A diamond-shaped spacecraft. Unearthly flashing
lights. Shooting white beams. Five people aren't
sure exactly what they saw hovering over
Kimberley Mar. 5, but they agree on one thing -
the experience was out of this world!
By Christine Boyd
Weekly Editor
A diamond-shaped UFO
covered with flashing lights may have been
responsible for the collapse of the McKim
Theatre roof in Kimberley two weeks ago.
That's the rumour
setting the ski town a-buzz after at least five
witnesses reported seeing strange lights
drifting slowly above the Bavarian City around
midnight Mar. 5.
Fuelling speculation
were reports of an unearthly "light show"
spotted directly over the theatre roof just a
few hours before it's as-yet unexplained
collapse.
Flashing
Lights above McKim
The first sighting of
the UFO – and that's "unidentified flying
object," not necessarily "spaceship," all those
interviewed were quick to point out – seems to
have been made between 10 p.m. and midnight Mar.
5.
Home care worker Gail
Shay had just returned from work to her
apartment in the Pioneer Lodge on Church Street.
As she prepared to retire, she noticed unusually
bright lights dancing above the roof of the
theatre a few blocks away.
At first, the
46-year-old assumed that the beams were part of
a McKim Theatre Society-sponsored light show.
A second glance sent
shivers up her spine.
"It was like nothing
I've ever seen before," said Shay.
"At first, it seemed
like there was a crisscrossing spotlight going
up into the sky from the roof of the school. It
was glimmering, like the northern lights. There
were all these colours."
"Then the light
spread out like a mushroom cloud, exactly on the
same spot as where the roof is gone."
Aware that she might
be in for some ribbing after going on the record
about her experience, Shay quickly added that
she hadn't been drinking and isn't a spaceship
buff. Although she considers herself somewhat
unconventional and open to esoteric ideas, she
was overwhelmed by the experience.
...
The light spread out like a mushroom cloud,
exactly on the same spot as where the roof is
gone.
I was reeling through
a list of possible explanations, Shay said she
decided that she must be hallucinating and
crawled quickly into bed.
"I just kept
thinking, "Well, it’s some unexplained natural
phenomena' . . . I can accept lots, but this was
too much!" she said.
"I just couldn’t keep
looking because my mind couldn't explain what I
was seeing. I witnessed something, but I don't
know what it was."
Shaking
knees in Townsite
Approximately an hour
later, 68-year-old Ted Zawaski was shaken out of
a deep sleep by a phone call.
On the other end of
the line was a friend in Chapman Camp,
incoherently insisting that Zawaski take a look
at the sky.
After a few minutes,
Zawaski, says he was able to make sense of the
friend's words - a diamond-shaped object covered
with flashing lights was drifting slowly over
the trees west of the town.
Grabbing their coats,
Zawaski and his wife ran outside.
"The minute I saw it,
I almost panicked, because it was like nothing
I’ve seen on this earth," said Zawaski, who
lives in Townsite.
Excitedly swapping
details with the friends in Chapman Camp, the
Zawaskis watched the object from 12:15 to 12:40
a.m when it drifted out of sight behind the
trees.
"What do I think it
is? I don't know. I can tell you what I don’t
think it was..." he said.
The quartet ruled out
every conventional explanation they could think
of for the phenomena - it was moving too slowly
and too low to the ground to be a plane or
helicopter and it had too many extremely bright
flashing lights to be a hot air balloon, said
Zawaski.
Zawaski admitted to
being a bit of a UFO aficionado himself, and has
spotted four over the past 30 years - in
Austria, Norway, near Calgary and Kimberley.
However the other three witnesss claimed that
they had never seen one before and weren't
looking.
Man-made,
not spacemen!
In fact, his two
friends from Chapman Camp only agreed to comment
if they could remain anonymous due to fear of
public ridicule:
"You're kind of
laughing at the whole thing yourself," said Mrs.
"X." "People make these little comments like,
'Well, were you drinking last night?"'
In fact, Mrs. X was
stone sober and doing a last tour of the house
before retiring for the night when she, like
Shay, noticed a bright light illuminating the
house from outside. Expecting to see a bright
star, she glanced outside and then stood
petrified.
"It was large and
round like a car light, so I thought it was a
plane that was going to be landing," she said.
As she observed with
dawning amazement, the "plane" hovered unmoving
for five minutes, bright white rays of light
shooting to each side. Then the lights changed.
"The
minute I saw it, I almost panicked because it
was like nothing I've seen on this earth."
"It was throwing out
quite a few different lights, rotating around
it. There were definitely four colours that I
recall and maybe two other ones," she recalled.
"Then, of course, I
ran in and called my husband 'Hey! You've got to
see this!"
Armed with a pair of
binoculars, Mr. X was the only witness to
perceive more details on the object. He reported
seeing a faceted shape like a diamond in a ring,
with an inverted cone underneath. Lights played
constantly about its surface, but they shimmered
like lights in a fog, not with the concentrated
energy of a bulb, he said.
"It definitely wasn't
a star," he said. "Stars twinkle they don't give
off dazzling light like that. It was too
brilliant and big for a star."
Mr. X believes it was
probably a man-made object, but is at a loss to
explain it.
"I don't believe in
flying saucers and little green men, space men,
and all that stuff, I don't believe in it" he
said. "I was the first to 'fooh-fooh!' all that
stuff when other people talked about seeing
UFOs. I think there's a logical explanation."
Back in Townsite,
Zawaski shook with excitement, too awed to take
his eyes off the object - which he now regrets
not photographing. He had to take a tranquilizer
to fall asleep after and couldn't help
constantly glancing over his shoulder the next
morning while skiing at the Kimberley Nordic
Track.
"It wasn't anything
I've ever seen anywhere," said Zawaski, adding
that the experience cured him of any desire to
see UFOs in the future.
"I don't ever want to
see another one: it's too devastating."
"If it
had been any closer, I would have had a heart
attack. When I hear reports of other people
experiencing these things from 20 metres away –
I don't think I'd survive."
Spaceship
not ruled out
While Cranbrook
Regional Airport doesn't have radar, nothing
unusual was reported that night by staff or
incoming pilots, according to its flight
services station.
However, Kimberley
RCMP received several telephone calls that night
about the phenomena, although they were unable
to verify the sighting.
The rumour was even
raised among members of School District No.6 at
an emergency meeting called to discuss the
collapsed theatre roof, which is attached to
McKim Middle School.
We're not about to
speculate on the cause of the collapse, but
we've heard all kinds of ideas, including UFO
sightings on Friday night," said George Watson,
school district director.
He did admit last
week, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, that
the work crew had not yet found anything in the
wreckage to rule out alien spacecraft as a
cause.
"We haven't yet, but
maybe when we get inside that building, we'll
find something: we could find anything!"
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