In the week of July 20th, 1999, UFO*BC received a call on our Hotline from a gentleman who said he had witnessed a most startling event and that he had video footage to back up his story. On the evening of July 26th the members of UFO*BC made a visit to John McConnel’s residence to view the footage and to interview himself and his sister Mildred who had also been a witness. On arriving at his home and being cordially welcomed, it was obvious that John was in a state of stress and some degree of trauma. His behavior was erratic in that he could not keep from frenetically moving about the room, continually chain-smoking. He told us that he had not slept for four days and his behavior was congruent with sleep deprivation. Once we started discussing what he and his sister had seen he seemed to calm down considerably and was more in control of himself. When the opportunity was presented to him to appear on our radio show with Jeff Rense he was more than eager to share his experience and for that we are grateful. This is a direct transcript of that interview with Jeff Rense from the "Sightings on the Radio" show dated July 27.
Jeff Rense: Hello John.
John McConnel: Hello.
Jeff: Welcome
John: Thank You.
Jeff: I don’t know how to extend to you my concerns about what you’ve been through and your frustrations, but we have all been at this long enough to be able to tell you that it’s not unusual...there are thousands of people listening right now who’ve had similar feelings and we appreciate you keeping at it. Some people just shut up and don’t talk.
John: Well I’m telling you that I’m still not over it. I’ve just started to barely eat the last two days and getting some half decent sleep, that’s how bad it was.
Jeff: You were not able to sleep for a number of days. When did this latest event happen? We’ll talk about some of the prior incidents, but the latest big one, when did it happen John?
John: It would be the 20th [July 1999].
Jeff: Exactly one week ago today. So you’re indoors doing what? Minding your own business? What time of night was this?
John: No, no. Initially Monday night I was just putting the garbage out at one o’clock in the morning. Then I just happened to see a little flash so I looked behind the trailer and I seen this big thing hovering over the back.
Jeff: OK now let’s paint a little picture. It’s 1 o'clock in the morning. Is the trailer park pretty dark at night?
John: No. We have lights lit up around.
Jeff: OK, so you’re out with the trash and you notice a flash. What like a flash bulb flash?
John: No, like a flash of lightning
Jeff: OK, flash of lightning on the opposite of your residence and you walked around at one in the morning and what did you see?
John: I saw this big sphere with like wings pointed down. That was the first one I seen.
Jeff: OK. Now hold on. Distance away? Approximately?
John: Distance wise? Maybe a hundred yards away.
Jeff: You could throw a rock!
John: Pretty well I guess.
Jeff: Pretty close to that distance. Alright. What’s the terrain like? Was this over some of the other mobile homes or over to one side of the park?
John: Over the mobile home behind me directly over the lake.
Jeff: So there’s a lake right next to the park and it’s over the lake and as you looked at it, it was on top, just above some of the mobiles there. And it was a sphere with wing coming off the edges pointing down something like that?
John: Yeah something like an "A".
Jeff: Something like an "A" with a round circle in the middle?
John: On top of it. It had all the flashing different coloured lights.
Jeff: So we’ve got an orb with two wing-like things coming in a downward angle. Not straight down but maybe 45 degree angle?
John: That’s right.
Jeff: If you were to hold something out in your outstretched arm, how big would that something be?
John: If I held it out it would probably be the size of a golf ball.
Jeff: OK. A golf ball at arm's length. It’s that big with two wings coming down and the golf ball itself was illuminated? Was dark? Lights on it?
John: The ball itself was really bright red...a pulsating red and down the wings were other lights and they were flashing a blue, a green, a white and they were just flickering off and on, off and on.
Jeff: I understand. Were they in a straight line down each wing? These two row of lights? Were they flickering in sequence or at random?
John: In a straight line down the wings and they were in sequence.
Graham Conway: Was there any noise John?
John: Not a single sound.
Jeff: So about a hundred yards away about as big as a golf ball. Had you been able to get closer to it...about as big as half your mobile home? As big as your mobile?
John: All I did was come running inside and got my son and said, "Just come look out the window and tell me if you see anything and he was shocked.. totally shocked. He said, "Dad, am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?" so I says, "So you’re seeing it too?" and he says "Yeah".
Jeff: So then what’d you do?
John: I went around to other trailer units. Like I said, it was 1 o'clock in the morning and I was banging on the doors waking them up and they all thought I was nuts or drunk or smoking something, which I don’t.
Jeff: What were you wearing at the time, pajamas?
John: No no. My jean shirt and jeans.
Jeff: Did anybody come out?
John: Yeah. They said, "Go sleep it off!". All I wanted to do was borrow a camera. It’s right out the back here and they wouldn’t even take the time to come look.
Jeff: Do you remember what you said to them?
John: Yeah... I said there’s a UFO right out the back here, just over the lake and they just sort of closed the door on me. I woke other neighbours up which they came out and they saw just as it was going away. They saw the lights and everything flashing the different colours.
Jeff: They did see it. Good, you have other witnesses. How many people did you get out to look at it John?
John: Two.
Jeff: Well better than zero. And how long was the object visible to you?
John: Till about 3 o’clock in the morning.
Jeff: You were going around bonkers for quite some time then.
John: Absolutely
Jeff: Was the object pretty much stationary for most of the time?
John: Right
Jeff: ....and almost as if it knew when you got a couple more witnesses it decided to take off.
John: No, I actually phoned the police.
Jeff: And did they show?
John: No, they didn’t show. I phoned back at 4:30 and I also have a police scanner and they were just making mockery about how the aliens have landed and stuff like that. So I phoned back and told `em.
Jeff: You heard what they were saying. Good you confronted them.
John: I told them I wasn’t too pleased about what you’re saying. I says "You can come out here and take a blood test and a breath test. I’m not drinking. I’m not doing drugs and you’ll see this thing".
Jeff: As human as that response may be it angers me. We’re paying these people to respect us....to protect us. If I were you, but I’m not, I would get a copy of those 911 calls and bring them to the attention of city council and the Police Chief, because that is not what I would exactly call professional conduct.
John: Well it’s funny ‘cause when I went to the police station the desk sergeant turned around and said, "No calls were reported that night" and I says, "That’s awfully funny, because I’m the one that originally reported it in."
Jeff: So what he’s saying is that the tapes have disappeared?
John: I guess so.
Jeff: I get the picture... we all get the picture. That’s very unfortunate and I share your incredible frustration and anger to hear about this. OK, so the object is visible for well over an hour and then when it retreated...how did it retreat? And in what direction did it go?
John: It went to the southeast.
Jeff: Did it retreat horizontally or vertical?
John: Straight up on an angle towards the south.
Jeff: Then out of sight?
John: Out of sight.
Jeff: And what period of time would you say it began its departure until it was not visible?
John: It was after a good hour anyway... I couldn’t get hold of a camera, nobody would loan me a camera... uh... I was pretty distraught from what I’d heard over the scanner and stuff like that so then the next day I phoned my sister and then I got my sister to come out here when I started seeing them again and they came out with their video camera.
Jeff: Alright... that’s your sister Mildred....
John: Right... and her husband.
Jeff: Mildred will join us in just a minute now... what I think I just heard you say is that you’ve seen these again since last Tuesday?
John: Right...I got the one that’s like the big mother ship and she was actually loading on other ships onto it.
Jeff: Alright... let’s try and reconstruct that. You’re describing these extremely well. I want you to know that. Don’t have any hesitation. Last Tuesday was the first sighting. You called your sister and when was the next sighting of this mother ship?
John: That would have been early Wednesday morning
Jeff: Ok the very next day. Tell us about that one.
John: My sister suggested I get a security camera from the carport that I have against people stealing the car or breaking in. Mildred suggested that I just take that off and set it up. Which I did that night.
Jeff: How did you know which direction to point the camera?
John: I was just looking for the spots in the sky where they were pulsating.
Jeff: You could see these things pulsating?
John: I could actually see them pulsate.
Jeff: So you set the camera up and turned it on. Was it on a continuous loop or set off by motion?
John: No, I put it on continuous. So I pointed it in the direction they all were and this is where my whole life changed around. I’m 49 years old. I was kind of a believer before but not a believer ‘cause I’ve never seen anything. But what I saw that night... I was actually devastated... like I wasn’t sleeping... I wasn’t eating... I had people look at this to make sure of what I had on tape because its over 15 minutes long of this big ship taking on these other ones. Other people had actually seen this too.
Jeff: Tell us about what this big ship looked like and where it was in relation to your residence.
John: OK. It was to the rear of my residence just to the north/northeast, just below the mountain range where they had done a clear cut maybe 4-5 years ago.
Jeff: How many miles away?
John: Would be maybe 3-4 miles.
Jeff: OK, and again, this is the early morning. Why were you up? Just checking the camera?
John: No, after the first sighting I couldn’t sleep and thought maybe I could get to see a little bit more but I got to see more than what I wanted to see.
Jeff: So you went out... tell us what you saw... this is a big thing at distance and again at arm’s distance about how big would this be?
John: Well one of the fells that was here last night... like I’m not a mathematical brain... but from what he figured looking out the back window to where the clear cut was and what he saw on the TV he figured it had to be well over 350 feet in length. It was humungous and there was two of them but I only got the one on camera.
Jeff: This is extraordinary and Graham had mentioned they viewed some extraordinary video at your home. The object was shaped like what?
John: It was like a saucer shape but the hump in the middle wasn’t directly in the centre it was more to the... I guess to the left side of it.
Jeff: So it’s slightly off centre on the top but there was a dome but it was not centered.
John: It wasn’t in the centre no.
Jeff: Ok and the object itself was pulsating, was steadily illuminated... how did look?
John: It was like a silver colour and at the bottom of was different coloured lights and they were actually spinning around while it was hovering. It didn’t touch down it just hovered just below the mountain range.
Jeff: And the lights under it. Did it look like they were attached to it or just spinning around?
John: They were attached to it.
Jeff: It must have been absolutely beautiful.
John: It was absolutely gorgeous but it was scaring the living... daylights out of me, ‘cause it wasn’t just the one ship there were the two them. If I had turned the camera just a little bit to the right I would have had them both.
Jeff: Same shape?
John: Same shape, same size, everything. And they were loading up all these other ships!
Jeff: Tell us what the loading procedure looked like to you.
John: There was a beacon in front of it just directly in front of it and another just behind it.
Jeff: A beacon being a flashing light?
John: Like spheres and then there were smaller spheres that were actually going down underneath and coming in at the top and actually going inside this ship.
Jeff: You could see them entering the ship?
John: Yes I could actually see them entering into the ship.
Jeff: The ship is taking on smaller ships. What did the smaller items look like? And as we’re looking at this round disc-shaped huge enormous object with a dome on top of it but off centre, where are the objects entering and what do the objects appear to your eye to look like from that distance?
John: Seemed like they were entering from the very bottom going into the bottom and also going into the upper top part.
Jeff: So they were streaming in from one direction or several directions?
John: Several directions.
Jeff: These were little lights? What colour were these lights?
John: They would appear in different colours like they would go from a white to red and then to a blue and then enter the ship.
Jeff: So they’d come in almost as if a reconnaissance... coming back?
John: This is what I was scared of. This is what frightened me. If I only had to see the one it wouldn’t have bothered me as much... but I seen hundreds of them.
Jeff: Two big ships and hundreds of smaller ones?
John: Hundreds of these things were entering the one ship alone...it was unbelievable.
Jeff: Oh my, and who was able to watch this with you?
John: There was absolutely nobody here at the time, everybody was sleeping. My son is not into this at all.
Jeff: After the first sight he didn’t want anything to do with it?
John: That’s right. After I replayed the video tape and you could see them coming into the ship from the north and just before it took off there was a... one that was stationary right in front of it lit up, about four really bright intense pulsating glows and then about a minute after that, that’s when this ship and the other ship actually took off.
Jeff: Almost like a cadence or a countdown or a signal of some kind.
John: A signal exactly the way I took it. It was signal for them to go.
Jeff: How mind boggling... you poor guy four nights no sleep... you are so fortunate as you know to have met Graham and his colleagues. They will take everything you say totally seriously and help you with it.
Graham: John, mention the jet fighters.
John: Yeah. It was earlier in the evening just after the sun went down, there was military fighters. I don’t whether they were Canadian or American. They were actually chasing these things over the trailer court and as they were chasing them they would just... bang... disappear like you turned the light switch off.
Jeff: They were chasing the smaller items? Not the big ships but the smaller ones?
John: Right. And when I asked about it they said there were no military planes in the area whatsoever
Jeff: There never are John.
John: ...and I have that on video... I have the fighters going crazy around here.
Jeff: And were you able to hear them without any question... the fighters.
John: Yeah.
Jeff: And you have neighbours that can testify to that?
John: Yep.
Jeff: And how many fighters?
John: There are two of them on that night. I originally reported it Monday night and Tuesday night the fighters were here, and they were saying there was nothing.
Jeff: That would frustrate anybody believe me. Now Mildred is standing by there with you. Was she able to see something after this? On another night?
John: Yep. When I phoned her on Tuesday night her and her husband came over and they went directly over to the Ruskin dam. On the cell phone I talked to Gene, her husband, and they were saying they couldn’t see anything from the dam. I says there is one directly northeast of you, and it’s really big and bright.
Jeff: This is one of the mother ships?
John: No, this is the one that had like the wings pointing down.
Jeff: Ok. Now how many of those were there, we just heard of the one on the first night.
John: Yeah there was just the one when they came over on the Tuesday and they were right there at the dam and they couldn’t see nothing. I’m only about two minutes away from the dam, they got in the car and came down here, they looked out the back window and they couldn’t believe it. From where I am they could see it hovering right there. From the dam itself they couldn’t see it.
Jeff: It was somehow obscured or cloaked from their dam vantage point but when they got to you they could see the round globe and the wings... they could see that easy?
John: Yeah... and all the different coloured lights flashing.
Jeff: Let me get Mildred on the phone...Mildred?
Mildred: Hi.
Jeff: Your brother is heroic with his efforts to bring this to all our listeners. We really appreciate it. Tell us what you saw. You pretty much saw the object as he described it? You came down from the dam yet you couldn’t see it at the dam.
Mildred: Yeah it was really amazing... and not a sound... it was dead silent. What I saw was like the sphere part of it. I don’t have very good eyes and the colours were like red blue and lime green going on around the base of it and probably the size of a football field or bigger and it was hovering sort of on its side. It had moved from behind the trees and it came up a little bit closer and closer. It went from probably 200 yards up to about 100 yards.
Jeff: You were within 100 yards of it?
Mildred: Yeah. It was amazing.
Jeff: How did you and your husband react?
Mildred: Odd... the good thing is that my son... my 13 year old son was here visiting and he saw it as well and he couldn’t believe it.
Jeff: What was he saying?
Mildred: He just... he was always denying that he didn’t believe in this stuff until he saw it that night.
Jeff: What were your emotions? Fear? Curiosity? A mixture of everything?
Mildred: With what I saw it was like a sigh saying, "YES! It’s true!". There was no doubt in my mind. They come up with excuses saying it’s some kind of military plane and all that. Definitely not. It was a saucer.
Jeff: So your feeling was confirmation?
Mildred: Oh yes, 100 percent guaranteed. There was no doubt whatsoever in my mind and the thing I found amazing was every now and then you’d see these red rays shooting out of it. The first one was on the right hand side and then probably... I don’t know maybe two minutes later there was one on the left-hand side.
Jeff: Small thin beams of light? Or bigger wider rays of light?
Mildred: Like a red beam that shot down
Jeff: Onto the ground?
Mildred: Yeah. I don’t know what it was for or whatever and then it moved a little bit after it shot the beams and it seemed really close but I had to get up to go to work. Then the next night when all this other stuff was happening with my brother my son was flying back home to his father so I was beat by the time I got back home but I would have camped up here. There’s something big going on Jeff no kidding.
Jeff: How big was the item when it was closest? If you were to hold something out at arm’s length.
Mildred: Uhh... wow....
Jeff: An orange? Golf ball?
Mildred: Ohhh... bigger than that.
Jeff: Bigger than an orange?
Mildred: Oh yeah...
Jeff: Bigger than a full moon?
Mildred: Yeah...probably...not by much but probably yeah.
Graham: Mildred?
Mildred: Yeah?
Graham: Tell Jeff about the scanner conversation between the police you heard and the comments they made about the "twilight zone".
Mildred: That was about 2-3 years ago. My brother had recorded on a police scanner.... my brother should probably tell that one.
Jeff: We’ll hear that from John in a few minutes. Tell us what else happened in your mind... what other remembrances you have that might be helpful to us?
Mildred: The thing that I find amazing is that only a hundred yards away there was no sound... nothing... not even a peep and the amazing thing is you didn’t hear any animals whatsoever. It was dead silent when these things were around.
Jeff: No crickets... and you have a million crickets and frogs I imagine?
Mildred: Exactly. But there was more around than just that one there was 3 or 4 of them that were in the vicinity but that one was the closest.
Jeff: The others that were in the vicinity were they the same size do you think? The same type craft or different?
Mildred: Probably... yeah... it was so far off in the distance it was hard to make out but... they were definitely moving about erratically but this one was right up close. It was like saying, "Here I am".
Jeff: Did you have any psychic feelings like it was aware you were watching it?
Mildred: I have no doubt in my mind. My brother has on film white flashes in the bushes which is not very far from his trailer and these are not fire flies.
Jeff: So the camera was picking up on video the bushes reflecting some kind of flashing light?
Mildred: Exactly. That’s scary.
Jeff: How long was your sighting then? The duration approximately?
Mildred: Oh I’d say a good couple of hours. I literally had to leave to get my son home for his flight and it was still there when I left
Jeff: And it stayed relatively close ?
Mildred: Yeah.
Jeff: How could you leave something like that?
Mildred: You know if my son didn’t have to go home you wouldn’t have gotten me away from there.
Jeff: Tell his Dad, "Sorry we had an encounter". Then you would have been in real trouble though.
Mildred: Yeah! Could you believe it?
Jeff: Alright Mildred this extraordinary... do you have any plans to go out there and catch more of these things? It sounds like from what we’re going to hear after the break from John that there is quite a history there. Do you want to go out and camp out and try and see more or have you seen enough for awhile?
Mildred: No I would actually love to go up with my UFOBC group if they would have me... I'd be very much interested in that.
Jeff: Alright super... OK thanks very much Mildred.
Jeff: John if you’re there go ahead and tell us about what you heard and recorded on your scanner.
John: About 3 years ago I was listening to the police scanner and then there was a report that came in from over in Mission somebody reported that they saw this red ball in the sky.
Jeff: And that’s where you live, in Mission, right?
John: That’s why I bought the place over here because it was close to all the action that was going on but I didn’t expect what I got anyway. Anyway the police officer went up to the person that phoned in and he spotted this thing in the sky above the tree line and he radioed the station that there was... and the station says, "there could be a flare" and the officer says, "No. I worked for the Marines and I know what a flare looks like....this thing is hovering over the tree line". So then a few minutes after all you heard the officers read back is, "HOLY GEEZ! If I weren’t seeing this with my own eyes I would never believe this!" He says, "This thing is the size of a football field."
Jeff: You have this on tape?
John: I had it on tape. I had loaned the tape out to somebody and I never ever got the tape back.
Jeff: Well we learned a lesson there didn’t we?
John: That’s why I’m not giving out or loaning out the original tape to what I got of this. Nobody is getting their hands on this one.
Jeff: Alright. Anything else on this visit you want to leave us with John... any details that are important that I haven’t been able to get to yet or that you haven’t been able to?
John: Well the only thing is, like I say, I was totally baffled... really upset over this... I even went as far as phoning my lawyer. When I was getting in touch with the police and the military I wanted my lawyer to be over here so he could view the tape with the police, and my lawyer even turns around and says, "John, when did you start smoking anything?" And I told him I didn’t.
Jeff: You mean your former lawyer?
John: My former lawyer is right
Jeff: It just challenges people to their very core in many cases and they just can’t handle it. So they deny it.
John: Well with everything I’ve gone through this past week and stuff like that I was going absolutely bananas. Like I didn’t know if we were under some kind of invasion from what I saw. I was showing people and they were absolutely stunned at what they were seeing on the TV, even the news networks. They wanted me to bring in the original, they were even going to send a car out from Vancouver so I would bring in the originals and I wouldn’t do that. I was afraid something might be set up down the line, that I would be intercepted with the originals. So I was told by somebody else to get the originals out of the residence and somewhere safe. That is precisely the procedure I did take. On the second tape I have video of almost three hours.
Jeff: We have video. It is secure. You are working with Graham and the UFOBC folks. This is an investigation that will go from one end to the other. You’re in good hands. Thank you John very, very much for sharing that tonight and I appreciate your time and please give your sister a thanks as well.
John: I sure will.
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