SIGHTINGS


 
More Than 225,000 Atlantic
Canadians Have Seen UFOs
By Gina Miller
The New Brunswick Telegraph Journal
www.canoe.ca/TelegraphJournal/news.html
From Stig Agermose <Stig_Agermose@online.pol.dk>
11-10-98
 
The Book: Maritime UFO Files
The Author: Don Leger
 
Harriet (last name unknown) was 15 and living in a fishing village west of Halifax when she saw her first UFO. Years later, when she was married, she and her husband Ray awoke in the night to discover their room was full of fog, or "mist" as Ray defined it.
 
Ray remembers being paralyzed but capable of discerning multicoloured lights flashing. Harriet recalls walking through a thick fog while Ray lay on the bed. Shortly thereafter, Ray discovered an odd scar on Harriet's lower back.
 
Neither Harriet nor her mother remember how or when the scar appeared on Harriet's back, but the size and mark is consistent with other scars documented in alien abduction cases all over North America.
 
According to a new book, Maritime UFO Files by Don Leger more than 225,000 Atlantic Canadians have seen what they consider to be an unidentified flying object - known as UFOs.
 
On top of that, some 54 per cent of Canadians who participated in a poll carried out by Manitoba Astronomer Chris Rutowski believe that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and some 35 per cent of those polled believe that intelligent life is visiting us now.
 
Mr. Leger lives in Bedford, N.S. A former pilot and now a civil servant, he has been researching UFO phenomena for six years. He has culled his information from a vast and shadowy nest of military and RCMP documents. Mr. Leger's book begins its catalogue of UFO sightings and alien abductions in the 1950s. From here he chronicles decades of first-hand accounts made by scientists, ordinary citizens, pilots and RCMP officers.
 
There is a commonality of experience in most of the accounts. Bright lights hover in the sky. Time lapses and the people who have seen or felt the presence of UFOs are confused and cannot understand how the hour has leapt ahead or what happened during that time.
 
One experience is particularly common: UFOs don't like cars. There have been several reports of UFOs chasing vehicles, frightening drivers into cross-country high-speed chases. Drivers report that they found themselves careening along country roads at 125 kilometres per hour in vain efforts to outrun gleaming orbs, or saucers in the sky.
 
In October of 1976, Joseph Robichaud, 26 years old at the time, filed a report to the RCMP Constable J.A. St. Pierre in Richibucto.
 
"At 3:30 a.m. on Oct. 3 1976," reported Mr. Robichaud, "I received a call from Rejean Emery Robichaud stating something unusual had happened to him. He asked me to meet him... on Highway 480.
 
"When I arrived at the site he was waiting there for me. There was no smell of liquor on his breath and his eyes were clear and normal. He did not seem to be under the influence of any kind of drug. He was, however, very pale and nervous, and appeared to be quite frightened. There were no clouds, there were quite a few stars in the sky, and the temperature was quite cool."
 
Mr. Robichaud told Joseph Robichaud that when he drove down Highway 480 in Kent County at approximately 3 a.m., he noticed a red, glowing object in the sky approximately 6 to 8 kilometres south of him.
 
He turned off the lights and engine of his car to get a better look at this stationary object, which was when the UFO started to move slowly up and down in the sky then headed north toward Mr. Robichaud.
 
At this point, Mr. Robichaud panicked, turned his car back on and headed east with the UFO in hot pursuit. The red glowing disc caught up to him very quickly despite the fact that Mr. Robichaud was reported to be travelling at speeds of 185 km/hr on the treacherous Highway 480. Eventually, with the UFO hovering above him, Mr. Robichaud arrived at a small group of houses. He slammed on the brakes, and ran from the car to take refuge. The UFO, he reported "stopped at about 91 metres from him and hovered silently over the pavement about 6 metres in the air.... The UFO was about the size of a house, and was red in colour similar to burning coals in a fire... Finally it took off into the night sky."
 
Mr. Leger believes that Mr. Robichaud's story has credence given that he was up-front with the RCMP about the speeds he was travelling in the night. Furthermore, he showed no signs of drinking or narcotic abuse and appeared genuinely frightened by his experience.
 
Throughout the 1970s, reports of UFO sightings appeared never-ending.
 
*In 1970 a precision radar painted a large object at CFB Shearwater, at an estimated altitude of 2,500 feet.
 
*For more than one week in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia a UFO was sighted by a number of individuals from Colpitts Settlement to Moncton, to Sackville to Falmouth, N.S. The UFO, Mr. Leger writes was reported to be "oval shaped, similar to a bathtub, and it had two reddish coloured lights shining downward."
 
*In 1977, Rosemary Anger of Bedeque PEI, called the Summerside detachment of the RCMP to report that she and her two daughters had observed a UFO which passed over her car at a height of approximately 15 metres.
 
*In December 1979, two different families - the Bartons of Segmour Point, outside Saint John and the Schwartzes who lived to the northwest of Fredericton - reported that they saw a flame-coloured UFO break up and fall over the Kennebecasis River on December 23 (according to the Bartons) and on December 24, near Fredericton (according to the Schwartzes).
 
The list of sightings tapers off in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1994, writes Mr. Leger, the RCMP stopped reporting public sightings, deeming that they "should be kept confidential to protect the identity of the witness."
 
Despite the high number of UFO sightings in Atlantic Canada, most go unreported, writes Mr. Leger. Which explains why from 1947 to 1988 only about 300 Maritime cases are on file with the National Research Council in Ottawa.
 
Most people, says Mr. Leger, will not report what they have seen for fear of ridicule within their community. Nevertheless, of the cases he has researched and the witnesses he has interviewed, each case has led to five others and Mr. Leger writes that he is concerned about how pervasive the sighting appear to be and how deeply they affect individual families.
 
Mr. Leger has no conclusions at the end of his research, except that it is unfortunate that people do not have a forum to seek explanations for what they have seen. In the end, he concludes that there is more to the issue of UFO sightings - particularly in Atlantic Canada - then we have ever realized. Till we do come to some conclusion or resolution, the M-Files will continue to amaze and frighten the people who see UFOs in the night-time skies.





SIGHTINGS HOMEPAGE