Thursday, July 02, 2015
The M-Files: UFOs in Manitoba
The M-Files: UFOs in Manitoba
The annual Canadian UFO
Survey, prepared by Winnipeg-based Ufology Research, has been collecting data
on reports of unidentified flying objects since the late 1980s. Its 25-year
analysis of Canadian UFO cases looked at about 15,000 reports from coast to coast,
with an average of several hundred per year. Last year, Ufology Research’s 2014
Canadian Survey studied more than 1,000 UFO cases reported in Canada, or almost
three cases each day.
But what about Manitoba, by itself?
Last year, in 2014, there were 44 UFO sightings reported
in Manitoba. The number per year has varied from as low as only six in 1999 to
as many as 124 in 2012. During the 25-year Ufology Research study, covering
1989-2013, there were 1,075 UFO reports from Manitoba.
However, Ufology Research originally had been the local
provincial group Ufology Research of Manitoba (UFOROM), created in 1976 through
the encouragement of the US-based UFO organization, the Center for UFO Studies
(CUFOS). Ufology Research thus also had access to the UFOROM cases for
analyses.
Although unusual objects in the sky have been seen and
reported throughout history, the “modern” UFO era began in 1947 when pilot
Kenneth Arnold reported seeing several metallic objects flying over Mount
Rainer in Washington. In subsequent years, the then-called “flying saucers”
were reported around the globe. Not surprisingly, many sightings were reported
in Canada, and many were by observers in Manitoba. The infamous Project Blue
Book and related earlier official studies by the US Air Force included many
Manitoba reports. Blue Book files have been released to researchers and the
Manitoba cases have been extracted.
In addition, historical records from newspaper archives,
journals and personal diaries have been scoured for reports of unusual aerial
objects. These and all other sources were used to add Manitoba reports into a
master database for studying what Manitobans have been seeing in the province’s
skies.
The oldest account of an odd object over Manitoba took
place in the fall of 1792. Explorers David Thompson and Andrew Davy were camped
on the shore of Landing Lake, near what is now Thicket Portage. In Thompson’s
diary, he recorded that one night he and his companion were surprised by the
appearance of a brilliant “meteor of globular form... larger than the Moon.”
This object seemed to move directly towards them, descending slightly, and “when
within three hundred yards of us, it struck the River ice with a sound like a
mass of jelly, was dashed in innumerable luminous pieces and instantly
expired.” Thompson noted that the next morning, when they went to see the hole
it should have made in the ice, they could not find any sign of the object’s
apparent impact on the Earth.
Between then and now, Ufology Research has collected more
than 2,000 reports of unidentified flying objects over Manitoba. These reports
include observations by people from all walks of life―from farmers, pilots,
campers and police. There are reports noted in newspapers, mailed to civilian
investigators and posted to Facebook groups. Cases have been obtained from
private files, RCMP files, Canadian Forces documents and the National Archives
in Ottawa.
It should be emphasized that
UFOs classified as Unknown or Unexplained do not imply alien visitation. Each
case might have an explanation following further investigation. And of those
that remain unexplained, they may remain unexplained, but still are not
incontrovertible proof of extraterrestrial intervention or some mysterious
natural phenomenon.
The Results
A total of 2,023 Manitoba
reports were found in historical records, existing files and modern databases.
Of these, most were clustered during the years 1952, 1967, 1975, 1992, 2004 and
2012. Some of these years correspond with UFO report trends elsewhere in the
world, although there are some differences.
Breaking down the cases by month, UFO reports peak in
Manitoba in July and August, which is what we would expect for a province that
has harsh winters. Most sightings occur when the weather is warm and more
witnesses are outside, at cottages, campgrounds or when evening sky observing
is comfortable.
For the type of UFO reported, the most common was a
simple Nocturnal Light (NL) at 54% of the total. This was followed closely by
Nocturnal Disc (ND), at 28%. What this means is that at least 82% of all
sightings occur at night and that most are simply lights in the night sky. Less
than 10% of all cases are Daylight Discs (DD), and are objects reported during
the day. Less than 7% of all cases were Close Encounters, where witnesses were
within 100 metres of an unusual object.
Since previous studies have shown that the density of UFO
reports is related to population, it should not be surprising that the largest
proportion of Manitoba UFO reports occurred in Winnipeg (38%). However, towns
with small populations such as Carman and Sperling made the top five list of
UFO “hotspots” in the province, obviously due to the major UFO flap in the
Carman area in the 1970s.
Top 10 Manitoba Cities and Towns with Most UFO Reports
% of Total 2011 % of Total
Rank Location Number Sightings Population Population
1 Winnipeg 767 37.9% 663,617 54.9%
2 Carman 53 2.6% 3,027 0.3%
3 Brandon 45 2.2% 41,511 3.4%
4 Thompson 40 2.0% 13,446 1.1%
5 Sperling 36 1.8% 100 0.0%
6 Gimli 35 1.7% 1,916 0.2%
7 Dauphin 32 1.6% 7,906 0.7%
7 Portage la Prairie 32 1.6% 12,728 1.1%
9 Selkirk 27 1.3% 9,515 0.8%
10 Barnsley 16 0.8% 0.0%
10 Beausejour 16 0.8% 3,126 0.3%
Other 924 45.7% 451,376 37.4%
Total 2023 1,208,268
The prime time for seeing UFOs in Manitoba was between
10:00 pm and midnight. The average duration of a UFO sighting was about 20
minutes, suggesting that a witness had plenty of time to observe and try and
explain the object being observed. Curiously, in cases where the UFO was
Unexplained, the average duration of observation is lower, at only about 17
minutes. The average number of witnesses per sighting is 2.08, meaning that the
typical case involved two people observing a UFO together.
The predominant colour of reported UFOs was white,
followed by red, orange and “multicoloured.” The predominant shape reported was
“point source” (i.e. a distant light), followed by fireball, sphere and then
“irregular.”
For Source of reports, about 37% were reported directly
to Ufology Research. National Defence had 8% of the cases, with smaller
fractions coming from RCMP, Transport Canada and the National Research Centre
in Ottawa. US-based UFO organizations such as MUFON, APRO and NUFORC provided
about 25% of the data.
The breakdown of all Manitoba UFO reports by Conclusion
is as follows:
Explained 6.5%
Insufficient Evidence 35.4%
Probable Explanation 40.5%
Unexplained 17.5%
Examples of Reported UFOs
in Manitoba
The first recorded
“airship” sighting in Manitoba was in Winnipeg at about 6:00 p.m. on July 1,
1896. People were said to have observed a “balloon” which came from the west
and made a "rapid journey some thousands of feet above the Earth." It
was said to have been larger than a toy balloon, and about the same size as
those used for "ascensions at River Park." Manitoba was visited by an
American airship on April 14, 1897, when a newspaper story reported that a
“specter” with lights “as large as the Moon” flew from North Dakota towards
Glenboro at a speed of “365 miles per hour.”
On July 15, 1947, at about
3:15 am, Winnipeg telegraph operator Homer Clinton had just returned home from
his shift when he heard a “noisy disturbance” in his back yard. He and his wife
and son ran out to watch a “whatzit” in the NW sky near the Big Dipper. The
object was starlike in appearance, but it moved on a zig-zag course and would
periodically “flop over” as it flew. The three witnesses observed the noisy
object for about 15 minutes before it gained altitude and was lost to sight.”
In Canada, there were two
military investigations of UFOs: Project Second Storey and Project Magnet. Both
were relatively short‑lived, and associated with a controversial electronics
specialist named Wilbert B. Smith. During the course of his work in the
Department of National Defense, Smith became convinced that UFOs did represent
alien contact, though his view was not shared by his superiors. However, Smith
claimed he had been privy to top‑level meetings with both Canadian and American
military personnel, and he was told at these meetings that flying saucers were
considered to be of major concern to the American military. Later in his
career, Smith claimed to actually have been in contact with the aliens, who had
begun preliminary negotiations for an official landing at a Canadian military
base. As strange as his claims were, Smith was a creditable electronics genius.
According to some reports, when he died, government officials confiscated all
of his documents and personal papers from his home.
According
to the files of Project Second Storey, on July 29, 1952, at about 11:00 pm., a
witness at MacDonald Airport north of Winnipeg watched an orange, oblong,
stationary object in the south-southwest sky for about two minutes. The aerial
craft was about 15 degrees above the horizon and was calculated to be about six
miles away from the airfield. As the witness watched, the craft seemed to
change into a group of smaller, round lights, and then they all disappeared
altogether.
On August 27, 1952, at about
4:45 p.m., two meteorological officers at MacDonald Airport a disc shaped
object “like “shiny aluminum” and with “with shadows on it as if it had an
irregular surface.” It was seen hovering motionless over the airport where the
rotating beacon caught it in the sky. It was thought to be below the cloud
ceiling of 5,000 feet and was judged to be five or six times the apparent size
of the Moon. As the observers watched, the object started moving and flew
around the field twice, then suddenly zoomed northeast, getting out of sight in
only a second.
The American presence in
Manitoba during the Cold War was quite significant. The 916th Base
at Beausejour (Milner Ridge) was a major radar facility for monitoring objects
flying south towards the United States. A former duty officer in the radar
operations building there said that in the fall of 1956, he detected a strange
object moving south over Eastern Manitoba. It was a strong return, indicative
of a solid object such as an aircraft, and about 175 miles northeast of Milner
Ridge. He was surprised when the second trace on the radar scope showed it had
moved a great distance from the first plot. In order to confirm the return, he
checked the height and range indicator and calculated the object’s altitude to
be 75,000 feet. When he spotted the object again, the equipment suggested that
its speed was between 6,000 and 7,500 knots — faster than any known aircraft at
the time. He explained: “If I had not confirmed its location on the two
independent systems, I would have just passed it off as a malfunction.” He
tracked the object for about 10 minutes as it flew a straight course with
slight changes in direction, but always the same altitude. The nearest it came
to the base was around MacArthur Falls. He reported it to the chief controller,
who labeled it a malfunction. However, the officer was called into the
controller’s office the next day and instructed never to tell anyone what he
had seen.
Just north of Falcon Lake on
May 20th, 1967, at 12:15 pm, Stefan Michalak looked up and saw two disc‑shaped
objects, glowing bright red and descending in his direction. One dropped down
and appeared to land on a large, flat rock about 150 feet away. It changed colour
from red to grey, until it finally was the colour of “hot stainless steel.”
Michalak
knelt behind a rock outcropping, trying to remain hidden from sight, making a
sketch of the object and noting things like waves of warm air radiating from
the craft, the smell of sulphur and the whirring of a fast electric motor and a
hissing, as if air were being expelled or taken in by the craft. Brilliant
purple light flooded out of slitlike openings in the upper part of the craft,
and a door opened in the side of the craft where he could see smaller lights inside.
Michalak warily approached to within 60 feet of the craft and heard two human‑like
voices, one with a higher pitch than the other. Convinced the craft was an
American secret test vehicle, he walked closer to the craft, ending up directly
in front of the open doorway.
Suddenly,
the craft rotated and an exhaust vent of some kind blasted hot gas hit him in
the chest, setting his shirt and undershirt on fire. Michalak immediately felt
nauseous and his forehead throbbed from a headache. He decided to return to
Winnipeg where he was taken to the Misericordia Hospital. He was tested for
radiation contamination, since some radiation was found at the site where
Michalak said he had his experience. He did exhibit some very unusual ailments,
including reported weight loss, peculiar burn marks on his chest and stomach,
charred hair, an odd rash and recurrent dizziness. He was interviewed by the
RCAF and RCMP. He led officials to the site, where the Department of Health and
Welfare found such high levels of radiation that they considered cordoning off
the area for a short while.
Michalak
spent a great deal of his own money traveling to the Mayo Clinic, as it was not
covered by Medicare. The results of the tests were negative; the physicians
could find no explanation for his symptoms, and psychiatrists concluded he was
not the type of person who would make up such a bizarre tale. If it was a hoax,
it is the most contrived on record, involving radiation, contaminated soil,
medical examinations and a flurry of interrogation by government officials at many levels.
In
the report of the United States Government‑sponsored UFO Project, the Condon Report, Michalak's experience was described as “unknown,” implying there was
no explanation for his experience. Their concluding remarks were impressive:
“if (the case) were physically real, it would show the existence of alien
flying vehicles in our environment.”
At about 6:00 p.m. on June
30, 1967, a woman was walking through her home in Thompson when she heard an
odd beeping sound. She looked out her kitchen window, and saw dirt and loose
pieces of paper flying in a large circle around the house. She went outside,
and saw her husband (who had just returned home) and five children staring up
into the sky. A young boy was holding down her eight‑year‑old daughter, on the
ground.
Up
in the sky, a rectangular object hung in the air, slowly rotating counter‑clockwise
and showing alternating silver and black sides. It was black on its lower
surface and made no noise. The object began moving off
at an angle, stopped and hovered, then continued towards the southeast. Until
this time, the circle of dirt and dust had persisted, but it now died down. The
whirlwind was very strange in that it was confined to the area immediately
around their house, and did not affect any other houses on the street. When the
object moved away, the dirt fell to the ground in a circle around the house.
Going
to the children, the woman found they were gradually calming down, all except
her daughter, who seemed dazed. The boy explained that the five of them had
been playing in the yard when the object first appeared overhead. As they
watched, her daughter had risen into the air, apparently under the influence of
the object in the sky. By the time the other children had come to her aid, she
was about three feet off the ground, and her clothes had edge up her body. Her
daughter said she did not remember anything from the time she felt the wind to
the time she recovered after being dragged back to the ground.
On April 10, 1975, as Bob and
Elaine Diemert were walking from their farmhouse to their private airfield in
Carman. They were startled to see:
...
a big red light coming at us, like a big landing light. You couldn't miss it.
It was right at eye level, and it was just loafing along. It was close enough already that you could
see the dome on the top, but it was all red―pulsing red.
The saucer‑shaped object flew
towards them from the west, then eventually veered north and travelled
"about 300 feet above the tree tops," going an estimated 30 miles an
hour. The entire sighting lasted no more than
five to seven minutes.
The
Diemerts observed objects a few more times that month, but the real affront on
their airport took place later, beginning on May 7, 1975, when sightings began
a nightly streak that lasted, literally, for months. During the summer, a large
number of people would gather at the Diemert's field, watching for the nightly
appearance of the affectionately-named “Charlie Redstar” as he (or it) skimmed
low over the trees on the horizon, then soared overhead in a grand finale.
“Charlie”
continued to put on a show for observers all that summer; UFO watching became a
favourite pastime for Carman residents, and many Winnipeggers joined the fray
as well. Carloads of curious people came each night to try to see their own UFO
bobbing through the night sky. The media made a mockery of the hysteria, both
in print and on the airwaves. Ads in local newspapers urged the reader to
"Shop where Charlie Redstar shops!" A National Enquirer reporter even arrived to interview witnesses and
put Carman “on the map.” A circus-like atmosphere evolved; cars lined the dirt
roads along favourite “hot spots,” and traffic jams occurred as Charlie flew by
and drivers scrambled to be first in the chase. During these chases, speeds of
80 or 90 miles per hour were not uncommon, and it was perhaps only luck that no
serious accidents happened. UFO watching parties took place throughout the
region, lasting in many cases through the night and into the dawn.
On June 4, 1975, a lone
witness was nine miles north of St. Claude in a pasture at 2:30 p.m. He looked
up to see "a huge craft...20‑25 feet from my truck...at treetop
level." He
described it as "two
domes" with a middle section of "clear material that resembled
glass." The top was silver and the bottom was milky white "like the
belly of a fish." Frightened, the witness tried to drive his truck away
from the scene, but his truck wouldn't start. He watched the object fly slowly
into the east and disappear behind the trees.
On July 2, 1975, a farmer
living near Halbstadt, a hamlet about 95 kilometres south of Winnipeg,
discovered an unusual oval barren patch in his otherwise healthy field of sugar
beets. This "landing site" measured exactly 30 by 39 feet and was 200
yards from a dirt road. Vegetation within the oval was apparently dehydrated,
crumbling to bits when crushed in the hand. The plants outside this patch were
healthy and unaffected except for an area immediately to the west where the
condition of the plants progressively became less withered over a tail-like
swath of about 50 feet. The implication was that something “swooped” over the
field from the west, spewing radiation before landing on top of the foot-high
plants.
What
was most remarkable about the “landing site” was that inside it were "tripod"
marks: three impressions in the dry, hard, packed soil that were bowl shaped,
about 18 inches across and three inches deep with small rectangular holes in
their centers. It was as if something like a lunar module with three legs had
hovered over the field and landed, its exhaust heating plants and soil to the
point where desiccation occurred. Yet, it should be noted that no one in the
area had reported seeing any UFO at any time before the site was discovered.
This was a UFO case without any UFO involved.
On February 15, 1977, at
about 3:15 a.m., Mrs. B, who lived just on the outskirts of Sundown, heard howling
outside, and thought stray dogs were attacking her cattle. She got her .22
calibre rifle, went outdoors and fired shots into the air to scare the culprits
away. She became frightened and went back inside her house. Looking out from
her bedroom window, which faces north towards a swamp, she saw a group of
orange lights by a bridge three‑quarters of a mile to the north, with a second
set of lights off to one side. The lights were arranged in a row, appearing
like the windows on a house, although there was no house near that area. In
addition, there were “searchlights,” like those at Hollywood premieres, playing
about the sky in various colours of blue, green, red, yellow and white.
Mrs.
B continued to watch the lights in amazement from her window until around 6:15
a.m. Then, two objects in the swamp lifted off and one headed in her direction,
moving in a peculiar up‑and‑down manner. In the morning sunlight, it appeared “metallic
brown,” with protrusions that on the object looked like “wings.”
The
nearest the saucer came was over a tree in Mrs. B's garden, which is about 25
feet in height. Using the width of the tree as a guide, she judged the object
to be only seven feet wide, and about four feet high.
Later,
an examination of the area near the bridge revealed nothing unusual. Due to the
heavy snowfall and the lack of travel on the road, investigators were forced to
examine the area riding snowmobiles. No recent tracks were discovered that
could be attributed to activity around the bridge or in the bush.
In the early morning of March
4, 1977, Mr. S was driving eastward towards his farm near Sundown, along
Provincial Road 201. About four miles west of Sundown, at about 6:00 a.m., Mr.
S saw a "vibrating," shimmering, oval source of light directly ahead
of him, an estimated 15 feet above the road. Its colour was whitish‑cream
around its outer edge, darkening to yellowish‑cream toward its centre. It made
no noise and did not look to be a solid, metallic object. Mr. S estimated it
was "as big as a car."
Thinking,
"I'm not really seeing this," he continued driving and passed
directly underneath the object. He said he still could not see any solidity to
it.
Approximately
two miles further on, he suddenly came upon three "people" standing
on the road before him in the glare of his headlights. They were arranged in a
row only 25 feet in front of his vehicle, spaced evenly across his side of the
road. Mr. S said they were about five feet tall and shaped like "bowling pins."
Later, he told investigators the entities each had a
bulbous head, a narrow neck
and a flared body "like a skirt" to the ground. No features were
visible on the heads.
Quickly
applying his brakes, he realized that he could not stop in time, so he braced
for the impact. To his surprise, he felt absolutely nothing as he "drove
right over" the creatures on the road. They seemed to
"disappear" when they touched the front bumper. Mr. S compared this
to driving over three vertical flashlight beams shining from three spots under
the road. He saw the entities reappear behind him when he looked in his rear‑view
mirror. As they reappeared, he saw that they were shrinking proportionately,
"like they were balloons going down," until they disappeared
entirely.
Shaken up and in a very anxious state due to this
experience, Mr. S drove straight to the house of a friend who lived south of Sundown
at Sirko, Manitoba. There, Mr. S told his story to his friend, who listened
patiently and saw that Mr. S was visibly shaken by his experience. Concerned
that Mr. S had killed some living beings, his friend persuaded him to call the RCMP.
The police arrived in a matter of minutes (responding to the "accident!"),
and went with Mr. S and his friend to the spot where the incident had occurred.
By this time, the Sun had risen, and the site could be inspected easily. There
were skid marks where Mr. S had applied his brakes, but no sign of blood, footprints,
glass or any other evidence that anyone had been hit by a car. As well, there were
no signs of impact on Mr. S's car.
On October 22, 1978, at
approximately 8:05 p.m., a large, red light was observed by many people in
southern Winnipeg. Several district police offices were inundated with
telephone calls from people reporting the slow‑moving light. It was seen to
move on an "S‑shaped" path for two to three minutes before it grew
brighter, then exploded and disappeared in a shower of sparks. At 9:22 p.m.,
the pilot of Air Canada Flight 181 (a DC‑9), on final approach to Winnipeg
International Airport, was approximately four and a half miles southeast of the
runway when he reported "traffic" in his vicinity. Air traffic
controllers reported that they detected no traffic near him, and questioned his
observation. The pilot replied that there was a bright red ball of light at the
same height as his aircraft, which was at about 2300 feet at the time. The
object was observed to move east, then "got bigger" and finally
"burst" in a bright display. A smaller aircraft heading southeast
confirmed this report; the pilot of the small plane reported a "steady
light" for two to three minutes, then was startled when the UFO exploded.
Three of the air traffic controllers also observed the explosion while conversing
with the pilots.
At about 12:30 a.m. in early
March, 1980, while recuperating from an illness and surgery in Teulon Hospital,
a man happened to be unable to sleep, and gazed out the window of his room. He
was surprised to see a "football‑shaped" object silently gliding over
a building, apparently "just across the street." The object was an
estimated 30 feet in diameter and 15 feet in thickness, with multicoloured
"Christmas lights" along its upper edge, steady and unblinking. It
was moving southeast, and as it passed the witness, it seemed to briefly turn
on its "cabin lights." The man found himself looking into four white "windows"
which appeared along the middle of the craft. After a few seconds, the "cabin
lights" were extinguished, and the object travelled out of view in about
two to three minutes.
He described "people" in the windows with their
heads facing the direction of flight. He recalled seeing "hair"
"cut fairly short" on each of the heads, as well as other normal
features such as ears, noses, lips, etc. At its nearest point, the object was
at an estimated 150 feet away from the hospital window, over another building.
In fifteen minutes, the same object travelled back, westward, without turning
on any cabin lights. After another fifteen minutes had passed, the same object
passed by again on its way back to the east. At this point, the man called for
a nurse to stay with him and
watch for its expected return trip, but it never appeared.
On the evening of March 4, 1985,
a woman called the Dauphin city RCMP to report a UFO. In response, two
constables were dispatched and immediately observed a light in the sky,
"brighter than a star." It was thought to be about half a mile north
and one mile west of the town, and like a "helicopter with a
floodlight." The police drove west of Dauphin in pursuit of the object, at
speeds of up to "140 kilometres an hour." Despite the speed, they
were unable to gain on the object over a distance of nearly 20 kilometres. Other
RCMP Detachments at Grandview and Roblin also said observed the object. Calls
were made to radar installations, but no aircraft were reported in that area at
the time.
On October 9, 1989, at
2:50 p.m., a family was visiting the Fort Whyte Nature Centre when they saw a
white boomerang shaped object in the northeast, hanging in the air over
Winnipeg. One parent ordered the
children into their car to prevent them from seeing the frightening craft. As the adults watched, the object slowly
rotated, showing a bulge on its underside.
After a few minutes, the object moved away out of sight.
On November 1, 1992, Karen, a nurse living in southern Winnipeg, awoke
at about 2:00 am because of a loud thump on her door. She thought it was her
noisy neighbours, who often were very loud and were very disturbing. She
decided to get out of bed and see who was in the hallway outside.
When she entered her living
room, however, she was startled to see two “little people” standing in the
middle of the room. At first, she thought they were children and ordered them
to get out of her apartment. She asked them: “How did you get in here?”
She then realized that they
were not children, but unusual beings with large round eyes and wearing long
white gowns or robes. They were very small, only 3½ feet in height.
She asked them to leave, but
they just stood, facing her. They did not seem to have any other facial
features, but they somehow began communicating with her, by what she assumed
was telepathy.
She asked them: “What do you
want?”
They turned their heads to
look at each other, then turned back to her. They told her that they wanted to
take her for a ride into space.
Suddenly, Karen found herself
in a very large room, like a “hangar,” in which a cigar-shaped craft of some
sort was parked. She did not remember how she had got there. There were no
other craft in the hangar, which was very modern in appearance and looked
“brand new.”
Karen was led across the floor
of the hangar by the two beings, who walked or floated, one ahead of her and
one behind her in a single file. They approached the cigar-shaped craft, which
had a small door in its side. They entered and walked down an aisle in the
interior of the craft, towards its bow. There, the aisle opened up into a
“control room.”
The control room had three
chairs, in front of a table which had three rectangular screens and two sets of
coloured buttons or control mechanisms. In front of the table were large
windows which seemed to show a very dark blue “sky.”
Karen was told they were
“going to the stars,” and watched as the beings on either side of her
manipulated the controls. As they took turns pressing the buttons, the buttons
would light up. The blue sky in the forward windows deepened in colour to
black, and she soon could see many stars.
Watching the beings in action,
she noticed that their hands were more like “mitts,” with no fingers, and that
they used their entire hands when depressing the buttons.
Suddenly, Karen found herself
back in her room.
Karen was convinced that the
experience had been real. She insisted that she did not normally have vivid
dreams and that she did not read science fiction novels, go to SF movies or
watch TV shows with such themes. When she met with UFOROM investigators, Karen
seemed very rational and calm. She did not seem to be the type of person who
would make up such a story and wasn’t seeking any money or notoriety.
It was a cold winter night in January, 1993, when Craig and Paul were
returning home after watching the Winnipeg Jets play hockey at the Arena. It
was about 10:30 p.m., and Paul had just turned east on the Perimeter Highway at
the Highway 7 overpass north of the city. There were no cars near them on that
stretch of road which was very dark that time of night. The highway was very
slippery and they were forced to drive very slowly as a consequence.
As they rode along, they were
talking about the game and about some of the charity work that they had been
doing there. They had only gone about three kilometres when the car’s engine
suddenly died and the headlights went out. Surprised, Paul began trying to
start the engine again but then noticed a strange object not far from the road.
It looked like “two Frisbees
put together, with a bump on the bottom,” Paul said. It was hovering
noiselessly about 150 metres in the air and within 100 metres of the highway,
near some telephone poles.
The object didn’t have any
features except the “bump,” not even windows or flashing lights. It was dark
orange in colour and “about the size of a house.” It made no sound and “was
just hanging there.”
Craig said that they were both
in some kind of shock, completely taken aback by what was happening.
“It all seemed so
unbelievable,” he added.
After about 15 seconds, the
strange object moved away from them at high speed, heading southeast towards
the city. It was out of sight in a matter of seconds. Then, without warning,
the car’s headlights came back on and Paul was able to start the engine again.
They traveled back home and
told their families what had happened. Soon, UFOROM investigators were called
and attempts were made to understand what had been seen.
According to Craig and Paul,
the car’s cigarette lighter, horn and interior dome light would not work after
the encounter.
More Examples of Manitoba UFO Cases
On August 4, 1997, at 7:20 pm near Hadashville, two forest
rangers in different towers simultaneously observed a "silver ball"
which hovered over the trees some distance away from them. A second identical
object approached the first and the two traveled away together.
On August 7, 2005, at 2:08 pm near Vita, a silver,
cigar-shaped object like a “wingless missile” flew over three witnesses. A
fast-flying conventional aircraft followed the object on the same trajectory
after a few seconds.
On February 25, 2012, at 7:00
pm in Winnipeg, two witnesses observed a flat, disc-shaped object with red
lights around its perimeter. As it flew it in horizontal flight, it turned on
its side and then darted towards the witnesses’ vehicle, then vanished before
their eyes when it was within five metres of them.
On December 31, 2012, a
witness reported:
At approximately 10:30pm CST some friends and I were walking along a street in Thompson, Manitoba when we noticed three orange glowing orbs in the sky in a rough triangular formation. They were not blinking like an airplane, and they moved slowly across the sky. We stood and watched them for a few minutes, each of us in turn trying to rationalize what they may be. As they moved across the sky the orbs shifted into a line formation. We waited to hear the typical airplane noise but it never came, even after the lights had disappeared on the horizon. In my search for an explanation, many similar descriptions have been dismissed as Chinese paper lanterns being set adrift in the sky. I firmly believe this was not the case in the event we saw—the lights were far away yet seemed quite large.
On March 17, 2014, at 3:00 am, three people were driving from Calgary nearing
Winnipeg, with no other cars visible on the road. They saw what looked like a
transport truck in the middle of the road up ahead, and continued to drive but
decreased speed. But as they approached, they saw that the shape of the object
was like “a squished octagon.” They came to within 150 meters from the object’s
strange “headlights.” Suddenly, the lights moved up into the sky and in “the
car shook like there was a huge gust of wind, and the object was gone.”
On February 15, 2015, rumours
circulated on the Internet (mostly Facebook, Twitter and Youtube) that a UFO
had crashed near Jackhead along the western shore of Lake Manitoba, and that
the military had covered up the incident. Despite many wild and unsupported
claims, the event actually was a misinterpretation of the Canadian Forces Exercise ARCTIC
BISON 2015, held February 13-22, 2015, focusing on challenging training for the
Arctic Response Company Group in austere winter conditions. For details on how this incident was investigated and explained, see: http://uforum.blogspot.ca/2015/02/hit-road-jack.html
Data entry and analyses of Manitoba UFO reports were by Geoff Dittman, Ashley Kircher and Chris Rutkowski.
For data and reports from the annual Canadian UFO Survey, including the 25-year retrospective, please visit: http://survey.canadianuforeport.com
For more information, contact Ufology Research at: canadianuforeport@hotmail.com
Labels: Manitoba Canada UFO reports sightings files data analysis
# posted by rutkows @ 10:57 AM 
