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The Shag Harbour Incident: UFO Crashes In Canada [1967]

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Info from research by Don Ledger. A book called "The Shag Harbour Incident" is available... out there. ;)

Roswell, HARUMPF! Around the night of October 4th, 1967, Shag Harbour Nova Scotia experienced a series of UFO sightings, and then the famous UFO on that date. The towns people of Shag Harbour, a small fishing community some miles from the city of Halifax, thought a plane had crashed into the harbour. A car load of folk as well as at least one man and one family saw "lights from a craft" that fell into the harbour, a glow from the "aeroplane" lights seen on the water. Did they exclaim "aliens!"? Nope, they called the RCMP and reported a plane crash (first question from Mountie who answered the phone" Were you drinking?"). The Mounties (both of them) called the Coast Guard, as fishermen in the area were called upon to take their vessels out to look for survivors. They found only a "yellow foam" on the water, which gave a "sulfur" stink. The experienced fishermen insist is isn't "sea foam" in any way. They had never seen anything like it before. With the arrival of the Coast Guard cutter, the total number of vessels in the search was seven that very same night.

Frantic calls up and down the coast to the RCAF, Military bases, American bases, etc. reveled no missing planes that night.

The "Air Desk" in Ottawa received a report from the RCC (Royal Coast Guard) and the RCMP from Shag Harbour. The report stated they had found no nothing after five hours of searching. Since the harbour and Sound were well known and not unusually deep or mysterious, everyone was satisfied there was no crashed plane. The Squadron Leader at the Air Desk scribbled "UFO" on the report with a pen.

Navy and RCMP Divers were brought out. Nothing. But lots of activity when they arrived on the morning of Oct. 5th. Nothing found.

The Chronicle Herald in Halifax ran this headline on Saturday the 6th. "Could be Something Concrete in Shag Harbour UFO-RCAF Continue to Search Today".

Still, the search (diving) continued until late Monday 8th until Maritime Command called off the search.

After that, there are all sort of strange stories, many impossible to confirm in any way. Russian sub spotted "lurking". Diving off Halifax Harbour miles away, and getting something (?). Divers stating "that ain't no sub down there!", etc. But the core "plane crash" story is veeery interesting. Lots of witnesses, official involvement, real people who are around today who are completely honest when they say; "God knows what it was... not a plane apparently!".

Roswell? HA! Try this one Fox Mulder!
 
While a lot of 'classic' cases dissolve under closer investigation, the Shag Harbour incident has stood up well to scrutiny. It's unusual because of the amount of official documentation from the RCMP, RCAF, etc.

Of course, like at Roswell, memories blur, stories are embellished, and people who weren't even there claim to have seen the whole thing. Still, it seems pretty clear that something odd happened.

But what? My bet is that a spacecraft was indeed involved, but that it came from Baikonour or Plesetsk, not Mars or the Pleiades.

Soviet satellites had a bad habit of falling on Canada - a nuclear powered one crashed in the Arctic, costing the Canadian government millions to clean up the radioactive debris. (The Russians promised to repay. The check is in the mail.)

Mystery objects - Soviet subs - there's enough intrigue in this story to make a Tom Clancy novel. I think we'll hear much more about Shag Harbour in the coming years.
 
A few good links to related stuff here.
I found this site regarding the new book. Apparently, the CBC is doing the advertizing. lol
Click here................................... :blah:

Dark Object
Sept. 30, 2001.
The Incident
 
Shag habour?

Apologies in advance, but if I was an sex-starved alien I would definitely here!

J.
 
Wild tale draws UFO buffs to Nova Scotia outpost

By Bram Eisenthal

Thursday, April 29, 2004SHAG HARBOUR, Nova Scotia - When it comes to UFOs, people tend to think of Roswell, Betty and Barney Hill, Project Blue Book - even that cute ragamuffin, E.T. But few people are aware that Canada experienced an incident last century that is perhaps one of the strangest, and best documented, in the history of unidentified flying objects.

You may be tempted to pass this off as the ruminations of madmen, but, as I discovered, this would probably be a mistake.

With magnificent scenery and warm people, I'd be the last one to recommend you come here just to visit an off-the-beaten-path spot like Shag Harbour. But if you're stalking the streets of Halifax, or traipsing through smaller gems like Lunenburg or Annapolis Royal, it's worth driving an extra couple of hours to stand at this spot. If you're a flying saucer buff, the stories don't come any crazier than this.

It happened on Oct.4, 1967. If you were here at the old moss processing plant, you could not have missed the strange object, wobbling in the sky and then slamming into the water at a 45-degree angle.

Chris Styles was 12 when he saw the object over Dartmouth, about two hours from Shag Harbour, during what has become known as ``The Night of the UFOs.''

In his book, ``Dark Object: The World's Only Government-Documented UFO Crash'' (Dell paperback, .50), co-authored with Don Ledger, Styles vividly recounts seeing ``an opaque featureless ball that glowed a dull orange.'' Following the object with his binoculars, ``I hadn't realized how big it was - it was easily 50 or60 feet in diameter,'' he said.

An adrenaline-pumped Styles rushed home. The next morning, when he picked up the newspapers he delivered daily, he was thrilled to see the story as that day's headline.

There's not much to see here the day of my visit but water and a few boats, heading out into the Atlantic. It's not cold, but Styles tale is enough to raise goosebumps.

Stiles said his grandfather, Gilbert Sampson, was here in Shag Harbour on vacation at the time. ``He witnessed something that came down and hit the water's surface.''

I try to picture this craft slamming into the blackness and continuing to glow, as it moved underwater through the harbor and made straight for open water.Fishermen took their boats out to investigate, but all they found was an unusual, fast-dissipating orange foam floating on the water.

One could suspect the many witnesses were part of an elaborate hoax, but Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Ian Andrew, in the company of three game wardens, also saw the orange object. The men watched as it moved, without a sound, above the tree line. ``What the hell is that?'' they asked one another.

That so many trained RCMP officers and other reliable sources saw it and filed reports, which Styles and Ledger obtained through Canada's Access to Information Act, make the story even creepier. But even Styles said, ``I am generally a skeptic regarding most theories, preferring to simply do the research and see where it takes me.''

Styles takes my wife and me to another place integral to the tale. About 30 minutes away, we arrive at what is now the Shelburne Film Production Centre. In 1967, during the Cold War, this was apparently a top-secret submarine listening post, CFB Shelburne. It was ``Harry,'' a retired Navy diver, who stunned the usually unflappable Styles and Ledger during a taped interview when he spoke of a UFO incident off the waters of Shelburne Harbour.

``You do know about the one off Shelburne, don't you?'' Styles said Harry asked them. ``You know, there was no doubt about that one.''

It was confirmed by Harry and other sources that Canadian and American naval divers were dispatched to both Shag Harbour and Shelburne Harbour, and they brought debris up from the shallow waters. ``We got big chunks of this stuff from the bottom,'' Harry told them.``Maybe foam is the wrong word. Some of it was decomposing as we brought it up.''

Today, the former CFB Shelburne is much as it was in 1967, and it isn't hard to imagine a frenzy of military activity here, though as with Shag Harbour, you do need an imagination. The only action is in the buildings' film sets, where such movies as ``The Scarlet Letter'' and ``Virginia's Run'' were made.

But Stanton J. Friedman thinks it's worth a visit for UFO buffs. The American-born nuclear physicist and renowned UFO theorist, who lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, is considered the ``father of Roswell'' by legions of fans.I ask about the significance of Shag Harbour.

First, Friedman explained, it happened in the recent past and ``a whole lot of people involved are still alive to confirm the details.'' Next, he said, ``you can safely say that some kind of object came down there and was seen by lots of people.''

Friedman said visitors experience ``a sense of wonderment'' here.

``It's a great place to jumpstart your imagination, that's for sure.''

http://theedge.bostonherald.com/travelNews/view.bg?articleid=264
 
I was just watching "The New Roswell" on the Discovery Channel (I'm sure it'll be repeated again if you keep an eye out for it) and they certainly paint a fascinating picture of...... something. I do think they got over excited whenever they saw the word UFO in official documents.

One thing I thought was interesting was the use of the comic to tell the story.

Also did no one think to take a samples of the mysterious yellow foam at the crash site??

The details of the book I mentioned above:

Dark Object: The World's Only Government-documented UFO Crash (2001)
by Don Ledger and Chris Styles
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0440236479/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0440236479/
 
I saw that as well Emps.

Unfortunately I was cooking tea at the time and therefore running in and out of the kitchen to make sure that the chip pan didn't burst into flame.

What I saw of it looked interesting though, especially the bit about the bloke who detected an object flying overhead as a large magnetic anomaly. But on a cloudy day. :(
 
Originally posted by Emperor


Also did no one think to take a samples of the mysterious yellow foam at the crash site??


Yes I thought the same, the most obvious thing to do.
 
Over 50 years ago, on the night of 4 October, strange lights appeared over the sky of a small Canadian fishing village.
Witnesses watched as the lights flashed and then dived towards the dark waters off the coast of Nova Scotia.
Now, what some believe to have been a UFO sighting has been commemorated by the Royal Canadian Mint.
The mint has released a collector's coin that tells the story of a "unique and mysterious event".
The scene on the glow-in-the-dark coin depicts a specific moment described by various eyewitnesses.

Mint spokesman Alex Reeves said the coin is "definitely one of the top performers" and has sold out on their website. It had a limited run of 4,000 and retailed for C$129.95 ($98; £79).


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49901449
 
Interesting new article on the Shag Harbour incident and a separate incident often confused with the former:

https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-c...ent-shared-at-ufo-expo-in-yarmouth-100785298/

The new incident sounds quite similar to some of the stuff mentioned further up the thread, perhaps this was the incident conflated with the 1960 events?

After that, there are all sort of strange stories, many impossible to confirm in any way. Russian sub spotted "lurking". Diving off Halifax Harbour miles away, and getting something (?). Divers stating "that ain't no sub down there!", etc. But the core "plane crash" story is veeery interesting. Lots of witnesses, official involvement, real people who are around today who are completely honest when they say; "God knows what it was... not a plane apparently!".

I do find myself wondering if many of these stories are based on overheard stuff about 'unidentified' (ie Soviet) subs tracking US ships or exercises - similar to the way the story that sparked the Penkridge 'crash' tale does seems to coincide in time with the crash and attempted recovery of a US aircraft in East Germany.

I've seen the core Shag Harbour incident explained as a fire balloon, which might explain some aspects of it I suppose.
 
The new incident sounds quite similar to some of the stuff mentioned further up the thread, perhaps this was the incident conflated with the 1960 events?



I do find myself wondering if many of these stories are based on overheard stuff about 'unidentified' (ie Soviet) subs tracking US ships or exercises - similar to the way the story that sparked the Penkridge 'crash' tale does seems to coincide in time with the crash and attempted recovery of a US aircraft in East Germany.

I've seen the core Shag Harbour incident explained as a fire balloon, which might explain some aspects of it I suppose.
Both Russian and US spy satellites of that era would jettison capsules containing the film they had taken but these could go astray for a number of reasons, so perhaps the Russian sub was looking for just such a capsule?
 
I was reading the following account of the Shag Harbour incident, and one passage particularly struck me regarding the main group of witnesses to see the 'UFO crash' and an obvious problem with their account. It'll probably leap out at you also:

https://masksign.wordpress.com/2019/06/17/shag-harbour-part-one-splashdown/

the first witnesses in Shag Harbour to see the now-famous UFO. It appeared on their port side as they steamed south, travelling alongside and coming down over the Shag Harbour Sound. It had the appearance of four bright, flashing yellow lights in a straight line, perhaps sixty feet in total length, angled downwards about forty-five degrees toward the water. Wickens and his friends kept a close eye on the object, but lost it when they went around a forested hillock that blocked it from sight. As they rounded a bend and opened their sight lines again, they were shocked to see but a single yellow light bobbing around in the Sound. Whatever the object was, it had evidently crashed into the harbour.

Sounds like the witnesses saw something in the sky, then had their view blocked by a "hillock", then saw a light in the water. How can we be 100% sure that what they saw in the sky did actually end up in the water in that case?
 
... Sounds like the witnesses saw something in the sky, then had their view blocked by a "hillock", then saw a light in the water. How can we be 100% sure that what they saw in the sky did actually end up in the water in that case?

Good point ... I don't recall ever seeing / reading any account that clarified whether the spot in the water (where the single light was later seen) had been blocked from view by the forested hillock (and / or other terrain) the whole time.
 
I have to admit this is a case where I haven't looked at any reports in great depth, but the evidence does seem a bit thin, on the face of it - I'm a bit surprised entire books have been written on the subject.

The above seems to reduce the real core of the case to a light seen on the water in Shag Harbour Sound. The report of the main group of teenagers linking it with some lights seen in the sky encouraged people to think this might have been evidence of a plane crash; nothing was found at the site except an area of yellowish foam on the water. The 'official evidence' everyone seems to have got very excited about is, really, just documentation relating to a search for this possible plane crash.

I'm not sure I see much here inconsistent with a fire balloon, stray flare, or even something which was never in the air at any point. I don't know whether anyone else in Shag Harbour reported the lit 'object' immediately before seeing the light on the water. There were various UFO reports from elsewhere earlier that evening, but this proves nothing in particular (especially if they only emerged after the 'crash' story was publicised).

As for the stories of submerged objects being tracked and the like, there now seems a possibility that this might reference garbled memories of a quite different incident.
 
https://files.ncas.org/condon/text/case34.htm

Here's the Condon Committee report on the incident - Case 34. There are a couple more sighting reports, though again nothing that inconsistent with a flare or similar. Another of the Condon cases from the same period sounds very like the Shag Harbour reports and was established by NICAP to have been a flare drop.

There is an interesting report of lights on the water and a radar return from a fishing boat crew, but this turns out to have been over 100 nautical miles away.
 
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https://nationalpost.com/news/canad...-the-shag-harbour-ufo-sighting-50-years-later

A more recent (2017) article.

Here we have one of the problems with researching decades old events of this sort:

Soon afterwards, Wickens was among a dozen or so people gathered at the water’s edge, watching in amazement as a glowing, orange sphere — about the size of a city bus — bobbed on the waves about 300 metres from shore.

But compare this with the Condon Committee's contemporary report:

The witnesses had lost sight of the object for about ten seconds while passing a small hill; they then saw a single white light on the water about where they estimated the object should have gone in. They observed the light while they drove on about .25 mi., then reported the incident to the RCMP detachment.

Seems quite a change over the past decades - a 'single white light' has become a bus-sized orange sphere, unless this is down to an error on the part of the article writer.

The duration of the 'air' bit of the sighting was quite short, but I'm wondering if debris from an aircraft deployed flare - the sort of magnesium fuelled thing Thiokol used to make for the USAF et al - might continue to burn for around 15-20 minutes with a white light if floating on the water, the sort of duration indicated by the report. Burning magnesium can produce magnesium nitride which is a light yellow colour; maybe this explains some characteristics of the odd foam?
 
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One thing I do wonder is whether the assertion that no planes were flying about that night is reliant only on information from the Canadian authorities. After all, Shag Harbour isnot too far across the water from the United States. Did anyone check if an exercise was taking place in US waters?

The reason I ask is that report by the captain of a fishing boat, a few miles out of Shag Harbour at the time of the incident, of a series of flashing red lights on the water, associated with returns on the ship's radar. One light went straight up into the air - at the time the witness interpreted these as ships and a helicopter, but thought they might have some relevance to the UFO seen the same evening.

Now it turned out the lights and radar objects - whatever they were - were about 170 nm away from the sighting area, so were discounted as having immediate relevance to the Shag Harbour incident. But could they have been the result of a US exercise taking place at the time? Is it possible that a flare drop, or stray flare drop, associated with an ongoing exercise could have explained what the witnesses at Shag Harbour saw?
 
I have always been interested in the Shag Harbour incident, I did read
something that I can no longer find that made me wonder if it was
in fact, a Broken Arrow incident.
 
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