UFO CRASH REMAINS A MYSTERY 50 YEARS ON
NO ONE KNOWS WHAT SANK IN NOVA SCOTIA BAY
The first frantic callers to reach the RCMP were clear: something had crashed in the waters off Shag Harbour, N.S.
It was around 11 p.m. on Oct. 4, 1967. Most witnesses thought it was a doomed aircraft.
Among those who saw the string of flashing lights on that clear, moonless night were three RCMP officers, scores of fishermen and airline pilots flying along the province’s southwest coast.
But a series of searches turned up nothing. No wreckage. No bodies. No clues as to what really happened that night 50 years ago.
A Halifax-area man later uncovered a trove of government and police records that would make the Shag Harbour incident Canada’s best-documented and most intriguing UFO sighting.
In a series of RCMP reports and correspondence sent by telex between military officials in Ottawa and Halifax, there are specific references to unidentified flying objects, and no attempts were made to explain away what people were reporting.
Chris Styles, the UFO researcher who dug up those documents, remains baffled.
“To this day, I don’t know the absolute answer, but we’re still finding things,” says Styles, the author of two books about the Shag Harbour incident.
Next week, on the eve of the 50th anniversary, Styles will be the keynote speaker at the start of the three-day Shag Harbour UFO Festival. After 20-plus years of dogged research, he says he has new evidence to share.
To be sure, the most compelling evidence to date has come from eyewitnesses like Laurie Wickens, now 67.
“There was four (lights) in a row, and they were going on and off,” says Wickens, at the time a 17-year-old driving home to Shag Harbour with a friend and three young women. “One would come on, then two, three and four — and they’d all be off for a second and come back on.”
Sure he was about to witness an airline disaster, Wickens found a phone booth and called the local RCMP detachment. Several other people called the Mounties that night. They all told the same story.
Soon afterward, Wickens was among a dozen or so people gathered at the water’s edge, watching in amazement as a glowing, orange sphere — about the size of a city bus — bobbed on the waves about 300 metres from shore. At 11:20 p.m., it slipped beneath the surface without a sound.
Three of those at the wharf were Mounties. One of them called the Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Halifax. A coast guard cutter was immediately dispatched to conduct a search.
Before the ship arrived, volunteer searchers aboard two fishing boats soon spotted a long trail of bubbling, yellow foam on the calm waters — but no wreckage.
A squad of Royal Canadian Navy divers later failed to turn up any clues after a three-day scan of the harbour floor, according to official military records.
Wickens, now president of the Shag Harbour UFO Society, will take part in a panel discussion Saturday.
“What sets this story apart is that the impact ... was witnessed by several independent and very credible witnesses,” says Brock Zinck, a Nova Scotia seafood buyer and vice-president of the Shag Harbour UFO Society.
“Nobody reported a UFO. Everybody reported a plane crash. That gives a boost of credibility to the story.”
It’s worth noting the incident at Shag Harbour occurred when the space race and Cold War were on. Russian submarines were known to frequent the East Coast. And the Americans were testing devices to spy on their communist foes.
While the official records provide no explanation for what happened, there are vague clues pointing to another incident about 50 kilometres north, just off the coast of Shelburne.
In his 2001 book, Dark Object, Styles says he eventually interviewed former military insiders and members of the navy’s Fleet Diving Unit, who told him the orange orb spotted in Shag Harbour had submerged under its own power and travelled to a spot on the seabed off Shelburne.
The area was the location for a top-secret U.S. military base, disguised as an oceanographic institute.
The facility used underwater microphones and magnetic detection devices to track enemy submarines, but its true purpose wasn’t revealed until the 1980s.
“I’m not here to make believers,” Styles says.
“Some people say I’m a believer, but that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I want the real answers.”
TO THIS DAY, I DON’T KNOW THE ABSOLUTE ANSWER.