Another Odd Northern Light

Swift River, YT - December 1968

Canadian UFO Report Vol. 1, No. 2. March-April 1969.


(Mrs. Sheila McCreedy at Swift River in the Yukon, whose series of sightings were reported in our first issue, sent us this unusual report carried by the Whitehorse Star. The incident occurred in December, 1968.)

"Am I crazy?" asked Paul Lucier.

"I don't know - but I can see something too." answered Fred Koch.

The two men were about to get into a car Sunday afternoon at Fred's Workshop on Seventh when they noticed "something" in the sky across the Yukon River valley, near Grey Mountain.

As Fred told it: "There was this rectangular light. Paul spotted it first - too long to be an aircraft light, moving toward town. We stood and watched for four or five minutes. When it got above the river, it got brighter, started to separate, then a piece seemed to fall off. The thing seemed to be in two parts and kept coming west, stopped, then went south, looked like 200 yards or so, then came back and there was another separation, then east and faded out completely. Then, when we thought it had gone, it suddenly lit up again. This happened two or three times."

What colour was it? "It just seemed like an ordinary yellowish-white light" Fred said, "but there seemed to be a reflection near the top, as if it were in two sections. It wasn't really dark by that time" (between 4:30 and five o'clock).

Paul Lucier said the fragments which broke off and dropped seemed to be "burning" but he couldn't hear any sounds.

He estimated that the object might have been between 7-8,000 feet up, but it was difficult to judge the distance. "It seemed to be approaching but not getting any closer. It was obviously a light of some kind. After we had watched it for several minutes, it faded right out, then got brighter, then faded right out and came back once more before its final fadeout."

The airport traffic tower records show that small aircraft were making regular circuits of the field between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. and then no traffic came in until 8:00.

This was no small aircraft, both men insist. And, they added "Now we believe there was something to the previous stories of strange objects around here.

Neither of them had a camera handy, nor binoculars.

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