Yukon UFO looked like "Santa Claus and his reindeer"

One of the classic Canadian UFO cases of all time, the giant UFO seen by dozens of witnesses on the night of December 11, 1996, was described in many different ways.

But the most vivid description was that by children in a family that watched it move across the sky near Carmacks, Yukon.

Martin Jasek traveled throughout Yukon and interviewed more than 35 witnesses of the remarkable object, who observed it from many different locations that night.

In his greatly detailed analysis of the case, he included the Carmacks observation:

This group of 5 witnesses to the UFO sighting in Carmacks consisted of a mother, father and their three children. At the time the family was staying at a house in Carmacks… The witnesses were interviewed together.

The father of the family… was watching television when he noticed a long row of lights moving in the distance through a window facing northeast. 

“I thought it was a jumbo 747! But I listened for sound, but nothing!" The father called the rest of the family to have a look. They were all amazed! 

Getting close to Christmas, the 3 children, of whom the eldest was six years old, thought that it was Santa Claus and his reindeer. 

The UFO consisted of “four big balls of light in a row” red-yellow in color with “a little bit of blue.” At the left and right side of this row of lights were smaller lights that were orange and green… 

The UFO was slowly drifting from left to right, “it looked pretty low, just over the trees” and was about 2 feet at arms length in size in the sky. There were also what appeared to be white sparkles dropping away from the base of the larger lights. They were dropping at an angle to the left, consistent with the UFO moving to the right.

The father thought that their sighting occurred at about 9 pm that night but it might have been an hour or more earlier. (Times of witnesses' observations that night varied between 7 and 9 pm.)

With the exception of only a few witnesses, the majority of the descriptions of the object were relatively consistent and led skeptic Ted Molczan to conclude that what was seen was actually the re-entry of a rocket booster that was in the sky at the that exact time and over that part of Yukon.

Others say that the giant mothership was an actual UFO that was in the pre-Christmas night sky. In fact, the Canadian government itself considered the case of enough historical and cultural significant that it minted an actual coin to commemorate the event.

While others... believe that Santa himself visited Yukon that night.

[BTW: The Canadian military tracks Santa's flight as part of its partnership with NORAD, and you can check its site here.]