UFO sightings soar across Canada to 1,981 cases in 2012

More Canadians say they are seeing unidentified flying objects (UFO) than ever before, with 2012 numbers nearly doubling the record number of sightings in previous years, CBS reported Wednesday.

In 2012, there were 1,981 sightings, nearly twice the previous annual record of 1,004 sightings in 2008. There were record numbers of UFOs reported in every province last year except for Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island.

Chris Rutkowski, a science writer who has produced the Canadian UFO survey since 1989, has just finished compiling all 2012 reports.

“It’s something across the board,” said Rutkowski. “People in Canada were actually looking up into the sky more than in previous years.”

The objects people witness come in a variety of forms — triangles or balls of fire, to the more traditionally ovoid-shaped “flying saucers,” hovering in the sky.

Adam Canning, 10, of Lake Charlotte, Nova Scotia, is one of the many hundreds of Canadians who reported a UFO sighting.

He said the UFO he witnessed with a friend earlier this year looked like an orb.

“I could see it in the distance for about a minute and then like boom, it went really fast,” said Adam, standing on a hill near his house, pointing at the sky.

“I heard this, beep, beep, beep. I knew something was in the sky. I looked up and there was a big thing. Big, round, like a big hotel or something. I looked at my buddy and I’m like, ‘That has to be a UFO.’ There are normally helicopters flying over our house but that was way bigger than a helicopter, so I knew it wasn’t a helicopter,” he said.

“There was this one little thing sticking out from the front, it looked like a little gun or something, and there were these two things sticking out of the bottom, it looked like legs or something ... There were these little round lights, around the whole thing and at the top, there was one big light.”

The majority of 2012’s sightings were gathered by civilian organizations, after various federal agencies decided to give up tracking and investigating UFO reports, according to documents obtained under the Access to Information Act earlier this year.