On March 18, 2001, UFO British
Columbia received an e-mail from a
gentleman living in Roberts Creek, on the
Sunshine Coast. It was in response to a
request we had put in the local Sechelt
paper asking for UFO sightings. For fear
of being ridiculed he had kept this story
within his family for over 2 years. The
following is an excerpt from an e-mail
that he had written to his sister living
in eastern Canada. The sighting took place
on December 28, 1998.
I promised I would write down my 2nd UFO
encounter. Here it is. UFO, as in unidentified
flying objects; not necessarily big, nor high
in the sky. Ask "Bob" to recall the church
parking lot which is out back of our place, to
the north, where we look out at Mount
Elphinstone. It was the Monday after Christmas
and before New Years, December 28th to be
exact. I had been at work and was home, and
"Kate" had gone to bed before me. So, I stayed
up and trolled thru the channels until I got
completely bored with TV and decided to go to
bed. I was quite tired, and it had been an
atrocious day for weather. In fact, the wind
was strong from the East, (i.e. from right to
left as one looks out on our deck towards the
north) and the rain was sheeting (another BC
word) down. No-one was out that night, believe
me, no one. Just a truly ugly night outside.
There is one light on the parking lot, a
bright parking-lot type light, on the far
side, by the fence, near the condos to the
north of us on the far side of the church
property. There were some low interior lights
on inside the church, as usual, but not a soul
there, no cars in the parking lot.
I headed out to the deck for the nightcap
cigarette, and as I was sliding the door open,
(no screen this time, no danger of a sudden
encounter with woven wire) I saw what looked
like two red lights circling about,
approximately 75 feet away, a couple of feet
above the gravel. Bob, remember that the far
half of the lot is paved, where the buses
parked, and the first 60 feet or so of the lot
from the fence north are gravel/grass. The
lights were 2-3 feet above the ground,
slightly to the right of due north, and not as
far away from me as the street is from your
front door. They were below my height, so I
was looking down slightly at them, and they
were very near the ground. What did they look
like? Like the passive red reflectors on the
back of a bicycle, or the red reflectors
people nail up to a stick and then plant at
the end of a road or driveway. They whirled
around each other, bright, small, no sound,
like two flies when you see a few flies in the
middle of a room oscillating around each
other. The motion was fly-like, or very
smooth, more smooth than birds, who dart from
point to point. I couldn't see anything except
this small red glow, maybe 1-2 inches across,
no shape, no noise, no shadow, no glow on the
ground, nuttin honey. I stepped out on the
deck, staring directly at this sight, my heart
pounding.
The much vaunted "Jones" analytical brain
kicked in... I thought some kids with a
Christmas gift of radio-controlled airplanes -
no, not a sound, these suckers would be loud,
and expensive, judging by the tight, fast path
of travel - then, fireflies, yeah, that's the
ticket, huge, motivated, rain-loving Hawaiian
fireflies blown north by the jetstream path
from Hawaii to BC (that's exactly the path of
the weather that week, I checked - and no,
there are no bright red, continuously lit
fireflies recorded in Hawaii or anywhere, I
checked THAT too - and no people, dogs, cats,
Kate, neighbours, buses, churchgoers, in fact
anything that would be considered a witness)
and just at that point, one rose, turned north
and flew off like a bee, the other one
following, crossed the lot and disappeared in
about 1/2 second. Total time of event, maybe 5
seconds - one seriously freaked out "George"
standing on the deck wondering what the hell
THAT had been all about...
Believe me, searching the Net for UFO stories
about red fireflies is a complete waste of
time. Nothing, nada, nil, rien. It's been a
month, and the hairs on the back of my neck
still stand up when I think about it like
right now. Two possibilities:
1) Living - not an encouraging concept. What
glows like bicycle light, flies like a bee, is
out on a dark rainy night, and takes off when
yours truly shows up? I looked - no fireflies
continuously lit show up anywhere. All my
instincts lean towards the idea of living,
particularly the motion - just like two flying
insects circling each other then the escape
path north. If you ever watch a bee take off,
it climbs before accelerating away, not the
other way around - this was exactly like that
- I'll show you sometime
2) Not live - less encouraging still - There
was an article very recently in the Economist
about the development of small scale
battlefield drones for reconnaisance purposes
- Lockheed is the recipient of a multi-million
dollar budget to develop stuff that would
weight less than a pound and be somewhat
autonomous - not this decade, though, and what
(or who) would be goofing around in the dank
outback of Gibsons between Xmas and New Year's
flying state-of-the-art prototypes and scaring
the daylights out of the innocent bystander?
Now you know. Believe me, this story is not
embellished. This is exactly as I remember it,
and I've remembered it a lot this past month.
I have literally no idea, but the strongest
impression that I was watching something
living. By the way, nothing in the local
paper, but I'm not going to tell anyone local,
for fear of being tarred as a loonie forever,
and I suspect that if anyone else saw
something like this, they ain't talking
either. So, two weird sightings, both local,
both within the year, one witnessed by Kate,
and not an ax to grind in sight. After a
lifetime of looking and not seing anything
weird, I'm the lucky recipient....twice.
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