- Did you see an unidentified flying object touch down
on Okanagan Lake Monday evening? Well, apparently at least three
of your neighbours did and they all managed to track down preeminent B.C.
UFO researcher Brian Vike to report the phenomenon.
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- Late Monday evening Vike started receiving reports of
an unidentifiable fireball hovering over the lake. "Everything
seemed to look good and usually you can tell if it's a hoax or not,"
said Vike, who was furiously contacting local media for help by Tuesday
morning.
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- Kelowna has been a hot spot for Vike who operates a UFO
research organization, HBCC UFO Research, out of his home in Houston, B.C. Back
in 2003 two women reported an incredible alien encounter on a Kelowna street
and it wound up among Vike's biggest cases.
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- The sighting was featured in a CTV special and even wound
up on the Montel Williams show as fodder for a famous psychic. So,
when three sightings were reported on the same night this week out of Kelowna,
Vike figured it was worth some attention.
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- The first sighting was by a woman walking her dog in
Westbank who noticed a fireball that appeared to dive into the lake and
then return to the air. "This thing ended up coming back
out of the water and started to hurl toward a different looking object
very high in the sky, which is totally bizarre," said Vike.
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- An excerpt from the email she sent the UFO researcher
shows just how upsetting the episode was for the pet owner.
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- "OK, I don't know what happened last night but it
was the most frightening, incredible, and down right terrifying thing
I have ever seen," she wrote. "I ducked for cover thinking
of a meteor or asteroid or something. I started to freak out and yell and
as I was standing up, something came literally shooting back out of
the water and I saw it start to hurtle towards a different looking object
very high in the sky."
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- The sighting reportedly occurred at 11 p.m. Vike does
not give out the names of those who make reports to protect their privacy
but he does go to great lengths to verify their claims.
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- Earlier this months he was featured on Castanet and is
still going through the material he received after the story hit their
web site and he is working on several reports he received on Father's Day
from Trail, B.C.
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- Apparently an airborne craft shook residents from their
beds in the Kootenay town, prompting a hunt for UFOs on local radio and
even in the newspapers, he said. But this week's incident in
Kelowna has him unusually excited.
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- "They saw what appeared to be a Star Wars movie
full of bullets and blasters, kind of thing and I've had reports from other
areas similar to what they're talking about," he said.
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- A second report from the Mission area noted the image
was accompanied by a sonic boom and yet another report has come in since
then.
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- Local RCMP did not receive any unusual calls Monday night,
to the best of the media spokesperson's knowledge. And nothing usual appeared
on Navigation Canada's radar. The air traffic control tower
at Kelowna International Airport closed just shortly before the sightings
occurred.
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- "I checked with the area control centre. Now they
only have radar for planes' transponders and so if it was a UFO it didn't
have a transponder on. So no, we have no reports of any unusual aircraft
in the area," said Ron Singer, Navigation Canada communications.
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- From this point forward, Vike will be combing his sources,
checking with military contacts, police and beyond to see what he can dig
out. If anyone can tell him what was going on in Kelowna's skies
Monday night, he can be reached at hbccufo@telus.net.
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