On Aug. 4, 1977, Paul Shishis was just a regular teenager working at a Scarborough grocery store.
But, it was no ordinary evening shift. He remembers that day well.
That Thursday night, he said, out in an adjacent open field, the 18-year-old saw what most people encounter only in science-fiction movies: a pear-shaped unidentified flying object with rotating multi-coloured lights in the night sky.
"I was dumbstruck with what I was witnessing," Mr. Shishis said, now 48 and living in Oshawa.
Mr. Shishis' experience is recorded alongside thousands of Canadian sightings, and the recent recounting of his story comes at a time when many continue to pose the elusive age-old question: Are we alone in the universe? This year marks the 60th anniversary of the crash landing in Roswell, New Mexico, where some believe the U.S. military covered up evidence of an alien craft. And this weekend, Edmonton's TELUS World of Science, a respected museum complex, hosted a two-day UFO conference exploring the possibility of intelligent alien life.
A television reporter claims to have discovered China's answer to the Loch Ness monster, state press reported Sunday.
Local journalist Zhuo Yongsheng shot footage of six "seal-like" creatures in the northeastern Tianchi lake, which local legend has long said is home to Loch Ness-style monsters.
"They could swim as fast as yachts and at times they would all disappear in the water," the Xinhua news agency quoted Zhuo as saying. "Their fins, or maybe wings, were longer than their bodies."
Elusive mystical creatures emerged again in Kanas Lake of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. According to the administration of the Kanas scenic spot, on July 5th at 8:20pm, huge ripples were seen on the surface of the lake by a few tourists carrying their portable video cameras.
"Look! Monsters!" A group of Beijing tourists cried in astonishment. The news claiming reappearance of "lake monsters" immediately spread throughout the region.
On the afternoon of June 7, (around 7:50 pm, Beijing time), seven tourists from Beijing were sailing on the Kanas Lake, a scenic spot in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, northwest China. When they stopped near Sandaowan for a photo, they suddenly spotted two dark objects, very large in size, springing out of the water, breaking a wave one meter high. They leapt forward one following the other, headed swiftly towards the middle of the lake and disappeared from sight in about two minutes. Then peace reigned again.
Airport bound planes and birds are commonly seen in the skies above Harlow, but only 11 days ago there was a report of a UFO spotted above the town.
The sighting appeared on a Canadian website, which is run by independent UFO investigator Brian Vike.
The person who posted the sighting had been sitting outdoors at 12.30am with friends when they saw a mysterious grey object move across the night sky.
"It looked greyish in colour and was not moving very quickly," they said. "It was probably a few hundred feet high, H shaped, completely silent and no lights to be seen."
They go on to say that the object was seen above the Princess Alexandra Hospital for about five seconds before it moved behind trees towards the east.
Peter Tremblay The Canadian Sat, 08 Sep 2007 05:30 UTC
Rumors have persisted for years that the astronauts -- nearly all of whom are military officers susceptible to being silenced under orders -- may have seen something more on the Moon than rocks and dust.
According to transcripts of the technical debriefing following the Apollo 11 mission, astronauts Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins told of an encounter with a large cylindrical UFO even before reaching the Moon, U.S. investigative journalist and researcher Jim Marrs documents. Mr. Aldrin further officially presented his encounters with apparent Extraterrestrials on CNN's Larry King Show.
Jim Marrs further presents that Mr. Aldrin said, "The first unusual thing that we saw I guess was one day out or pretty close to the Moon. It had a sizable dimension to it". Aldrin said the Apollo crew at first thought the object was the Saturn 4 booster rocket (S-IVB); but, he added, "We called the ground and were told the S-IVB was 6,000 miles away."
Anna Vernoslova RIA Novosti Wed, 05 Sep 2007 15:16 UTC
Ukraine's political life is no stranger to the unusual and the inexplicable, but if ordinary people tire of intrigues and controversy, they can turn their attention to more celestial, if no more comprehensible phenomena. UFO sightings are up across the country. But in contrast to the politicians, no ufologist claims to have all the answers.
The Zond center for the study of anomalous phenomena claims that Ukraine has seen an increase in UFO activity over recent years. "While in the 1990s we had 10 to 15 reports a year, now their number has increased to 20-30. Most of them are accompanied by photos and videos. Witnesses understand that if they have seen something unusual in the sky they must tell researchers about it," said Artyom Bilyk, the center's learned secretary.
In scientists' view, the increase in reported sightings is explained by the proliferation of technology, as more and more people have access to cameras, video cameras, camera phones and so on. But even controlling for the increase in available technology, the UFO phenomenon is now observed more often than before.
Three residents in Nyssa and one in Ontario said they saw bright lights in the night sky Tuesday and Wednesday that were unlike anything they had ever seen before.
A clear, official explanation for what they saw, however, has yet to materialize.
The people said they did not want their names released, though, because they fear the community will think they are "crazy."
The bizarre light incident in the sky occurred between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. both nights.
A Ripley man had a close encounter of the third kind this weekend when he spotted mysterious orange lights hovering over Belper.
The unidentified flying objects were seen by Jason Selby, of Ripley, at around 9.20pm while driving towards Derby on the A38 on Saturday night.
Mr Selby, said: "I watched these two objects fly from the direction of Derby. One followed the other in what seemed to be almost a straight line. At first I thought that they may be helicopters, but I noticed that they had no green or red navigation lights visible on them."
My Selby then pulled into the layby on A38 just before the Kilburn turn off and watched the two objects in the sky for another two minutes.
Crews of two passenger aircraft, TU-134 and Boeing-737, spotted two unknown flying objects - supposedly, big balloons, in the sky of the Moscow Region. Despite the unusual "finds", flights of the two planes were not interrupted.
The crew of TU-134 of the air company Aeroflot-Nord was the first to notice the flying balloons at a height of 2100 metres. This happened not far from Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow at around 6.36pm Moscow time, September 2. Eight minutes later the crew of Boeing-737 of the air company Transaero noticed a flying red balloon at a height of 4500 metres.
