On March 18, 2001, UFO British Columbia received an e-mail from a gentleman
living in Roberts Creek, on the Sunshine Coast. It was in response to a request we had put
in the local Sechelt paper asking for UFO sightings. For fear of being ridiculed he had
kept this story within his family for over 2 years. The following is an excerpt from an
e-mail that he had written to his sister living in eastern Canada. The sighting took place
on December 28, 1998.
I promised I would write down my 2nd UFO encounter. Here it is. UFO, as in unidentified
flying objects; not necessarily big, nor high in the sky. Ask "Bob" to recall
the church parking lot which is out back of our place, to the north, where we look out at
Mount Elphinstone. It was the Monday after Christmas and before New Years, December 28th
to be exact. I had been at work and was home, and "Kate" had gone to bed before
me. So, I stayed up and trolled thru the channels until I got completely bored with TV and
decided to go to bed. I was quite tired, and it had been an atrocious day for weather. In
fact, the wind was strong from the East, (i.e. from right to left as one looks out on our
deck towards the north) and the rain was sheeting (another BC word) down. No-one was out
that night, believe me, no one. Just a truly ugly night outside. There is one light on the
parking lot, a bright parking-lot type light, on the far side, by the fence, near the
condos to the north of us on the far side of the church property. There were some low
interior lights on inside the church, as usual, but not a soul there, no cars in the
parking lot.
I headed out to the deck for the nightcap cigarette, and as I was sliding the door open,
(no screen this time, no danger of a sudden encounter with woven wire) I saw what looked
like two red lights circling about, approximately 75 feet away, a couple of feet above the
gravel. Bob, remember that the far half of the lot is paved, where the buses parked, and
the first 60 feet or so of the lot from the fence north are gravel/grass. The lights were
2-3 feet above the ground, slightly to the right of due north, and not as far away from me
as the street is from your front door. They were below my height, so I was looking down
slightly at them, and they were very near the ground. What did they look like? Like the
passive red reflectors on the back of a bicycle, or the red reflectors people nail up to a
stick and then plant at the end of a road or driveway. They whirled around each other,
bright, small, no sound, like two flies when you see a few flies in the middle of a room
oscillating around each other. The motion was fly-like, or very smooth, more smooth than
birds, who dart from point to point. I couldn't see anything except this small red glow,
maybe 1-2 inches across, no shape, no noise, no shadow, no glow on the ground, nuttin
honey. I stepped out on the deck, staring directly at this sight, my heart pounding.
The much vaunted "Jones" analytical brain kicked in... I thought some kids with
a Christmas gift of radio-controlled airplanes - no, not a sound, these suckers would be
loud, and expensive, judging by the tight, fast path of travel - then, fireflies, yeah,
that's the ticket, huge, motivated, rain-loving Hawaiian fireflies blown north by the
jetstream path from Hawaii to BC (that's exactly the path of the weather that week, I
checked - and no, there are no bright red, continuously lit fireflies recorded in Hawaii
or anywhere, I checked THAT too - and no people, dogs, cats, Kate, neighbours, buses,
churchgoers, in fact anything that would be considered a witness) and just at that point,
one rose, turned north and flew off like a bee, the other one following, crossed the lot
and disappeared in about 1/2 second. Total time of event, maybe 5 seconds - one seriously
freaked out "George" standing on the deck wondering what the hell THAT had been
all about...
Believe me, searching the Net for UFO stories about red fireflies is a complete waste of
time. Nothing, nada, nil, rien. It's been a month, and the hairs on the back of my neck
still stand up when I think about it like right now. Two possibilities:
1) Living - not an encouraging concept. What glows like bicycle light, flies like a bee,
is out on a dark rainy night, and takes off when yours truly shows up? I looked - no
fireflies continuously lit show up anywhere. All my instincts lean towards the idea of
living, particularly the motion - just like two flying insects circling each other then
the escape path north. If you ever watch a bee take off, it climbs before accelerating
away, not the other way around - this was exactly like that - I'll show you sometime
2) Not live - less encouraging still - There was an article very recently in the Economist
about the development of small scale battlefield drones for reconnaisance purposes -
Lockheed is the recipient of a multi-million dollar budget to develop stuff that would
weight less than a pound and be somewhat autonomous - not this decade, though, and what
(or who) would be goofing around in the dank outback of Gibsons between Xmas and New
Year's flying state-of-the-art prototypes and scaring the daylights out of the innocent
bystander?
Now you know. Believe me, this story is not embellished. This is exactly as I remember it,
and I've remembered it a lot this past month. I have literally no idea, but the strongest
impression that I was watching something living. By the way, nothing in the local paper,
but I'm not going to tell anyone local, for fear of being tarred as a loonie forever, and
I suspect that if anyone else saw something like this, they ain't talking either. So, two
weird sightings, both local, both within the year, one witnessed by Kate, and not an ax to
grind in sight. After a lifetime of looking and not seing anything weird, I'm the lucky
recipient....twice.
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