by PATRICK LEJTENYI

At around 10:30 p.m. on September 19, 2004, residents of Nuns’ Island saw something in the sky they couldn’t explain. “A stationary object with white ‘windows’ on its underside was seen over some chimneys, then several lights approached it and appeared to entered [sic] into it.”

At around 2 p.m. on June 13, 2004, in Shipshaw, a small town near Jonquière, “Five people watched a white, disc-shaped object that was stationary at first, then began to rise, moved sideways left and right, then spiralled downward, over the course of about 15 minutes.”

These laconic descriptions appear in The 2004 Canadian UFO Survey: An Analysis of UFO Reports in Canada, compiled by UFO Research of Manitoba (UFOROM—www.ufon.org/ uforom), a small, independent operation run by Winnipegger Chris Rutkowski. They constitute two of the seven most interesting Canadian “unknowns” of last year—unidentified flying objects (UFOs) that can’t be explained and come from reliable sources: people who appear otherwise sane.

According to the UFOROM report, 2004 was a high watermark year for sightings, with 882 from coast to coast. Most are quickly explained away, but a small minority remain tantalizingly baffling.

Paranormal run-ins

Ken McCracken, a 40-year-old Beauharnois Web designer and UFO investigator, has met his share of kooks. But he says he’s had his own run-ins with the paranormal and inexplicable lights in the sky. In 1998, while at a beach with his wife and in-laws, he says he saw four or five small objects in the afternoon sky, moving against the wind but around each other. All four of them saw it. “It was pretty wild, man,” he says.

McCracken, who’s always had an interest in UFOs, set up www.quebec-ufo-abductions.com two-and-a-half years ago, and began his own investigations of sightings around the province and eastern Ontario. He remains skeptical of most of the 200-plus sightings he’s investigated, but diligently investigates every one. And while his specialty is in UFOs, he does express an interest in other paranormal phenomena.

While conducting an investigation in the Gatineau area earlier this summer, he says, “I saw a pick-up truck in the front yard, which was unusable. But the lights were on inside, and I got freaked out. There were all these strange things going, I saw something in the sky, and I just felt sick. I had to leave, I was getting nauseous. I don’t know what it is, I don’t know if it was something in the air or in the ground. I don’t want to go back.”

McCracken insists he is not easily fooled, even if some of the stories he hears are fanciful. “Look, I’m getting them from professionals, from parents, from retired people,” he says. “No one is gaining anything anyway, they’re not getting paid for their stories. But it’s up to me to determine who’s who—the ones who are being straight, and the ones who aren’t all there.”

Decreasing ridicule

Convincing people about these kinds of things remains difficult, McCracken concedes. But he says recent mainstream media coverage has helped. Larry King recently talked about UFOs on his show, and, last February, the late Peter Jennings hosted ABC’s The UFO Phenomenon: Seeing Is Believing, a two-hour, prime time special. According to the ABC special, almost 50 per cent of Americans believe in UFOs.

Consequently, discussion of UFOs is coming out into the open, says Chris Rutkowski of UFOROM. “Most people who report seeing UFOs are looking for someone to listen to them,” he says. “There is some ridicule, although that’s decreasing.”

Most sightings can be explained, says Rutkowski, and the people who report them are generally eager to hear the explanation. “Most of them turn out to be fireballs [long-tailed shooting stars] or aircraft,” he says. “People are saying, ‘I saw something, I know I saw something and you can call me whatever.’ But the reason people are coming forward is because we are living in the Steven Spielberg generation. People are more open to the possibility. But also, people are making honest mistakes and want to know what they’ve seen. Kooks really are in the minority, and I say that after 25 years of conducting investigations.”

Raelians need not apply

Like many people, McCracken believes in aliens—to a degree. “I believe in God, but I still believe in extra-terrestrials,” he says. “But people who talk about alien abductions and that the end of the world is coming, no (he named his site Quebec UFO Abductions more out of positing the question than asserting it. In an e-mail, he writes, “It’s not that I don’t believe in abductions but the proof is not clear. I do have a report here that a possible abduction may have occurred, but again it’s not clear and the proof is not there. Abductions real or fiction??”).

While he says he’s “on and off skeptical” about whether the lunar landings really happened or not, he’s definitely not into cults. “Oh, the Raelians,” he says, referring to the sex-and-aliens pseudo-religion. “They gave me so much trouble. They bombarded me with e-mails, asking me to come to their meetings, to meet Rael, to show me pictures, but I told them I just can’t be bothered. But they kept inviting me! They’re so pushy. But I finally got rid of them and went on with my business.”

Rutkowski approaches the question in a more scientific manner. “I’m not here to say that aliens are after our land or our women or whatever,” he says. “I’m a liaison between the scientific community and the public.” He doesn’t equate UFOs with aliens.

Aliens and Harry Potter

For Pierre Cloutier, a member of the Quebec Skeptics, a myth-debunking non-profit association that promotes critical thinking and rigorous science, most discussion surrounding UFOs is hokum. “Each case is different, but you have to look at the person making the claim,” he says. “Usually you don’t have to look much further than that because the person’s disturbed.”

At this point, Cloutier says, with no scientific evidence whatsoever to back up any of the thousands of claims occurring across the world every year, there’s no point to believing in aliens. Those who do, he thinks, are most likely filling some kind of spiritual void. “If people aren’t seeing UFOs, then they’re seeing angels or ghosts,” he says. “You get into the realm of Harry Potter.” The Skeptics still have a $10,000 prize for anyone who can prove that UFOs exist.

“There’s nothing that would please us more than seeing a UFO land on a house, or see a piece of an alien spacecraft, or even getting a signal from space,” he says. “But nobody has ever produced scientific proof. Not even anything remotely tangible.”

He also notes that most sightings take place outside the city. “Life in the country is boring sometimes,” he says. “This adds a little excitement. It helps them dream a bit.”

Passing the UFO buck

Which is not to say that people don’t see things they can’t identify streaking through the sky. But few people in positions of authority seem to take the phenomenon seriously.

“According the Canadian NORAD (North American Aerospace Defence Command) Headquarters, no files are kept on unidentified flying objects,” says Canadian Forces spokesperson Captain Stéphanie Godin. All reports are transferred to Rutkowski for compiling. The same applies for Transport Canada, says a media rep there.

According to the data for the first six months of 2005, there is a dramatic decrease of reported sightings compared to 2004. The overall trend has been a steady increase, from 141 in 1989 to 882 in 2004. If the trend continues, the end-of-year numbers will be down to 2000 or 2001 levels, with 263 and 374 sightings, respectively. “We’re very puzzled by this,” says Rutkowski. “Usually during the summer months there’s an increase in the number of sightings, because people are at their cottages looking into the sky.”

Still, McCracken plans to continue his efforts at documenting and investigating UFO sightings, even if it gets tough at times. “It’s very hard to be taken seriously,” he says. “We’re just trying to get the public to understand more. Not everyone who sees a UFO is a maniac or crazy.”