Original subtitles

[theme music]

NARRATOR: It's a mystery that has haunted

a community for decades.

Something strange is seen plunging into the water of Shag

Harbour, Nova Scotia, on the evening of October 4, 1967.

Cases like Shag Harbour are definitely

something unconventional.

They're not easily explained or explained away.

Something was there in the sky and it was lit up

and the lights was on and it came down.

NARRATOR: There are dozens of eyewitnesses, but few

explanations.

A lot of people saw something go in to the water

and no one has ever given a cause or name to it.

NARRATOR: Local fishermen, the Coast Guard,

and Navy divers search, but are unable to find

any evidence of a crash.

We couldn't believe that there was nothing.

There was no debris and there was not so much as a tin can.

It was something that had never happened before.

They didn't know what to think.

NARRATOR: The town is left in a state of uncertainty,

and with no official explanation from the Canadian authorities,

rumors of a government coverup begin to emerge.

I guess there was a considerable amount of secrecy

about the whole mission because they didn't reveal anything

to us.

I think everybody that night had a feeling that they were

keeping something from us, but we didn't know what it was.

NARRATOR: But an investigation 25 years later produces

declassified government documents

and some startling revelations.

What bothers me about it is that we're

being treated like children, and we're not

supposed to know this.

It's one of those cases that defines UFO reality.

NARRATOR: In the next hour, eyewitnesses, UFO researchers,

and recently uncovered government documents

will shed new light on the most comprehensive and mysterious

UFO case in Canada's history.

[music playing]

October 4, 1867, something unusual

is happening in the skies over the Canadian province of Nova

Scotia.

During the waning hours of the evening, dozens of people

are confounded by a series of inexplicable lights in the sky.

It's a date that will later become

known as the Night of the UFOs.

It was a clear night.

The stars were out.

It was a cold night.

There was a light wind.

A beautiful night, starlight.

The night of October 4th, '67, stuck with me for several

reasons.

Perhaps primary is the principle that seeing is believing.

At 10:00 PM in the town of Dartmouth,

12-year-old Chris Styles is getting ready for bed and takes

one last look out his bedroom window.

He is dumbfounded at what he sees.

I saw a strange orange light that

was moving along the shoreline, and it was

like nothing I've ever seen.

It was dim and hard to discern any detail,

so I quickly grabbed my jacket, ran out the front door,

went down to the waterfront to get a better look.

NARRATOR: A quick sprint past the warehouses

bring Styles face to face with the mysterious apparition.

When I got to the waterfront, what I saw

was a strange orange sphere perhaps 60 feet through,

and it was the color of an iron poker

when it first glows in the fireplace

if you let it get hot long enough.

It was hovering, following the shoreline, perhaps 10 feet

over the water.

Made no sound.

I was quite fearful and after a time, ran from the scene.

NARRATOR: The object drifts across the harbor

as Styles flees the area, but the initial shock

leaves an indelible impression.

I knew in my life at 12, for the first time,

what real fear was.

NARRATOR: Styles' encounter with the UFO

is only the prelude to a flurry of sightings that explode

throughout Nova Scotia that night.

One hour later, the small fishing village

of Shag Harbour, on the southern tip of the peninsula,

begins to erupt with similar sightings.

18-year-old fisherman, Laurie Wickens,

is driving home with three friends when

something odd in the sky catches his attention.

We're on our way to the harbor,

and through Shag Harbour just past the post office,

we happen to look through the window and we see a light.

Then there was two on, then three on,

and then there was four on.

It seem to be flying along like just level,

a yellowish orangish color, I guess, the color of the lights

was.

NARRATOR: Racing West along Highway 3,

Wickens attempts to keep the strange lights in view,

but the noiseless objects begin descending at a 45 degree angle

and drop below the tree line.

Seemed to be going along with us,

and then when we got to the bottom of the hill,

we lost sight of it.

NARRATOR: A few miles away, 18-year-old Norman Smith

is riding home with a friend through Bear Point Woods

and sees something similar in the sky.

We were chasing the girls, and we were on our way home,

and when we first noticed the lights in the sky.

NARRATOR: The sight of the strange illuminated shapes

is enough to make them pull over and watch.

We stopped alongside the road.

I got out, was looking at the lights.

It was stopped in mid-air, and there were five lights.

The lowest light to the ground was like if you were looking

at a full moon, and then the next one just

kept getting smaller, the next one smaller.

There was no sound.

You couldn't hear anything.

NARRATOR: Smith gazes at the lights for a few moments

as curiosity grows into unsettling concern.

I know I was frightened because I didn't know what it

was.

Never seen lights like that before in my life.

NARRATOR: Down the road, Laurie Wickens and his friends

are still in hot pursuit of the strange object.

They suddenly see a bright flash and hear a whistling sound

like a falling bomb.

They believe it may be falling into the harbor,

so they speed toward the waterfront.

The minute we come over the top of the hill,

we could see the light in the water.

At the time, we thought it was a flame.

NARRATOR: Wickens pulls into a vacant parking lot

by the shore to get a better look.

The light we see in the harbor looked like a half

a globe, a yellowish colored light,

we could see it drifting down the harbor.

That was first thing coming to mind is go call the RCMP

and report that we've seen a plane crash because that's what

we thought it was.

NARRATOR: Wickens returns to his car,

races to the nearest payphone, and calls

the regional headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,

the country's national police force.

It is known throughout Canada as the RCMP.

The corporal on duty answers the call at 11:25

and hears Wickens' excited voice.

The Mounties wanted to know what we were drinking,

and we said we wasn't drinking, and wanted to know

the number for the phone booth.

NARRATOR: After listening to Wickens' story,

the RCMP officer on duty is skeptical,

but as soon as he hangs up, other calls start pouring in.

The calls come in from nearby Bear Point, Cape Sable Island,

and Maggie Garens Point, all reporting the same thing.

With so many witnesses, the RCMP has no choice but to take this

seriously.

We got in the car to leave, and then he called back

and wanted to know where he could meet us so he could see

it in the water.

And I told him we'd be by the Moss Plank,

because that's where it was right off of there.

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, eyewitness Norman Smith is also busy

alerting people about the mysterious object

above the harbor.

We drove up to my father's place,

and I ran in the house, got my father, and he came out door.

We stood looking at the lights in the sky,

and it wasn't too long, probably a couple of minutes,

when we see the police car coming and its red lights

flashing.

NARRATOR: Smith follows the speeding police cruiser

to a shoreside parking lot where a crowd of witnesses

has gathered.

When we got there, there was I think 16 people, including

the police officers.

And they were local people.

They all seen the lights come down to the ground,

and they watched it land in the water.

NARRATOR: Civilians and the RCMP officers on the scene

observed the dull yellow orange light

drifting 300 yards from shore.

It was totally dark.

All you could see was the lights and it was on the water.

We watched the light for probably 10 minutes as it

was drifting down the harbor.

We walked to the top of the hill,

and then the light just went out.

It just disappeared.

NARRATOR: Everyone is convinced that they have just witnessed

a plane crash.

At 11:38 PM, one of the officers puts a call

through to the Rescue Coordination Center in Halifax,

the branch of the Canadian military that organizes search

and rescue operations.

The Coast Guard cutter in nearby Clark's Harbour

is also contacted.

Lighthouse keepers in the surrounding areas

are put on alert.

I was on duty, just carrying out my regular surveillance

of navigational aids.

Somewhere around midnight when I first got a call that they were

searching for something that crashed in the harbor.

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, the RCMP officers

improvise their own rescue operation.

They begin contacting local fishermen to commandeer boats

to go out to the impact site.

As word gets out, local residents sprang into action.

Someone came to our door and my husband jumped up and went

to the door to see who was there, and it was a policeman.

And he said that something had come down in the harbor,

and that they thought it was a plane.

And they knew that his boat was at the wharf,

and he could get there in a hurry.

I was on my way home from babysitting where I was picked

up by a local resident there.

He had some urgency in his voice when he said,

you've got to go with me because we've got to go search

for possible survivors of a plane crash

or something of that nature.

We really didn't know what we were heading out for.

All we could do was try to get there as fast as we could,

and we were rushing.

We went down to the wharf, untied the lines,

and got the boats cleared.

And we left there as fast as we could to get to the area.

NARRATOR: It's now slightly before midnight.

Two fishing boats with several volunteers

motor out towards open water at full throttle.

Criss crossing patterns of search light

beams paint the dark, still waters of the harbor

as the search begins.

And what we were doing was looking

for something on the water.

Debris is what we were thinking.

NARRATOR: The mood on the boats is tense

as the would be rescuers brace themselves

for a grisly scene of floating body parts and plane wreckage.

What they actually encounter is even more bizarre.

We came into this foam on the water.

It was like orange foam that was on the water, like bubbly foam.

Quite a long streak of it.

It was just more or less floating on the water.

What it was, I don't know.

NARRATOR: The fishermen realized that the mysterious foam is

connected to whatever crashed into the harbor.

Norman Smith attempts to get a sample

of the peculiar substance.

We circled the boat around, when we came back

into the foam.

When we came back into it, I took a small dip net

and dipped the dip net down into the water right into the foam.

When I pulled the dip net out of the foam, there was nothing.

You couldn't see nothing.

Totally nothing on the dip net.

I've been fishing all my life and I never

ever seen anything like that.

I've been up rivers and on lakes and even on the ocean

and never ever seen foam like that on the water.

NARRATOR: The strange foam soon melts back into the dark water,

but even more puzzling than the foam is the lack of any debris

at the site.

If something has just crashed into Shag Harbour,

it seems to have completely vanished.

We had thought that whatever it was had just sunk.

And I was, like you, kind of expecting to find some debris,

but there was nothing.

We were out there pretty near all night,

and circling around and looking for anything else that

was on the water, any debris or anything,

and we never found nothing.

There was not so much as a tin can.

NARRATOR: The confusion among the fishermen in Shag Harbour

is shared by the individuals back at the Rescue Coordination

Center in Halifax.

The RCC checks with the air traffic control center

in Moncton, New Brunswick, and the NORAD control center

in North Bay, Ontario, to determine

whether any civilian, commercial,

or military aircraft is missing.

The reports of an aircraft crashing into Shag Harbour

do not mesh with the data they get back.

They realize that this is not a downed aircraft.

None are missing.

They're looking for something unconventional.

They're starting to realize that perhaps this is

some unknown object from space.

NARRATOR: The residents are certain that something fell

into the dark waters of Shag Harbour,

but no one seems to know what it is.

Shag Harbour is a small, unassuming fishing village

on the southwestern tip of Nova Scotia.

It's so inconspicuous that it does not appear on some maps.

That is all about to change on October 4, 1967.

Several local residents report what

they believe to be a plane crashing into the harbor.

The sightings begin a chain of events that will make headlines

around the world.

Within hours of the initial reports,

local fishermen, police officers, and the Coast Guard

scour the waters of the harbor throughout the night,

but find no wreckage or debris.

As the sun rises the next day, the community

is gripped by apprehension and uncertainty.

I think everybody that night had a feeling that they were

keeping something from us.

NARRATOR: Word quickly circulates

that no debris has been found.

With no information coming from the authorities,

speculation spreads like wildfire.

It was the talk of the community, you know,

and it was a UFO, and of course, like everybody else,

we wondered I guess what it could be.

People became fearful.

They were wondering would there be more?

Would they tangle in our nets?

Would it crash in our house?

What's going on here?

And they just weren't getting answers.

NARRATOR: Finally, the Rescue Coordination Center

issues a statement that rules out the possibility of a plane

crash.

At 10:20 AM on October 5th, the Center

sends a telex stamped priority to the Canadian Forces

Headquarters in Ottawa.

The message outlines the sightings

by the Shag Harbour residents and the RCMP officers.

It refers to the thing in Shag Harbour as a dark object.

More important, it labels the object in question as a UFO.

It's unique also in that, again, the term UFO was first

used by the authorities who are searching

and not by the eyewitnesses.

NARRATOR: By the evening of October 5th,

the Shag Harbour incident has become a military matter.

After reviewing the telex from the Rescue Coordination Center,

Squadron Leader William Bain sends an urgent message

to the Canadian Maritime Command,

Canada's Naval headquarters for the Atlantic coast.

It advises an immediate underwater search of the area.

If the mysterious dark object left nothing floating

in the sea, perhaps the dive teams

can find something below the surface.

Maritime Command responds by dispatching a team of divers

from the Navy's fleet diving unit in Halifax.

They arrive on October 6th, and begin diving off the deck

of a Coast Guard cutter 101.

You get all kinds of rumors in a small village like this,

and then the Navy shows up with divers and stuff, well,

you know they must have taken it seriously

because so many people saw the event in the sky.

NARRATOR: The divers section off an area of the harbor roughly 1

half mile long by 1 and 1/2 miles wide.

Well, they'd go over the side and start

doing square searches.

They'll pick an area and normally stake it

off with a buoy on the bottom.

The visibility in the waters off Nova Scotia

is so full of plankton and so on, it's usually quite limited.

You know, maybe 20 feet at the most.

It was a low tech search simply

with handheld flashlights under the water.

They wouldn't let us anywhere near that area.

We were out there in the boat all right,

but we had to stay back away from where they were diving.

NARRATOR: As the divers are scouring the depths

of the harbor, the tiny fishing village

is thrust into the media spotlight.

On October 7th, a camera crew from the Canadian Broadcasting

Corporation arrives and films the divers in action.

This is actual footage from their news coverage.

Canada's major newspapers have also gotten

wind of the strange happenings.

Among the first to jump on the breaking story

is journalist Ray MacLeod of Halifax's "The Chronicle

Herald" newspaper.

I was one of the night reporters on duty

at "The Chronicle Herald" when the assignment editor

just called me over and said there's a report of something

going down in the harbor.

A lot of people had seen it.

RCMP reported they'd seen it, and the newspaper wanted

to find out what had crashed.

NARRATOR: But when McLeod attempts

to find out what went into the harbor, no one has any answers.

I started following up on what we got from our RCMP,

and what we got from search and rescue,

and that was they had no idea what had gone down.

They had nothing missing.

They had seen nothing drop off the radar screen anywhere

in the area, and they were basically puzzled.

NARRATOR: The lack of information surrounding

the incident raises MacLeod's curiosity

and inspires him to launch his own investigation.

Any time you don't know, it teases your imagination.

You have to wonder why they don't know.

When all the armed forces and everyone

was saying we have no idea, we have no idea,

we can't find anything.

That's when I use one of my sources

in the armed forces to get a number of someone in Ottawa.

NARRATOR: MacLeod's source refers him to Squadron Leader

William Bain at the Air Desk in Ottawa,

a division of the Royal Canadian Air Force

in charge of investigating UFO cases.

Bain's response to the Shag Harbour incident is surprising.

Just from what he'd heard so far,

it looked like one of those few cases

where there might be something concrete to the incident,

and that, of course, was the quote that ended up

in the headline of the paper.

NARRATOR: On October 7, 1967, MacLeod's article

makes the front page of the ultra conservative newspaper

"The Chronicle Herald."

MacLeod is as surprised as anyone to see it there.

And then the story come out, and my first reaction was, oh,

my God, what have I done?

OK, I never expected to see that screaming headline.

It was a headline in 2 inch red letters

that looked more like something you would see in the "National

Enquirer," and that served to fuel again the rumor

mill and the speculation.

NARRATOR: The shock waves of MacLeod's article

reverberate throughout the Canadian province

and reach the depths of Shag Harbour, where

the underwater search is in progress.

On October 7th, Maritime Command orders three additional divers

to the impact site.

As the dives continue, the people of Shag Harbour

want answers.

None are forthcoming.

I guess there was a considerable amount of secrecy

about the whole mission because they didn't reveal anything

to us.

Some people were told that they weren't allowed

to speak about it.

We thought that in a few days time

we were going to be hearing, yes, there

was a plane that went down.

It was on the bottom of the ocean,

or whatever it was that they found.

We thought that in a few days, they were going to be telling

us, but nobody ever did.

NARRATOR: Maritime Command terminates

the underwater search on October 8th.

They announce that three days of searching the harbor

have yielded nil results.

Five days after the sightings, the residents of Shag Harbour

are no closer to understanding what crashed into the water

the night of October 4th.

But the end of the underwater search

is just the beginning of a UFO case

that is about to become even more perplexing.

October, 1967.

After dozens of witnesses see something plunge

into Shag Harbour on the southern tip of Nova Scotia,

local fishermen comb the waters looking

for clues and Navy divers search beneath the surface.

But the Canadian Navy abruptly canceled the search

with no explanation, leaving the people of Shag Harbour

to wonder and worry.

In a lot of our minds, it was a cover up for something,

but for them to spend that much time and effort

and then give no explanation, it's

like they were here today and gone tomorrow type of thing.

NARRATOR: With no one providing any answers,

the rumor mill begins to churn.

And there was even a rumor at the time

that they had found something.

We thought that there were times

that they were bringing things up off the bottom of the ocean.

The guy that had the divers in the area,

he did admit that they did bring something up, wrapped.

Underwater, it was wrapped underwater,

but I guess that was kept a secret.

Speculation was rampant, but speculation is always rampant

when you don't give someone an explanation.

NARRATOR: During the 1960s, speculation

about UFOs and other unexplained events

often turns to the Cold War.

The nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet

Union is at its height.

The two superpowers are constantly

seeking to trump each other by harnessing the latest

military technology.

Top secret exercises are common in the North Atlantic.

The heated atmosphere produces anxieties that intensify

concerns about the incident.

It was always in people's minds, and of course, you know,

this is just a few years after the Cuban Missile Crisis

and other things.

So this added fuel to the fire.

And then, of course, people start coming up with theories.

Maybe it was a secret American device of some sort, a plane,

a satellite that went into the water, or was it

a Russian object?

NARRATOR: Night reporter Ray MacLeod

helps break the news about Shag Harbour

by writing a front page article in Halifax's "Chronicle Herald"

newspaper.

As MacLeod prepares to follow up on the story,

he receives some startling and discouraging news.

There was a note on my typewriter to see the managing

editor, and I was told, don't follow up this story.

We think this story should be handled by someone on day side

because a lot of the contacts are easier to get in the day,

and we want to follow this up thoroughly.

So we've given the story to David Bentley.

You're off the story.

NARRATOR: MacLeod asserts that Bentley confers with scientists

and academics to downplay the UFO angle.

He pursued talking to people who basically pooh poohed

the story and told everybody there's nothing to it.

It was all right.

NARRATOR: Among Bentley's chief sources

is one of Canada's most outspoken UFO debunkers,

an astronomer named Father Burke-Gaffney.

The late Father Michael Burke-Gaffney was a Jesuit

priest.

He was an astronomer.

He was a UFO skeptic.

He took a very dim view of what the UFO phenomena possibly

could be, and in statements to the press,

he would downplay that interest.

NARRATOR: In a public lecture a few weeks after the Shag

Harbour sightings, Burke-Gaffney tries

to alleviate any lingering concerns about what happened

that night by arguing that 94% of all UFO sightings

can be explained by meteorites, simple mirages,

and other natural phenomena.

With UFO skeptics having their say,

MacLeod begins to wonder what happened to Squadron Leader

William Bain, the source of the Canadian military quoted

as saying that there might be something concrete to the Shag

Harbour incident.

I asked Bentley why he wasn't following up on Squadron Leader

Bain, and Bentley told me that he was told the man didn't

exist and there was no such office in Ottawa,

and to leave that angle in the story alone.

NARRATOR: Is "The Chronicle Herald"

bowing to pressure from the Canadian government?

MacLeod ultimately realizes that the side of the story he began

to pursue would never make it into the newspapers.

I feel badly in some ways that I couldn't have used my talent,

my contacts, and my belief that the people have a right

to know to keep plugging away until we found out what was

going on.

A journalist feels empty when they have to do that,

but then again, sometimes you have to do that.

NARRATOR: Soon, news of Canada's Shag Harbour's sightings

travels across the border and reaches renowned physicist Dr.

Edward Condon and his team at the University of Colorado.

Condon and his committee are working

under a $500,000 contract from the United States Air Force

and putting together an independent scientific

assessment of unexplained UFO phenomena.

The Condon report was striving to gather a certain amount

of case studies in other countries around the world

internationally to see whether the United States Air

Force should continue investigating reports

of unidentified flying objects, and the Shag Harbour incident

came to their attention.

NARRATOR: They have deep resources and a distinguished

staff, but according to eyewitness Chris Styles,

Condon and his committee do not dedicate much time or effort

to the puzzling Shag Harbour case.

The case was turned over to an electrical engineer called

Norman Levine.

He made a few calls to RCMP headquarters in Ottawa

and to Maritime Command, but was assured by them

that they had done a complete and thorough search.

It's unfortunate that he didn't pursue that path because God

knows what he would have found.

NARRATOR: Canada's Shag harbour incident is 1 of 59 major UFO

cases around the world that Condon's team selects

to include in their study.

They submit the final report to the Air Force on October 31,

1968, but Case Number 34 receives only a few paragraphs

in the 900 page tome.

The report defends the lack of initiative in Shag Harbour

by arguing no further investigation by the project

was considered justifiable.

This conclusion of the Shag Harbour case

is consistent with Condon's overview of UFO research.

Our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study

of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added

to scientific knowledge.

I think one of the things that happens

when a serious scientific study is carried out

to look at the UFO situation in specific cases,

there's often a criteria that's very formal and rigid.

And often what happens is the best cases somehow,

no matter how you use your definitions,

no matter how carefully you are, will slip through the cracks.

I believe that's what happened in Shag Harbour.

NARRATOR: With no one pushing for answers,

Canada's Shag Harbour incident becomes

another unexplained mystery that is all but forgotten.

It quickly faded from the headlines

and became the back page story, and a month later, it

would have been hard to find anything on it.

And people went home, made a sandwich, went to work,

life went on.

NARRATOR: But 25 years later, a new investigation

is launched into the Shag Harbour incident.

This time some startling revelations

make it clear that the book should never

have been closed on this case.

In October of 1967, over a dozen witnesses see a UFO plunge

into Shag Harbour, Canada.

25 years later, unanswered questions remain.

That's where it all took place, right there.

We knew that something came down out of the air and something

landed in the water, but what it was, we didn't know.

NARRATOR: One of the other eyewitnesses that night cannot

forget what he saw over the harbor.

Chris Styles had seen the UFO from his home in Dartmouth,

Nova Scotia.

In 1992, while watching TV one night, everything would change.

I had watched a rebroadcast of the "Unsolved Mysteries"

episode that dealt with the Roswell incident,

and it made me think about Shag Harbour.

And what I remembered and what was so tantalizing about Shag

Harbour was that there was no denial, that the authorities

believe that this was a genuine UFO incident,

and it had simply faded from memory.

NARRATOR: Styles decides to launch his own investigation

into Shag Harbour.

He requests documents from the Canadian National Archives

and the Department of National Defense

using Canada's Access to Information Act.

In a few weeks, the government documents

arrive on spools of microfilm at the main branch of the Halifax

library.

A tedious search begins.

As you sit at the viewer and start going through document

after document, you realize that often these collections

were compiled by bureaucrats, who threw away nothing.

NARRATOR: The microfilm contains thousands

of documents of UFO cases across Canada from 1965 to 1981.

You're looking for an extraterrestrial straw

in a terrestrial haystack.

NARRATOR: Styles spends weeks at the microfilm viewer

until he hits paydirt.

It was all there, priority telexes from the Rescue

Coordination Center to the Canadian Forces headquarters,

instructions from the Canadian Maritime Command

to the Atlantic fleet diving unit,

and reports by dozens of witnesses.

Styles realizes that he is looking at the biggest

UFO event in Canada's history.

And I only saw one that had UFO written on it in three big

letters underlined three times and that had to do with

the Shag harbour incident.

I knew very early on that I had primary documents and a paper

trail a mile wide here.

NARRATOR: Has Chris Styles stumbled

upon a Canadian government cover up?

Styles decides he needs help.

He contacts fellow UFO researcher Don Ledger

to assist with his investigation.

Chris Styles was very passionate about Shag Harbour.

He'd been at it for about a year to a year

and a half at that point, researching it, digging up

the documents and so on, and he was infectious.

Eventually, dragged me into it as well.

NARRATOR: A careful examination of these declassified documents

paints a vivid timeline of the events

and helps bring the night of October 4, 1967 back to life.

I was very impressed with the paper trail for the Shag

Harbour.

It just pretty much laid out the whole thing.

NARRATOR: For Styles, the documents also suggest

that the Canadian military knew more than they were telling.

I think what surprised me most was how comfortable

these military people seemed with the possibility

that they might actually be looking for an object

of extraterrestrial origin.

In a sense, it was kind of an acknowledgment of UFO reality.

NARRATOR: Styles uncovers documents

that demonstrate that the sightings of October 4th

were not confined to Shag Harbour alone.

Reports came in from witnesses from all over Nova Scotia

that night.

He then comes across eyewitness testimony

from an unexpected but extremely reliable

source, experienced airline pilots.

At 7:15 PM on October 4, 1967, two pilots on Air Canada flight

305 are flying at an altitude of 12,000 feet

over southeastern Quebec.

Captain Pierre Charboneau and First Officer Robert Ralph

glance out of the left cockpit window

and see something astounding.

What they saw that night was a large round,

colored object in the sky that looked like to them

like a kite with a tail on it.

It was off their left wing and just slightly

above their altitude.

NARRATOR: The experienced pilots are at a loss.

They observe the strange shape for several minutes

when suddenly they see a series of explosions.

According to their testimony, they

begin to take evasive action when the UFO disappears

into a wisp of clouds.

After some deliberation, the pilots

decide to file official reports about the bizarre occurrence.

It's not common for pilots to go on record

and report a UFO, particularly a commercial pilots because

of maybe some recrimination later on from his employers

or maybe some ridicule from his peers.

NARRATOR: Continuing his research,

Styles uncovers more information from an unexpected source.

At St. Mary's University in Halifax,

Styles finds a treasure trove of x-files collected by none other

than the UFO skeptic who had downplayed the Shag Harbour

incident in the press, Father Burke-Gaffney.

And an x-file is not just a secret file,

but a file that is not admitted to by the originating agency,

so it was great that they were there because there was no

record of these in Ottawa either at National Archives or RCMP

headquarters.

NARRATOR: The RCMP x-files collected by Burke-Gaffney

provide more telling details about the night of October 4th.

One report includes the testimony of a ship captain

named Leo Mersey.

He's the captain of a fishing dragger that has 18 men.

It's off the coast of Sambro, Nova Scotia,

and it's got four UFOs in the distance in a box pattern.

And he looked at them, and then he went

and he checked and found them on radar.

NARRATOR: But Mersey's report contains something even more

puzzling, a reference to another underwater search

near Shelburne, 31 miles Northeast of Shag Harbour.

His statement in this x-file, he says,

perhaps it's like the thing you're looking for down off

Shelburne or off Shag Harbour.

So this would seem that there was indeed

a second simultaneous search effort.

NARRATOR: Did the UFO somehow travel away from Shag Harbour

after it crashed?

As it happens, the town of Shelburne

is also home to a former Canadian military base.

Is it somehow connected to the secrecy

surrounding the Shag Harbour sightings?

In fact, during the 1960s, the Shelburne facility

was officially called an oceanographic institute,

but its real identity was shrouded in Cold War intrigue.

In its heyday, it served as a top secret listening post

to track Soviet submarine movements in the North Atlantic

Ocean for the US Navy.

For Soviets, a submarine would come out in the Atlantic

from Russia and go on its tour.

They would pick up the engine noises

and the hull sounds made by the submarine passing

through the water on the microphones.

This would be fed into a computer

so they could get a match later on for if the same submarine

came up.

NARRATOR: Could the Canadian authorities

have used this submarine tracking technology

to locate a submerged UFO?

Was the Navy secretly searching the waters off

Shelburne while all eyes were focused on Shag Harbour?

To continue his investigation, Styles

sets out to track down those who would know best, the divers who

actually probed the depths of Shag Harbour.

On October 4, 1967, Chris Styles was one of many witnesses

who saw something strange in the skies over Nova Scotia.

Now he is on the hunt to try to find out what it was.

He has uncovered declassified government documents

indicating that the Canadian military was involved

in an intense search for a UFO that apparently crashed

into Shag Harbour.

The Canadian authorities assert that nothing was found

but Styles begins to suspect that the divers may hold

the key to the mystery.

A number of them we're unwilling to talk,

but a few were, and they told a very interesting tale that

went well beyond what was in the press clippings.

NARRATOR: April 9, 1993, one of the divers

agrees to an interview with Styles,

but demands that his identity be kept anonymous.

Styles is shocked when the diver informs him that they did

indeed find something underwater,

but it was not in Shag harbour.

He eventually explained that by the time divers had arrived

in Shag Harbour, they knew the object was no longer there.

That indeed, it had come to rest on the seabed 25 miles

away off government point near the Shelburne base.

NARRATOR: Had the UFO eluded the search efforts at Shag Harbour

by traveling underwater under its own power

up the coast of Nova Scotia?

If true, this would mean that the Canadian military conducted

a secret search at Shelburne that was then concealed

from the public.

The diver's new revelation is confounding to Styles.

I found the Shelburne story very troubling.

There were a lot of things that were certain,

we had government documents, but now there was a black box

element to the case.

And at first, I was very wary of it, very dubious of the claim.

NARRATOR: Now, Chris Styles is wondering if the Naval search

at Shag Harbour was just an elaborate decoy

for the real search the diver is now telling him about.

When pressed for details, the diver's story

becomes even more incredible.

When the divers were dispatched to the Shelburne

location, they dove over the object

and found that indeed there was in fact, even a second object

there, which they described as lending assistance

to the first.

I didn't know what to make of this.

This was well beyond events in the Shag Harbour incident.

NARRATOR: The diver informed Styles

that a flotilla of US Navy and Canadian ships

actually anchored over the two objects at Shelburne

and monitored their activities.

As he said, when he dove, him and a partner,

they were shocked to find there was still activity going on

and they indeed saw beings.

They were on the bottom and they watched what they thought

was creatures from one object giving aid to the other object.

NARRATOR: The Canadian diver's story does not end there.

He says that the Navy flotilla observed the two UFOs for seven

days.

Suddenly, the operation was interrupted

by a Russian submarine crossing into Canadian territorial

waters.

At this critical juncture, the Navy ships

were diverted to intercept the sub.

They attempt to intercept the Soviet sub, trying to cut it

off, and it's at this point when they're doing this maneuver

that the two UFOs begin to move back toward the Gulf of Maine,

and indeed, eventually, as reported, break the surface

and fly away.

NARRATOR: Are there any witnesses

on record that can corroborate the diver's fantastic story?

Did anyone see these two UFOs leaving the waters

off Shelburne?

Perhaps.

At 10 o'clock on October 11, 1967,

exactly one week after the Shag Harbour sightings,

the mysterious lights in the sky were seen once again,

this time by a family in Lower Woods Harbour, 35 miles

from Shelburne.

We look at what's known as the Lachlan Cameron sighting

one week later to the hour, and we

see two sets of lights leaving the area of Shag Harbour

and flying away.

It fits the diver's story like a glove.

It's hard to ignore that synchronicity.

NARRATOR: And we are left to wonder, did an alien spacecraft

really crash into Shag Harbour as the Navy diver suggests?

Or could there be another explanation?

An important clue to that question may still

exist with what one former lighthouse keeper says is true.

The second day, I did find a cylinder.

I knew it was something different, something

I had never seen before.

It was a cylinder-type shape, oh, 30 inches, 30 to 40 inches

long maybe.

15, 18 inches in diameter.

Had been partially burned, wires protruding, terrible odor.

NARRATOR: After finding the cylinder on the rocky shore

of Bond Portage Island, Banks says he notified the Canadian

Department of Transportation.

They informed him to carefully pack the object

and deliver it to an American Naval officer

at Prospect Point wharf.

It had to be something that they needed bad, wanted bad,

because they flew him in from Virginia,

or that's just what he told me.

NARRATOR: But what was inside the cylinder that

was so urgent and so secret?

I was working for the federal government at the time,

and I don't really feel comfortable answering that.

NARRATOR: It's an ongoing mystery that continues

to invite speculation.

For some, the evidence points to the secret military experiments

of the Cold War.

I theorized in my own mind that probably this

was some kind of an experimental drone or something

that they had back then.

One of the first ones that they had that

somehow got away from them.

I think it was a surveillance type of thing,

and it either crashed on its own, or they crashed it.

I think it was a plane, American military plane.

NARRATOR: Others contend that something capable of operating

both above and below the water can only be extraterrestrial.

Even now in this type of stealth aircraft,

we still don't have anything that's

both aerodynamic and hydrodynamic.

What the object is, that's what everybody always

wants to know.

What was the object?

Whatever went into the harbor that night was intelligently

controlled, and it was of extraterrestrial nature.

NARRATOR: It is unclear when if ever

the complete set of military records will be released.

If they are, will they shed light on this strange incident

and maybe even settle once and for all what happened in Shag

Harbour on October 4, 1967?

Until then, we are left with the mystery, speculation,

and the fading memory of the people

who saw something very unusual crash into the ocean

that night.

Today, I still scan the sky looking for something that

might be different or something like what I seen back

30 odd years ago.

Only thing that I would like to know is what it was.

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