Who you gonna call?

No, not when you see a ghost - but when you spot a meteorite falling from the sky.

It happens more often than you would think.

When a suspected meteorite landed on a Spruce Grove golf course recently, a number of residents continued to come forward with their own stories.

LOUD

"We both heard a very loud sound," Jocelyn and Michael Pederson wrote in an e-mail, describing the incident. "It was like a plane descending, and we thought a plane may have crashed.

"It was very close."

Mike Elliott, 49, his wife and a friend were headed south toward Spruce Grove around that time when, "all three of us saw the same thing."

"Its trajectory was straight down, and it was greenish in colour with a white spot, leaving somewhat of a tail behind it," Elliott said. "It surprised all of us, and we all thought it had to be a meteorite."

Elliott said it was the third meteorite he's spotted in his life - while veteran stargazer Evelyn Jones claims two.

Jones, who lives outside Breton, described driving home recently and also suddenly "looking up at the sky and seeing this thing with a big tail coming from behind a row of 60-foot spruce trees," - describing a glowing object resembling a honeydew melon.

"I'm 64," she said when asked her age, adding, "and I'm of sound mind."

Alan Hildebrand, a professor at the University of Calgary, tracks meteorites, or "fireballs," for the Canadian Space Agency as part of his study of asteroids and comets. And he concedes there can be a reluctance to report them.

"People do often tell me things like, 'I went into work and told them what I saw, and they told me I was crazy,' " he said. "So, I suppose they do have cause for fear.

"But that is another reason to report sightings because then other people might come forward, too."

But Hildebrand says that some 70 meteorites do indeed fall on Canadian soil or water every year. And he adds that's where organizations like the Meteorite and Impacts Advisory Committee come in. The committee maintains a website [HERE], which includes online reporting forms.

FIREBALLS

Barring that, Hildebrand said people spotting fireballs may also simply tell staff at institutions like the Telus World of Science, who can pass on details to him.

The geology professor says besides assisting researchers understand how the solar system works, reporting meteorites can help rule out catastrophes like plane crashes.

Hildebrand recommends would-be reporters take notes on aspects like height, distance and direction - and not rely on memory alone.

"Tracking down a meteorite is like the police trying to solve a crime," he said. "It's good to have multiple witnesses."