Canadian Archives

 

The Year We Were Invaded

Without Knowing It

 

 

by

John Magor

In the spring of 1967 the late Dr. Olavo T. Fontes, of Rio de Janeiro, an intensely interested student of the UFO mystery, predicted the fall of that year would record more UFO sightings than any period in the 20-year history of the phenomena.    

Asked on what basis he made this prediction, he explained that he and other researchers had noticed that UFO waves occurred every 26 months. In addition he had made the personal observation there was a peak period every five years, and according to his calculations the two cycles would merge late in 1967.    

Some weeks later when Dr. Fontes was visited by Jim and Coral Lorenzen of the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization, the three of them discussed his forecast and tried to select the areas where activity would be most pronounced. Because Canada and England always had their share of visits, but so far not in any unusual number, they picked these two countries as the probable areas of most noticeable activity.    

All this is described in the Lorenzens' recent book UFO and possibly elsewhere, but we had read nothing of it at the time last summer when our bank manager was telling us of sightings in the Cariboo country where he was previously stationed.    

"You should go up there," he urged. "Speak to Brian Grattan at Lone Butte. I'll drop him a note and send him a copy of your magazine."    

And that was how we learned Canada was indeed "invaded" in the late summer and fall of 1967, though barely a ripple of it came to public attention. On our visit to the beautiful Cariboo country we heard of sighting after sighting and came to know in advance what year would be mentioned as the time of occurrence - 1967.    

Still not aware of the dimensions of what we were after, we thought perhaps there had been some particular circumstance in the Cariboo country that had attracted this attention. Out of curiosity on our return home, however, we looked up the account of our visit to the Yukon in issue no.1 and here was that year cropping up again. 1967.    

The next step was to write consulting editor Brian Cannon to ask if his voluminous UFO files showed anything special for 1967. His reply, in effect, was - and how!    

So that was our introduction to the incredibly extensive but quiet "invasion" of Canada which, for all we know, may establish 1967 as one of the most significant years in our history. As the story is too broad in scope to be told in one issue, we will start with the Cariboo chapter while Cannon assembles his material for the national coverage.    

Here then is the extraordinary story of how Canada was "invaded" without knowing it.    

[Note that although Canada may have been an area of special activity, the UFO wave in 1967 was world-wide. Jacques Vallee in Flying Saucer Review records there were 95 landing reports in that year, the highest number for any year except 1954 when an incredible 236 landing incidents were reported.]   

WEIRD FLIGHTS OVER GUEST RANCH    

"Every now and then a reporter from one the city papers shows up with kind of a smile on his face and says, 'I hear you people have been seeing flying saucers around here. How about a story?' Well, I haven't anything to say to him. If they think this thing is a joke or some kind of publicity stunt, they can forget it."    

The speaker was Brian Grattan, a young man who, with his wife Pat, operates the 'Big G' Guest Ranch on the broad cattle country at Lone Butte off the Cariboo highway. He was the first contact we made in gathering material on the strange incidents that happened in that country two years ago, and which to a lesser extent were still going on.    

Friendly and approachable as they were, the time needed for our interview with Grattan and later with his neighbours Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Hills of Green Lake, was not easily spared. Even though the visitors' season was over, these people were hard at work preparing for the harsh bite of a Cariboo winter and making plans for next season.    

But as we sat over coffee with Brian Grattan and he carefully drew sketches on a paper napkin to illustrate what he, his ranch hands and guests had seen, we understood what a deep impression his sightings had made. He wanted to discuss them as long as there was no suggestion of disbelief. And, of course, there was not.    

"There were several scattered things that happened," he said. "So many, in fact, that I can't sort them out any more. But there were three incidents in particular that I do remember, and one of them was the very first sighting we had that summer. (1967)    

"I remember the time distinctly. It was the eleventh of July, in the evening, and I was with Sean Broc, a wrangler from Texas, when I saw a peculiar red light over Taylor Lake. I asked Sean what he thought it was and he didn't know, so we went over to the lake to have a better look.    

"Well, there were five of those things there. Four smallish ones in a neat rectangle and a larger one in front."    

At the time of this interview the last issue of Canadian UFO Report was just going to press. On its cover was a remarkable photo of a carefully investigated sighting over Victoria, B.C., in 1968. It showed four strange lights in rectangular formation with a larger one in front!    

"The lights were red with a bit of green in them," Grattan continued, "and they were making a loud hum, as if they were charging up. It was in a low frequency of about 400 megacycles, sounding like the key of F. It was so loud it was uncanny.    

Fascinated, the two men stood on a pier and watched and listened as the uncounted minutes ticked by. Suddenly a sixth object appeared. To illustrate, Grattan made a circular design on his napkin.    

"It was moving so fast we couldn't make out all the details but it had a red light on the top which I think was revolving, and the rim was lit up and it may have been revolving, too. Anyway, it came down at a terrific speed, went right between the other lights, then shot up out of sight. How it missed diving into the lake I don't know."    

Although this occurred in split seconds, the witnesses had a definite impression the sixth object was acting in concert with the others, perhaps as a scout ship.    

"It must have given them some kind of signal," Grattan said, "because pretty soon after that they disappeared. They all shot off in different directions."    

After that, strange red lights were seen on various occasions, though never in such dramatic fashion as that first sighting. Grattan recalled a night he saw one low overhead just after one of his ranch hands, Billy O'Neil, had left him to go to bed.    

"I called Billy and he was out of the bunk-house in about six seconds, but by that time it had climbed way up and looked just like a very bright star. That's how fast they can travel."    

On another occasion a glowing red object made a Saturday night appearance over the local dance hall as if interested in the action. But then the crowd started shining lights at it and the object took off.    

"In a fixed position those lights are greenish-red," Grattan said. "But when they move they are completely red."    

The second outstanding incident he remembered occurred on an August evening of that same year.    

"There were two couples from Oregon staying with us at the time and we had been telling them about our UFOs but they were pretty skeptical and just laughed. Then on this particular evening some of the other guests were sitting outside when one of the ladies there pointed to a bright light in the sky and asked what it was. Someone said it was Venus. 'In that case,' she said, Venus is moving.    

"Well, that light was moving all right. It came right on down and hovered for a while. It was about the size of a DC8 and lit the whole place up. The two men from Oregon came out just then and were just as amazed as we were. They called to their wives and they came out and stared like the rest of us. Then the light went across the highway and settled behind a clump of trees three or four miles away. We couldn't see the light itself after that but everything around it stood out plain as day."    

If any of the group considered having a closer look at the light, they were soon dissuaded by what happened next.    

"That thing started a dry electric storm that lasted all night," Grattan continued. "Lightning flashed around it, yet the sky remained absolutely clear."    

Obviously close exposure to such activity could be dangerous, but Grattan was determined to maintain watch on the light even though they could not see it directly. He arranged that not less than seven of his men be on lookout at all times for whatever period the light stayed there.    

"We kept an eye on it from about nine o'clock to 4:15 the next morning, then somehow it disappeared. As the sky started to brighten, the aura of light just wasn't there any more. After a while I had some of the men go over to see if it had left any traces but there was nothing. There wasn't a mark or a sign of burning anywhere."    

As already said, there was a scattering of incidents between the three main events which were too varied to keep track of. Although most of the sightings were of lights, metallic-looking objects were also seen occasionally. Grattan recalled one day when his guests came back from a picnic in great excitement, having seen an unmistakable flying saucer.    

"They thought it was a DC3 at first but they couldn't see any tail. Then it flipped over and they could see it was shaped like a disc."    

In issue no.4 we reported the experience of Albert Kershaw, a logging truck-driver on Vancouver Island, who in 1966 saw a low-flying object which he first took to be an airplane coming in for a crash landing. Then, to navigate a passage through the trees, it turned on its side and he saw it was a disc.    

"Whatever they are, these things operate in a highly sophisticated way," Grattan went on. "Most of the time, though it's certainly not always the case, they give the impression they don't want to be seen. Sometimes those lights stop dead in the sky and look exactly like a star. They even twinkle like one and have the same colors."    

Then on the night of Feb. 7 or 8 there occurred the incident that Grattan remembered perhaps most vividly of all.    

"I was having a shower when it happened," he said. "We operate on diesel power at the ranch, so when the water suddenly stopped running, I put on my dressing gown and slippers, grabbed a pocket flashlight and went out to the diesel shed to check on the pump. It was just a small difficulty, so I was only in there a minute or two.    

"Now the entrance of the shed looks out directly toward the corral where we keep the calves, and as I started to leave I noticed a dim light moving above the corral.    

"My small flashlight wasn't any help but there was just enough light to see what the thing looked like. It was disc-shaped, I'd say about 28 feet in diameter, with a dome on top and a dim light on top of that. I couldn't tell whether the rim was lighted or whether it was reflecting the light on top, but it was a little brighter than the rest of the object and seemed to be revolving. Around the base of the dome there was more faint light coming from what looked like three or four windows. I couldn't see anything inside."    

As the snow was melting in the unusually warm night, making a quagmire of the corrals, Grattan went back to the house to put on a pair of gumboots. Then entering the corral, he sloshed through the mud and stood almost directly under the object.    

"It was about 40 feet up, moving slowly along with a wobbling motion, and underneath it I could see three equally spaced markings pointing toward the center." (See Lesley Footner's illustration based on witness' sketch.)    

Convinced after numerous sightings over the "Big G" ranch that UFOs were not hostile, and in fact tended to shy away from humans, Grattan shone his small light at the object, waved his arms and tried as well as he could to show friendly interest.    

"It didn't seem to notice me at all," he said. "It just kept slowly following the calves across the corral as if it was studying them, and all the time it was making a low rhythmic noise like an IBM computer."    

Asking the inevitable question about its effect on the animals, we received a surprising reply.    

"It wasn't bothering them at all and, from what I've noticed, that is usually the case. These things only seem to get animals excited when they're making a loud droning noise, like that time over Taylor Lake, or when there are quite a few of them around. Maybe that's not the case everywhere, but that's been our experience.    

This remark suggested an answer to the Cariboo mystery we had not considered before: perhaps the UFOs' main purpose in visiting the area was to study its unusual animal life. To our visitors from space the sights of herds of animals wandering freely about in this part of the country, and not in others, might have seemed strange indeed. If so, maybe they were equally mystified to see groups of these animals penned up as if for some reason of selectivity. If we remember that for cattle-raising productiveness the Cariboo is quite unlike the country surrounding it, we have more understanding why it could attract our visitors' attention. Assuming they were curious about the cattle as obviously they were, we can see why they avoided causing a disturbance  apparently a factor under their control.    

Whatever its purpose over the calves' corral that night, the low-flying disc never once paid attention to Grattan. Its study completed, it wobbled leisurely off into the night, leaving Grattan probably more puzzled than his un-announced sightseers.   
    

FLYING LIGHTS, CIGAR AND COWBOY HAT    

Obviously a basic part of our space visitors' roving-eye equipment is the comparatively small ball of pulsating light, usually reddish in color. In another of countless episodes this was made quite evident during the Cariboo flap of 1967 when one paid a widely witnessed visit to McLeese Lake, a small community on the Cariboo highway north of Williams Lake.    

It was 10 o'clock on the hot still night of August 26 when at least a dozen residents there saw a glowing blood-red object about the size of a soccer ball move into sight from the south. It was traveling directly above newly installed cables leading to the giant Peace River power project-to-be far to the north.    

"It didn't seem to be in any hurry and it stayed right over those lines as if it was studying them," said Mrs. Alfred Beck. "It was pulsating from dull red to bright red and it was moving so slowly there was plenty of time for many of us to see it. We watched it for three or four minutes."    

As the power cables ran along a high ridge skirting the community to the east, the witnesses had a good view of the whole performance.    

"I turned off my washing-machine to see if I could hear anything," Mrs. Beck continued, "but it wasn't making a sound, at least as far as I could tell."    

Although observing the object with naked eye, she had the impression there was "something dark underneath" but could not see exactly what it was.    

Jerome Olson, operator of a chinchilla farm who with his wife and son watched the light through binoculars, said it had a greenish spot. Evidently, however, this was not what Mrs. Beck observed as Olson described the spot as being in the center.    

A noteworthy point of this incident was that the Peace River project had not then started operation, so no power was passing through the cables at the time. Therefore the object's interest, for reasons unknown, must have been focussed on the mere existence of the system.    

On a third witness, Mrs. Barbara Begin, this and other sightings that summer had such an effect that she bought a telescope, started studying astronomy and for a while made nightly visits to a point where she had an unobstructed view of the power cables. Unfortunately nothing more happened there but meanwhile she kept a notebook of local UFO incidents and, in doing so, wrote another chapter in the story of the Cariboo flap.    

Her diary of events showed that the red ball was not the first UFO observed at McCleese Lake during that eventful summer. At 8 p.m. on August 2, just two weeks before, the Beck and Begin children and one or two others, making a total of about nine, saw a cigar-shaped object appear above Sheridan Hill to the north and head swiftly southward. Although the sun had not quite set, the children had the impression that the bright silvery look of the object was caused by self-illumination. An aircraft seen at approximately the same place and time the. next evening appeared shadowy by comparison. They said the object had no protrusions, made no noise they could hear and was much larger than any aircraft they had seen in the area.    

Mrs. Begin's notebook went on to show that early in the morning after the red-ball incident something else made a mysterious appearance over McLeese Lake, this time much higher.    

Outside to get a breath of fresh air in the oppressively close night, she noticed an unusually bright star she could not identify. As she studied it, she saw what appeared to be a satellite move up from the south. But as the "satellite" approached the "star" it suddenly stopped and the "star" took up the flight until it disappeared in the north. Fascinated, Mrs. Begin went across the road to awaken her friend, Mrs. Beck, and with marvelous determination they watched the now-stationary "satellite" for another two hours but the light of dawn came without any more action being noted.    

According to Mrs. Begin's notes, glowing red balls were seen over McLeese Lake on two occasions after the first. Then, in full daylight on Nov. 25, the Beck and Begin children saw another extraordinarily aerial object. In the words of Lynn Beck, then 13, it was like a flying "cowboy hat" changing from brown to red as it traveled eastward across the sky. The. youngsters joked about a cowboy being bucked too hard at a rodeo and losing his hat but their earnest description left little doubt that the Cariboo skies had once again received a visitor from space.   
    

UFO BIG AS BUILDING PAYS VISIT    

In opening this report on the Cariboo we described how in July, 1967, glowing red lights were seen in formation over Brian Grattan's guest ranch at Lone Butte. This was our first lead into the mystery of the pulsating red balls - "the beating-heart UFO" as one witness described it - that featured so prominently in the flap two years ago over the rolling plains of that great cattle country.    

Shortly afterwards, we heard of another spectacular group visit.    

This time, having completed our trip north to McCleese Lake, we had sought out Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Hills who operate a lodge on beautiful Green Lake immediately south of the Grattan's place.    

Their extraordinary experience occurred on the cold dismal night of October 30 in that same flap year. Mrs. Hills was preparing to go to bed.    

"From our bedroom upstairs," she told us, "there is a wonderful view south across the lake. On that particular night there wasn't much to see as it was very cloudy and dark, but I was looking out when I noticed this odd red glow appear over the hill on the other side. It was growing brighter and shining off the clouds when I saw two red lights come up over the hill and then another, much larger, move up between them. Then two more small ones appeared, so there was this immense red light with four little ones - two on each side - in perfect formation around it. I had never seen a UFO before but somehow I knew right away 'this is it.'    

Suddenly this was it in a still more dramatic way. Having cleared the hill, the awesome formation now started swiftly across the lake on a collision course toward the lodge! Answering her frantic shout, Ernie Hills and their son, Robin, rushed in just in time to see the lights veer off on another collision course toward their neighbors, the Gammies, to the west. When this happened, Mrs. Hills flew to the phone. ("As soon as Shirley Hills called," Bert Gammie of the Flying U Ranch told us later, "I just dropped the phone, rushed outside and stared. I thought it was going to hit us." Unfortunately, as he and his wife were preparing to leave on a trip, we were able only to speak to him briefly on the phone during our Cariboo visit.)    

But at the last moment the huge glowing object and its satellites- Mrs. Hills compared their relative sizes to a door and a door-knob - again changed course and shot off toward the southwest end of the lake, where it stopped abruptly about seven miles away. Here it added another trick to its already remarkable performance which particularly impressed Hills.    

"That thing was obviously looking for a place to land but its. speed was absolutely unbelievable," he said. "First it would shoot off to one side, then back again, then up and down and so on, but moving so fast it was impossible for the eye to follow. It seemed to be in several different spots all at once. Then suddenly it stopped and that was it. It had found its spot."    

There was no doubt the object was looking for a landing - or hovering - place as Ernie Hills conjectured, but how could its operators pinpoint that exact spot while performing at such fantastic speed? We would think such eye-boggling manoeuvre would be utterly confusing even for our remarkable space visitors. One possible answer is that such an operation is carried out by exquisitely precise instrumentation working under automatic control. Though primitive by comparison, our lunar landings are designed to operate on the same principle, with the option of pilot takeover if necessary.    

But even if the whole operation is carried out by instruments, the possibility remains that these alien spacecraft have, like ours, some sort of pilot back-up system, and this may give us one more clue in the study of our space visitors: namely, that in all likelihood they have acquired physical reflexes far superior to our own. Although in many UFO-occupant reports these strangers are described as frail looking creatures, it does not follow we are giants of physical prowess by comparison. Accustomed to handling vehicles that operate at blinding speed, they almost certainly have a correspondingly greater physical dexterity than we. Sometimes they are described as awkward in their movements but in such cases they are outside their craft and moving in an environment that to them is unnatural. When the enormous brilliantly red object finally came to a halt - because of the reflection underneath Mrs. Hills was inclined to think it was on or just above the water, but her husband believed the reflection was caused by ground mist or a thin coating of fresh snow - casting a glow on the clouds around it, the witnesses were reminded of a spectacular version of the B.C. Hydro building in Vancouver seen at night in the distance with all its windows alight. Although the outline of the object itself was not clear, the Hills agreed it was at least equal in size to this spacious office building.    

Then, through binoculars, they made a curious discovery. Horizontally across the face of the UFO ran two parallel lines of whitish light, resembling rows of windows lit from within...and there were stranger discoveries to follow. As they watched, the four little balls of light that had maintained their formation on the large one suddenly darted off in different directions in the same way as those observed at Lone Butte by Brian Grattan.    

But for the Hills there was an extra surprise package.    

"After a while those things started coming back," Ernie Hills said. "First of all a beam of light would come out of the big light, then one of those red balls would come sailing into view and shoot right down it. We weren't sure if the little lights actually entered the big one but Bert Gammie next door said he could see them going right in."    

Because the witnesses were staring directly into the glow of the object, it was understandable this part of the performance caused uncertainty. Conceivably the beam of light was caused by the opening of an entrance into the main object, in which case the small UFOs undoubtedly would have gone right in like aircraft returning to their hangar. But basically this element of the account, though intensely interesting, was a detail. More significant was the obvious overall manner in which the satellites acted as scouts for the central body. While there is a variety of mother-ship reports on record, this is the first we know of in which the scouts have been dispatched and brought back to a fixed position with such evident precision. To the witnesses the scouting intent of the whole performance was completely obvious.    

Whether each satellite made more than one trip was not entirely clear, nor were the witnesses sure they saw all four return. Puzzled, and after a while exhausted, by their unbelievable experience, the three Hills lay down in bed to watch in comfort as the drama unfolded. (This was after Ernie Hills had dissuaded his wife from venturing out to have a close-up look at what was happening. He believed there could be unknown dangers, and it is true that witnesses approaching UFOs too closely have occasionally. suffered burns and blackouts.)    

But the final act was denied them. As the night wore on they all fell asleep, and when they awoke their strange visitor had left.   
    

LOOKED LIKE AIR RESCUE    

So abundant were UFO reports on our field survey of the Cariboo that ironically after a while we hoped we would not hear of any more. Probably like most ufologists in similar circumstances we were looking for a pattern, and now that we thought we had found it - sketchy though it was - we wanted it to remain intact. In that flap of 1967, we concluded, the core of work - for whatever purpose - was carried out by those vari-colored balls of lights that showed up everywhere. Apparently they were some kind of sensors gleaning information which they then relayed back to a central body of information.    

It was all so clear. Brian Grattan at Lone Butte had told us how he had seen four of these lights storing up energy, or whatever, in company with their parent body. Next we had the McCleese Lake report of a red light carrying out its mission, and finally the step-by-step account of the Hills at Green Lake who saw the actual system of dispatch and return.    

Scattered throughout were high-flying objects of various forms but these seem to be a part of any flap and we made no special effort to fit them into the pattern. Right from the start, however, there were two other objects that posed a problem: namely, the conventional saucer-type that flew over Grattan's cattle, and then the brilliant white light that landed near his ranch and created an electrical storm. How did they fit into the picture?    

As the ball-of-light sightings intruded themselves more and more into our report, we began mentally to isolate these two incidents from the rest of the flap. In the manner of our scientific friends, we argued they were oddities and therefore had no more than coincidental bearing on the main events.    

Then, just about the time our minds were comfortably made up, we stumbled across another incident and our pattern fell apart, or seemed to. It happened when someone suggested somewhat mysteriously we get in touch with Herman Sten at Lac La Hache.    

When we did so, we understood the mystery. Clearly Herman Sten is not a man given to ready conversation, particularly when approached at work by a stranger. He has the look and manner of one who gives himself quietly and completely to his job, which is the maintenance of heavy equipment. Unless we had shown him a copy of Canadian UFO Report he might have had little to say to us. But the magazine convinced him of our real interest and, like a man trying to rid himself of a disturbing dream, he described what happened to him one evening in the late fall of 1967 (unknown to him, the Cariboo flap year).    

"I don't remember the exact date," he told us, "but I do remember it was a Friday. I was driving home from work about six o'clock and at that time on a Friday there should have been lots of traffic on the highway. But this time there was hardly any."    

Since he was living then at 100 Mile House about 30 miles to the south, he had plenty of time to observe the rolling ranch country through which he was driving. The only restriction was the approach of night.    

"Soon after I left Lac La Hache I noticed something in the air away ahead of me to the right. It looked like a blinking light at first but it wasn't moving very fast so I thought it must be a helicopter on some kind of exercise, and I kept my eye on it."    

Several miles farther on he realized he was catching up to the light, and by the time he reached a small lake at the 108-mile point he was abreast of the object and had a close look at it.    

"It was hovering about 200 feet above the lake and I could see the light wasn't blinking at all," he said.. "It was revolving around some large dark thing that looked like two plates pressed together, one upside down on top of the other. On top was a dome-shaped piece and on top of that was a steady red light, not very bright. The whole thing must have been more than 100 feet wide."    

Despite a complete lack of sound from the object, and its strange shape, Sten still believed he was looking at some sort of conventional aircraft.    

"I thought something must have happened out on the lake and this was an air-rescue operation. Then I began to wonder because all at once the thing flew across the highway right in front of me and hovered over a small hill on the other side. A moment later I knew for sure something funny was going on. The object started to come down among some trees on the hill, and when I saw the light flashing around on those trees, I figured it was time to get away from there."    

About three miles farther on he stopped the car again and looked back just as the object was climbing in a sweeping curve toward the west. Finally reaching home at 100 Mile House, he looked for the object once more and for an instant saw the intermittent light before it disappeared high in the darkness.    

So here was yet another type of closely observed object that we had to fit into the Cariboo flap. Definitely not of the red-light variety, it seemed more like a larger version of the disc-shaped craft seen by Brian Grattan over his corral at Lone Butte (though this sighting actually took place early in 1968).    

Did this mean, then, there were two flaps going on - one composed of glowing lights and the other of flying discs? Both are a frequently seen type of UFO but, since we hold the view that our space visitors probably have various origins, it bothered us that objects of such dissimilarity should be operating in the same areas at about the same time. By some weird chance, was the Cariboo being visited simultaneously by two sets of aliens?    

Then we remembered that Grattan had seen a disc and a group of red lights together, and that seemed to answer our question. Different though they looked, the two types of UFOs were related and on the same mission. In ufology, however, answers are not won that easily, if at all. How, for instance, would we explain the next case?   
    

OCCUPANT ENTERS CAR    

The locale this time was in Idaho which, with sections of Washington and Oregon, might be considered the U.S. continuation of Canada's Cariboo country. As reported by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena which gave considerable attention to the case, it was about 9:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2, 1967 (note it was a Friday in late autumn and so perhaps the same night that Herman Sten had his experience) when two Navajo Indian youths, Will Begay and Guy Tossie, were blinded by a sudden brilliant flash as they were driving on Highway 26 outside Ririe. Although Begay, driving, did not apply the brakes, their car stopped and a small domed UFO appeared just above the highway ahead of them. Flashing green and orange lights seemed to be revolving around its rim, and through the transparent dome the startled young men saw two small humanoid figures.    

After a moment the dome swung open and one of the creatures drifted lightly to the ground. Then, to quote NICAP: "His height was a little over three feet. His face had a rough look - like 'scars, deep scars,' as one of the Indians said. He had large 'high' ears; his eyes were round, and his mouth was a slit with very thin lips or none at all. No nose could be seen in the roughness of the face."    

To the horror of the witnesses, the creature approached the car, opened the driver's door without apparent difficulty and climbed in as the frightened Indians huddled toward the other side. Whether the humanoid then actually drove the vehicle or it was pulled somehow by the UFO remains unknown, but it did move ahead into a field of stubble wheat while the UFO manoeuvred in front.    

When the car stopped after a short distance Tossie, on the right hand side, leaped and ran to a nearby farmhouse where he babbled out his story. Eventually the farmer and his son persuaded the "incoherent Indian" to take them to the car where they found Begay, paralyzed with fear, sitting alone with his eyes closed. Later Begay said the creature in the car had jabbered at him in high, rapid sounds "like a bird" until he was joined by the other humanoid. The two strange beings then returned to the UFO which, with a flame-like light glowing from the bottom, climbed off into the night.    

Later there were two other UFO sightings in the same area. A man in a pickup truck said he was stopped by a strange flying device from which a small being emerged, while in the second case a woman, Mrs. Quinn, said she saw a low-flying orange light that appeared to be rotating.    

Considered separately, the U.S. humanoid accounts, as in so many other cases, are completely puzzling. Why would bizarre beings, presumably so highly developed they can visit us from another world, drop down in lonely places to harass motorists? On the face of it, they appear to be bad-tempered idiots.    

But considered as part of the UFO wave to the north, the U.S. incidents make a great deal more sense. In this light we begin to see a total intelligible plan in which our visitors examined us in a myriad of ways, ranging from a look at our largest new power system to a personal on-the-ground study of "what makes earthlings run?"    

Some might balk at the idea of lumping the Canadian and U.S. incidents together on the grounds that the UFOs were too unlike each other. For instance, the object seen by Herman Sten on the Cariboo highway was apparently massive compared to that encountered (possibly the same night) by the two Indian lads. Respective diametric measurements were about 100 feet and eight feet.    

Impossibly different though these measurements may seem, we have a hunch that in both cases the craft was the same. On the night of his experience Sten saw an object with a rotating light near a stretch of highway where he was the only motorist at the time. It could almost have been waiting for him. Just over three hours later - if it was the same night - in the neighboring State of Idaho on another lonely stretch of highway the two Navajo youths had their remarkable encounter. The object they saw apparently had rotating lights, plural, but any of the witnesses might have been mistaken in this respect. The actual number of lights would probably seem to vary with the speed of rotation. Also it should be remembered that Mrs. Quinn's description of a UFO over Idaho that night tallied closely with Sten's in British Columbia.    

As for size, all the witnesses made their observation at night. With nothing but a dark shape and moving light or lights to judge by, they could be expected to vary widely in their guesses. Also all the witnesses were in a state of alarm - to put it mildly in the case of the two Indians. This would certainly add to the confusion.    

The point we are after is that the seemingly absurd activity of some UFOs may actually have great purpose. If we put all the reports together, no doubt is left that two years ago North America, or at least its Northwest section, was given minute but barely noticed scrutiny by our strange visitors. Somewhere in space the results of that scrutiny, plus many others, have been tabulated. The time almost certainly approaches when the purpose of all this will become clear.    

Now, what about that other totally different object, the brilliant white light that landed near Brian Grattan's ranch at Lone Butte?    

To touch on a possible clue we will refer back to an incident described in our issue no. 3 when, on Vancouver Island in the summer of 1968, building contractor Hans Sorensen saw a strange light over his place which seemed similar to the Grattan sighting in brilliance and size. From this light there emerged a smaller one of conventional soccer- ball size.    

So here again we have the mother-ship performance. Possibly the Grattans were visited by a mother-ship smaller than that seen by their neighbors, the Hills, but performing a similar function. If so, it keeps intact the pattern of lights and discs carrying out their strange but related duties.   
    

NEW FLAP STARTS    

Although the Cariboo flap of '67 and early '68 had an intensity all its own, our strange aerial visitors still roam over that country sporadically but in noticeable number. At the very time we were making our survey in September the radio stations at Quesnel and Williams Lake had a sudden flurry of reports of a mystifying light being seen between the two towns. While a trainman on the Pacific Great Eastern line decided it was a meteor, others claimed it was pulsating and one or two said they saw it make a turn.    

Isolated incidents like that may be dismissed, if we are so inclined, as quickly as they arise. There is no doubt, however, that earlier this year the Cariboo experienced another flap of sorts, giving weight to Fontes' theory there are cycles within cycles.    

We began to realize a second flap had occurred when we followed up on a tip to speak to Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Robertson who own spacious farmland off the highway south of McCleese Lake.    

"Yes, we did see something we couldn't explain," Robertson affirmed. "It was a reddish light that looked more amber at times, and it came from the south and moved north toward McCleese Lake. We watched it for about 20 minutes."    

This sounded so much like one of the McCleese Lake sightings, we expected to hear it occurred in 1967. But Robertson said not. The date was about the end of March this year.    

Not only that, but soon afterward in full daylight he saw something else that puzzled him. He was in his station wagon in the vicinity of Alexis Creek, west of Williams Lake, when he was startled to see a long metallic object fly across the road in front of him and dis- appear behind a hill.    

"It was no airplane or helicopter," he insisted. "I could see it much too plainly to make a mistake about it. It had no wings and wasn't making any noise. Just before it went behind the hill it looked as if it tipped on one side a little, and I thought maybe it was more circular in shape."    

So there we were, back with the same sort of object seen by the picnickers at the "Big G" ranch in 1967!    

In precisely the same period this was happening, a young woman at Williams Lake, Mrs. Arthur Millard, had an experience that brought the impact of this secondary flap quite literally closer to home. For the reader to understand the upsetting effect this had on Mrs. Millard, it must be explained her house is on the still sparsely developed north side of Williams Lake. Much of the property there is woodland, with the result that residents feel somewhat more isolated than those in the town itself.    

On the evening in question Mrs. Millard was preparing dinner. Unlike her usual custom she had chanced to leave open the curtains of her kitchen window facing out to a cluster of tall trees behind the house, where it was now getting dark.    

"I was in front of the window when I noticed a bright light shining through the trees," she said. "It puzzled me because it was near the top of the trees and was bright red." Suddenly the object began to alternate between red and bursts of flashing white, and Mrs. Millard, now thoroughly alarmed, realized she was looking at something utterly strange.    

In issue no.4 we reported the experience of Mrs. Paul Hiliman on Vancouver Island who, on a summer night in 1968, was startled to see a red glow outside her window. Our report continued: "Mystified and alarmed, Mrs. Hillman called to her husband who entered the room in time to see the red light change to an almost blindingly brilliant white, then vanish."    

"It just hovered there sending out these weird flashes of light," Mrs. Millard said. "Sometimes the white flashes seemed almost blue, and then at times they had tinges of yellow."    

Gradually the thought asserted itself that she must be watching a UFO and she rushed to phone Michael and Myrna Halsall, a couple she knew had studied the subject. By the time she described the incident and returned to the window the light had gone, leaving a disturbed but curious witness to ponder what had happened.    

It is appropriate here to say a word of appreciation for Mr. and Mrs. Halsall. Motivated by the prodding interest that serious ufologists everywhere can understand, this young couple has made their attractive house on the shore of Williams Lake a sort of informal headquarters for those seeking or giving information about UFOs. By press, radio and conversation they have made known their willingness to receive and discuss sighting reports, and for many puzzled witnesses this has meant a welcome contact. They helped us greatly in providing leads for this Cariboo report and we are grateful.    

One of the leads the Halsalls gave us was the name of Alex Whitecross, a writer living at Alexis Creek where, as we have reported, a strange flying object was seen by Zander Robertson. Alexis Creek is in the uniquely beautiful and scantily developed Chilcotin country of the Cariboo which has inspired other resident writers to describe their struggles against the wilderness. Since the road was unnavigable by our car at the time, we spoke to Whitecross by phone and include his story here because its dating seems to place it in the secondary flap.    

The incident occurred late one afternoon in the Christmas season last year as the Whitecrosses were driving home after a visit to Williams Lake.    

"It was dark on the ground when we saw a tremendous bright green light passing high in level flight in front of us," he said. "The sun was still shining at that altitude but this light was self-illuminated. It was as bright as a magnesium flare. I've never seen anything like it but I'm not saying it was a UFO. I don't believe in them. I just don't know what it was."    

Disbelieving though he was in the existence of UFOs, Whitecross did not suggest what he saw was a meteor. Obviously the impression it made on him was too strange to allow such a ready answer. Others merely reading of his experience, however, might conclude that was exactly what he saw.    

Perhaps it was, but it should be remembered that 20 years ago green fireballs established themselves as a spectacular part of what was then the embryonic UFO phenomenon. So many were seen, particularly over the American southwest, that commercial airlines became seriously concerned. Eventually Dr. Lincoln La Paz, head of the university of New Mexico's Institute of Meteoritics, was called upon to head up a team to investigate the mystery, and later Project Twinkle was established for the same purpose.    

Although no official conclusion was ever reached, Dr. La Paz formed his own opinion that the fireballs were not meteors or meteorites. His reasons were the trajectory was too flat, the color was too green, and no fragments were found even though his team knew where they should have landed if they were meteorites.    

Taking it from there, some ufologists theorize the green fireballs are a device to check conditions in our atmosphere or even to clean out nuclear pollution which may be causing danger on a far vaster scale than we realize.