As four men drove up to the gate of the logging grounds at Gold River on Vancouver Island the evening of Dec. 1, 1968, they were surprised to find the gatekeeper, Bus Stevens, in a state of great excitement.

"That thing stalled my bus." he exclaimed. "I was just backing up when that light flew right above me and stopped me dead."

Climbing from their car, the foursome stared into the darkness and saw a bluish white light, about 10 times as bright as a star, performing lazy S figures along the Gold River valley. In the party were hotel manager Ray Fairservice and loggers Donald Klint, Darwin Bjornson and Rusty Shelly, all of Parksville, B.C. They were returning from a day of hunting on the logging grounds.

"It was kind of creepy," Fairservice said as we interviewed three of the witnesses about their sighting. "It looked like a mercury vapor light flying around up there and it seemed to know exactly what it was doing."

Klint confirmed the impression that the object moved in a deliberate manner.

"It seemed to favor one side of the valley," he said, "and it followed the contours of the ground below. When it came to a bit of a rise it would go up one side and down the other."

Looking at the object through his rifle's scope, the third witness, Bjornson, noticed something not visible to the naked eye.

"The light seemed to be a beam slanting down from a dark shape underneath it," he said. "There was definitely something carrying it. When the light passed in front of trees, my view of the trees was blocked off just underneath but not on top."

As the object moved farther up the valley, Stevens was able to restart his Volkswagen bus. After remaining in sight for about 15 minutes, the light finally disappeared beyond the surrounding hills.

Klint had this to add: "That thing was really bright. We could see the trees below it clear as day, and the moon wasn't up so it certainly wasn't that. And it wasn't a light from a helicopter. It made absolutely no sound."