internet_ufo_hoax/

Then CSICOP faked a UFO with lighted balloons in New Jersey a year or two ago. Also with predictable results.
http://ourstrangeplanet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=394&Itemid=73

My second point is that it's kind of odd that we know about this planned hoax in advance. Anonymous isn't known for releasing major details of its actions before their attacks. Also, this isn't typical of Anonymous, as far as I can tell. They sometimes do live, in-person events - that's the idea behind their Vendetta masks - like protesting Scientology centres and other physical sites. They most often hack websites and take down major organizations, forcing DoS. A mass UFO hoax seems too lame for them.

The other thing about attempts to fake UFO sightings so that UFO buffs can be made out to look really silly is that they have no bearing on actual UFO research and investigation.

Case in point: a real sighting report by a police officer that I've been working on for a few weeks. The UFO was seen on April 24, 2011, at 2:15 am, by two police officers parked in their patrol car in southern Manitoba, Canada. Only one of the officers was comfortable with filing an official report. The UFO was seen to fly overhead and was actually videoed as well. The police contacted aviation authorities who told them that there was no known aircraft in the area at the time.

Of course, the video simply shows a light moving in the sky, but its movement supports the visual observations by the police. What's interesting is that the officer did feel the object was both unusual and important enough to report it through the chains of command. (And eventually to me.) There is no question this is not a hoax, nor spurious, and furthermore is an observation by a reliable and capable witness.

The implication for UFO hoaxing projects is that we do get good-quality UFO reports and we investigate them as best we can. Filing a false UFO report or making up an observation story makes as much sense as telling people you've seen a black '92 Camaro driving on I-94. Such things really do exist and are observed by witnesses. What would be the point of pretending to have seen one too?

UFOs over Fort Nelson

2011-04-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

I received a report from Fort Nelson and thought I would post some details to see if anyone saw something similar.

The sighting was on April 28, 2011, at 11:05 pm PT. The witness was on the Encana Highway northeast of Fort Nelson, BC, when he saw:

two objects in the sky at about 1 o'clock. Both objects were traveling in a south easterly direction and one object appeared to following or at the very least adjacent but slightly behind and to the side of the first object. Both objects displayed a light in the evening sky.

The objects themselves appeared to be identical and at first I thought they were two helicopters flying but then at the speed they were traveling - it wasn't possible. Both appeared to have a tail but that could have just been the light reflection or a light. As they continued south east - they appeared to be about 1000 feet off of the ground and as I watched the last object (or at least the trailing object) simply disappeared. The first object continued in a SE direction - at about the same height but was gone from my vision within a second or two. It continued to be lit but was moving very quickly and it disappeared over the trees as I continued south.

There are a number of possibilities as explanations.It's possible they were high-flying aircraft (and only appeared to be 1,000 feet high). They might have been NOSS or Iridium satellites, which can travel in twos and threes and follow easterly courses. As for one disappearing, that is what happens when a satellite passes into Earth's shadow. If it wasn't an aircraft, a slight bank would have rendered it invisible.

Wikileaks and the Raelians

2011-04-29T08:50:00.000-07:00

Well, Assange promised there were some UFO-related cables in his upcoming Wikileaks docs, and sure enough, one was released yesterday.

All it contains is a summary of the strangeness of the Raelian UFO cult and its announcement it has cloned (or will clone) a baby as part of its mandate to advance genetic experiments began by the aliens many millennia ago.

The cable originated from the Montreal Consulate of the USA in 2003, probably simply as a response to queries regarding media reports on the Raelians.

Notable quotes from the cable:

DESPITE THE SECT'S TWO POWERFUL MARKETING TOOLS, SEX AND
UFOS, THE RAELIANS HAVE VERY FEW MEMBERS.

IN PHOTOS AND TELEVISION APPEARANCES, RAEL SURROUNDS
HIMSELF WITH BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. RAELIAN MEDIA KITS INCLUDE
MANY PICTURES OF SCANTILY DRESSED "MEMBERS." RAEL PREACHES
"SENSUAL MEDITATION" WHICH ENABLES THE FAITHFUL TO REACH THE"COSMIC ORGASM."

THE PUBLICITY GARNERED BY THE CLONING ANNOUNCEMENT MAY BE USED BY THE RAEL ORGANIZATION TO GAIN NEW ADHERENTS IN THE UNITED STATES.

The released part of the cable is viewable at:
http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2003/01/03MONTREAL1.html

Unfortunate End to Open Access to Canada UFO Reports

2011-04-26T09:01:00.000-07:00

It's sad, but one online source for information about Canadian UFO reports has been shut down. That means that people curious about what is being reported in Canada won't be able to learn about what others have been seeing.

And, not surprisingly, I'm being blamed for it.

Today, Brian Vike, who has been posting reports sent to him on his Vike Report, posted a note that:

The Vike Factor receives a lot of Canadian UFO sighting reports throughout the year and every year as time goes by. I finally have had enough of one guy who has ticked me off. I won’t post any Canadian sighting reports.
http://canadaufo.blogspot.com/2011/04/abit-ticked-off-not-reporting-anymore.html

Yeah, I'm the "one guy."

He went on to note:

Since every report gets tagged with the source of where the reports comes from, I get tagged with “an online source”. So had enough of this guy for sure using the information.

I was initially puzzled, but then I went back and looked at my quickly-dashed-off blog post yesterday, and saw that I had indeed quoted a posted report from Vike and simply noted it was an "online source."

Mea culpa, despite the fact that I have referenced Vike in previous posts, acknowledging him as the source for UFO case information. (cf. http://uforum.blogspot.com/2011_01_01_archive.html) in the post "Top Ten Most Interesting UFO Reports in Canada in 2010") And, in our annual Canadian UFO Surveys, Geoff Dittman and I have been careful to give credit to all sources and contributors, including Vike. (cf http://www.canadianuforeport.com/survey/essay/2008surveyessay.pdf)

But this time, because I didn't mention him specifically, he reacts badly and pulls the plug on reporting Canadian UFO sightings in his various blogs.

Well, that'll teach me. I'll just have to continue posting Canadian UFO case info from those who freely share and disseminate case data, and provide details on cases that are reported to Ufology Research and myself.

Maybe this could have been averted through a simple email or phone call.

C'est dommage.

More Pesky Flying Things (PFTs)

2011-04-25T13:17:00.000-07:00

A few more reports came in over the weekend:

From MUFON, a report from Carman, Manitoba, (about 50 miles from me as the crow flies):

The UFO was just lights without shape; the lights were symmetrical descending in a cone like shape but the lines were broken up. The object was heading North, and was not going fast. I only saw it when it appeared and then it flew across the sky for about 5 seconds then disappeared. It did not seem to far up in the atmosphere and was very clear... I was very freaked out, and was only about two houses away from my own, and after I watched it I ran home, and called my friend immediately.

Then, on April 2, over Bowen Island, BC, from an online source:

I stepped outside again for another smoke and like every night since December, I looked up. And again I believe I saw the same thing, but this time it seemed much farther away and I couldn't quite verify it. (What I saw was a massive triangle. It had three red lights on each corner with a blue/white-ish light in the middle.)

On April 8, 2011, a "red dot" was seen over Fort Nelson, BC, at 9:30 pm by three people.

On April 21, a family in Coquitlam, BC, saw three glowing lights, like "fire in the sky."

And finally, a person in Toronto sent me a link to two "orbs" she managed to video on the same day, one in the daytime and the other at night, both on April 21, 2011. The former looks like a bird and I'm not sure about the latter. (Are they "orbs" if they're black in colour and seen during the day?)

And the UFO reports come a-tricklin' in...

2011-04-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

While you're waiting for the non-news about an FBI flying saucer memo to die down (it's not a new memo, it's been around for more than a decade and was even published in some books, for gosh sake - and what's more, it's a reference to a flying saucer hoax that was popularized in Frank Scully's book!), here's a new UFO report, hot off the ether:

What happened tonight (April 17, 2011) around 11:15 pm, in London, Ontario, Canada was something like this:

My mother called to me from the balcony, so my grandmother and I went to see what she wanted. She pointed to a strange large dim light sitting silently in the sky. We came to the conclusion that it wasn't a star or planet because after a few minutes of motionlessness, it started a very slow, upward motion. I watched for a few more minutes and decided to return inside and continue watching from the window. By the time I got there, it was gone. We saw a very similar thing just a few nights ago, except that time it was moving slowly from west to east on a very direct path. There were possibly some other lights flashing but I'm not sure, I was more concerned about watching its movement and trying to see clearly exactly what it was.

I appreciate the witness taking the time to report this formally. It helps our research.

It's quiet... too quiet...

2011-04-15T11:48:00.000-07:00

Although not really.

It's common to have the number of UFO reports wax and wane throughout a year, in addition to a yearly fluctuation. It's just that it's very slow right now compared with the beginning of 2011.

We had a record number of sightings in Canada in January, about average in February, then the number dropped like a stone for March, and April is barely a whisper.

That's what people really are reporting. Some UFO sites are going on about "mass UFO sightings," which simply aren't happening, and I have no idea why they're claiming it. MUFON, NUFORC and other UFO reporting sites don't reflect anything like what would be needed for such claims.

But that's not to say that UFO reports have gone away completely. I received a report this morning, for example:

Toronto, Ontario
Monday, April 11, 2011
9:00 pm

I was on the 32 bus waiting for it to leave at Eglinton west station then I looked to my left and saw red and blue lights. It was like a triangle shape, blinking, but it was a saucer. I saw the side of it and it was hovering towards I think downtown Toronto or Bathurst area. I totally forgot that I had my camera phone and didn't think to get a picture of it. After that sighting I couldn't believe what I saw and didn't understand why everyone else on the bus didn't even notice.

It's possible that UFO report numbers are down because there are more pressing things to worry about now, such as the Japanese crises, American government shutdown, Canadian election, Manitoba floods, Libyan civil war, and so forth. Historically, however, UFO report numbers do not dry up at times like these.

Oh, and that FBI document about crashed saucers? Old news. Nothing of substance there.

Why Do UFOs Have Lights?

2011-03-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

I just finished entering the latest batch of UFO reports into the Canadian UFO Survey database and am more disappointed than usual. Case after case of a video taken of a starlike object low in the sky, usually the south or southwest. Most often, the UFO is filmed for a long time, even if the length of actual observation can be up to three hours.

Really? I mean, if you're looking at a starlike object flashing different colours low in the sky, why would you even consider it was a UFO or spaceship and not simply a star or planet? Even after a hour of watching it drop slowly into the west? The really good ones have an image that racks the lens out fully as it tries to focus on infinity, thus creating a "hexagon" shape that is interpreted as an alien mothership.

In many cases, the witness writes on the online form something like: "I know this wasn't just a star or planet," and usually adds: "It must be an orb (or a beamship)."

Oy.

Most of the cases this year seem to be only lights, and that brings up an interesting point, something that I've written about many times: Why lights? Why would an extraterrestrial craft need to have lights? Surely not for DOT navigation compliance.

Grant Cameron once suggested that it was because the lights are caused by the fields or energy that allows the UFOs to hover and fly. That's actually a reasonable hypothesis, but untestable as of yet.

This question was asked recently by a debunker, however, and it raises another issue. Astrophysicist Adam Frank asked it in a blog and noted:

"Why do UFOs need headlights?"
Yeah. Good point. Are the aliens scared of running into a deer?

If they were really planning interstellar black-ops, then they should paint their spacecraft — you know — black and turn off the damn lights. Yes, of course, it might be their engines but a species crossing trillions of kilometers of empty space is not going to be using rockets. Hopefully they have some other kind of "hyperdrive" or something cool. If so, they should be smart enough to stealth its exhaust (does hyperdrive have exhaust?)

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/03/25/134855990/highbeams-of-the-gods-do-ufos-need-headlights

Yes, it's a point we've seen noted before. But then he noted this:

The problem, of course, is that any civilization with technology capable of spanning light-years ought to be able to hide themselves well enough to avoid detection from hairy apes with jet-planes like us.

And that is a problem.

It's a problem because the lovable debunker Phil Plait has argued that astronomers should be the ones to see UFOs (read: incoming alien space ships) because they're the ones scanning the skies more often than laymen.

But, if fellow skeptic Adam Frank is correct, then astronomers wouldn't be able to detect UFOs because a really decent alien civilization would be cloaking its arrival.

So, which skeptic is right? Will alien spaceships be detectable or not?

(Oh, BTW, this argument has nothing to do with sightings of UFOs reported and recorded in databases. I only deal with what's actually reported.)

UFO Over Kananaskis

2011-03-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

Although 2011 Canadian UFO report numbers started off strong during January and February, March reports are at a trickle. Nevertheless, we still get or hear about some cases, and the following is just the most recent.

The sighting occurred on Wednesday, March 23, 2011, in Kananaskis, Alberta, at about 11:00 pm. The witness noted:

I noticed a multicoloured light flashing in the southwest... At first it appeared almost globed shaped, with the lights dancing around (almost like when a diamond catches the light at just the right angle). It reminded me of... emergency vehicles with all the lights intermingling together.

I changed positions and went inside to look from the window upstairs, waking my husband for him to also take a look. I then grabbed my binoculars and went back outside. The object was more circular than globed, and did indeed have a series of lights moving around it. Red, blue or violet and whitish. Every few seconds it was as if a search light, emitting from the object, rotated around the sphere.

The object was moving slightly, yet stationary in the same area from when I first saw it. I was fascinated and continued to keep track of it in my binoculars for about 20 minutes. I went to get my camera, hoping to get it on film, but when I returned outside, the object had shifted and was more distant. I was not able to zoom in on it.

The sighting sounds very much like a star or planet, but Saturn was in the Southeast, not the Southwest, at 11 pm. It could have been a star, such as Rigel or Betelgeuse in Orion low on the horizon, since the latter star's redness would be striking. The fact that the UFO could not be zoomed in on argues strongly for an astronomical explanation. The twinkling would definitely create the flashes and colours.

I am grateful for the witness in sending the excellent observation report.

New British MoD UFO Docs: No Disclosure Yet, Sorry

2011-03-08T12:41:00.000-08:00

For those who are interested, I have a new post on The Daily Grail about the new batch of British MoD UFO documents. I had also tried to post something here last week but Blogger was being finicky.

For my Daily Grail post, look here.

Missed us by THAT much!

2011-03-08T09:30:00.000-08:00

I just got a note from a fellow astronomer that a small-Earth-crossing asteroid just missed Earth last night, and may have spawned some bolides since there have been reports of fireballs over the Canadian prairies early this morning, March 8, 2011.

The object was about nine metres in diameter and was detected only a few days ago. Not bad, since it was a small astronomical body and wouldn't have been seen much further away. It passed within only a third of the distance to the Moon, which is a bit too close for comfort.

A nine-metre-wide object puts it about the size of a semitrailer. The good news is that an object this size likely would break apart completely before hitting Earth, so the largest chunk that would reach the ground would be dishwasher-sized or (likely) smaller.

If anyone saw a bright fireball last night or early this morning, let us know.

If you were squashed by a meteorite this morning, text me with a twitpic.

CNN Headline: "Cameras to track stuff smacking Earth"

2011-03-01T13:39:00.000-08:00

Well, it was a good story, I suppose. Just not as remarkable as one would assume for it to make CNN headlines.

The story is at: http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/01/nasa-cameras-track-down-shooting-stars/?hpt=T2 and describes a new program NASA is developing to visually track incoming meteors.

This is a NASA photo of the meteoroid trackers in action:

(I wish I could say I was making that up.)

This is kind of cool, and in theory would mean that NASA would therefore detect all UFO sightings as they were happening, since part of the system is a real-time all-sky camera. Fantastic! And there's a link to a live camera watching for meteors (and UFOs) right now! http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov./liveview Nifty!

Except-

There are only three cameras running right now as part of the project, all of them in a small area of the southwestern USA. Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, to be exact. There are plans for 12 more in the USA, mostly in the east. What isn't well-advertised is that much of the technology and software was developed in Canada at the University of Western Ontario, and is based on an all-sky camera network that was deployed in Canada in the 1970s and was decommissioned in the 1980s.

So, there's not really that much coverage of the night sky, after all. However, there are several other all-sky cameras run by (for the most part) amateur astronomers (cf.: http://homepage.usask.ca/~ges125/fireball/index.html).

The CNN news story is somewhat more optimistic:

"If someone calls me and asks 'What was that?' I'll be able to tell them," said William Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "We'll have a record of every big meteoroid that enters the atmosphere over certain parts of the U.S. Nothing will burn up in those skies without me knowing about it."

In theory, all the amateur sites would send their data somehow to NASA, although certainly not in real-time. Many are only triggered by bright fireballs, so they would depend on some human intervention. Cooke would have to wait a while. Although, I guess that if a bright fireball was observed over a wide area, calls would be made to all the amateur astronomers to check their video recorders.

So NASA cancels the Space Shuttle Program and instead funds a system for tracking incoming meteors that was decommissioned by the National Research Council of Canada in 1985 because it was inefficient. (See: http://www.rcktmom.com/njlworks/MeteorTrackingPpr.html)

The good news? NASA will be able to detect UFOs.

Abductions and Aliens

2011-02-25T10:32:00.000-08:00

The firestorm that was touched off by Budd Hopkins' wife recently has sent ufology into a tizzy. Essentially, his wife, who was with him while he did his investigations and hypnotic regressions, is "whistle-blowing" that he and other abduction researchers have been sloppy and/or unprofessional in many, if not all cases.

Supporters of both sides of the debate have been lining up to add their comments about the current state of abduction research. I'm staying out of it.

Well, until now. Back in 1999, my book Abductions and Aliens was published, giving my take on the field at that time. In the book, I was not overly optimistic about how abduction research was going. I had been involved in dozens of abduction cases by that time, and had formed my own theories are to what was really going on.

The book is still in print and available at:
http://www.amazon.com/Abductions-Aliens-Whats-Really-Going/dp/0888822103/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1298658306&sr=1-1

Here is an excerpt from the book:

The Abductee Problem

One of the strongest arguments against abductees "really" being in receipt of direct (and often physical) alien contact is the greatly conflicting nature of the experiences they recall. In very few cases are the aliens described exactly alike (with identical planets of origin, identical spacecraft, identical medical instruments, identical relayed intent, etc.). Admittedly, some abductee researchers are attempting to identify matching symbols observed by some abductees on board the ships, and there are some cases that have some similar characteristics, but for the most part, each abductee case possesses some unique facets. This may be partly explainable due to differing recollections by disparate abductees and deliberate interference by the aliens themselves, but these could be considered arm-waving exercises. (One ufologist even has suggested that, because the abduction stories are so bizarre and incredible, abductions are proof that aliens have their own warped sense of humour.)

Although most abductees seek help from ufologists, it is increasingly apparent that ufology is ill-prepared to deal with them. An abductee case is far more complicated than an ordinary sighting of a UFO. Even though abductions are often considered the fourth category of close encounters, they are extremely different from the lesser three categories and should be placed in a category or series of categories of their own.

It is usually recognized that UFO investigators do not investigate UFOs, but the reports made by the witnesses themselves. Already, ufology is once-removed from pure scientific investigation and could be considered more analogous to memorate studies by anthropologists. Abduction cases are even more humanistic; there is often no definite "time" of an event, and it might not "take place" in a precise location. They are extremely subjective and may represent something beyond our investigation.

This is why psychologists are more suited to abduction studies. Researchers often have found that abductees have emotional and psychological problems that may or may not be directly related to their experiences. Some appear to have a history of sexual or domestic abuse, and others exhibit symptoms of stresses within their lives. (It is possible that it is because of such backgrounds that they are "chosen" or otherwise sensitive to abduction-like encounters. It is even possible that lifelong abductions are the cause of the psychosocial problems.) Regardless of the cause and effect, however, an abductee seeking help from a UFO buff is asking for trouble. Simply put, few ufologists have the therapeutic tools and expertise required to properly unravel an abductee's experiences within a framework of personal problems.

Alien Abduction Syndrome (AAS)

I've stopped counting how many people have come to me asking for help or guidance in understanding their abduction experiences. Not only that, I've come to identify the "usual" story:

"I had this dream, well at least I thought it was a dream, that these little creatures were in my room and I could understand them even though they weren't really talking and it hurt when they touched me and then I seemed to be floating somewhere not in my room and they told me some things I couldn't understand and then I was suddenly back in my room. But I think they are still around."

I've read John Mack's epic case study Abductions and I tend to see the points of many of his critics. Far from the aliens preparing his clients for some future use and teaching them about ecology and spirituality, I think some of those in his group have problems in dealing with our reality.

Not that that's such a bad thing, mind you.

Now, I'm not a psychologist by training, nor a psychiatrist, so I'm sure my diagnosis is going to draw some flames. But I think that what we have here is something I might call Alien Abduction Syndrome (AAS).

For some reason, certain people appear to think they have been contacted by aliens. This could be because of various contributing factors: dissatisfaction with life; stress; domestic problems; family problems; peer pressure; rape trauma; chemical imbalances; or child abuse. Perhaps any one of these or any combination of them. I believe that thorough studies might help to understand AAS. (It's even possible that aliens are actually doing some abductions, but that's another matter.)

Let me backtrack, however. First of all, I don't think that all people who report such experiences have AAS. Secondly, in most cases, AAS is not a "problem."

The real problem, though, is how to deal with such cases. Most ufologists are woefully inadequate as abduction therapists/counselors. Investigating a nocturnal light and counseling an abductee are two very, very different things. You just don't "file" an abductee case away as you would a daylight disc case. Furthermore, ufologists are not trained as psychologists (generally), though John Musgrave published a paper in the late 1970's or the role of the UFO researcher as a counselor and healer. It was ignored at the time.

However, there's another side to this issue, and more questions. Who is appropriate and/or adequate as a counselor/investigator of abductee cases? What relationship should there be between a clinical psychologist and a UFO researcher?

Want to read more? Check out my book.

Nonsense in the News

2011-02-16T14:47:00.000-08:00

There are several amazing stories that are circulating in the UFO subculture this month. All of them are nonsense. Most are being promulgated through Twitter and Facebook, and in a variety of blogs and faux-news sites. Here are my cautions on some of them:

1. A new planet has not been discovered in the Solar System. Niburu still does not exist.
2. Stan Fulham's predictions about UFOs have not been proven true.
3. The Jerusalem UFO videos are not baffling UFO experts. They are fakes.

1. Sorry, no Niburu

As excited as some are getting about the claim that a giant planet four times the size of Jupiter has been found beyond Pluto, it's simply not true. Such a planet has been speculated, but that's a long way to proving it exists. In fact, the researchers who suggested it may exists are doubtful, too.

The original paper about this appeared in November in Icarus, an excellent scientific journal that often deals with spaceflight and SETI (and should be essential reading for ufologists). The authors are John Matese and Daniel Whitmire, both physicists at the University of Louisiana, who have been studying comets and the Oort Cloud for many years. In fact, they've been speculating about a "distant solar companion" since the 1980s! Basically, they have been studying the frequency distribution of the orbits of certain comets and think that a large massive object may exist somewhere out there, giving cometary debris a nudge and sending them inward towards the Sun.

Their most recent paper (available here: http://bit.ly/hrNbCG), simply presents additional evidence that such a large, dark body may exist. It does not say that any planet has been discovered, only that it has been theorized to exist in order to explain the distribution of comets in our Solar System. That's it.

According to those who believe Niburu exists and may hit the Earth in 2012, there is no evidence at all that this large speculated planet (called Tyche by Matese and Whitmire) is going anywhere. In fact, it is so far away from Earth that it would be clearly visible by now if it was heading in our direction, which it's not.

Now, it's possible that a comet perturbed by Tyche could be heading our way for an Earth-crossing event in 2012, but that could happen with or without this new research.

2. Stanley Fulham's "Predictions"

First of all, I read Fulham's book in an early printing several years ago. It's pretty standard contactee literature, and nothing very different from the rest of the genre. Self-published, it didn't stand out to me as anything special. The fact that he was a NORAD staff member is the most interesting aspect.

Secondly, Fulham's book got attention in a later printing, after Randy Kitchur connected with him. I should note that I know Kitchur, as he is from my own town and I have met him numerous times regarding issues related to UFOs.

Last year, Fulham made the prediction about a UFO fleet appearing on October 13, 2010. His original prediction is noted at: http://networkedblogs.com/920Oa

A news release noted:

A newly-published 352-page book by a retired Air Force officer, Stanley A. Fulham, tentatively predicts October 13, 2010 as the date for a massive UFO display over the world’s principal cities.

Where did Fulham get his information from?

For more than a decade, through the services of a world renowned channeler, the author has communicated with an ethereal group of entities known as the Transcendors — 43,000 very old souls who combine their vast experience and knowledge through eons of incarnations, providing advice and information to humans in search of basic realities of mankind’s existence.

And as for the October 2010 event, Fulham hedged a bit:

Fulham clarifies there are no absolutes; the principal of free will and choice that exits with all souls precludes all absolute realities, and the aliens may decide to postpone their intervention — but the Transcendors confirm it will nonetheless occur in 2010. Quoting the author, the event will “occur this year, in what will surely be one of the great dramas of our galaxy, the introduction of their alien civilizations and technologies to mankind.

So, on October 13, 2010, there was supposed to have been a massive UFO display over the world's principal cities. Of course, there was no such thing. Fulham's supporters point to a single UFO sighting over New York on that day that has general been explained as a cluster of balloons but is accepted as a spacecraft visitation by some loyalists. That's not a "massive" UFO display, in any sense of the word. Nor was there any parallel set of events over cities such as (presumably) Paris, Moscow, Tokyo or Beijing.

It should also be noted that Fulham's hedge was that the UFO display was "tentatively" scheduled. In other words, if nothing was seen, it would still have been a valid "prediction."

As for the sightings in 2011 over London and Moscow, which also have been linked to "predictions" by Fulham, any examination of Davenport's NUFORC list will show that UFOs are sighted on a daily basis around the world, and since UFO reports tend to be reported by people in cities, sightings over London or Moscow are not unusual on any day of the year.

It is claimed that a video of a UFO over Moscow on January 7, 2011, represents a "hit" by Fulham. Looking through Youtube, there are videos of sightings over Moscow from January 18 and 25, but the one that is called a "hit" is indeed from January 7, 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv3lj0jHnV0

The trouble is, there's nothing in this video to distinguish it from any other UFO video posted to Youtube. It;s simply a teeny tiny dot of light moving slowly in the distance. That's a UFO that was manipulated to be there by aliens? Apart from the fact that the case was never actually investigated, so we have no way of knowing if the video is legitimate, there is no reason to assume it is anything remarkable.

As for the predicted London UFO, Kitchur noted:

London was a little different. London actually started out with what look like a fleet on New Years Day, and ended on January 31st with a single UFO videotaped low over a residential neighbourhood. In between there was a videotaped event on January 14 over downtown London, the very date Stan predicted if one interprets his prediction for London correctly. At one point in late-January I thought Stan might have got the order of the Moscow and London displays reversed, but it wasn't until I learned the significance of the January 14th event following the incredible UFO display over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on the 28. Actually, it wasn't that specific event that provided that understanding, it was the front page story carried by Israel's largest newspaper mentioning Stan in relation to a prior event which took over the Wailing Wall in mid-December just before Stan died, of an orb that was videotaped the looks exactly like the orb in London on January 14th -- the day Stan predicted.

If the video in question is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkgGed8hw40
then this is also doubtful, as the orb zooming quickly away from the camera over Camden looks a lot like something in the air close to the camera lens and nothing alien.

These videos are said to be "3 of 3" in terms of Fulham's predictions, but the reality is more like 0 of 3.

3. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Thou UFO Ever Less

I don't really want to start in on the Jerusalem UFO videos, but really, people. I still am getting tweets and Facebook updates by people who state that "skeptics" are "baffled" by the Jerusalem videos. Uh -nope. I can't think of a single serious UFO researcher who didn't see the videos once and realize they were faked.

Yet UFO proponents hype it this way: http://www.allnewsweb.com/page1199999486.php

Although to counter that, look at a website such as: http://bit.ly/iinE2V

There's so much against the reality of the video. Anonymous poster, lack of numerous witnesses, internal inconsistency of the video itself, and simple directions on how to fake it, showing the "motion tile" effect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-27bJdrhhAI

A good try, though.

What's most annoying is that ardent believers are using the Jerusalem UFO video as proof or in support of other cases that may or may not have more support. And that's too bad, because if there is a real phenomenon, this is not the way to prove it.

[4. And don't get me started on chemtrails...]

A slight difference in interpretation

2011-02-08T08:51:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons I began doing the annual Canadian UFO survey back in the 1980s was because I wanted to know exactly what people were seeing and reporting, as opposed to what tabloid news agencies and other sources of UFO news were claiming. It was common to see headlines such as "Giant UFO hovers over power lines" or "Huge unknown craft swoops over freeway." It was only after investigating and getting the actual sighting details that the real story emerged, usually involving a misidentified star or planet.

Now, more than 20 years later, things haven't changed all that much. The only difference is that sensational headlines are usually now Facebook updates or Twitter tweets, and they can get reported or retweeted innumerable times until they go viral and the original case is lost in the ether.

Take the case of the recent UFO reports over Vancouver Island. (Please.) The headline posted by Examiner.com was:

"Massive UFO over Victoria, BC possible ET Chemtrail remediation"

The story (at: http://www.examiner.com/ufo-in-vancouver/massive-ufo-over-victoria-bc-possible-et-chemtrail-remediation) described how a witness bore testament that: "A spectacular UFO was captured on video by a Vancouver Island online news service as it flew below the clouds over the provincial capital" on January 22, 2011.

The article went on to quote the witness about his sighting:

Mr. Stammberger estimates that as the object first became visible he was facing North and that it was approximately 5 kilometers distance from his location. The second appearance took place at a range of 3 kilometers while he faced towards the West. “That was huge. I film the moon from up here some nights and I think that [object] in the sky looked about half the size of what a full moon looks like. It was quite big and it lit up a significant portion of the sky.” There was more to the sighting than just a big mysterious flashing light. The camera captures what appear to be structural elements of the UFO suspended from the sphere. He described how, “When I zoomed in you could see what looked like a metallic body that hangs down below [the object]. I turned away to get the camera on a tripod and as I turned back the object had turned back into a ball-shaped sphere of light. So it seems to have some sort of shape-shifting or morphing ability.”

Stammberger's video is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ievFL41As3g

Although the time of the event wasn't noted in the article, it seems that the sighting was one of many that were reported over Vancouver Island that night. Dozens of people reported seeing a series of objects described as glowing balls of orange light, sometimes accompanied by smoke trails. On one online UFO sightings website, headlines heralded reports such as:

UFO Makes Strange Maneuvers Over Mudge Island
Unusual Blinding Brilliant Orange Lights Over Cobble Hill
Bright Glowing Balls Of Light Looked Like A Bonfire Over Chemainus

All the sightings occurred between about 6:30 pm and 10:30 pm, and all described orange lights moving over the area.

Brian Vike found that a search-and-rescue operation was being carried out by the Coast Guard that night, as they were looking for a paraglider who had crashed near Duncan, BC. The Coast Guard plane had dropped six flares to light up the heavy forest, and the man was found and taken to hospital.

(News story: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Paraglider+injured+Duncan+area+crash/4151392/story.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+canwest/F227+%28Times+Colonist+-+News%29)

Now, there's no question that this is what Stammberger had seen and filmed. But his interpretation is rather different than, say, what Eric Chisholm noted. He's a physicist from the National Research Council of Canada who happened to be observing the sky that night too. He saw "a large, glowing light on the western horizon" that he immediately knew was Jupiter. He also determined that the other lights were the flares dropped by the Coast Guard.

(Story: http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_south/oakbaynews/news/114980354.html)

Jupiter is pretty spectacular these nights, for sure. What's amazing is the large number of Youtube videos of it, calling it a UFO. These include:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yToAECiEeFk

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXStP3yxiwc

... where the UFOs are called "EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIVING ENTITIES."

Back to the Vancouver Island case, one can ask why the original headline mentioned chemtrails, when the video only showed a light. Well, it seems that Stammberger has seen UFOs on many occasions, and is convinced that his observations are of something truly mysterious. In the same Examiner article, it is noted:

Stammberger described personal encounters with the media’s role in an environmental cover-up which lead to the establishment of his online news service. “I was working on a tree farm here, in BC, on Vancouver Island, a couple of years ago, where I was outside all day long. I started to notice that the jets were crossing the sky leaving huge trails from horizon to horizon. Over the day [those trails] would spread out and cover the entire sky. I watched this for two years and filmed it. I took that footage into all the local news stations here … in Victoria and nobody would touch it. Nobody would even look at it or comment about it. And that’s obviously what is referred to as Chemtrails but that now, years later we know as Stratospheric GeoEngineering. So this is why I started IslandOnlineNews, because no one would touch this footage, no one would report about it. So I thought,’If they won’t touch it, I’ll just start my own news website and I’ll report it myself.’”

Hmm. Mainstream media weren't interested in videos of aircraft contrails. How odd.

So, he started a news website to propound UFO/conspiracy stuff. The consequence is that his stories get pulled into news feeds by search engines and then promulgated across the Internet. Since his sighting and video were likely the flares dropped by the Coast Guard, receivers of the viral news feed will continue to associate the BC reports with a "massive" UFO and associated chemtrails.

Those darned Chinese lanterns... and a UFOROM database update

2011-01-12T09:20:00.000-08:00

Geoff Dittman passed along another report for 2011, this one from a witness in Paudash, Ontario. I added it to the UFOROM database, making it the 41st UFO reported in Canada so far this year. If the numbers keep up, this will be a record month, if not year.

Anyway, the witness reported that on January 10, 2010, at 6:27 pm:

I was chopping a few pieces of wood ... I caught some movement above and to my left. I looked up, and was surprised to see the brilliant blue outline of a perfect square, with no glare whatsoever. There was a large red light in the exact center, again with no glare whatsoever. Whatever the body of the "craft" I saw was composed of, there were no reflections of any kind. It was pure black. I would estimate it's height at 500-700 feet, and it's size at around 25-30 feet to a side. What struck me was that something could move that slow and stay aloft, (15-25 km/h) as well as make no sound. It crossed ... on a North-easterly heading.

Now, there's been a lot of discussion in ufology lately about Chinese lanterns giving rise to UFO reports. One grounded lantern was discovered in northern Manitoba following a series of UFO sightings around Christmas Eve. This is perfectly understandable.

The description of the object over Ontario on January 10th sounds remarkably like a Chinese lantern. My only question is who would release one in an isolated area on a non-holiday night? Why bother?

Oh, and further to the Canadian UFO Survey, with the numbers tallying for 2010, the total number of cases already in the database and awaiting data entry now total more than 10,000. That's ten thousand UFO reports recorded in Canada since 1989, a span of 22 years. That's an average of more than 450 each year, although since the number of cases each year has risen dramatically since 1989, during the past five years or so it's more like an average of 800 cases each year. That's at least two sightings of UFOs every day in Canada, a country with a population of around 31 million.

For those of you who like to play with numbers, we cam ask, "Are these values reasonable?"

We know from previous studies that only one in ten UFO witnesses reports their sighting. Furthermore, polls have shown that one in ten people believe they've seen UFOs. So, out of 31 million, we're down to only 310,000 people with UFO reports. We have about 10,000 reports on record since 1989. That means we're only a factor of ten or so from having all sightings on record. That's not bad, really, considering some of our assumptions could be off by that much at least. Also, we have no idea how many sightings there really were before our comprehensive annual survey began in 1989. Another 5,000 perhaps?

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." - Mark Twain

Top Ten Most Interesting UFO Reports in Canada in 2010

2011-01-01T15:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, after spending many hours reading through the 950+ UFO cases reported in Canada in 2010, I have managed to come up with a list of ten which seem more interesting than most. These are cases that met ad hoc criteria, including: witnesses who provided greater detail than most; multiple witness cases; cases that were investigated more significantly than most; witnesses who were above average observers; cases in which the objects seen did not appear to be conventional objects; or a combination of these.

Where possible, links to the original sources are provided. Images and photos of the UFOs observed can be found on some of the sites.

=========================================================================
January 25, 2010    5:00 pm
St. Pierre, Newfoundland
Two people saw a “silver-grey bullet” moving through the sky towards the east. Photographs showed a strange rocket-like object with an “exhaust.” Many explanations were put forth, but none seemed satisfactory. The Canadian government was evasive about the incident.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2010/01/27/nl-ufo-military-012710.html

April 3, 2010    11:30 am
Ste. Rose du Lac, Manitoba
A man and his son watched a black, silent boomerang-shaped object fly slowly over houses in their town. The description matched that of a remarkably similar object seen over Westlock, Alberta, only a few weeks later.
http://uforum.blogspot.com/2010/05/boomerang-ufo-flew-over-ste-rose-mb.html

May 19, 2010    2:00 pm
Winnipeg, Manitoba
A witness saw “a solid shiny silver object in the sky.” He watched it for about two minutes and realized that it wasn't a plane and it wasn't moving so he ran inside to get a camera. When he returned he took several photographs which show a fuzzy object. As he watched, the craft shot out another object which flew away at great speed.
http://mufoncms.com/cgi-bin/manage_sighting_reports.pl?mode=view_long_desc&id=23410&rnd=6611293841445
http://www.mufoncms.com/files/23410_submitter_file2__WTF2.1.jpg

June 12, 2010    10:30 am
New London, PEI
Two people saw a ball of fire fall from the sky and hit a hay field nearby. The hay was set on fire and the couple were able to put the fire out. Astronomers who were called in to investigate the “meteorite” said the observation and physical traces were “not consistent with natural meteoroids or space debris.”
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2010/06/15/pei-metor-fire-expert-584.html

October 5, 2010    9:05 pm
Montreal, Quebec
Several witnesses observed a large structured object hovering or moving slowly over buildings downtown. It was oval, with two “tails” and had a lighted “cabin” at the “bow.”
http://www.ovni-alerte.com/2010/10/25/ovnimontreal5octobre2010/

November 1, 2010    3:13 pm
Scarborough, Ontario
A witness photographed a stationary object in the clear blue sky. The photographs show the object was rotating silently clockwise. It was observed for five minutes, then it vanished.
http://mufoncms.com/cgi-bin/manage_sighting_reports.pl?mode=view_long_desc&id=26473&rnd=999071293840476
http://www.mufoncms.com/files/26473_submitter_file1__UFOSequenceWindandSun.jpg

November 2, 2010    8:10 pm
Campbell River, BC
A witness looked up through her car's windshield and saw a very bright light shining downward. As she got closer, the object silently passed over the top of her vehicle at approximately 100 feet and flew behind power lines and tree-line. The object was triangular in shape, with a middle large, bright light. On each of the three corners of the triangle there was a white light, and a neon red line of light ran the full length of one side of the triangle, with a similar green light on the other side. The next day, she drove out to where she had seen the UFO and found a slight impression of a triangle in the grass off to the side of the highway.
http://the-v-factor-paranormal.blogspot.com/2010/11/campbell-river-british-columbia.html

November 12, 2010    6:45 pm
Ingleside, Ontario
At about 1:45 pm, a woman driving west near Long Sault, Ont., noticed four strange shapes in the sky. "They looked like rockets or spaceships," she said. She stopped her car for a closer look, but after a few minutes the objects went “straight up” until they disappeared. Then, five hours later, she saw three lights that hovered in the night sky for about 30 seconds. One was lower and between the other two, and they turned very slowly. Several other people also saw the three odd lights.
http://thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?archive=true&e=2845781

December 16, 2010,    2:00 am
Grand Barachois, New Brunswick
Across a marsh, four large very white “canisters” with black numbers and small black crosses on their sides appeared towards the ocean. “It looked like a construction site had dumped them there.” Then there was “a flashing movement like a hologram changing and a page was turned over slowly and the marsh reappeared.”
http://www.ufosnw.com/sighting_reports/2010/grandbarachoisnbca12162010/grandbarachoisnbca12162010.htm

December 25, 2010    9:15 pm
Hudson, Quebec
A total of 16 witnesses, including two commercial airline pilots, observed two reddish-orange lights moving low over some houses in an urban area. The objects did not look like or behave like any aircraft. A check with nearby airports did not show any traffic that could explain the sighting. (Currently under investigation.)

Classifying and Studying UFO Cases

2011-01-01T14:49:00.000-08:00

Since it will take a while to enter the past two years of UFO report data into our database, we won't have a full statistical breakdown of the 2010 UFO cases for some time. However, I thought that I could at least read through the 950+ Canadian UFO reports for 2010 and pick out some that seem more interesting than most.

Most cases appear to fall into several categories, apart from the usual Hynek classification scheme. Many reports are cases in which witnesses see fireballs or bolides that are greenish in colour and seem to fall to Earth within 5 seconds or so. Many other cases involve witnesses seeing starlike lights that hang in the sky for several hours, flashing different colours. Those are likely stars or planets.

More and more, people are uploading videos of UFOs to Youtube. Most of them show starlike objects that, again, are likely stars or planets. This is exacerbated by people who don't use tripods to steady the images, or use camcorders that autozoom to infinity and turn a perfectly decent starlike point into a mottled disc that is often called an "orb" or a "lightship" or "mothership."

Many people send in or post photos with comments like:"I didn't see anything at the time, but when I uploaded it to my computer, there was this odd object..." Daytime photos like this are usually blurred birds or bugs (translated as "rods") while nighttime photos of tiny dots in a black sky could be literally anything.

Another category is that of moving points of light in the night sky that sometimes appear in clusters. While the ones that move in twos or threes in the same direction are possibly satellites, there are many cases where clusters of 5, 6 or 10 or more move together, or in disparate directions. Birds can be explanations for some of these, especially daytime observations where white dots seem to "play tag" with one another in the sky. But there are some cases for which that explanation does not seem to be viable. What these might be is not clear.

An interesting set of cases involve daytime or nighttime observations of "slow-moving rockets" in the sky. There are several photos and videos taken of these every year, and TV news often features them in "Weird News" segments. Most are probably not rockets at all, but contrails of high-altitude aircraft caught by the setting Sun. This is borne out by the fact they often appear at dusk.

Beyond all those, there are cases in which witnesses report seeing structured craft that do not appear to be conventional aircraft. There are cases of multiple witnesses reporting unusual objects, including cases where witnesses are pilots or others familiar with aircraft.

The biggest problem with ufology today (if I had to pick just one) is that most UFO reports are never properly investigated. Sure, there are hundreds of new cases listed each month on various UFO websites, but in most instances, that's about as far as it goes. This is not a fault of the webmasters; it is a problem with investigation.

Back in the "good old days" of ufology, UFO groups garnered members by the bucketload every year. These members received newsletters (by snailmail), attended meetings, studied UFO investigation manuals and took tests to become "qualified investigators." If a UFO sighting was reported to a UFO group, they would immediately notify a nearby member/investigator and the witness was soon interviewed and details sent to other members of the group. APRO, MUFON and CUFOS were particularly good at this. In the 1970s and 1980s it was not unusual to visit a police station or sherriff's office and see a CUFOS sticker or MUFON logo on the blotter or switchboard.

But who investigates UFO reports in person anymore? Except for some major case clusters or events like Stephenville or O'Hare, most UFO reports are noted on websites and that's that. MUFON, the group still training new investigators, has far fewer of them around.

Because, let's face it: UFO case investigation takes time and labour and is much less glamourous than Mulder and Scully made it look. Several times during the past three decades, I have agreed to let some well-intentioned UFO buffs who had been pestering me to help me in some way become "interns" to go and investigate reports that came in. Their first missions were well-written-up and detailed, even though they may only have been simple nocturnal lights. Their second and third investigations were pretty good, too. By about the fifth or sixth, they were getting tired of chasing stars and planets and fireballs and aircraft. None lasted beyond about the seventh UFO reported.

So most UFO reports that we hear about on websites or on blogs or on TV newscasts are never properly investigated. A few emails and phone calls may be exchanged with a witness at best, but rarely is a case attended in person by an investigator. One reason is because the number of cases reported each year has risen to the point where it is impossible for a single person to adequately investigate cases. It is especially true when UFO witnesses are very long distances away from the webmasters, who in some cases are one-man operations. Peter Davenport admits he is overwhelmed by the sheer number of cases reported to him, but he does accept help from time to time.

Nevertheless, most UFO sightings are reported by witnesses online and appear as narratives that in most instances lack adequate details to assess them. In Canada, where the 950+ cases in 2010 mean UFO report numbers continue to increase, it does not mean that the quality of the reports are increasing as well. In fact, as the number of reports increases, the overall quality of the cases decreases because fewer are being properly investigated. Technology and social media have stripped ufologists of the ability to effectively investigate UFO reports.

If there is some good news, it is that because the majority of UFO sightings seem to have simple explanations or possible explanations based upon key characteristics noted in the narratives, the number of "good" cases may float to the top of the milk and can be skimmed off. It still means that most cases are never investigated, but it may mean that the really interesting cases can get attention.

Of course, the other thing that may happen is that a truly good case may not be recognized as such because what little information as was posted was not enough to indicate its actual importance.

Having said all that, my next blog post will list my "Top Ten Most Interesting Canadian UFO Reports of 2010," based on available information and intuited criteria.

By the numbers: UFOs in 2010 up from year before

2010-12-28T10:51:00.000-08:00

I've had some time to sort through the UFO reports that have come in recently, and I have been able to update the numbers of cases reported in both 2009 and so far in 2010.

There were about 850 UFO sightings reported in Canada in 2009. The stack of files is about eight inches high on my desk. These have yet to be added into the main UFOROM database, so the breakdown of sightings by province, times, shapes, number of witnesses, etc., will have to wait until the spreadsheet elves come and physically type in the data. Until then, I at least have the raw numbers in terms of monthly reports and the total for the year.

Those of you who have been following the blog know that 2008 was the record year for UFO reports in Canada, with more than 1000 reports on record. With 2009 only at about 850, UFO cases took a bit of a dip. I'm fairly certain that this was an anomaly, as the trend had been for a slow but steady increase over the years.

This is more clear if we look at the graph that shows the number of UFO reports in Canada during the past 20 years:

Okay, so even if there were "only" 850 UFO reports in Canada in 2009, the general trend of increasing numbers of UFO reports is still evident, with a few spikes here and there that ufologists will have to reckon with at one point. This puts 2009 third-highest in terms of Canadian UFO reports, even with the dip.

So what about 2010? Well, we're still getting reports coming in for December, but even so, there are nearly 900 sightings already on file. This means that 2010 already has the second-highest number of UFO reports on record for Canada, and the year's not done yet. (It also puts 2009 back to fourth place.)

Israel Shoots Down a UFO - The Music Video

2010-12-17T09:38:00.000-08:00

When I talk about "the UFO Phenomenon," I don't just refer to the sighting reports. It's all the "other stuff" that makes the topic a cultural phenomenon. The books, magazines, ufozines, conferences, meetups, Facebook pages, Tweets and so much more. It's the people; the way the subject is embraced by individuals across the globe and across all demographics. It's a topic about which everyone has an opinion, one way or another, and everyone seems to know someone who has seen a UFO, if not themselves.

And all that explains why, mere hours after a news story broke that the Israeli Air Force shot down a UFO over a nuclear plant, a song and music video went up on Youtube.

What else is there to say about this?

The Top 10 Most Interesting UFO Books of 2010

2010-12-16T08:38:00.000-08:00

010 saw a curious crop of books related to UFOs and related phenomena offered to a public eager to know more about their subject of choice. Most were awful. In fact, with the proliferation of books published direct-to-digital, the access to inaccurate and pointless information is better than ever. Any books that noted "pyramids," "Atlantis" and "beamships" in their titles, subheads or tables of contents were immediately excluded from eligibility in this list because they really didn't add anything to knowledge about the nature of the UFO phenomenon. (Similarly, "Federation of Light," "emissaries" and "channelling.")

The good news is that some new books published in 2010 were outstanding, and definitely fill a void that needs filling. Curiously, many were chronologies or lists of cases or events, providing documentation and sources that might have otherwise gone astray.

Here are my picks for the Top 10 Most Interesting (nb: not necessarily "Best") UFO Books of 2010:

1. Kean, Leslie. UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record. Harmony Books: NY.
This one is the best of the year. Well-written, informative, and it infuriated debunkers as well. Couldn't ask for much more.
http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Officials/dp/0307716848/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292516300&sr=1-1

2. Vallee, Jacques and Aubeck, Chris. Wonders in the Sky. Penguin: NY.
A sequel of sorts to Passport to Magonia, Vallee teamed up with Aubeck to produce a highly detailed cross between The Book of the Damned and the Fortean Times' Classical Corner.
http://www.amazon.com/Wonders-Sky-Unexplained-Objects-Antiquity/dp/1585428205/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292516355&sr=1-1

3. Feindt, Carl. UFOs and Water. Xlibris Corporation: http://www.xlibris.com
A paper version of his wonderful website, Feindt has produced a self-published work similar in nature to that of Vallee, listing hundreds of cases where UFOs and aliens seem to have an attraction to water.
http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Water-Physical-Accounts-Eyewitnesses/dp/145009533X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292516384&sr=1-1

4. Friedman, Stanton and Marden, Kathleen. Science Was Wrong. New Page Books: Pompton Plains, NJ.
Technically not a UFO book, as such, it's even found in "Science" sections of bookstores. Friedman and Marden authored alternating chapters on a variety of science's shortsightedness, including one on UFOs.
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Was-Wrong-Inventions-Impossible/dp/1601631022/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292516412&sr=1-1

5. Randle, Kevin, Crash: When UFOs Fall From the Sky. New Page Books: Franklin Lakes, NJ.
Another chronology (do you see the trend here?), this time regarding stories and references to alleged UFO crashes. It's remarkably comprehensive, including many previously unknown sources.
http://www.amazon.com/Crash-History-Incidents-Conspiracies-Cover-Ups/dp/1601631006/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292516457&sr=1-1

6. Birnes, William. Aliens in America. Adams Media: Avon, Massachusetts.
Focusing on about 20 major cases in the USA during the past 60 years, Birnes gives a short overview plus some speculation, and adds travel and tourism tips for those wanting to visit, say, New Hampshire.
http://www.amazon.com/Aliens-America-Hunters-Extraterrestrial-Hotpspots/dp/1440506280/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292516482&sr=1-1

7. Goyette, Danielle. OVNIs. Editions Michel Quintin: Waterloo, Quebec.
The only foreign language book included in the list, this is part of a series on paranormal phenomena, looking at cases in Quebec. It is part biography of ufologiste Francois Bourbeau, and part sighting chronology.
http://www.amazon.com/OVNIS-Danielle-Goyette/dp/2894354673/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292516514&sr=1-1

8. Bullard, Thomas. The Myth and Mystery of UFOs. University Press of Kansas: Lawrence, KS.
Anything by Bullard is a welcome addition to lists like this, especially for his writing, which is literary and more erudite than most. The book is less nuts-and-bolts and more introspective than most other UFO works.
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Mystery-UFOs-Thomas-Bullard/dp/0700617299/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292516552&sr=1-1

9. Pilkington, Mark. Mirage Men. Skyhorse Publishing: NY
Included for its slant on the popular interest in conspiracies, Pilkington has produced a work which asks the question, "What?" Is it possible that ufologists are the sane ones?
http://www.amazon.com/Mirage-Men-Adventure-Espionage-Psychological/dp/1602398003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292516589&sr=1-1

10. Imbrogno, Philip. Ultraterrestrial Contact: A Paranormal Investigator's Explorations into the Hidden Abduction Epidemic. Llewellyn: Woodbury, MN.
Not quite as good as Files From the Edge, this book is a kind of autobiography of a ufologist as Imbrogno describes his personal investigations into UFO reports and other paranormal experiences, some very weird indeed.
http://www.amazon.com/Ultraterrestrial-Contact-Paranormal-Investigators-Explorations/dp/0738719595/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292516619&sr=1-1

Yes, I know there were others. Some were pretty good. But for one reason or another, or simply because I couldn't decide on just 10, they were left out. Oh, and I didn't think it ethical to include my own book on UFOs published in 2010 in the list, but there's a link here if anyone is curious.

Great Balls of Fire in Georgia and Ontario

2010-12-08T13:33:00.000-08:00

So, I've seen the CNN video of the Georgia UFO, and it looks identical to many others that have been touted this past year or so.

Georgia (at very end of clip): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Gj8TaFTn4
Poland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2tzTA2UUfs
Singapore: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqr-2vl54_4
Another, obviously a jet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRocD9_nOOs

I've seen these before myself, and there's no question they're simply jet contrails at sunset. Why they're labeled as mysterious is more the mystery.

However, I did get a UFO report from Northwestern Ontario recently in which the witness said the object he observed was: "similar to object reported Georgia - CNN."

This was on Monday, December 6, 2010, at 5:30 pm local time, at Perrault Falls in Ontario.

In this case, however, I doubt it was a contrail. He said it was an "orange-ish, very bright ball, similar to a baseball hat," moving from the northwest heading southeast. It was flying very low, parallel to the ground and traveling just above the treeline at about the speed of an aircraft. It disappeared behind some trees as he was watching it.

The Georgia and Polish objects were observed for a fairly long time, whereas this Ontario object went by relatively quickly. I'd be inclined to think it was an "ordinary" fireball rather than an aircraft.

But you never know.

Wikileaks and UFOs

2010-12-03T08:52:00.000-08:00

As noted on UFO Updates, in an interview with the Guardian, Julian Assange hints at some documents that mention UFOs.

[From]achanth

Mr Assange, have there ever been documents forwarded to you which deal with the topic of UFOs or extraterrestrials?

Julian Assange: Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant. However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our publishing rules.
1) that the documents not be self-authored;
2) that they be original.
However, it is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/dec/03/julian-assange-wikileaks

OK, so I sympathize with Assange on this one. He must get reams of stuff from conspiracy theorists and contactees about government/alien contact. He also must get copies of UFO-related docs found by Stan Friedman or John Greenwald (Black Vault), sent by UFO buffs. It's interesting that researchers like Friedman or Greenwald or Grant Cameron (or Lawrence Fawcett or Barry Greenwood or...) have already done a great job of finding and releasing UFO-related government docs.

So what's in the cables? Well, we already have dozens of diplomatic cables that were found to contain comments about UFOs. One example: UFOs in Iran, noted by a Defense correspondent:

So, a cable about UFOs wouldn't be really surprising, unless it contained some really spectacular information. And judging from Assange's comment, whatever he has isn't Earth-shattering.

But it could be interesting.

UFO Report Numbers in 2010, So Far

2010-11-26T09:19:00.000-08:00

Although Geoff Dittman and I haven't had time to do a full UFO Survey for Canada since 2008, we have been keeping track of cases. In terms of numbers, 2009 had fewer cases than 2008, but that was because 2008 was a real anomaly for some reason, with 1004 reports filed. For 2009, the total was just under 900. Still pretty good, and it puts that year in at least 3rd and maybe 2nd overall. So far in 2010, we're over 800 reports, so we'll be right up there again.

The bottom line is that UFO reports in Canada during the past 5 years have been at an unprecedented high level.

A few odd numbers come out of the pure number counts, however. So far in 2010, two months have had record monthly numbers of UFO reports far above average levels. In July 2010, there were a whopping 190 UFO reports in Canada for that month alone, eclipsing the previous high of 148 in the record year of 2008. And, in case you still hear people saying UFOs are seen mostly in summer months, there were 102 reports in October 2010, more than any other October on record (there were 82 in 2008).

The difference between the "record year" of 2008 and the past few years is that except for a few record months, UFO report numbers have been relatively low in other months. Barely one a day in February and March 2009 and 2010, for example. Definitely no bell-shaped curves the past few years, for some reason. Despite these anomalies, the overall UFO report numbers average out so that we're still around almost 900 reports per year - a level that shows UFOs have certainly not simply gone away.

Fireball over Nova Scotia November 18, 2010

2010-11-19T08:52:00.000-08:00

From the South Shore News in Nova Scotia:

Reports of 'huge ball of fire' in sky turn out to be meteor shower
by Eva Hoare And Patricia Brooks Arenburg, Staff Reporters
Fri, Nov 19 - 4:53 AM

They feared it was a plane crash, but it turned out to be a meteor shower lighting up the night sky.

Emergency crews rushed to the South Shore early Thursday evening after receiving reports that a "huge ball of fire" had fallen from the sky near Exit 16 on Highway 103.

The Mounties and the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Halifax were dispatched to the area near Italy Cross, Lunenburg County.

But after thorough checks, it was determined there was no plane crash, said Scott Burgwin, the search and rescue co-ordinator for the Maritimes.”We’re pretty sure there were no aircraft (in the area),” Burgwin said from the Halifax centre just before 8 p.m. “We think it was some sort of natural phenomena like a meteor shower.”

The call about the fireball came in at about 6:30 p.m. from a paramedic in the area, said RCMP Sgt. Brigdit Leger.

A woman working at a restaurant near Exit 14 on Highway 103 said she heard two RCMP cruisers "go flying by here" at about 6:45 p.m.

Burgwin said co-ordination centre officials checked with Moncton’s air traffic control centre and found that no planes had flight plans for that area and nothing had shown up on radar, Burgwin said.

“We have heard some reports that people saw something,” said Michelle Bishop, spokeswoman for NAV Canada in Ottawa. “We do not have, at this time, any missing aircraft.”

Dave Chapman, past president of the Halifax Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, said “it’s entirely possible that it could have been a fireball associated with the Leonid meteors.”

The Leonid meteor shower, so named because the meteors appear to come from the Leo constellation, happens around Nov. 17 each year, Chapman said. If it was part of this particular shower, a fireball at that time of day would have been travelling from east to west. But fireballs can also occur without meteor showers, he said.
He hadn’t yet heard of the incident when contacted Thursday night but would be interested in hearing more details from the person who reported the fireball and anyone else who saw it.

Anyone who sees a fireball is asked to report it to the Meteorites and Impacts Advisory Committee of Canada at miac.uqac.ca

Ebenezer's Ice Cream Cone: The PEI UFO of 1990

2010-11-16T14:27:00.000-08:00

The following is a redux of the infamous "Ebenezer Ice Cream Cone" case, with additional notes from my files.

The evening of Wednesday, August 22, 1990, was clear and cool throughout all of Canada's Maritime provinces.

At 7:00 pm, Walter Benoit of Bellefond, New Brunswick, saw a "very bright object, 4 to 5 feet long," and "clear in colour." He reported it to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who sent the report to the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), Canada=s official repository for UFOs. The NRC numbered the case N90/66 in its Non-Meteoritic Sightings File.

At 7:15 pm, Carmelle Morrissey was in Morristown, Nova Scotia, Canada, and happened to look up into the early evening sky. Morrissey saw a Avery bright, circular object@ moving in the sky for an estimated four to five minutes. The sighting was reported to CFB Greenwood, and the BOC (Base Commander) filed the report with the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND). In turn, DND sent a note about the sighting to the NRC, which filed it as case N90/61. Copies of the report were sent to an alphabet soup of official acronyms: RCCPJAC NDOC OTTAWA, RCWBOCA, ACOC WINNIPEG, RUWOKDB NORAD COC CHEYENNE MTN COMPLEX, DOFO, RCCBNVA FGCANCHQ NORTH BAY, SSO, NT, CCCEON, NRCOTT OTTAWA "METEOR CENTRE".

Fifteen minutes later, at 7:30 pm, an anonymous caller in Iles-de-la-Madeline, Quebec, notified the Department of Transport (DOT) (probably through an airport) that he or she had seen a "bright red ball followed by a tail." It was seen for only five seconds, which prompted the NRC to file the report as N90/62: "Identified as possible meteor."

At the same time, Gerald Foster of Kingston was in Middleton, Nova Scotia, and saw an "orange/yellow circular object" for about three to five seconds. He also reported it to DND, and as NRC case N90/63, it too was "Identified as possible meteor."

Also at 7:30 pm, Anne Mazeralle of Chatham Head, Nova Scotia, saw a "bright, lime green, oval-shaped object" for "a few seconds." She reported it to the RCMP, which also sent it to the NRC and the report became N90/64. It was also "Identified as a possible meteor." (NB - This report is actually dated August 23 in the NRC files, but this is probably a mistake because it seems to have been part of the "meteor" activity of the day before.)

Meanwhile, something odd was happening in Prince Edward Island.

According to N90/65, from 222350Z to 230115Z (7:50 pm to 9:15 pm), Shirley Yeo of Ebenezer, PEI, was "eyewitness to [a] glowing white object which landed in woods." She and all her family watched the strange object, which they described as "like an ice cream cone." Remarkably, once it "landed," the object was reported as "still glowing at 0300Z," two hours later!

Helen Gallant, who lived with the Yeo family, said: "I saw it through the trees. It looked like a great big round ball of light through the trees."

While the glow was still visible, witnesses watched as military helicopters and aircraft arrived and began circling the area. Although there is a civilian airport at Charlottetown, 12 km southeast of Ebenezer, and a military base at Summerside, 45 km southwest, witnesses were puzzled by the appearance of the aircraft because such activity seemed unnecessary if the UFO was really only a meteor.

Charlottetown RCMP confirmed that they had received more than a dozen calls about the Ebenezer object and had sent two constables to investigate. They noted that one officer "could see it in the distance, but then he just lost sight of it."
Meanwhile, Alexander Davis of Frenchvale, Cape Breton (Nova Scotia), "saw [a] red-hot sheet of metal land 300 yards from him in woods." It was noted that "he swears he knows exactly where it can be found." At the time the NRC report was filed, the RCMP were planning to "question him" the next morning.

N90/65 comments about the large number of reports that night, noting that the "phenomena [was] seen from Anticosti Island to Halifax, and from Newfoundland to Maine." Furthermore, "all colours of flares [were] reported as well as fireballs, flaming aircraft and burning boats," and reports were received over a period of 90 minutes. One note recorded that "RCMP detatchments in [the] Maritimes have reported location of debris."

Spurred by the possibility that the object was in fact a meteor which may have fallen, a group of 30 amateur astronomers with the Charlottetown Astronomy Club searched the area the next morning, but found nothing of interest.

Clive Perry, president of the club, was doubtful the UFO had been a meteor.
"I wouldn't think it would be a meteorite when it glowed so long," he said. "It pretty well had to be space junk or parts of a satellite. That's about the only thing that could have come down unless you want to talk about little green men with buggy eyes."

Perry spoke with the witnesses and found them to be honest and truthful. "They are very credible," he noted. "It would take a pretty good mind to make up a story like that."

Another astronomer, Paul Delaney of York University in Toronto, also offered his opinion to the media that because of the duration of the sighting, the UFO was probably not a meteor. He thought that the presence of the aircraft indicated the falling object was a satellite.

However, despite witnesses= reports and the negative findings of the astronomers, NORAD and CFB Halifax insisted the UFOs were ascribable to meteors. A newspaper report noted: "Neither military agency would say if anything struck the ground."
Like the Shag Harbour case, the reports were filed away without further investigation because it seemed no new information was going to be forthcoming. For lack of any other evidence, the sightings might as well have been due to meteors. After all, they did have some of those characteristics.

But in 1997, "A" began investigating UFOs. An ex-military officer with rescue training, she was living in PEI but had left the Canadian Forces and was then living elsewhere in Canada. "A" told UFO researchers that she had been based at CFB Summerside several years earlier when she and a rescue team had been scrambled to assist following a crash of some object near the base. Knowing of the PEI case, Ufology Research of Manitoba investigator Chris Rutkowski asked her for more details, and "A" began to describe a very different scenario than had been publicly offered.

"A" said that she and the medical team had been flown into the Ebenezer area on a Hercules transport after being told to prepare for a rescue mission. She says they were told to bring along their "banana suits" - protective yellow-coloured outfits for going into contaminated areas. However, once on the ground, she and the team were told by senior officers that they could not go near the crash site because of an unspecified security issue.

As they waited, "A" said she watched as a flatbed transport was brought in, then it left the site with something covered by a tarpaulin. She says she was sure that whatever had crashed had been recovered and taken away on the truck.

"A" said she and the team were given strict orders not to talk to the media about the operation. However, she said she was surprised when her own family later asked her what had happened and that they related the media stories about the meteor. She did not tell them about her experiences that night, however, obeying her instructions.

She also said that one day in the mess hall, a group of American air force officers were sitting beside her discussing the recovery operation at Ebenezer. She says she asked them what had been recovered, and was told outright that it had been a "spaceship."

The question is, then, what do we do with this new information? How can it be interpreted? While the original reports could be explained as meteors, this explanation would only work if we ignored some of the witnesses' observed details and assumed they were in error. Further, we could reason that the military aircraft activity was part of a planned operation and unconnected with the UFO sightings.
Given that the American military recently has admitted using UFO reports as a subterfuge to conceal secret missions, however, UFO researchers might be justifiably suspicious of military explanations of UFO sightings. If we assume instead that the witnesses' observations were relatively accurate and that the military activity was as a result of the observed object, it is possible that the fallen object was in fact a satellite of some kind as had been speculated.

In other words, without invoking the idea of aliens and crashed flying saucers, it is possible to interpret the events of that night in PEI as being due to an actual military rescue and recovery operation that was "covered-up" and a fictitious explanation given to the media for dissemination. Of course, why the crash of a satellite would need such elaborate security is not obvious.

In any event, even without "A's" statements, the PEI case is not explained to everyone=s satisfaction. And, if "A's" version of events is taken into account, the incident becomes even more puzzling. Who knows? Perhaps it was even a contemporary UFO crash, rivaling Roswell.

Or not.

Letter to Edward Ruppelt from Military Observer in Manitoba in 1954

2010-11-10T08:41:00.000-08:00

While going through the UFOROM files, I discovered a copy of a letter sent to former Project Blue Book head Captain Edward Ruppelt in 1954. It was written by a former military man and he thought his observation of some objects shining in Manitoba skies was worth mentioning to Ruppelt.

Selkirk, Manitoba
August 10, 1954

Capt. E. J. Ruppelt, U.S.A.F.R.,
c/o TRUE Magazine
New York City, N.Y.

Dear Sir:

It was with great interest I read your article 'What Our Air
Force Found Out About Flying Saucers' which appeared in the May 1954
issue of True Magazine. I have read quite a few accounts concerning these
unknown flying objects, but your article was by far the most interesting.
Never having seen such objects, I was perhaps a little skeptical, but
never considered them impossible. On July 22 however, I did see
"something" and was fortunate enough to have three other people as witnesses.

I understand that you are no longer connected with this research,
but I have taken the liberty of writing you, hoping that you will pass on
the following report to those who may be interested.

On July 22, between 8.15 and 8.30 p.m. C.D.T. I saw what at first
appeared to be five aircraft in the southern skies. It was a very clear
sunny evening and these aircraft seemed to be reflecting the sun -- they
were a very bright shiny silver in color. The angle at which they
appeared in relation to directly overhead and the horizon would be, I
judge, between 20 to 25 degrees (see sketch). I watched these objects for
not less than three minutes, possibly six or seven -- unfortunately I did
not think to time them -- did not realize what I was viewing. During
that time they did not increase or decrease in size, all the while
glowing a very bright silver in color. While watching, they appeared to
'drift', almost imperceptibly in a westerly direction. Suddenly four of
the objects disappeared and the fifth (No. 1 in the sketch) vanished
possibly 30 seconds later. They did not grow smaller and vanish, but
simply disappeared, very much like a person turning off a light. At no
time was any sound audible. These objects were in formation (see sketch)
and as long as they remained visible, they did not alter their formation.
As for the shape of these objects, I believe "round" would best describe
them - they were definitely not square, oblong or cigar-shaped.

Whatever these were, they were also seen by people living in the
Winnipeg area at approximately the same time. As Winnipeg and Selkirk are
roughly 20 miles apart, these unknowns could hardly have been balloons.
To have been seen from both places at the same time, it would seem to me
that these objects would have to be at a very high altitude and also very
large in size. Some of the people in Winnipeg who saw these strange
objects, reported such to the two newspapers, The Winnipeg Tribune and
the Winnipeg Free Press.

I am not by any means an expert on aircraft, but during the war I
served with the Royal Canadian Navy and spent a few months with a British
Aircraft Carrier.

The people with me at the time these objects were sighted were my
wife, my sister-in-law and her husband. No doubt you have had many
reports at different times from various people - believe me, I am not a
"crank" looking for publicity, but I actually saw something which I have
seen before and of that I am certain. If there is anything else, such as
any further details concerning that which I have reported, I sincerely
hope that you or someone will write, as I shall be only too pleased to
try and answer. I am definitely very curious and interested to try and
learn what I actually did see.

Yours very truly,
(named deleted)

Darn those massive alien spaceships!

2010-11-05T09:21:00.000-07:00

In today's Winnipeg Sun, a letter to the editor complains that I "didn't do my research as a UFO buff" because I missed pointing out in my debate with Robert Sheaffer that giant alien spaceships hidden in Saturn's rings were detected last year by French scientists, and then the story was apparently covered up.

UFOs and the truth

Re: ‘Look up in the sky,’ Nov. 2.

Chris Rutkowski hasn’t done his research as a UFO buff and missed that French astronomers discovered some massive ships in the rings of Saturn last year.

It was all over French news media for about a day, then the story quieted down. Robert Sheaffer states this phenomena started during the Cold War and that’s wrong, too.

There are cave paintings depicting aliens and UFOs, there are hieroglyphs depicting them, Sumerian tablets, the Bible even. All throughout the Middle Ages (in paintings and in some books) you can find UFOs.

Jean-Luc Levesque

http://www.winnipegsun.com/comment/letters/2010/11/04/15968236.html

I thank M. Levesque for pointing out my omission.

Take THAT, Fox News!

The Great (Non-)Debate About UFOs

2010-11-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

I had been contacted some time ago by Sun Media for the series they were doing on UFOs. I was under the impression they were going to run it before Hallowe'en, but scheduling had it just start on October 31 and ran the next few days. Curiously, some Sun Media papers ran all three parts on the same day, while others chose to spread it out.

Anyway, I had been asked to comment on the QMI survey that they were doing, without knowing the results. I gave them details on the survey that Ufology Research had done some time ago, and sent them the excellent and virtually unread paper Geoff Dittman had written on UFO polls, noted here previously:

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1HeLpsnzccUl_K6Fj-koqkvqWV6rdzanYN0Bcczahf2U

The other thing I was asked to do was give answers to a set of questions that would be posed to both myself and archskeptic Robert Sheaffer, who headed the UFO subcommittee of CSICOP.

The two-sided Q&A was published thusly:

http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2826623

I'll also note the text here in case the link dies (as it has for some of the papers already):

LOOK! UP IN THE SKY!
By THANE BURNETT

After a series of puzzling stories in 2010 concerning UFOs -- publicized sightings from Newfoundland and Montreal to China and the U.K. -- QMI Agency, in a three-part Alien Probe special report, has looked at how humans continue to contemplate mysteries in the heavens.

And in the discussion, Canadians overwhelmingly - an exclusive Leger Marketing poll revealed yesterday - believe UFOs could be connected to alien visitors.

But in this final day of the series, we thought it might be worthwhile to get a grounding in facts.

So we invited renowned American skeptic and debunker Robert Sheaffer and Canadian UFO-buff Chris Rutkowski -- a Winnipeg-based astronomer who helps keep track of Canadian sightings -- to debate the known realities.

[Here are the Questions]

Do you believe aliens are visiting our world?

Chris: The UFO question is not about aliens visiting Earth, but about sightings of UFOs, which are not necessarily extraterrestrial. But since you asked, I would say there is no incontrovertible evidence to prove that aliens are visiting Earth. All we can say, scientifically, is that astronomers haven't detected any large interstellar craft heading for Earth during the last century or two. However, it would be presumptuous to think we have the ability to recognize, let alone detect a technology that might be hundreds or thousands of years ahead of us.

Robert: No. Nor do I believe in Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, or sightings of Elvis. Just because some people think they see something strange doesn't mean it's real.

What would it take to make skeptics believe?

Chris: Again, I doubt it will happen. By definition, skeptics are doubters to the end. A debunker, on the other hand, refuses to consider evidence against his or her belief system. It's their version of religion. Some have the attitude: "Don't bother me with the facts; my mind is already made up." Some debunkers state that no scientific studies show UFOs are worth the effort, but don't mention relevant literature, such as Blue Book Special Report 14, or the annual Canadian UFO surveys, or NARCAP reports on pilots' sightings. Sometimes a debunker says that a piece of metal with a non-terrestrial isotope ratio would be convincing proof of alien visitation, but I'm sure that the testing and analysis of such a piece, if ever offered, would be so clouded in doubt and accusations, it wouldn't be worth a plugged Martian nickel.

Robert - Obviously if a UFO landed on the White House lawn, that would suffice. But it need not be something so dramatic. If hundreds or even thousands of people independently sighted, and many photographed, a large flying structured craft in daylight (not some little dot in the sky), and all these photos were consistent with a real object, it would be very difficult to say that object wasn't real. Especially if the people had no connection or common link beforehand. But that never happens. Why not? Some UFOs are reported to hang around for an hour or more. Isn't that enough time to get a TV news crew to the site, even just once?

What would it take to make believers lose faith?

Chris: In my opinion, it won't happen easily, if at all. Belief is something that cannot be changed without a paradigm shift. Pronouncements by "experts" that something is not possible or deserving of study likely only reinforce long-standing beliefs held by people who may be looking for affirmation or validation beyond authorities' insistence. And to someone who has seen a UFO, skeptics' insistence that belief in UFOs is nonsense only reinforces a distrust of science. It's like Columbus being told by skeptics not to waste his time looking for the New World because it couldn't possibly be there. Oh, wait. They did tell him that. My bad. Sorry.

Robert: I don't think that ever could happen, since most of them have a strong emotional attachment to the "faith." It's much like a religious faith, and not based on logic. No matter how many UFO sightings are shown to have a rational explanation, believers resist accepting the explanation, and claim there is a government "cover-up" of UFO secrets.

What's your best theory behind a long history of UFO sightings around the globe?

Chris: The simplest theory is that not everyone can identify what they see in the sky. Nevertheless, UFO sightings represent a historical, persistent and global phenomenon, and for that reason, it seems reasonable that science should be studying it in more depth. UFOs are either physical phenomena, or psychological or sociological phenomena, so that in either case, scientists should be studying UFO reports.

Robert: It began in the frenzied post-War and early Cold War atmosphere of rapid progress in aeronautics and rockets, and of the atom bomb. Exciting and sometimes frightening new things were happening all the time. Once a certain percentage of the population believed that UFOs were something real, reports of UFO sightings in the mass media were enough for the phenomenon to feed on itself. Every time people saw something in the sky that looked a little strange, "It's a Flying Saucer!" became the conclusion.

Do you believe world governments are withholding important information on UFO sightings?

Chris: Most countries' governments withhold some information from their constituents. Why should the subject of UFOs be exempt? It is reasonable to think that data on certain UFO cases would have been collected through intelligence channels that are classified, and for that reason would be withheld from public scrutiny. There are many circumstances under which FOIA (or in Canada, AI) requests about would be denied, and we wouldn't even know the documents existed.

Robert: No. There undoubtedly are a few reports in the secret files from pilots or military personnel on a special mission who think they've seen a UFO. Stuff like that. But documents that "reveal" the "startling truth" about what UFOs are, where they come from, etc. -- nope.

We seem to be going through one of those periodic upswings in the number of UFO news stories. What should people take away from these reports?

Chris: Well, for one thing, this tells us there are many qualified observers who have seen and reported UFOs. It has been said that pilots make mistakes of observation as much as anyone else, but let's face it: Their observational abilities are relied upon every day for making judgments that keep our lives safe. If a military pilot with 10,000 hours in the air says he saw something that mystified him, it's worth talking about.

Robert: That even trained personnel can mistake ordinary phenomena for something strange and exotic. They're human, just like the rest of us. And none of these people have any actual proof that they witnessed something mysterious, it's just their interpretation of what they saw. So many sightings, so little evidence.

A few things to note:

I was described as a "UFO buff" - not the most accurate term, but something that anyone who studies the UFO phenomenon seriously has to live with. I take some comfort from the fact that J. Allen Hynek was also often called a UFO buff.

Also, on Twitter, after a member of the Ottawa skeptics tweeted a link to the debate, he was asked who "won" the debate. He replied, not surprisingly, that the skeptic did, because the "believer" attacked skeptics in his answers. Two things arise from that. First of all, debunkers often resort to attacks on supporters of UFO investigation in print, and it's considered fair game. Secondly, calling me a "believer" is curious. What, exactly, am I "believer" in? Interestingly, if you examine what I said in print, nothing there is at odds with conventional science. I made no claims about invasions by little green men, alien intervention in government activities, nor the existence of pod creatures in our neighbourhoods. In fact, I was very careful to simply argue that the UFO phenomenon should not be dismissed by science but studied scientifically and objectively.

I think that my being labeled as a "believer" was a result of my opponent being called a skeptic, and so for a debate, I had to have an opposing or contradictory viewpoint. But if you look at our two answers, they are mostly in line with one another. That thwarted a really juicy American-style political debate, but it did accurately give readers a sense of where serious ufology makes its stand. (And I'm often called a "skeptic" in the UFO community because I don't buy into a lot of what's touted as ufology these days.)

So, given that I must be wrong because the skeptic is right, my statement that there is "no incontrovertible evidence to prove that aliens are visiting Earth" must be in error. Ergo, aliens are here.

Top 20 Scary Movies About Aliens or UFOs

2010-10-29T09:10:00.000-07:00

Previously, I've posted lists of the best and most interesting UFO movies, but for Hallowe'en, here's a list of the Top 20 Scary Movies About Aliens or UFOs:

1. Alien (Aliens, etc.)
- Well, you kind of have to go with this one. The "boo" factor was at its highest for the first, and declined after that. We'll see how the prequels go.

2. Signs
- Again, mostly for the "boo" factor of waiting for the aliens to break into the house where Mel Gibson and his clan are holed up.

3. The Fourth Kind
- Even though IT DIDN’T REALLY HAPPEN, PEOPLE!, this Paranormal Activity-style film got many viewers riled up over what the aliens do to abductees.

4. The Day the Earth Stood Still
- The classic original film frightened audiences because aliens are unstoppable, all-powerful and wise compared with us humans. But we knew that already.

5. District 9
- So good, I went and found the original short film and was impressed by it, too. Aliens suffer indignities in a South African refugee camp. Like everyone else.

6. The Day of the Triffids
- A meteor storm creates walking plants that want to eat people. ‘Nuff said.

7. Village of the Damned
- The creep factor in this version of the Midwich Cuckoos was high; the scenes where children with weird eyes stare at you are chilling. Every teacher’s nightmare.

8. Knowing
- It’s the end of the world as we know it, but kids don’t seem all that worried for some reason.

9. Communion
- Whitley Strieber goes crazy as aliens haunt his life. Did you even have the feeling you were being watched?

10. Fire in the Sky
- What happened to Travis Walton when he disappeared for several days? He was in an alien goo-filled egg sack, of course.

11. The Mothman Prophecies
- Completing the trifecta of “based on real events” movies (with Communion and Fire in the Sky), this story is the original “Men in Black” tale, done creepy-style.

12. The Abyss
- Close Encounters done underwater. Most of the scariness comes from the crazed human psychopaths trapped with the scientists, but it counts anyway.

13. Dreamcatcher
- Truly awful film that tried to include every alien/UFO meme imaginable, and then some, but many people were scared (maybe for the wrong reasons)

14. The Thing From Another World
- The original film produced shivers (mostly for the Arctic scenes) as tension built. Is the alien’s severed arm moving…?

15. The X-Files
- The first movie found Mulder and Scully battling bureaucracy as well as killer bees, and our heroine ends up in a vat of goo (Note: recurring theme in alien movies).

16. Horror Express
- A frozen “fossil” being transported by train comes back to life, and Telly Savalas stands between it and the rest of world.

17. The War of the Worlds
- The original movie was a Cold War analogue playing on the fear of the Martians who cannot be stopped by good old American know-how.

18. Predator (Predators, etc.)
- An unstoppable alien warrior wants to play war games with CIA and Army Commandos in the Central American jungles. Can Arnie save the human race?

19. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
- The movie that asked the question: “Do your neighbours seem a little strange?”

20. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- The origin of the government cover-up theme, as only the elite must know that aliens want to land in Wyoming.

Quebec UFO activity

2010-10-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

According to Francois Bourbeau of OVNI-ALERTE, an interesting object was seen this morning (October 28, 2010) over Laval, Quebec. It was a structured craft of some sort, with lights, and was seen about 3:00 am. Most remarkable is that the sighting of the object was associated with a loud rumbling noise and strong winds that shook the entire house from which teh witness was observing the object. OVNI-ALERTE is looking for additional witnesses.

http://www.ovni-alerte.com/2010/10/28/appel-a-temoins-secteur-lavaltrie-cas-possible-de-rrii/

In addition, I should note that a recent book published in Quebec gives a very detailed history of UFOs seen in that province. Because of the language barrier, most of English Canada knows little about UFO activity in Quebec (unless you read my blog). The book, by Danielle Goyette, is one of a series of books about Quebec mysteries, called Quebec Insolite. This book, titled simply OVNIs, covers cases from 1841 over Hudson Bay to Gaspe in 2009.

Goyette has done a good job in gathering disparate information and case details about Quebec and crafting it into a nicely-illustrated and laid-out work that is appealing and informative. Interestingly, she has sections giving voice to skeptics and contactees alike. The chapter on the infamous Hotel Bonaventure case has some good information and description, although she devotes most of the book to cases that have occurred in this new millennium, many of which are new to me. Goyette essentially follows the life and UFO investigations of Francois Bourbeau, (who runs OVNI-ALERTE), with a few references to other Quebec ufologists like Christian Page, but no mention of Claude MacDuff or Don Donderi. She includes references to pop culture and includes some questionable stuff (why bother with UMMO, anyway?) but all in all it's a nice addition to Canadian ufology, despite ignoring all cases outside of Quebec.

Available from:
http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=danielle+goyette+OVNIs&x=0&y=0

Polls About UFOs

2010-10-14T13:02:00.001-07:00

Polls about UFOs make the news every few years. In general, they find that many people believe UFOs are "real," whatever that means. An important and overlooked study about such polls was done by Canadian UFO researcher Geoff Dittman a number of years ago. It's highly significant and I am making it available to a wider readership here:

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1HeLpsnzccUl_K6Fj-koqkvqWV6rdzanYN0Bcczahf2U

Response To An Uninformed Debunker

2010-10-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

After an article appeared in the Montreal Gazette a week or so ago regarding a UFO seen by several witnesses over a shopping mall there, a follow-up article appeared, penned by a freelancer who was identified as an "astronomer and science writer." Apparently, the concept of UFOs was so appalling to him, he chose to attack everything in the original article, including comments by me which suggested an explanation for the UFO seen. In fact, he accused me of "intellectual dishonesty" for noting that about one per cent of all UFO cases may be unexplained.

Such attacks usually don't deserve a reply. I've dealt with them many times before.
In this case, though, since I'm accused of intellectual dishonesty, which is something about which I am very concerned, I sent a letter to the editor, which of course was not printed (likely because it was too long). Here it is:

In response to Andre Bordeleau regarding UFOs...

The rather personal attack on me by Andre Bordeleau ("In UFOs, the U is key," October 7, 2010) should probably best be ignored, but in this case I feel it deserves some comment.

Bordeleau informs readers that UFOs are not necessarily flying saucers from Mars piloted by little green men. This is a good example of stating the obvious. Considering most serious researchers on the subject know this already and try to educate the public on this fact, this is nothing new. In my several books on UFOs, I make this distinction often.

Bordeleau also calls me a "UFO buff." It's a bit condescending, as I like him am an astronomer and science writer. I remain objective and do not dismiss UFO reports out of hand but am willing to talk about them in a rational manner with witnesses, rather than engage in ridicule.

Bordeleau also writes that I "might believe an advanced civilization has found the means for interstellar travel," but I state no such belief. I share the view of most astronomers that extraterrestrial civilizations could exist but that the distances between stars are too great to overcome with our present understanding of physics and technology. To suggest that we will not be able to overcome the obstacle of distance given continued advancing technology is illogical, given that similar doubts about human engineering such as sending people to the Moon was also thought by some narrow-gazing scientists to be impossible.

Bondereau also relegates the study of UFO reports to an area known as "pseudoscience," a term generally used by debunkers to designate something which they disdain. The collection of data and research into UFO reports by witnesses (which include pilots, meteorologists and, of course, astronomers) is scientific in nature and should not be ignored.

My observation that there were more than 1000 reports of UFOs in Canada in 2008 includes sightings later explained as aircraft and balloons is a statement of fact. Without actually looking at the data, it is impossible to make statements or conclusions about what is being reported. That's how science works.

The one percent that are high-quality unknowns are the cases that were sifted out of the hundreds of UFOs reported sincerely by witnesses who were baffled by what they were seeing, and which remained unknown after ruling out various explanations.

Bordeleau's accusation that I am intellectually dishonest (brazen or otherwise) is bizarre, given that I honestly present the data behind my statement. His bias against the possibility that some cases are unexplained might be held in the same regard. I wonder how many of those 1000 cases he himself has studied in order to arrive at any conclusion, since making statements without investigation is not a scientific approach.

Even that small average yearly percentage, amounting to a few hundred cases during the course of our 20-year study of Canadian UFO cases, does not mean that Bordeleau's little green men (which he apparently entertains, not I) are hovering over St. Joseph's Oratory. It simply means that witnesses, among them good observers, are reporting unusual objects for which there are are sometimes no simple explanations.

Bordeleau concludes: "Perhaps the media should pay less attention to outfits like Ufology Research of Manitoba and more on properly investigating the stories they publish."

If media did pay no attention to Ufology Research of Manitoba or other institutions seriously investigating UFO reports, they would not get reliable and factual information regarding the subject and instead receive only uninformed opinion to publish.

Dismissing the subject of UFOs out of hand is not an objective standpoint.

UFOs and Canadian Pilots?

2010-10-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

"As a matter of fact, I just had a phone call about an hour ago..."

This morning, I did a short radio interview (about five minutes) with 570 News in Kitchener, Ontario. It was in the middle of a longer segment on UFOs during which Robert Hastings was a guest talking about last week's story that UFOs had been seen over US nuclear plants and had been seen on many occasions by military pilots.

Hastings had been asked about UFOs seen by Canadian pilots but wasn't able to give enough of an answer so the host asked me. By coincidence, I had "breaking news."

Just about an hour before I was called by the radio station, I had a call from a commercial pilot who had seen some UFOs last night. He said that he lives under the flight path of aircraft in Winnipeg and is familiar with how they appear. He explained that last night (October 6, 2010) at about 10:20 pm, he was in his back yard, looking up and saw three bright lights in a linear formation moving in the northeast. He said they were brighter than the stars in Cassiopeia, which they were passing underneath. They were at about 60 degrees elevation and an estimated 3,000 feet altitude, and flew from NE to NNE in a matter of six or eight seconds.

I checked the satellite ephemerides for last night and nothing came up in that location and time. No Iridiums, either.

The pilot said that he had "never seen anything before this in all my years of flying." He thought they were geese migrating, but they were too bright, not wavering in flight, fast and made no noise. It was a perfectly clear night, with no clouds at all. Before and after the UFOs there had been both flights of geese and aircraft overhead, but these three objects were not like those at all.

So yes, pilots do see and report UFOs.

The Montreal UFO

2010-10-04T19:17:00.000-07:00

Anglophone media in Montreal is covering a UFO sighting from last week, although their French counterparts seem to be less than interested.

On Wednesday morning, September 29, 2010, at about 1 am, Dr. Cleve Ziegler was driving past the Cavendish Mall when he saw something unusual in the sky. Ziegler, an obstetrician at the Montreal Jewish General Hospital, insisted to reporters that he is "not a crazy person." He said he really saw a strange flashing object in the sky and stopped his car to get a better look.

He said it had blue and red twinkling lights, and was not an aircraft or the beam from a flashlight playing about the sky. He noted: "It was moving up and down, sideways. It was not a flying saucer, more like a couple of triangles."

He saw another person standing nearby, also craning his neck to look at the object. The two men, the other man's girlfriend and one other woman, all watched the object and agreed it was something strange.

Ziegler used his cellphone to take some really indistinguishable photos of the object, and then used it to call police. He continued to watch for a total of 10 minutes, then went home. Police interviewed him at home the next day.

English source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Montreal+sighting+probably+explainable/3605747/story.html

French source:
http://www.ovni-alerte.com/2010/09/30/obstetricienovniufo29septembre2010cavendish/

The Montreal Gazette called me for an opinion, and I gave it, based on what I had read. The description was lacking some detail, but it sure sounded like a balloon or kite, and when I read on the Gazette website and also the CBC website in the readers comments about the UFO story that someone had seen a guy flying a kite, then that seemed a reasonable possible explanation.

Of course, that was just speculation, and I told the reporter that we'd need to know what the winds were like that night, for one thing, before making a definitive conclusion. However, the reporter used my "probably explained" comment as a headline, and the story seemed to die.

Until Quebec ufologists investigated. Jean Casault (jeancasault.com) and Francois Bourbeau (ovni-alerte.com) both went after the case. I suspect they were a little ticked at me for labelling it as Possibly Explained without onsite investigation, but I had only given a qualified opinion to the reporter, not a definitive answer. But they both have been investigating since then, with some interesting results.

Additional witnesses have been located and interviewed. Also, they pointed out that the guy who had reportedly been flying a kite at night has not been located. So at this point we only have the statements of Ziegler and the others as testament to something that was floating over Montreal that night.

Yet, I remain unconvinced it was anything unearthly. I suspect it was a kite or balloon, even though I can't imagine why anyone would want to fly a lighted contraption like that at 1 am over a shopping mall. Sleep seems a much better pasttime.

I don't think the Montreal object was extraterrestrial, but I think the best way to get to the bottom of what was seen is through investigation by onsite researchers. I look forward to their investigation results.

United Nations Appoints "Space Ambassador" ... or not

2010-09-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

News broke today that the United Nations will be appointing a Malaysian astrophysicist as Earth's "ambassador" to alien worlds.

Mazlan Othman is head of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA).

The appointment is being made because of "the recent discovery of hundreds of planets orbiting other starts, which is thought to make the discovery of extraterrestrial life more probable than ever before."

Othman is quoted as saying:

“The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day human kind will received signals from extraterrestrials.

“When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8025832/UN-to-appoint-space-ambassador-to-greet-alien-visitors.html

Well, this isn't surprising at all, of course, since I noted the United Nations' Outer Space Treaty in a recent blog post: http://uforum.blogspot.com/2010/04/man-who-would-know-about-alien-contact.html

It's interesting that the discovery of more and more planets outside our Solar System is finally making the scientific community think seriously about preparing for what seems to be the inevitable contact with extraterrestrials.

But, when the discovery of a habitable world is announced...

... then what?

BUT... BREAKING NEWS:

It's all a hoax.

A story released today essentially retracted everything!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/sep/27/un-alien-ambassador-mazlan-othman

Of course!

UFO Reports by the Numbers: 2009 vs.2010

2010-09-26T16:22:00.000-07:00

Now that my next book is finally published:
http://dundurn.com/books/big_book_ufos,
I had some time to go through the foot-high stack of UFO reports that has been towering over me as it typed at the desk in my study.

While I won't have a chance to do a rigorous analysis such as previously done in the annual Canadian UFO Surveys (http://survey.canadianuforeport.com),
I have been able to do a quick numerical count just to see how things have been doing so far in comparison with last year.

During the first eight months of 2009, there were 449 UFO reports filed across Canada (i.e. January to June 2009). In comparison, there have been 576 UFO reports filed during the same period in 2010. That's about a 28 per cent increase from last year.

Before we get too excited, I should note that most of this increase came during the second trimester of the year (May to August). In fact, numbers of UFO reports in 2010 were actually lower than 2009 until an unprecedented surge in UFO reports in July, when 183 cases were reported in just that one month compared with only 80 in 2009. Why that was so is not known at this time.

There were slightly more than 800 cases filed in 2009, a significant drop from the all-time record in 2008 when more than 1000 reports were filed. However, if 2010 remains on track, we will be somewhere around 900 cases by the end of the year, enough for the second-highest number of UFO reports in a single year.

Will we make it? Stay tuned.

Radar and Visual UFO Sightings Over Winnipeg in 1967

2010-09-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

As I sort through the many documents in my collection regarding UFOs, I sometimes find things that have been overlooked or filed in a "Study Later" folder. I recently discovered some interesting correspondence on some radar UFOs, buried remarkably well in a file containing information on the note "Falcon Lake" or Michalak incident of 1967.

Rather than recap the Michalak case here, I'll simply refer to some online sources. One good one, based on my investigations, is here. Another is here.

The real significance of the case is that it was investigated by many military and government personnel. The USAF-sponsored Condon Report even listed it among its "Unxeplained" cases. We also have access to many pages of official documents detailing investigations and attempts to explain the incident.

Debunkers usually adopt the simple view that the case must have been a hoax. This, despite the fact that there was physical evidence (including radioactive materials) and also that the witness himself did not believe the object which landed and injured him was an alien spaceship. Until his death, he maintained that it must have been some kind of military test vehicle. Claims that he made the story up to publish a book and make money are refuted by the observation that he made no money at all by the publication of a ghost-written pamphlet about his experience and in fact he was irritated by the constant questioning of his character and the harassment of his family.

Among the original official investigators of the case in 1967, one of the most skeptical was Sgt. Paul Bissky, then Squadron Leader for Canadian Training Command within the air force arm of the Canadian military.

As I noted in an earlier publication:

Squadron Leader Paul Bissky of the Royal Canadian Air Force was the investigating officer on the case. His reports to Canadian Forces Headquarters are remarkable in their detail and candid comments about his investigations. But complicating his reports is the fact that Bissky was a devout skeptic, and told researchers he "didn't believe in that stuff [UFOs]." How much his personal opinions may have influenced his reports is not known.

That Bissky thought Michalak was a liar is an understatement. At one point during his investigation, he bluntly asked Michalak if he had been drinking on the day of the experience. He believed that Michalak was hallucinating because of some alcoholic stupor. Bissky appeared sure that alcohol was somehow involved with the case, and he cleverly manipulated Michalak into proving he was not a teetotaller. In his first report, Bissky noted:

"Although the authenticity of Mr. Michalak's report had not been questioned up to the second search, he had appeared genuinely sincere and his story was convincing to those who heard it for the first time, some doubts arose during the last search. . . . Mr. Michalak had staunchly denied having consumed alcoholic beverages at any time while at Falcon Lake. Yet a reliable witness at Falcon Lake advised that he personally had served Mr. Michalak 4 or 5 bottles of beer the night prior to the trip into the bush."

This is an odd note, since the "reliable witness" was obviously a bartender, and Bissky did not state how his source's own reliability had been established. Bissky seemed to want to prove there was at least one inconsistency or lie in Michalak's testimony, and the issue of alcohol consumption seemed to be a choice target. (In retrospect, even if Michalak admitted drinking several beers, there would still remain the problem of the other physical and physiological evidence; Michalak's drinking probably had no bearing on the case itself.)

In his later report, Bissky noted several "discrepancies" in Michalak's story, including this following detailed passage which gives us some insight into Bissky's RCAF investigation:

". . . it was proven that Mr. Michalak does consume alcoholic beverages, in fact to some considerable extent. After coming out from the alleged site, Mr. Michalak was purposely taken to the same bar where he had consumed the five beers the night prior to his initial encounter on the 20 May 67. Although he declined the offer of beer (it could not be determined whether this was done because he did not like beer or not), he did accept the offer of several rye "Presbyterians" (rye and half water/ginger ale mix), in fact he even went so far as to purchase a round of drinks for the group. He appeared to hold his alcohol reasonably well, although it was noticed that he did loosen up after the third drink and become quite gay, telling numerous stories. When questioned about the vast discrepancy in direction the object departed, he just shrugged his shoulders and laughed it off. When last seen, he was in a jovial mood, remaining at the bar, presumably to await the arrival of his two assistants from Winnipeg. Hence it is very possible that Mr. Michalak may have had a private party on his own the night of 19 May, which in turn could have caused hallucinations the following day."

In other words, Bissky resorted to trying a tried and true method for extracting information from informants: get them drunk. Bissky tried to get Michalak drunk in order to break his story. Rather than admit defeat when it didn't work, Bissky simply suggested that Michalak had been having hallucinations because of a presumed (but unproven) party the night before. Of course, this explanation wouldn't explain the physical or physiological evidence, but why let that slow down an investigation?

Anyway, what is most interesting is that while the vehemently skeptical Bissky was working on the case, he was also himself a UFO witness. Documents I located within the Condon Committee files on the Michalak case include some correspondence between Bissky and Roy Craig of the University of Colorado UFO project, dated 12 July, 1967.

In this letter, Bissky helpfully provides Craig with details on not only a visiual sighting of UFOs over Winnipeg by military personnel but also several radar observations of UFOs. What's more, it seems as though the visual observations may be of the objects detected on radar.

Unfortunately, the letter is not accompanied by a supporting document that is mentioned, which must contain further details. What we can gather is that Bissky is writing Craig as a follow-up to a telephone conversation during which he reported a UFO seen on July 6, 1967.

Bissky noted:

As mentioned in our telecon, there was a similar sighting on the night of 6th July as well, and which I had the opportunity of observing myself, after having been alerted by [Group Captain] Fitzgerald. This sighting was also made by Squadron Leader Gary McCowan plus a group of approximately 5 visitors.

Okay, nothing much. Just a UFO seen by eight people including at least three military personnel, one of whom was a devoted skeptic.

Bissky then noted:

Unfortunately, my observation was only of the first object. The brighter and the first to cross the Winnipeg area was observed to be travelling at a high speed, apparently paused for approximately 15-20 seconds directly above Winnipeg, then headed off in an ESE direction, thus altering from the original west to east line of flight. The second object, which was not quite as bright, appeared to be travelling along the same flight line west to east but at approximately twice the speed of the first, overtaking the first just over Winnipeg and continuing on.

So, as we can piece together, Fitzgerald called to Bissky and they and several others watched two UFOs pass over Winnipeg. The second could very likely have been a satellite. The other one. which changed direction, was not.

But then the following note:

On the afternoon of 7 July, I was advised of several radar returns picked up by the Winnipeg DOT [Department of Transport] and the Kenora radars that were unidentifiable.

Unidentified radar returns. Ho-hum. Bissky then quotes a report from Winnipeg radar "Which was made on an aircraft that departed Winnipeg at 1950 local time, (or approximately 060400Z)."

This is odd, because the local and Greenwich times don't match at all for that location. We therefore don't know the time of the UFO sighting by the eight witnesses, nor the time of the radar observation, although in context the two incidents may have been concurrent.

At any rate, the radar operator in Winnipeg reported:

I was operating at the Winnipeg east enroute radar position monitoring flight Air Canada 916, DC-9, Winn. to Montreal, climbing to 29,000 when I observed a radar return 11 o'clock his position at a distance of 70 miles from Winnipeg on an approximate bearing of 093 degrees. The target was observed from 2 miles between sweeps until the last observed sweep vicinity of Vivian [Manitoba, near the American border] showed a distance of ten miles. The target was lost as mentioned in the vicinity of Vivian in the ground clutter breaking through on our radar. The return was observed by three other controllers and two technicians, the latter felt the return was not a "running rabbit" type of interference.

Bissky then added:

The interpretation of the milages [sp.] and sweeps is an acceleration from approximately 720 knots to 3600 knots in one minute 10 seconds. There were no visual reports on this radar report.

So, despite Bissky's note that the radar observations were not confirmed visually, he and several others may have seen something the same night.

He then gave details on three additional UFOs detected by Kenora radar on July 6th, the same night as the visual observations:

070324Z July
Observed target NE bound by the Kenora VOR on the 263 radial at 45 miles. Proceeded on the 263 radial to 40 miles turned SW bound to fifty miles.

070335Z
One followed Air Canada flight 405, turned NE bound to the Kenora VOR and disappeared off the scope.

070353Z
One followed AC flight 927 NW bound to the Kenora VOR, turned NE and again disappeared off the scope.

Bissky concluded:

In each of these disappearances, the objects faded from the scope as opposed to running out of range which would indicate they either climbed out of the operating range (approximately 40 to 43 thousand feet) or descended to below radar pick-up. No speeds were given.

So, the space of about half an hour, three UFOs were seen on radar.

What's curious is that Bissky made no effort to further investigate these cases, but simply gave details to the Condon Committee, which as far as can be discerned, did nothing with them. What's more this is the same Bissky who was so convinced there are no such things as UFOs and Michalak couldn't have been telling the truth about his encounter that he tried to get the poor civilian drunk.

Two visual observations by military personnel and four radar observations, all on the same date and possibly about the same time.

But they were never fully investigated.

A few more UFO reports

2010-09-07T10:25:00.001-07:00

I was contacted by a reporter yesterday regarding a photo of a UFO that was taken September 5, 2010, at Steep Rock Lake, Manitoba. Some nature photographers were doing some time exposure shots of the lake and landscape when a slow-moving fiery object photobombed the scene.

It's a nice shot, even with the UFO trail that extended through half the photo. The exposure was 273 seconds long and was started at 9:26 pm, facing west. The object was calculated to be visible for a considerable length of time, but less than a minute.

The photo can be seen with the accompanying article here.

The "bright orange object came into view from the east and appeared to descend as it moved westward, underneath the cloud cover. It then appeared to level off and then disappear behind the cloud."

The object appeared to "flicker" like "fire" with a "wobbly" path, and "the 'flame' burned and flickered constantly as it moved." It also made no noise.

Since the object was seen for a long time, a fireball or bolide could be ruled out. It was also under the cloud cover. This effectively ruled out a jet contrail illuminated by the setting sun, as one person suggested on the newspaper website. Nice try, though.

I suggested it could have been a Chinese lantern, as they're starting to be more popular with vacationers this year. Its appearance is also consistent with what was observed, although it would have been nice to get some wind direction data.

Sure enough, a few people commented that they had released such lanterns in the area this summer. I think there's enough evidence that this UFO photo case can be closed.

I received a second case, this one through Transport Canada. It's also old: it happened on the night of April 30, 2010, at 11:30 pm, in Montreal, Quebec, but reported today, September 7, 2010.

The report notes that a white object like a "moon" was seen low in the sky, estimated only 200 feet over trees. This object "followed" the witness three times that night over a half-hour period.

A check of star charts shows the Moon was in fact rising about that time low in the south east and might have indeed been the culprit.

Two for two.

Project Grudge Conclusions: Military Personnel Make Lousy Observers

2010-09-01T08:22:00.000-07:00

Just doing a bit of poking around in the Project Blue Book archives online, and I came across the table of cases examined by Project Grudge. Serious researchers have seen this before, of course, but it's interesting to note the breakdown and comments again just to put things into perspective. Debunkers like to note that official studies of UFOs found there was no value in UFO reports, but the USAF project contains wording that suggests otherwise.

To whit:

According to these findings, 78, or almost one-third, of the 237 incidents yet remain without an appropriate hypothesis for explanation. It is likely, of course, that with additional evidence that a number of those included in class 3a would be easily explained (some of them, probably, astronomically). There are, however, at least 48 incidents in which the evidence, if correct as given, does not fit any simple explanation, and a number of these were reported by presumably well-qualified observers.

(Project Grudge Report, Page 114 in the Maxwell Blue Book Files)

Categories 3a and 3b were labeled "Non-astronomical, with no explanation evident," and 3a was further noted as: "Lack of evidence precludes explanation," while 3b was: "Evidence offered suggests no explanation."

Category 3b, therefore, included cases for which there was significant information for positing an explanation, and not "Insufficient Information" as debunkers have sometimes claimed. But as the author of the report hinted, the only possible way to explain the cases was to suggest that the cases were not "correct as given." But then why include them in this second category at all, when category 2 was "Non-astronomical, but suggestive of other explanations" and these could have been put there? In other words, the reports had enough information content that if the UFO was a plane or balloon or star, it would have been listed as a possibility and not put in category 3b. Yet 3b made up 20 per cent of the total batch of UFO cases.

If debunkers are correct, then, at least 20 per cent of the (largely military) UFO witnesses were mistaken in their observations. But what does that say about the general reliability of military observers? One in five cannot be trusted to be good observers? It's long been conceded that pilots, both military and commercial, can make misidentifications of ordinary phenomena when reporting UFOs, but one in five? One would have to question every observation by military personnel, whether regarding a UFO or conventional military targets.

UFO detected by USAF radar in Manitoba in 1956

2010-08-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

In going through some old directories on a computer hard drive before junking it, I found the following email that had been bad-dated and was still "unread" in the Inbox. It was from 1995, almost 15 years ago!

I have tried contacting the individual, but no luck as of yet.

The story is about a radar operator who witnessed a UFO on his scope back in 1956.

I was in the United States Air Force. I was stationed at the 916th AC&W Site located near Beausejour and at Milner Ridge, Manitoba. It was in the fall of 1956 when this happened.

You are probably wondering how an American was stationed there. During that era, we were in the middle of the cold war with the Warsaw Pact. Missiles were pointed over the pole and threats, real or imagined were on everyone’s mind.

I was on duty in the radar operations building manning the scopes and calling in plots of aircraft in the area. I noticed a return in the Northeast quadrant approx 175 miles from the site. It was a strong return, therefore I was convinced it was an aircraft. The next trace showed it very far from the first plot. Since there was no other traffic in that area and seldom any was there, I suspected I had a false signal. In order to confirm, I checked the HRI (height/range indicator). In plotting the track thru dead reckoning, I saw the return at 75,000 feet. When it came up on the scope again, I set another dead reckon and spotted it again at the same altitude. The speed was in the range of 6,000 to 7,500 knots. That was faster than any known aircraft at the time.

If I had not confirmed its location on the two independent systems, I would have just passed it off as a malfunction. I did track it for about 10 minutes. It flew a fairly straight course with some variation but always at the same altitude. The closest it came to our location was in the vicinity of MacArthur Falls area.

I reported this to the controller who called it a malfunction. I did not think he was convinced until the next day when I was called in to his office and instructed not to disclose what I claimed to have seen.

I have thought many times about what happened but rarely mentioned it for fear of being labeled some sort of nut.

I am a rational, reasonably intelligent person who would gain nothing by fabricating this story.

I have withheld the man's name; if I hear anything more from him I will note his response.

Recent Canadian UFO Reports (August 2010)

2010-08-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

This is just a sampling (not the complete list) of UFO reports acquired recently by Ufology Research.

July 2010, 7:00 am, Porter Creek, Whitehorse, Yukon
A football-shaped object, greenish-silver in colour, was moving across the sky, reflecting the rising Sun as it flew. It had no wings or other protuberances and soared for about 90 seconds before it was lost to sight in the distance.

August 1, 2010, midnight, Regina, Saskatchewan
Triangular-shaped group of lights seen between trees. Moved slowly, with no sound, and disappeared suddenly. (UFOINFO)

August 2, 2010, 2:27 pm, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Photo taken of interesting clouds. When examined 2 weeks later, a “rod” was visible. (MUFON)

August 5, 2010, midnight, Sauble Beach, Ontario
Three orange lights in a line appeared and flew in an irregular pattern over the lake, then shifted to form a triangle. (Pararesearchers)

August 6, 2010, 10:00 pm, Delta Beach, Manitoba
Starlike light in west began moving up, down, zig-zagging, etc. (Pararesearchers)

August 8, 2010, 11:50 pm, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Faint, flickering light in WSW, stationary. Apparently not a star or planet. (UFOROM)

August 8, 2010, 9:15 pm, Edson, Alberta
Stationary light in western sky, long before sundown. (UFOROM)

August 9, 2010, afternoon, Mississauga, Ontario
Witnesses noticed four grayish-black disc-shaped objects overhead, moving together in apparently random pattern; were rotating and moving away. Photo taken. (MUFON)

August 9, 2010, 3:00 am, Gypsumville, Manitoba
Witness was “having trouble sleeping and felt like I was being watched” so he looked out of window, saw a ball of light over trees. The top-shaped object was flashing colours and moved irregularly in sky for three hours. Video taken. (UFOROM)

August 10, 2010, Quebec?
“Rod” UFO in video of aircraft.
(http://pindz.blogspot.com/2010/08/large-ufo-rod-and-airplane-quebec.html)

August 10, 2010, morning, Trois-Rivieres, Quebec
Several people watched an intense red light low to the horizon. Through binoculars it appeared to be a triangle with blue lights on its corners. Then changed shape to a circle with white dots around it. It was visible for several hours. (UFOROM)

August 11, 2010, 9:00 pm, Gimli, Manitoba
Dozens of people reported seeing a series of bright lights moving over the lake. At one point, a large object like a bright “turnip” was seen flying over the lake. Investigation confirmed that Canadian Forces were doing training over the lake that night, dropping flares and flying patterns.
(UFOROM)

August 12, 2010, 10:45 pm, Bowmanville, Ontario
While watching the stars, witnesses saw them appear to be blocked out by a large dark shape like a boomerang, slowly progressing across the sky. (Sightings.com)

August 14, 2010, 3:00 am, Miramichi, New Brunswick
A bright light like a spotlight slowly and silently progressed across the water, made a right angled turn and flew eastward out of sight. (Media)

August 16, 2010, late evening, Hamilton, Ontario
A witness using binoculars to observe the stars saw a “silver disc-shaped object move away from the star cluster” and head east. It then stopped, then flew off at a 45-degree change in direction. (MUFON)

August 16, 2010, 1:00 am, Whitehorse, Yukon
Dozens of people witnessed a bright fireball streaking overhead, heading north, although some said it was going east. (Media)

August 17, 2010, 9:00 pm, Leamington, Ontario
A bright red light flew towards some witnesses, and when it was close enough, they could discern a dark disc-shaped object that had a red light rotating around its edge. It went NW to SE. (Sightings.com)

August 18, 2010, 2:00 am, Chilliwack, British Columbia
Several callers to a late-night radio show reported seeing “some crazy-ass lights hovering over the lake” low in the east. (Media)

August 20, 2010, dusk, Lillooet, British Columbia
Two lights were seen moving in the sky, moving west to east. In mid-flight, one of the lights dimmed and made an abrupt change in direction to the south. (Media)

August 23, 2010, 10:00 pm, Mississauga, Ontario
An object that looked like “the shield of a space shuttle” was seen flying from east to the northwest. “It had a look like a skirt at the bottom with an extremely bright white light beneath.” The witness noted: “It definitely was not an aircraft… as it had no sound and it was too far up and going too fast until it disappeared high in the west. (UFOROM)

Another "Fortean" Vacation! Part 2

2010-08-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

After leaving the "haunted" fishing lodge, we drove south to a tiny, out-of-the-way town called Soudan, Minnesota. Why? Well, it sits up on top of a low mountain, overlooking lush valleys, in the midst of a rich lode of iron ore.

At least it was rich. It was mined for decades until it finally closed in the 1960s when it became too expensive to operate and work the rapidly depleting ore.

But what do you do with a 50-year-old decommissioned iron mine?

The town had a brilliant idea. It marketed the mine to FermiLabs, which was looking for an underground location for its high-energy physics laboratory. Yes, it's now a neutrino detector!

They built a huge lab, about the size of a 747 hangar, about a half-mile down at the bottom of the main mine shaft.

They invite people to visit the site and go on tours of the area, including descending in the original mine car.

In the control room of the mine, at the top of the mountain. A guy sits in a chair at a set of controls which guide the cables hoisting the mine car as they wind on a huge drum. One ding from below means send it up. Two dings means send it down.

The cables came out of the building through a rusty guide cage...

... across to a pulley above the mine car dock.

All in the open, exposed to the elements.

Well, we had to go. Donna was a bit reluctant, since going down into the mine is a three-minute roller coaster ride straight down (well, at 80 degrees, actually) in a small, six-person, rattling and clanking metal box in almost complete darkness as you plunge into a hole in the ground. It's not for the claustrophobic.

All suited up and ready to spelunk.

Opening the gate of the cage...

... to let the previous tour out.

This is what it looked like at the bottom:

And yes, there were bats. Everywhere. Apparently, they sometimes even get into the mine car and fly around while you're going down. In complete darkness.

But usually, they just attached themselves to the walls of the cave and looked cute.

At the bottom of the shaft, the cave opens up into a series of caverns, and the one into which we were led was entered through a pressurized doorway.

Inside, it was like any physics lab on Earth, with offices, computers and cubicles, except for the hundred-foot-long stack of metal plates on its side that was the detector. There was a canned presentation, and then you could watch the detector register particle impacts from both Fermilab itself (near Chicago, sent through the Earth) or from above, from cosmic rays passing through the half-mile of solid rock.

The giant cosmic ray detector.

Very, VERY cool. (It was supercooled, as a matter of fact.)

So, from ghosts to "ghost particles," it was an interesting day. And our vacation was still just starting...

Britain following Canada’s lead in releasing UFO files

2010-08-05T14:11:00.000-07:00

I sent this news release out today in response to media stories about the British MoD release of yet more UFO files:

Britain following Canada’s lead in releasing UFO files

As reported by various news agencies, the British government has released another batch of files regarding UFOs, Held by the Ministry of Defence, the 5,000 pages in 18 separate files include correspondence from British citizens inquiring about UFOs and also reporting sightings to the MoD “UFO Desk.” The files cover the years between 1995 and 2003.

In Canada, similar files have been available for some time, and are accessible through the National Archives in Ottawa. Analyses of the Canadian UFO reports have been conducted since 1989 by the unaffiliated group Ufology Research, based in Winnipeg. Its annual studies of the numbers and distribution of UFO reports in Canada are available at: http://survey.canadianuforeport.com

A 20-year longitudinal study of Canadian UFO reports covering the years 1989 to 2008 used data on more than 8,500 UFO cases, including many sightings reported to government and military agencies such as National Defence, Transport Canada, NavCan and the RCMP.
The study can be accessed at: http://bit.ly/dk2pN9

British media are noting that in the case of England, “Reports of sightings of UFOs peaked in 1996 in the UK - when science fiction drama The X Files was popular.”

It should noted that this was not the case in North America, where The X-Files TV show was produced and where it likely had the most influence. In both Canada and the United States, data shows that the number of UFO reports steadily increased during 1995 and 2003, dissimilar to the MoD results.

UFO sightings continue to be reported throughout the world in significant numbers. In Canada, the peak year was 2008, when more than 1,000 sightings were reported, and 2010 may reach a similar mark.

It should be noted that the large numbers of sightings do not prove alien visitation or mass hysteria. Most sightings can be explained or have insufficient information for conclusions but an approximately residual 5 per cent of unexplained cases each year suggests there is a real phenomenon worth studying in a scientific manner.

For more information, please contact Chris Rutkowski, research coordinator for Ufology Research, at: canadianuforeport@hotmail.com

Review of Leslie Kean's new book: UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record

2010-08-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

A Kean Eye for UFOs

Book review:
UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record
Harmony Books: NY. 2010. 335 pages.

The new book by Leslie Kean about UFOs is a problem. It’s quite unlike most other books about UFOs that have been published in recent memory, and it’s very good. It’s a problem because either every contributor to her edited collection of official testimonies and UFO case histories is a liar or completely misguided, or else she’s on to something important. Something about which scientists and the general public should pay attention.

UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record is a collection of essays, some penned by Kean herself, about officially-documented and investigated UFO cases that were considered unexplained by government and military investigators. And just as the longish title infers, testimony by well-placed individuals who are and were in positions to know the facts and details about significant UFO incidents show that there is something truly perplexing going on in the skies overhead.

This isn’t a book about UFO crashes or Roswell (although it’s mentioned in passing on a few pages) nor is it about abductions by aliens and implants surgically removed from toes and noses. Nor is it about messages imparted by aliens to selected individuals or psychic vectoring of lights by self-declared Terran emissaries.

Kean’s book is about facts. She details what really happened in specific and noteworthy UFO cases that in some instances made worldwide headlines and others were never made public. She cites official documents (not disputed documents) and interviews the military or government officials involved.

Kean’s capability as an investigative journalist is clearly evident throughout the book, and she has no interest in arm-waving exercises to dismiss witnesses’ observations simply on the basis that flying saucers cannot be real. At the same time, she effectively and deliberately distances herself from “undiscriminating UFO groups” and “extremists” who “market themselves as scholars or activists” and who “compound the public relations nightmare that UFOs already face within public discourse.”

In short, Kean’s work is one of the most important works in ufology published in decades. Her background in journalism and her passionate search for the truth has allowed her to seek out respected and staid individuals to tell the story behind what seems to be a most remarkable suppression of events and information.

She starts by introducing Major General Wilfrid de Brouwer, who was in charge of the military investigation of the Belgian UFO wave of 1989 and 1990. He effectively shoots down debunkers’ suggestions that the wave was caused by mass hysteria, helicopters or secret military maneuvers. Then, Captain Julio Miguel Guerra of the Portuguese Air Force describes a UFO which flew circles around his plane in 1982. A team of scientists and military investigators could not explain his experience. Later, Captain Roy Bowyer gives testament to the cigar-shaped UFOs which flew past his commercial aircraft over the English Channel in 2007, and the associated puzzling radar returns.

And so on. Retired military personnel and advisors come forward with statements and new testimony that UFO reports have been filed and investigated by various world governments, long after Project Blue Book declared UFO research as without any merit. Brazil, Britain, Chile, France and other countries have all been relatively transparent when it comes to release of UFO files, and yet, as Kean notes, the United States seems not to have any interest in the matter. Why?

Kean and her contributors all argue that the prevailing attitude of debunking UFO reports, accelerated during the Condon fiasco, should come to an end. They dare scientists who believe the “party line” that there are no credible and well-investigated unexplained UFO cases to wake up and take a real look at the collection of factual reports described in detail in Kean’s book.

If UFOs have no bearing on national security, Kean reasons, then why are military jets scrambled to chase seemingly solid radar returns? If there is no danger to aviation, why are pilots confounded by UFOs on routine flights across the country? Why does the FAA refer pilots to Peter Davenport’s UFO Center? Why wouldn’t the FAA prefer to thoroughly investigate their own pilots’ sightings? In one chapter, new evidence provided by the head of accident investigation within the FAA even suggests that the oft-noted 1986 JAL incident over Alaska was not as easily dismissed as some writers insist. And that “punch-hole cloud formation” over O’Hare? Kean wonders why the FAA didn’t investigate the incident in the name of transportation safety, and why won’t a single witness go on record about it?

Beyond documentation of official military and government UFO case investigation, Kean seeks the root cause of cynicism and debunking of UFOs among journalists and academia. Detailed statements by the French COMETA investigators, for example, all scientists in their own right, are diametrically opposite to those made by debunkers. Official conclusions by military and government investigators in several countries collectively call for more serious and objective studies of UFO reports, especially in the light of a lack of explanations for some peculiar cases.

The simple way to debunk Kean’s work is to challenge each and every contributor’s official statements, insisting they are all in error or liars. But this in itself raises an important problem, too. Why would so many well-placed and qualified individuals, most with outstanding service records, make such statements? Not fame, surely. Not for monetary gain. Then why?

Kean carefully crafts her work in a logical and compelling manner, without wide-eyed believers’ fanaticism but with a rational approach that challenges the reader and leads toward her thesis that it’s time for a paradigm shift: a new Kuhnian “scientific revolution.” She restates and improves upon the skeptics’ rallying cry that “extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence” by making a sensible, subtle adjustment: “An extraordinary phenomenon demands an extraordinary investigation.”

Kean argues that, like many other countries around the globe, the United States should create a small official department to investigate UFO sightings in a timely manner and inform the public of details regarding their actions. This would not be simply a “public relations exercise” as Blue Book and been, but a way to reassure a frustrated public that its elected officials and taxpayer-funded military are actually doing their job at protecting American interests.

Kean presents the facts of many remarkable UFO cases, summarized in most instances by the witnesses themselves. Whereas some simply express their bewilderment at what they saw and the way in which official investigation transpired, because they are in positions to know the capabilities and limitations of terrestrial aircraft, they cannot contain themselves from concluding that they could have encountered an alien craft. It’s duly noted throughout the book that only a small fraction of UFO reports are unexplained, and a smaller fraction are thoroughly investigated and studied.

The fact that a real phenomenon is manifesting in terrestrial skies is the main premise of each section of the book. Based on Kean’s presentation, it is a logical and reasonable conclusion. And that’s a problem, because UFOs aren’t real, right?

Summer Reading

2010-07-31T18:01:00.000-07:00

While on our vacation excursion into the hinterland of Minnesota and Wisconsin, we happened upon quite a few bookstores. Darn. Hence, our car was more heavily laden coming home.

Don't ask how many books we bought. It's embarrassing. Our home looks like a cross between Giles' library on Buffy and an audition for Hoarders. (We're not that bad. Yet.)

One amazing bookstore that we found was in Duluth, of all places. It's on the main street that runs west to east and is in an old church. The entire inside of the church, from narthex to nave to choir loft is full of bookcases carefully loaded alphabetically with rare and remarkable books, grouped within the bays and ranges by topic, authors and genre. In addition, there are many antiques that make the place have a very musty, comfortable feel to it. Definitely worth another visit.

The most significant thing about this particular vacation, however, was that I actually had time to read and relax. I used to be a voracious reader, but with life taking some twists and turns, and raising a family and working several jobs, opportunities to read and the ability to keep my eyes open when I had such opportunities meant I rarely could finish a book in a week.

But on this vacation, Donna deliberately scheduled day after day where we simply relaxed. We read in deck chairs at the beach, on our cabin 's deck, and in grassy parks. It was wonderful.

My reading choices were very diverse. If you've seen our collection, you will understand our dilemma of deciding what to read. But I almost randomly picked some recent acquisitions and set about digesting the tomes.

First, The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, a writer for the journal Science. The book is about how each of the elements in the periodic table were discovered, and anecdotes about their discoverers. It's very interesting, but it tends to paint science in a very bad light, with infighting, politics, and egos getting in the way of good science. Scientists are human, after all. The most off-putting thing about the book is Kean's attitude. He comes across as a know-it-all, and virtually sneers at those foolish scientists who delved into alchemy, cold fusion and “pseudoscience” while nevertheless making major chemical breakthroughs.

Next, John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany. Donna's been after me to read this for years, and I simply haven't been motivated to read the whole thing. She said it is on her top ten favourites, and I couldn't figure it out. I keep picking it up and reading a few pages, but it never has grabbed me. So, I set my sights on finishing the damn thing. And you know what? It's great. I still say the movie (Simon Birch) was very good, even though it cherrypicked scenes from the story and called it quits by about a quarter of the way through the book. Irving's book is a brilliant work of writing, and even qualifies as a fantasy/SF novel.

Next, Phoenix Without Ashes, by Harlan Ellison and Ed Bryant. The best part of this book is Ellison's epilogue, in which he tells the true story of how Hollywood ruined his story idea and created probably the worst science fiction TV series in history. Boy, was Starlost bad. So bad, that Ellison insisted his name be removed from the credits.

I also read Science Was Wrong by Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden. Interestingly, this book wasn't in the UFO/paranormal section, where the rest of Stan's books are located. It's found in “science,” which is appropriate, since it's about controversies in science, such as global warming, AIDS, aviation and genetic manipulation, but there's one chapter on UFOs and one on parapsychology thrown in for good measure. Of note is that Friedman's version of the cold fusion story is a bit more objective than Kean's, which is mostly ridicule.

I also read a smattering of books by Kevin Randle, Stan's – uh – friend and colleague in the Roswell UFO crash dialogue. Randle's book Crash is just out, listing and describing most of the known UFO crash stories, of which there are dozens. As with most compilations of things, the book doesn't include several UFO crash cases of which I'm familiar, including the Clan Lake and Etzikom cases, although there are sections on the Shag Harbour incident and a recent non-UFO crash event for which Randle asked my opinion and gave me a nice shout-out.

Randle is also an SF author (yes, he really does have more than 100 books published), and I got his set of The Exploration Chronicles from him at the 2009 MUFON Conference in Denver. The set of four books is composed of: Signals, Starship, FTL and The Gate, chronicling the progress of human space exploration and development. The series spans many generations and years of human progress, if one can describe it as such. It's actually very pessimistic and paints humanity in a dismal light, with constant battles between scientists and nearsighted politicians and bureaucrats. It's a wonder that we make it off the planet at all. It seems very realistic and possible.

Something that struck me while reading the series is that Randle is a UFO investigator and believes strongly that alien civilizations are out there and may be visiting us. Yet his SF series about human exploration of space and contact with aliens, while good reading and very plausible, portrays our venture into the universe as an extension of our progress in the 20th Century. Talk about depressing.

Meanwhile, SF authors like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov, who painted vivid tales of interstellar voyages, human/alien interaction and fantastic trips through time and space, were UFO debunkers, seemingly unable to even consider the potential of possible alien contact with humans today.

That seems odd.

Another "Fortean" Vacation! Part 1

2010-07-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, we made it back, and with stories to tell. Once again, we decided to go on a "Fortean Tour" for our vacation this year. After much web browsing, book scouring and pamphlet poring, we set out on our trip into the American midwest.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010:

Out east from Winnipeg on a morning threatening rain, but nothing manifested. We passed through Falcon Lake, the site of the classic 1967 UFO landing; you can take a horseback "UFO Tour" to the landing site, guided by someone from the Falcon Lake stables. And t-shirts commemorating the event can be bought in the town's grocery. Having been there several times, this was not on our agenda, however.

We took the north bypass around Kenora, where we were almost immediately wiped out by a semi that was passing a slow-moving car by driving in our lane of oncoming traffic! I had to veer onto the shoulder to avoid collision. The Trans-Canada in Northwestern Ontario is definitely as dangerous as its reputation has it!

We turned south from Kenora towards Sioux Narrows, passing some gorgeous lakes along the way as the two-lane road wound through forests. We passed Rushing River, one of my favourite
campsites, but continued south.

We stopped for a break in Sioux Narrows. It kind of reminded me of some place like Golden, BC, surrounded by high hills and nestled in a river valley. (Yes, I know there were no mountains! But the scenery was beautiful and the town has all the tourist trappings and souvenir stands that make it what it is.)

Back on the highway until we reached Fort Frances, ON, and International Falls, MN, a twin town that straddles the border. We can verify that as we were told, the area smells awful, the pulp mills brewing up some seriously noxious odours. The border crossing here is on a bridge. It was about a half-hour lineup to get through customs. Curiously, you can walk on a footbridge to go across for the day, commuting between the two towns being so easy and economical.

Once across, we quickly sped east to the Island View Lodge, a fishing resort that is frequented almost exclusively by those wanting to catch "the big one." I say "almost" because we were there to catch a glimpse of something else: the Island View ghost!

The story we heard was that the ghost of a former owner was haunting a cabin at the lodge. We didn't want to make any inquiries too early, else someone might deliberately give us our money's worth!

Fortunately, we were there for a vacation too, and took advantage of the gorgeous weather and our deck overlooking the lake to do some reading a enjoying the fresh air and scenery. The lodge has a restaurant overlooking the lake, so we went there for dinner and were pleasantly surprised to find it's fantastic! Donna had a duck with wild rice and I had prime rib with walleye fingers (didn't know they had fingers, did you?), and a bottle of champagne.

The dining room, overlooking the lake.

The Madame posing on the resort's deck.

Me, being all relaxed and stuff.

After dinner, we asked our waitress about the ghost and she was very helpful. She brought out a clipping from Minnesota Moments magazine from 1993 in which stories of the ghost were recounted.

According to locals, the ghost is that of Bob Cole, the former owner who died many years ago. Ever since then, many people have had experiences with poltergeist-like effects. A long time ago, someone had been working on a truck's engine and had given up on it at last, because its parts were so corroded and rusted. Suddenly, all by itself, the motor one day started up and ran until the puzzled mechanic stopped it. Of course, the motor never ran again.

Many employees at the lodge have been victims of a playful ghost. Once, a bartender had been using a bottle opener very often one night, having to retrieve it every so often from a hook on a wall. At the end of the night, he couldn't find his keys to the cash register, so he said out loud, "Okay, Bob, help me find my keys!" Suddenly, he heard a jangling of keys behind him, There they were, on the hook behind the bottle opener!

We then began calling out for Bob to appear or give us a sign he was around, to no avail.

Only one person has seen the ghost. As we were staring to check out the next morning, we asked the lodge manager about the ghost. She said that she had seen it once, when she had forgotten something at the reception desk late at night, and rather than turning on the light she just carefully want downstairs. She was shocked to see a ghostly-white figure standing in the gift shop, hovering in the darkness.

The Gift Shop, where the ghostly figure was seen by the manager.

The manager fled upstairs in a hurry. She also said that the odd phenomena seem to center on herself. She said that "things happen around me." She said that every time she walks into the bar, the blender turns on by itself!

Day One completed.

Les OVNI au-dessus Repentigny, Quebec

2010-07-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

..

I received a report about a UFO that broke into pieces over Montreal early this morning.

The date and time given was: 12 July 2010 at 1011 local or 0500Z

The report states:

Observed by several persons and QPP (Quebec Provincial Police) officers, that a single object of a red colour and a blue ring descended at [to?] about 50 metres and several objects [indecipherable] in several directions.

1 object however split in[to] several objects at around 50 metres from ground and a blue colour [was observed?].

The police officers reported no smell of burning was observed [detected?], but all the objects reunited and left.

The police officer has observed this phenomenon and several people [have the] same story.

Seemed like a simple fireball or bolide case, but the line that threw me was that the objects "reunited and left."

I would hope some additional information will be forthcoming on this one.

Great Balls of Fire (or not)

2010-07-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

Late Friday night, July 9, 2010, I received a call from a man who excitedly told me about the white fireballs he and three others had just seen over Winnipeg.

At about 11:55 pm, he and some friends were outside enjoying the warm summer night when they all saw a bright object in the southern sky, in the direction of the airport. He said they saw it zip westward quickly, leaving a bright trail and perhaps even some sparks. This sounded like quite a nice bolide. But then, he said a second identical object appeared a few minutes later, following the same path. This would be very unusual for bolides, but not unheard of.

I made an appeal on radio for additional witnesses and I contacted some news reporters to see if anyone else had reported something similar, to no avail.

Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center was interviewed in the media as saying:

Over the last 48 hours, NUFORC has received almost 100 similar reports of very peculiar events, which have been witnessed across the U. S. and Canada on July 4th, and perhaps on July 3rd, as well. The sightings are a phenomenon for which we have no ready explanation. Many of the reports from both days have been submitted by seemingly serious-minded individuals, many of whom apparently witnessed the events with multiple other witnesses present.

Read more: http://technorati.com/technology/article/independence-day-ufo-sightings-flood-nuforc/#ixzz0tPjbt4E6

In addition, Davenport explained that the reports:

are similar, in that the witnesses have described seeing strange red, orange, or yellow ‘fireballs,’ which have been seen either to hover in the night sky or to streak overhead, sometimes individually, and on some occasions in clusters. In some instances, the objects were observed against a clear, cloudless sky, and in other cases they were observed below solid cloud cover or in broken overcast conditions.

I've been puzzling over these BOLs (balls of light) for years. In most instances, they are obviously bolides, satellites or high-flying aircraft. However, I'm getting more and more reports of BOLs which seem to make right-angle turns, travel one way and then make U-turns, and are motionless than accererate out of sight.

Those are UFOs.

Most of the UFO reports received are simply too incomplete to assess.

A typical case from sightings.com is:

Joliet, Illinois, July 9, 2010, Approx. 11:00 p.m.
My wife, her daughter and her friend were at Chicagoland speedway last night about 11:00 o'clock pm, we started seeing orange lights in the sky coming from the south. First there was 1 then 2 then 3. They would disappear and reappear in a different location. Sometimes closer or higher. The 4 of us watched this for about an hour. When we were leaving, I saw a formation of 5 white lights in an arrow formation with something behind them. It wasn't a plane that I know of or a helicopter or stars or planets.

And similarly:

Harrietsfield, Nova Scotia, July 9, 2010, 10:40 - 10:45 p.m.
I was looking out my window and looked up and saw an orb of light floating just above the trees. It was coming from the west, headed east and I kept my eyes on it until it appeared to just fade away into the horizon over the Atlantic Ocean. It was truly amazing.

I don't find the latter one particularly amazing, but that's just me. Notice how the UFO is called an "orb," which automatically means it is mysterious and otherworldly. It was a distant light, "just above the trees," which to experienced investigators simply means that it was low to the horizon and likely was dozens of miles away.

A quick check of several flight trackers showed that the light could have been any one of at least half a dozen commercial aircraft flying in or out of Halifax, or several airliners overflying the area on the way to Europe. Or not.

As for the Chicago area case, how many more aircraft are in that area at that time of night?

And the formation? How close of a formation was it? A few degrees of sky or 20 or 30 degrees? I sure hope that the investigator remembered to get such details, otherwise the report is of little use to ufologists.

As for those BOLs which seem to make right angle turns or reverse direction, one possibility is that the witness is watching a satellite that enters the Earth's shadow and thus disappears, coincidentally at the same time another emerges, or a high-flying aircraft becomes illuminated.

Of course, not all BOL reports are as easy to come up with possible explanations for. I'm simply urging caution when labeling all BOLs and lights and orbs as "mysterious."

UFOs, yes, certainly. Alien spacecraft, probably not.

The Alien in Alberta

2010-06-29T18:09:00.000-07:00

Look out, Stan Romanek! The aliens have moved to Alberta!

A video recently posted to YouTube is being promoted on UFO fan websites as the "clearest alien footage ever" and it "stuns UFO researchers."

(cf. http://www.allnewsweb.com/page1199999385.php)

The YouTube version is on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axeFnzsg3gI&feature=player_embedded

It has tens of thousands of views already, and it looks like it will soon go viral and capture the imaginations of those who should know better.

One person commented:

"this footage is being looked at by UFO researchers around the world" and "this is the most profound footage ever seen."

Well, de profundis perhaps, anyway. (Translation: "out of the depths of misery.")

Let's list some of what's wrong with this. Let's check for red flags.

1. Posted anonymously. Check.
2. Location not specified. Check.
3. Witnesses were not shocked to see it. Check.
4. No follow up possible. Check.
5. Video not sent to serious researchers. Check.

UFO fan sites should be ashamed of themselves for retweeting and hyping this stuff.

June 2010 UFO Reports in Canada

2010-06-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

To those who asked:

To complement the list of Canadian UFO sightings reported in May 2010, here’s a list of June 2010 cases so far (it often takes another month to get all the reports in and together):

1 June 2010, 12:13 am, Kenora, Ontario
Light slowly zig-zagging across sky, near treeline.

1 June 2010, 10:45 pm, St. Catharines, Ontario
Light in sky “stays in one area” but “moves sorta fast.”

1 June 2010, 10:46 pm, Hamilton, Ontario
“Unfamiliar star” started moving, made 90 degree turns then accelerated out of sight

1 June 2010, 10:56 pm, Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec
Black triangle like “two converging rows of lights” flew overhead, seen for few secs.

1 June 2010, 11:08 pm, Toronto, Ontario
Six or seven flashes of light from an object “skipping” across the sky

5 June 2010, 11:00 pm, Thunder Bay, Ontario
Starlike object began moving, pulsated, made 90 degree turn, flew south

7 June 2010, 10:45 pm, Stratford, Ontario
Fireball flew across sky heading north, seen for few secs.

9 June 2010, 9:30 pm, Dunrobin, Ontario
Odd noise heard, triangular obj. seen hovering over trees, moving slowly east

11 June 2010, evening, Montreal, Quebec
Triangular formations of orbs seen “every clear night”

12 June 2010, evening, Edson, Alberta
Reddish ball seen moving near home; paranormal effects inside house?

12 June 2010, 12:55 pm, Bear Mountain, British Columbia
Metallic cigar-shaped object, cruised silently overhead horizon to horizon

12 June 2010, 3:30 am, Windsor, Ontario
Bright light moved quickly and erratically in sky, “took off”

13 June 2010, 9:30 pm, Dunrobin, Ontario
Bright light hovered for 5 minutes in north

14 June 2010, 4:30 am, St. Catharines, Ontario
Black triangle with lights on corners flew low over homes, “scanning” neighbourhood

14 June 2010, 6:22 pm, Toronto, Ontario
White sphere of light emerged from rainbow; photo taken

14 June 2010, 10:00 pm, Orangeville, Ontario
Bright light in western sky

14 June 2010, evening, Edson, Alberta
“Super white orb” came out of west, moving very quickly, disappeared

15 June 2010, 9:00 pm, Bonfield, Ontario
Bright orange object with short tail flew overhead rapidly

15 June 2010, 10:00 pm, Orangeville, Ontario
Bright light in western sky

16 June 2010, 10:30 pm, Orangeville, Ontario
Bright light in western sky moved back & forth, dropped white flare

17 June 2010, 2:30 am, ??, Saskatchewan
Orange “ball of fire” with blue tint seen through binoculars

17 June 2010, 8:52 pm, ??, Quebec
Bright object flew east, then flew back after one minute; video taken?

18 June 2010, 4:01 pm, Navan, Ontario
Three red lights in triangular formation hovered for 30 minutes, vanished

18 June 2010, 10:00 pm, Orangeville, Ontario
Bright light seen, moved north out of sight

19 June 2010, afternoon, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Group of black spheres, changing shape, high in sky; photos taken

19 June 2010, 11:00 pm, Thunder Bay, Ontario
Moving starlike object made 90 degree turn, headed east, pulsated, vanished

20 June 2010, 9:00 am, Cookstown, Ontario
Two stationary balls of white light in sky, eventually disappeared

20 June 2010, 9:52 pm, Orangeville, Ontario
Bright light seen in sky, moving north

20 June 2010, 1:11 pm, Toronto, Ontario
Odd “structures” appeared in clouds?; photos taken

20 June 2010, 1:41 am, Edson, Alberta
Bright light in sky “whizzed” overhead; video taken

21 June 2010, 4:00 am, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Stationary dark object began emitting light, disappeared

21 June 2010, 11:15 pm, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Three lights in triangular formation traveled over city towards northeast; no sound

22 June 2010, 1:15 am, Trois Rivieres, Quebec
Very bright light moved rapidly in east

24 June 2010, 10:45 pm, Spanish, Ontario
Starlike object “hovered in one spot” in northwest sky, went slowly west, vanished

25 June 2010, 11:47 pm, Whitby, Ontario
White light crossed sky from south to north in about 15 seconds

26 June 2010, 2:54 am, Toronto, Ontario
Three “ships” appeared in sky, flashed lights, vanished after about 30 minutes

26 June 2010, 10:06 pm, Saguenay, Quebec
Bright light low in southwest, moving east, seen for two minutes

27 June 2010, evening, Edson, Alberta
Bright light moving in sky; video taken

I will be discussing some of these in future blog posts.

Stay tuned.

Canadian UFOs in May 2010

2010-06-28T13:44:00.000-07:00

I’ve been contacted several times so far this summer by reporters wanting to know why there are no sightings of UFOs anymore. My short answer is that there are many sightings and reports; it’s just not a popular news topic these days.

I’ll go into detail regarding some of the UFO reports in Canada at a later time. Right now, however, I’ll just give a list of the cases brought to my attention during May 2010:

1 May 2010, 11:30 pm, Edson, Alberta
Bright object “bounced around” in NE sky; video on YouTube

12 May 2010, 9:55 pm, Calgary, Alberta
Two bright green lights flew west over house, descending

12 May 2010, 10:04 pm, Walpole Island, Ontario
Stationary light in west

12 May 2010, 11:18 pm, Riverview, Ontario
Large diamond-shaped object with 6 lights, stopped, changed direction, no noise

16 May 2010, 10:45 pm, Ottawa, Ontario
Black triangle flew overhead from south to north

18 May 2010, 4:20 pm, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
“Bulbous” white object with 2 orange spheres flew in wide arc in distance

18 May 2010, 11:40 pm, Acton, Ontario
Starlike object seen for 1 minute moving towards southeast

19 May 2010, 11:30 am, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Shiny silver object in north flew overhead, split into 2 pieces, photos taken

20 May 2010, 11:30 am, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Shiny silver object in west flew north, photos taken

20 May 2010, 11:40 pm, Port Hawkesbury, Ontario
Bright starlike objects “zipped” in sky

22 May 2010, 10:00 pm, Ottawa, Ontario
Cluster of orange lights moved across northeast sky, changed direction

24 May 2010, 11:30 pm, Edson, Alberta
UFO chased by witness in car; object took off, hovered

28 May 2010, 11:30 pm, Edson, Alberta
Stationary light seen in clouds in north; video posted to YouTube

29 May 2010, afternoon, Toronto, Ontario
Nine people saw three dark, fast moving objects seen in sky; third object photographed

29 May 2010, 12:00 midnight, Belleville, Ontario
Red ball flew from south to north

I list June 2010 reports in my next blog post.

Orbs and UFOs

2010-06-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

Somewhere around two or three decades ago, the age of orbs came upon us.

It started, innocently enough, as ghosthunters examined photos taken in haunted houses and found round, transparent objects floating unobserved by humans.

Example:
http://www.ghostresearch.org/ghostpics/mtthabor.html

I'm not sure why the assumption was made that the objects in the photographs were spiritual in nature, and not just photographic artefacts. There's no question that the belief systems of ghosthunters affected their objectivity, but since image after image showed the same kind of globes, one would think that a photographic explanation would have become apparent.

Instead, we can find many websites such as this one:
http://theshadowlands.net/ghost/orbs.htm

which publish such photos. This one states authoritatively that orbs are: "energy being transferred from a source (i.e. powerlines, heat energy, batteries, people, etc) to the spirit so they can manifest."

What this means is, unfortunately, that many of the photographs that I take on vacation, such as this one inside a bowling alley, also show such orbs. This must mean that this place was haunted too, not that orbs are artefacts.

All is not lost, as many paranormal researchers have pointed out that ob photos are simply problems with digital cameras versus mechanical SLRs:

http://www.castleofspirits.com/orbs.html

On this page, you can see clearly how orbs photos can be created.

Then UFO fans started finding orbs in photographs, too. The origin of calling distant nocturnal light UFOs "orbs" came in the 1990s. One version of the origin is that a group led by Jennifer Jarvis, documenting UFOs over Lake Ontario in 1997 called them orbs in parallel to the lights seen over Phoenix:

http://www.globalserve.net/~mallet/name.shtml

The orbs are viewed anthropomorphically, as if they were actual creatures. Observers report some sort of empathic or actual telepathic communication with them, somehow:

However, the "ORBS" are out there, busy with their "work." Whenever I go to the shore, the lights spin and dance, and a nice warm feeling emanates from "their" direction. (ibid.)

It's common now for UFO fans to call all unusual distant lights "orbs," where previously they might be DDs or NLs.

An interesting example of daylight orbs videoed by a witness:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4394879/amazing_daytime_flying_ufo_orbs_over_japan_2010_edit/

And a nighttime orb video:
http://vodpod.com/watch/3072927-ufo-orb-lights-in-sky-16feb10-tx-us

The assumption by UFO fans is that orbs are definitely alien in nature, and likely physical spacecraft. Headlines like: "UFO Orb-like Scout Ship Flyby Nevada-Arizona" are common on popular UFO websites.

One example:
http://www.nowpublic.com/strange/ufo-ufo-orb-scout-ship-flyby-nevada-arizona

Other examples from popular UFO websites:

Orange Colored Orbs Over Burnham On Crouch Essex UK
Large Reddish Orange Orb Seen Over Toronto Ontario
4 Bright Orange Orbs Over Leeds Road Kippax UK

There are some web pages that talk about orbs as "plasma beings" and sentient creatures of "higher dimensions" popping in and out of our reality.

But speaking of "reality," most UFO orb photos and videos I've seen are simply distant planes, stars and planets, with a smattering of birds (usually seagulls) thrown in for good measure.

However, calling them "orbs" adds an aura of mystery to an otherwise unremarkable phenomenon.

And don't get me started on "rods."

The demise of ufology

2010-06-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

I caused a bit of a stir several months ago when I called UFO case investigation a lost art. I'll go further this time: ufology looks like it's near death.

The bad news is: I'm an optimist.

I was having a conversation with Brian Savage recently, and he made the observation that the UFO phenomenon has been derailed. He was formerly with the Alberta UFO Study Group, an earlier incarnation that produced in-depth investigation reports and scoured government documents for historical Alberta cases. Brian's comment was in reference to the many popularized UFO-related developments over the past 20 years which have destroyed the legitimacy of serious UFO research.

Examples of these derailments include the alien autopsy film, Lazar's Element 115, the strawberry ice cream nonsense, Greer's telepathic vectoring of UFOs, crop circles, exopolitics, Nibiru, and the resurgence of the contactee phenomenon. These and others have served to draw public and popular attention away from serious UFO case investigations and into the realm of wild arm-waving speculation and wide-eyed fanaticism.

It's too bad; it really looked like there was something developing there, for a while.

UFO cases themselves have radically shifted characteristics. Things seemed so simple when Hynek formulated his Close Encounter classifications: CE1 was a sighting at close range; CE2 was a trace case; and CE3 involved seeing occupants. There was no CE4 or CE5, as adopted by some ufologists now, reflecting abductions and contactee incidents. Only three categories, nicely defined and delineated.

The CE2s went extinct first. Ted Philips had several thousand physical trace cases documented by the time crop circles arrived on the scene. Then - poof! No more CE2s. People stopped seeing UFOs landing and taking off; aliens stopped landing their scout craft and leaving behind scorched patches and tripod marks in fields. Instead, mysterious circles (and later, patterns) appeared, almost always without accompanying UFO sightings, and it was assumed that the aliens were using some kind of "rotating vortex" to power their ships.

Then the CE3s went AWOL. No more sightings of landed UFOs where entities were seen exiting and re-entering their crafts. Instead, abductions ballooned in number, eventually overtaking classic CE3s. Really, have you heard of a decent CE3 case recently? No bedroom visitations, no alien faces in windows, no telepathic instructions about saving the human race. Just a simple CE3 observation. No? No.

Even CE1s are mostly gone now, too. Instead, we have YouTube videos of "mysterious orbs" and "Galactic Lightships" seeming to dance all over the pace because the witness couldn't hold the video camera steady. On the other hand, we have goofballs with too much time on their hands using video toasters to create obvious hoaxed UFO videos that experienced UFO investigators can tell are not worth bothering with but go viral anyway, getting retweeted and reblogged everywhere by UFO fans.

But a well-witnessed, well-investigated CE1 case? Rarer than a straight-talking politician or oil executive. Sure, if you look at popular UFO websites that list UFO reports, there are dozens and dozens from all over the world, posted by witnesses. But follow-up to get additional details to make an evaluation, such as direction of movement, where the UFO was in the sky compared with other things, and even an accurate time? Forget it. Onsite investigation? Impossible. Referral to one of the few reliable UFO investigators who lives nearby the witness, to allow proper investigation? Can't, sorry; privacy of witnesses is guaranteed.

So what we have in ufology today is the maintaining of a high number of UFO sighting reports, but a decrease on information content of the cases. Public attention surges when UFO stories in the news go viral, but critical thinking goes out the window.

Part of this is because no one person is viewed as someone who can speak for ufology today. Following the death of Allen Hynek, no one was easily identifiable as someone to take his mantle. (Not even Philip Mantle.) Not Stan Friedman, not Jerome Clark, Mark Rodeghier, not Jenny Randles, not Kevin Randle, not Bill Birnes, not any other of the dozen or so who might (or might not) fit the bill.

(Similarly, who speaks for debunkery? After Phil Klass passed away, is it now Phil Plait? James Oberg? James Randi? Bill Nye? Even Larry King can't decide who is an authority and whom to have on as guests to debate UFOs.)

Poor MUFON and CUFOS, the few remaining doggedly determined UFO groups. They're hanging on, with declining revenue, losing staff and trying desperately to carry on with serious UFO study, when UFO fans have not the slightest interest in that.

Ufology is greatly fractured. With thousands of UFO-related web pages, everyone (and anyone) can be an expert. Anyone can tell you the "REAL Truth" about the aliens' presence on Earth and their nefarious dealings with the government and how Obama is an alien and why I've been chosen as their emissary and why alien hybrids have pale skin and why aliens will arrive in 2012 and where the underwater alien bases are in the Gulf of Mexico and why the hundreds of orbs in my photograph are mental images of aliens and not dust particles and why some UFO craft disguise themselves as airplanes and why chemtrails are not just contrails and why this blog is passing through into another dimension....

Newfie UFOs sill a mystery?

2010-05-28T14:02:00.001-07:00

According to a CBC story today, the Newfie UFOs are still unexplained.

A January 28, 2010, DND document obtained through an AI request (the Canadian equivalent of an FOIA request) noted that:

"The RCMP … is calling the event an unexplained sighting."

Curiously, the bulk of the discussion within the documents deal with the possibility that the UFOs seen by witnesses back in January were rockets or missiles. As I noted in earlier blog posts here in January and February, that's just one possibility. I fact, my own investigation showed there was a stronger likelihood that the UFOs were a bit more prosaic: high-flying aircraft. This was supported by the fact there was another, almost identical but less-publicized sighting about the same time over New Brunswick, which was tentatively identified as an aircraft.

The CBC report notes that:

The government has blocked nine pages and a several paragraphs of the UFO documents from public release.

Without having seen the documents, it's difficult to know why they might have been sanitized. One of my original suggestions is that the UFOs were actually military aircraft on a classified mission. The RCMP, DND and NORAD would therefore state that they had no knowledge of missiles or rockets being in the vicinity. But then, no one asked about aircraft.

As it stands, then, a well-witnessed and photographed UFO sighting is labeled "unexplained" by government officials, and the identity of the objects observed is still a mystery. Further, official documents support the fact that the UFO cannot be explained.

Don't debunkers say there are no good-quality UFO cases that are unexplained?

Oh, and note added in proof: Even though I routinely receive official UFO reports through government channels, I have received absolutely none of the documents regarding this incident.

The CBC story can be accessed at:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2010/05/28/ufo-newfoundland-dnd.html

Why Don't More Astronomers Report Seeing UFOs?

2010-05-14T07:29:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes; the old skeptibunker question.

But maybe there's a simple answer.

The argument as presented by skeptics goes something like this: If UFOs were "real," the most would be seen and reported by those people who spend the most time watching the sky. Originally, the group of people that were considered most likely were astronomers, but it was quickly pointed out that most professional astronomers are too specialized and involved in academia to do much observing.

But amateur astronomers, on the other hand, do spend a lot of time observing the sky. They're the ones who really know what's up there.

A case in point: Ian Shelton made Time Magazine for discovering Supernova 1987a, the brightest of its kind. I went to school with him, and had the opportunity to talk with him about his discovery. When we were in undergraduate astronomy in university, we were in a hallway and saw a poster advertizing a job for a graduate student in Chile, maintaining the University of Toronto's observatory literally on top of an isolated mountain. Already a family man by that point, there was no way I could have considered it, but Ian looked wistful and said, "That sounds neat." He applied and got the job.

Several months later, he was walking between domes on the Chilean mountaintop when he happened to glance upward. Now, you have to understand that Ian was (and is) a very good astronomer. He spent a lot of time observing the sky. He was the best at star-hopping and finding Messier objects and galaxies by eye, and could pick out comets like nobody's business. He looked up into the Chilean sky and knew that one particular star, out of the thousands visible, was out of place.

Ian had discovered a supernova. But he was an amateur astronomer, since he did not have a PhD yet.

It's amateur astronomers who spend time with their eyes glued to eyepieces at 40 below (like I did in my undergraduate years) mapping the Moon's surface. Looking for comets. Timing occultations. These days, a lot of the chore is done by computers and digital imaging devices, but it's usually amateurs who monitor the equipment.

A friend of mine, Dave, is a brilliant amateur astrophotographer. (The qualifier "amateur" hardly seems appropriate.) His photos of the Owl Nebula, the Horsehead and Jupiter's bands are poster-quality. I asked him about his process, and he said that he sets up his equipment in his dark site in Texas before dusk. He waits for darkness, punches the coordinates of the star or galaxy he wants to photograph into the telescope's computer, and makes sure it's centered and focused... and then goes into his warmup shelter and has a beer. Or three. The methodology guarantees success.

But I digress...

It's true; amateur astronomers watch the sky more than most people. Of course, there's fewer of them than there are other people who might casually or accidentally watch the skies, so that's why most UFO reports come from anyone other than amateur astronomers. The other reason is because, as skeptics point out, amateur astronomers can identify most UFOs they see. That is, if the see an object they can't immediately identify, it only takes a minute or two to determine it is a satellite or fireball, of something else. It is true, however, that even experienced amateur astronomers file UFO reports about unusual objects they have seen whilst doing their observing.

But skeptics insist that most "real" UFOs would be reported by amateur astronomers. The reasoning is that if there were any real alien spacecraft approaching Earth, then they would be observed by amateurs' Earthbound telescopes. Also, since amateurs are often blogging or emailing each other about their observations, the news of an anomalous object heading for Earth could not be kept secret. That's how comets are discovered; similarly, asteroids and wayward satellites.

No such discovery has been bouncing around the astronomy ListServs, therefore, there are no alien starships coming to Earth.

UFO buffs, however, note some flaws in the reasoning. First, if we assume aliens are advanced enough to have conquered interstellar space travel, their technology may be more advanced than we can understand. In fact, why couldn't they be here or have come and gone already without our detection? It's kind of Stephen Hawking's suggestion that if aliens are technologically advanced, then they may be very technologically advanced; not just a few hundred years, but tens of thousands, or a million? If our own civilization lasted a million years, can we even conceive of what it would be like?

Secondly, amateur astronomers may be good observers of astronomical objects, but would they be able to identify objects within their own frame of reference? If a UFO flew over their observing site, would astronomers notice it, and if so, report it?

Some note that the tenet that "UFOs are nonsense" among the scientific community is very strong in astronomy circles. Amateurs might be very hesitant to report their observations, thus the percentage of UFO reports among this demographic might be artificially lower than the general population, which has less of a social stigma in this regard.

But another possible explanation was recently noted by my wife, whose insights are always significant. In her research on an unrelated subject, she came across a reference to a famous psychology experiment that may be relevant to this issue.

The experiment was performed and results published by Daniel Simons and Christipher Chabris in 1999. (Simons D J, Chabris C F, 1999, "Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events." Perception 28(9) 1059 – 1074.) They noted:

Our results suggest that the likelihood of noticing an unexpected object depends on the similarity of that object to other objects in the display and on how difficult the priming monitoring task is.

For the experiment, they filmed a scene of several people passing a basketball to one another, and showed the film to a group of participants in the experiment, asking them to note how many times the players in white shirts passed the ball. As much as 70% of the time, the viewers counted the passes correctly, but failed to see the guy in a gorilla suit walking through the scene.

View the clip at: http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/media/ig.html

The phenomenon of inattentional blindness occurs when people are focused on a specific task and ignore other things around them. This could be one reason why so many people can be out observing the sky and fail to see something out of the ordinary flying overhead. This would be most relevant for professional observers of the sky, like pilots, meteorologists and astronomers.

In other words, an astronomer observing the night sky, looking for comets or simply tracking a planet's progress for astrophotography, might not observe a UFO moving in the area. It;s the focus of one's attention that prevents observation of things not of interest. And UFOs are definitely not of interest to astronomers.

Mystery Regarding Official UFO Report

2010-05-14T07:08:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I noted some recent UFO reports in Canada. One of the cases was:

May 5, 2010
2:00 am
Maidstone, SK
"Lots of blinking lights. yellow and red, hovering near the airport. No noise. Lights were present several minutes."

This report had come by way of official channels, i.e. Transport Canada, National Defence or RCMP. In this instance, the report was a CADS (Civil Aviation Directive) Report that normally is filed by a pilot or airport personnel.

The problem is that the report notes it was filed by the "Airport Manager" at Maidstone. The number listed for the observer was the municipal office for the town, and they were baffled.

You guessed it; there is not such position as "airport manager." Maidstone is an unmaintained airport, open to the public and without onsite personnel. In fact, when I contacted the municipal offices, they couldn't think of anyone who could be called a "manager" of the grassy strip.

Even Barb Campbell, longtime area resident and my colleague-in-arms with regard to paranormal/UFO events in SK, and who happens to live in the area, didn't know who might have filed the report. She did, however, send some photos of the little airstrip for reference.

Now, it's common to get anonymous UFO reports from the general public. However, getting one through official channels is another thing.

Recent Canadian UFO Reports

2010-05-10T07:36:00.000-07:00

Some cases that either came to me directly or I found in my net mining:

May 5, 2010
2:00 am
Maidstone, SK
"Lots of blinking lights. yellow and red, hovering near the airport. No noise. Lights were present several minutes."

May 5, 2010
9:30 pm
Lac du Bonnet, MB
While driving down (east?) Highway 317, a witness saw a bright starlike object in the East. After a while the single light became three in a row. The group seemed stationary. Witness did not think the lights were on a plane as they did not move. However, he soon saw they were flying as a group from the East to the Northwest, "smoother than any other plane," then were lost to sight.
(UFOInfo)

May 6, 2010
9:00 pm
Cornwall, ON
A bright light was seen (in the south?), then disappeared. Then a blinking red light appeared and the bright light "came on" again. Video was shot and posted to YouTube, but the image is too faint and the camera was not on a tripod.
(YouTube)

May 9, 2010
2:10 am
Edmonton, AB
A glowing orange sphere was see in the north. No sound was heard as the object moved between two clouds from East to West in only a second, then made a right-angle turn and headed South. The light was then lost to sight.
(UFOInfo)

Boomerang UFO Flew Over Ste. Rose, MB

2010-05-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

A witness reported a detailed sighting to PsiCan.org (thanks Sue!) and I was able to interview him regarding his observation.

It happened on Saturday, April 3, 2010, at about 11:30 am. The witness and his son were on the deck of their home in the town of Ste. Rose du Lac, Manitoba. While casually looking at the sky, they saw "a dark shadow." It moved from the south into view over the roof of the house.

He noted:

We observed the craft together as it passed overhead until we could not see it anymore. As it passed over head I gauged the size of the craft using my fingers and structures as a sizing guide. Guessing the size at about 250 ft wide by 500 ft plus long, I could not believe what I was seeing so close to the ground. The craft passed directly overhead in a straight line at a slow enough speed that I could see some finer details of the craft. It was a long black boomerang shaped Craft. It was about the height off the ground as a small plane would fly - I would guess about a thousand feet off the ground or so. All black in color, no marker lights shining. There were three red glowing round openings under each wing [that were] orange/red in color. They were evenly spaced on the back 2/3 of each wing.

They watched the craft until it disappeared behind the local community hall, where although many people could be heard gathered there outside, no one saw the object pass overhead. The entire duration of observation was only about 8 to 10 seconds before it passed out of sight behind buildings and trees.

The witness noted that on April 18, 2010, he saw another odd object moving in the sky, although at a much higher altitude, with a somewhat different appearance.

It is interesting that the description of the object seen over Ste. Rose is very similar to what was seen over Westlock, Alberta, on April 18th (the day of the Manitoba witness' second sighting. A sketch of the object seen at Westlock is at:

http://www.ufosnw.com/sighting_reports/2010/westlockalbca4182010/westlockalbca04182010.htm

UFO Reported from Edson, Alberta, May 1, 2010

2010-05-04T12:43:00.000-07:00

I received a DND report regarding a witness' sighting of a UFO over Edson, Alberta, on May 1, 2010. The report is actually already on Youtube, with additional information:

I went for my last smoke around 11:30 pm May 1st 2010 saw it, ran in and grabbed my camera. I only wish I had thought of my tripod, but if you turn the contrast up you can plainly see it suddenly jump away from the edge of the outside light. I have a 60X zoom on my cam so its shaky. I used a flashlight to try to coax the thing closer but it it flashed a bit then took off northbound. Im keeping my eyes on the skys from now on with cam in hand big time! Hopefully there will be more vids to come. The first few minutes is the best footage as the thing got further away the camera couldnt pick it up as well, PS my husband says it could be mid air night refueling of a jet, but over Edson?

The video itself is less than spectacular. A distant light videoed without a tripod, bouncing all over the frame, the camera desperately trying to zoom out to infinity and back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5R8i8XHt2g

It was said to move "left to right [then] departed north." Since we don't know what direction it was seen in the first place, this isn't that helpful. The duration is also not given.

So, I called the witness and she used a compass to get an accurate direction for me. The object was low in the northeast at first, then went west to the north compass point, then back to the northeast, went to the NNE and headed out of sight.

Also, she said that the object had started out high in the sky ("up with the satellites"), then she went in their trailer to get her camcorder. When she came out, it was lower in the air, in the northeast.

Videographer's Complaint: Why No Clear Videos of UFOs?

2010-05-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

I was just assisting with a TV interview of a researcher regarding a major breaking news story today (nothing to do with UFOs) when during a break the videographer recognized me from the UFO stuff.

He came up to me and said, "You know, I'm still skeptical about UFOs." He held up his network news video camera. "There are hundreds of guys like me with cameras like these all over the place. Why can't anyone get a really clear video of a UFO?"

I replied. "That's an excellent point."

Then I asked: "So how many really clear videos of the Times Square car bomber did any of the hundreds of people and news cameramen in downtown New York manage to get, especially outside the Viacom offices?"

He harumphed and walked back to the shoot.

Oh, lordy... could Nibiru be real after all?

2010-04-28T13:04:00.000-07:00

Good grief.

According to a paper submitted to the astronomy journal Icarus, our Sun may have a dark companion.

Physicists John Matese and Daniel Whitmire at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette are convinced that cometary deflections and distribution show that there must be a large planet bigger than Jupiter hiding in the Oort Cloud. Matese has been publishing papers on this for decades, and while astronomers aren't completely convinced by his arguments, this latest paper bolsters the probability that there's something big beyond Pluto.

Originally, the premise was that this large companion to our Sun was called Nemesis, but the contactee and ancient astronaut proponents have adopted Nibiru as the name of the rogue planet. If it's only Jupiter-sized, it would barely qualify as a brown dwarf, since those usually are at least ten times the mass of gas giant planets. The only difference is that brown dwarf stars have some degree of fusion going on inside them; Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune radiate more heat than they get from the Sun, but haven't "turned on."

Even if there is a large massive object in the Oort Cloud of comets, it would not be visible to earthbound observers, despite what Nibiru buffs would have you believe. Also, this object would not zip around the Solar System playing billiards with planets a la Velikovsky or Zecharia Sitchin zetatalkers.

The real importance of this paper is that it adds support to the contention that most stars will have planetary systems, bolstering belief that planets are the norm in the universe. And more planets = more possibility of extraterrestrial life.

The Icarus article is viewable at: http://url.ie/5yck

UFO over Westlock, Alberta

2010-04-27T12:12:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting report out of Westlock, Alberta, from April 18, 2010. A man left a message on a UFO website about a large dark, triangular object that he saw moving slowly over his home. The object emitted a dull reddish glow and had three circular things on its underside. He thought it was only about 500 feet above his home at one point.

The report was on UFOs Northwest, an American site that is very good in its scope and approach, classifying cases by location and doing some preliminary evaluation. In this case, the witness left a message on the webmaster's voicemail, and the audio file is linked on the site as well. The eyewitness testimony gives an interesting perspective of what had been seen.

The link is:
http://www.ufosnw.com/sighting_reports/2010/westlockalbca4182010/witnessreport.mp3

Those Crazy Cosmologists

2010-04-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

First Paul Davies, and now Stephen Hawking.

Cosmologists have stated explicitly that extraterrestrial life exists, something that astronomers had speculated about years ago. It's a statistical probability; given that there are billions upon billions of stars out there, it's likely that some have spawned and nurtured life on planets in orbit around them. And at least a small percentage of those planets have advanced life. Hopefully, somewhat more advanced than us.

That's essentially what Hawking asserted. He suggested that aliens likely exist, but that contact with them would be detrimental to our existence. That's because contact between a voyaging race and indigenous entities has always favoured the visitors, at least historically.

What this implies, however, is that Hawking believes interstellar travel is possible, despite apparent limitations of distance and time. Skeptics sometimes argue that aliens could not visit Earth because space travel is prohibitively expensive in terms of time and energy. Therefore, UFOs cannot be spacecraft.

But Hawking, and actually many other scientists, believe that it is possible and practical to travel between the stars. It's an interesting paradox, however, that while they believe aliens exist and have likely developed space travel, few accept the possibility that some UFOs are alien spacecraft.

Davies also acknowledges that we might not recognize alien visitors or their technology because they would be so, well, alien. Yet if that was true, why is the possibility that some odd lights or other objects seen by some Earth observers might be alien visitors seem so ridiculous?

Of course, there is no incontrovertible proof that any UFO sightings were observations of alien spacecraft. But if scientists state that, ipso facto, UFOs are not worth bothering with, then studies of the phenomenon are left in the hands of laypeople.

The Man Who Would Know About Alien Contact

2010-04-08T14:05:00.000-07:00

In compiling information for my next book (titled The Big Book of UFOs and due out Fall 2010), I collected some trivia for a "Did You Know?" section.

One of the documents I found in going through my files at Ufology Research was the Outer Space Treaty. Not well known, the treaty was drafted by a subcommittee of the United Nations and ratified in 1967, and signed by the USA, Soviet Union and United Kingdom. In other words, it's a document of international law.

Buried in dozens of pages of gobbledygook is the following note, found in Part One, Section E, Article 5, Point 3:

In carrying out activities under this Agreement, States Parties shall promptly inform the Secretary-General, as well as the public and the international scientific community, of any phenomena they discover in outer space, including the Moon, which could endanger human life or health, as well as of any indication of organic life.

In other words, if anyone finds or contacts aliens (and presumably UFOs of they are spacecraft), the first person to be notified is currently Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations. Then, the public should be notified, and then the scientific community.

So, the one person who should be informed of any alien contact is Ban Ki-moon. He's the go-to guy.

I don't recall him commenting about evidence for aliens in any of his recent speeches, however.

The good news is that the public is supposed to be informed too.

The text of the complete treaty can be found here:
http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/oosa/en/SpaceLaw/outerspt.html

A "Real" UFO Video

2010-04-08T10:05:00.000-07:00

I've talked about this kind of thing before, but this is the best example in a long time.

These days, pictures are not worth 1,000 words. Especially photos or videos of UFOs. It's bad enough that Photoshop and video suites have allowed idiots to fake most of the UFO visuals that are posted, but even when authentic video or a photo is posted, it's just downright sad.

A case in point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mAHLjD0l7A

The title is: White Glowing ORB UFO turns into a fake plane. Windsor Ontario Canada April 2 2010

The video runs about three minutes, and shows a distant light slowly moving low over some houses. During the video, the witness racks his camera's zoom to the max, causing it to overcompensate and make the light seem to become a large mottled balloon, taking on the shape of the internal camera optics. It's an obvious and basic problem with zooming out to the camera limit.

Even while the video is not zoomed, you can see small flashing lights at either side of the main object. It's clearly a plane, and as the video progresses you can see the wingtip lights get wider apart as the plane passes nearer to the witness.

The witness' interpretation? The "glowing orb: UFO takes on terrestrial camouflage and appears to be an aircraft, although it couldn't possibly be an airplane.

Comments on Youtube include things like "definitely not a plane" and "if it was a plane then why was it sitting for 5 minutes before it started moving?"

Well, that's what planes do and look like when they're approaching.

Such videos proliferate on the Net and get hardcore believers excited while at the same time allowing debunkers to use them to show that UFO buffs are unscientific and unreasonable. It's fuel for both sides, unfortunately.

MoD UFO Files: The "expert"

2010-02-19T14:44:00.000-08:00

Someone sent a ream of letters to the MoD in 1999. He or she offered to help investigate, give advice on how to handle extraterrestrials they might have found, and suggest ways to more efficiently deal with all the reports of spacecraft they were getting.

Here's a sample of his or her missives:

In its standard form letter, the MoD reply includes the statement that it's not interested in UFOs and has "no expertise" in dealing with aliens and flying saucers.

If that was true, the letter writer argued, then how could he (or she) be the expert that he (or she) is? Furthermore, since he (or she) must know more than the MoD about UFOs, they should have asked him (or her) for help.

Can't fault the logic.

Yeah, MoD! What's the deal?

MoD UFO File: Lucifer in the sky with, uh...

2010-02-19T12:19:00.000-08:00

Another goodie from the MoD UFO Files. This one is tucked in with other reports from the year the 2000.

This might explain why the MoD UFO desk staffers might have become jaded after a while.