A curious UFO case over Winnipeg, Part 3

Well, it's not exactly closure, but I've reached a conclusion in the case of the large object seen over St. Norbert on August 23, 2009.

My conclusion: "I don't know."

Yes, the case is officially unexplained at this time. That doesn't mean aliens are invading Manitoba - just that I don't know what was seen by the two main witnesses.

I went over to their home and interviewed them earlier this week. I listened and asked questions as the woman and her teenage son described the sequence of events and what they saw, from slightly different angles and perspectives.

The object was large: "the size of a van." It was hovering over a tree in their front yard in a residential neighbourhood, making a loud whistling or whining noise and shining bright, rotating flashing lights down onto their house.



The underside of the object was whitish, with a dark triangular area that had three bright white lights shining down from it that were rotating counterclockwise rapidly.

The object remained there for about two or three minutes before it moved over the house, above and behind them, flying away to the southwest.

They phoned a friend, who drove to their house and went with them to a southwest-facing window where they saw several lights moving rapidly up and down in the sky and slowly moving across their field of view in the distance. They were not sure if this was the same object as the one that had been over their house.

I don't think they hallucinated the object, and I see no evidence of hoaxing.
The witnesses are admittedly somewhat "read up" on popular material about UFOs and unconventional phenomena, so their description may be influenced to a certain degree by UFO literature and media. However, I doubt they imagined this close encounter of the second kind.

So if there really was something there, what could it have been? We can rule out a helicopter for several reasons, even though I know one was in the area three hours before the sighting. Anything that large would have been noticed by other residents in the neighbourhood. I did knock on some doors and spoke with neighbours but could not find anyone else who saw the object too. I was on radio a few times since then and posted on Facebook and Twitter seeking other witnesses, but no one has come forward, even anonymously. I figure even a military flight would have been noticed by residents if it was really that low.

This leaves a few possibilities.

1. An alien spacecraft.
2. The witnesses were hallucinating.
3. Something else entirely.

The witnesses themselves recognized the absurdity of no one else seeing the UFO. They did, however, suggest what some UFO investigators have proposed in other cases: that the aliens selected these two witnesses for some unknown reason, using advanced technology that prevented observation by others.

My conclusion in this case: unexplained.